EARLY JAPAN BISHOP 561 



understood instance of royal brother-and-sister marriage, a custom 

 which Ave know formerly existed in Korea also.^° 



That a marked change of some kind, whether as the result of 

 actual invasion or not, really did take place at this time is further 

 shown by the fact that the Chinese records of the period sometimes 

 refer to " Great Wo " by the alternative name of " the Queen 

 Country," although declaring specifically that in earlier times it 

 had been ruled over by kings. It seems to have been the case, that 

 these female rulers of the Wo derived their powers from a belief 

 that they in some special sense — most likely through actual physical 

 descent — represented the Sun Goddess, whose oracles and priestesses 

 they were. 



It was about this same period, apparently, that there arose on the 

 main island, in what was later the province of Izumo, an independ- 

 ent kingdom which had especially close relations with the country of 

 Hsin-lo, or Silla, facing it across the Sea of Japan.^^ It is perhaps 

 in this Izumo region that is to be sought the land of Ko-nu, mentioned 

 by contemporary Chinese writers as situated across the sea from Ye- 

 ma-t'ai (in Kyushu, as we have seen), and more to the eastward. 

 The people of Ko-nu, we are further told, although of the same race 

 as the Wo, were generally on terms of hostility with the latter, and 

 unlike them were ruled over hj a king, who was in diplomatic cor- 

 respondence with the Chinese representatives in Korea. 



Thus it seems clear that beginning about the latter half of the 

 second century western Japan was invaded from Korea by a de- 

 cidedly high culture characterized by the use of iron, the manu- 

 facture of wheel-made pottery, the possession of domestic animals, 

 the custom of fighting on horseback, the practice of true agriculture, 

 and the burial of the illustrious dead in dolmens covered by huge 

 mounds of earth. It is possible that the bow played a part in the 

 extension of this culture, for the original Mongoloid settlers of 

 western Japan, like their kinsmen of the Chinese littoral and so 

 many of the modern peoples of Indo-China and Indonesia, appear 

 to have been spearmen rather than archers. 



Of the substitution of male rule for female rule among the Wo 

 there is no historical record. But that it took place not long after 

 the time of the great queen just mentioned and that it was due to 

 the growing influence of Chinese ideas may be held as certain. The 

 former divine queens seem to have survived merely as chief 

 priestesses of the Sun cult, while the actual power was henceforth 

 vested in the male heads of the ruling clan, the historical mikados, 



»»Hulbert, op. cit., p. 81. 



^ On the contact between ITsin-Io and the Izumo region of Japan, sec Aston, Nihongi, 

 vol. 1, p. 166 and note; W. E. Griffls : Corea, the Hermit Nation, New Yorlc, 1882; refer- 

 ence in I'reface, p. v ; Baelz, op. cit., p. 52.5. 



