802 PRIMEVAL JAPANESE. 



most liighlj civilized among the bjinds of colonists constituting the 

 iincestors of the present Japanese race. Thus the "divine warrior," 

 after having been temporarily erased from the tal)lets of history I)}' 

 the modern sceptic of the West, is projected upon them once more 

 from the newly opened graves of the primeval Japanese. It is true 

 that there is an ai'itluiietical difficulty. It has ])een supposed that the 

 dolmens do not date from a period more remote than the third century 

 l»efore Christ, whereas Jimnufs invasion is assigned to the seventh. 

 But no great eti'ort of imagination is required to effect a compromise 

 between the uncertain chronology of the Japanese annals and the 

 tentative estimates of modei'n archeologists. 



Some of the l)urial customs revealed by these ancient tombs resem- 

 ble the hal)its of the Scythians as descrilx'd by Herodotus. The Japa- 

 nese did not, it is true, lay the corpse of a chieftain between sheets of 

 g'old, nor did they inter his favorite wife with similar pomp in an 

 adjoining chamber; ])utthey did deposit with hiiu his weapons, hisorna- 

 UKMits, and the trap})ings of his war horse, and in remote times they 

 followed th(» l)ar])arous ]-ule of burying alive, in the inuiiediate vicin- 

 ity of his sepuk'lier, his personal attendants, male and female, and 

 prol)a1)ly also his steed. To the abrogation of that cruel rule is due 

 nuich information al)Out the garments worn in early epochs, for in the 

 century immediately preceding the Christian era a kind-hearted 

 emperor decided that clay figures should be substituted for hutuan 

 victims, and these tigures, being modeled, however roughl}', in the 

 guise of the men and women of the time, tell what kind of costumes 

 were worn and what was the manner of wearing them. Collecting all 

 the available evidence, the story shapes itself into this: 



Prior to the third, or perhaps the fourth century before the Chris- 

 tian era, when the dead were interred in barrows, not dolmens, the 

 Japanese, though they stood on a plane considerably a])Ove the gen- 

 eral'level of Asiatic civilization, did not yet understand the forging of 

 iron or the use of the potter\s wheel. They were still in the bronze 

 age, and their weapons — swords, halberds, and arrowheads — were 

 made of that metal. Concerning the fashion of their garments not 

 much is known, but they used for purpose of personal adornment, 

 quaintly shaped o})jects of jasper, rock crystal, steatite, and other 

 stones. Then, owing probably to the advent of a second wave of 

 immigration from the continent, the civilization of the nation was sud- 

 denly raised, and the country passed at once from the bronze to the 

 iron age, with a corresponding development of industrial capacity in 

 other directions, and with a novel method of sepulture having no 

 exact prototype except in western Europe. The newcomers seem to 

 have been, not a race distinct from their predecessors, but a second out- 

 growth of colonists from the same parent stem. Where that stem had 

 its roots there is no clear indication, but it is evident that, during the 



