EAELY JAPAN BISHOP 563 



inflicted at tlie end of tlie fourth century upon one of their war parties 

 oy the Ainu of the rugged peninsuLar region between Tokyo Bay 

 and the Pacific Ocean. And 80 years or so later — in the year 478 

 A. D., to be exact — the Chinese records inform us that the emperor 

 then reigning, Shun Ti, of the Early Sung Dynasty, received a 

 letter ==* from the ruler of the Yamato, stating that his father had 

 conquered toward the east 55 states of the Maojen, or "hairy men" 

 (the Ainu, of course), and on the west G5 states of the I-jen, or 

 "barbarians." Who these latter were is uncertain, but they were 

 perhaps most likely fragments of the pre- Yamato population of 

 western Japan, of mixed Ainu and Mongoloid descent, which, dwell- 

 ing in mountainous areas or outlying islands, had managed hitherto 

 to escape conquest by the Yamato. Southern Kyushu in particular 

 we know long remained independent and hostile. The almost entire 

 absence of dolmens here indicates the slight control exercised by the 

 Yamato over this region during their Early Iron Age, and this in- 

 ference is most abundantly confirmed by their own records. 



LOSS OF CONTINENTAL TF^RRITORY 



But, though the influence of the mikados was being strengthened 

 during this period in Japan proper, as much can not be said with re- 

 gard to their relations with the continent. During much of the 

 Early Iron Age western Japan and particularly northern Kyushu 

 seem to have been far less closely allied in feeling to the Yamato 

 region than they were to southern Korea. At times this conscious- 

 ness of kinship actually took the form of alliances between the 

 peoples on the two sides of the Strait of Tsushima for waging war — 

 " rebellion " in the official Japanese phraseology — against the divine 

 Yamato rulers of central Japan. It was only by great efforts that 

 the latter were able to maintain even the loosest control over their 

 kinsfolk of the lower end of the peninsula.^^ Geography, in the 

 shape of the hundred miles of sea between Japan and Korea, was 

 working as inexorably against them as did the English Channel 

 against the retention of Normandy b}^ the English kings — in many 

 ways a closely parallel case. 



Finally, in the latter half of the seventh century the age-long 

 friendship between the kingdom of Hsin-lo, the ancient Shen-Han, 

 and China, then under the sway of the powerful T'ang Dynasty, 



" Thus showinjr that the .Tapanose were now boginning to conduct their diplomatic 

 correspondence in writing, if indeed they had not already been doing so for a century 

 or two ; but the art remained for long a secret confined to certain hereditary guilds of 

 Chinese or Korean extraction, whose members thus acquired vast influence with the rulers 

 and great nobles of the Yamato whom they ser^-ed as scribes. 



^ On the dominance of Japan in Korea during the early centuries of the Christian era, 

 see Kauichi Asakawa : The Early Institutional Life of Japan. Tokyo, 1903, pp. 80 et seq. 



