EARLY JAPAN BISHOP 565 



fighters were by no means content merely to act on the defensive. 

 Throughout their history as an independent people they evinced an 

 entire willingness to meet their enemies quite halfway. Their usual 

 method of waging war was to strike the settlements of the foe im- 

 awares and then be off again Avith their booty and captives, leaving 

 behind them a trail marked in blood and fire, before troops could be 

 brought up against them. The attitude of the bulk of the Japanese 

 peasantry toward these savage raiders is vividl}' reflected in a 

 very ancient song, attributed lo the mythical hero Jimmu, which 

 says that one Emishi (i. e., Ainu) is a match for a hundred men. 



THE AINU FRONTIER 



It was clearly for strategic reasons that the Yamato had moved 

 their seat of government in the first place from Kyushu to the fron- 

 tier region about Lake Biwa. For it w\is there that Ainu incursions 

 were most to be dreaded and there, too, that they could be most easily 

 repelled before the}^ had penetrated far into the country. That such 

 a radical change of base should have been made, in spite of the very 

 great importance which we loiow the Yamato rulers attached to the 

 maintenance of their hold on southern Korea, gives us a measure of 

 the anxiety with which they regarded the "Ainu question." Only a 

 motive of the utmost cogency could have induced them to remove 

 so far from the position close to the Strait of Tsushima which they 

 had hitherto occupied. 



The settlement of the Ainu problem was at length effected; but it 

 was only by dint of the hardest fighting, protracted through cen- 

 turies. The possession of iron weapons and of a force of mounted 

 archers accustomed to maneuver at a gallop over rough ground 

 must have given the Yamato a great advantage over the Ainu in the 

 open field. But as the latter were slowly pushed back northeastward 

 they absorbed more and more of the civilization of their enemies 

 with a consequent increase in their own powers of resistance, while 

 the Yamato armies, on the other hand, advancing both by land and 

 by sea, met with ever greater difficulty in getting up their supplies 

 from the cultivated districts far in their rear. Moreover, it was 

 not enough merely to occupy the lowlands near the coast with 

 blockhouses and military colonies. The central mountain ranges 

 had also to be invaded and their inhabitants dispossessed or sub- 

 dued, if there was to be any security for the always lengthening 

 lines of communication. In view of the overwhelming difficulties 

 attending the task, it is no wonder that it was so long of accomplish- 

 ment; while the dogged stubbornness Avith which the centuries-long 

 76041—26 37 



