THE ANCIENT PIT-DWELLERS OF YEZO. 



By Eomyn Hitchcock. 



When the first Emperor of Japan, known by the posthumos title 

 Jimum Tenno, whose traditional reign began 660 B. C, was on his im- 

 perial journey eastward from ancient Tsukushi, to establish the seat 

 of government in Yamato, he came to a great " cave " or " apartment", 

 in which eighty tsuchigumo or cave-dwelling savages were awaiting 

 him. The word tsuchigumo is usually translated "earth-spiders," but 

 Prof. B. H. Chamberlain regards it as a corruption of tsuchi-gomori, or 

 " earth-hiders." Whatever the original meaning may have been, there 

 can be no doubt that it was applied to a savage people, who inhabited 

 Japan before the coming of the Japanese. 



The ancient records of the Japanese contain many allusions to these 

 dwellers in caves, or dwellers under ground. In the reign of the Em- 

 peror Keiko two Kumaso braves were killed in a cave by Yamato-take. 

 The Empress Jingo Kogo was wrecked amoug tsuchi-gumo. They are 

 said to have been numerous in Bungo and in other western provinces, 

 in Omi, in Yamato, and in other localities. 



The character of their dwellings is not clearly defined, owing to the 

 ambiguous meaning of the Chinese character translated "cave." In 

 certain parts of Japan natural caves are numerous, but they are not 

 common throughout the country. Artificial caves are not uncommon, 

 but I have endeavored to show, in an article treating of ancient Japa- 

 nese burial customs, read before section H of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science at Toronto in 1889, that such caves 

 were constructed for interment of the dead and not for dwellings. 

 Still other structures, chambers made by piling up huge rocks and 

 heaping up mounds of earth to cover them, are also numerous in 

 southern Japan, and these have been designated as caves by von 

 Siebold, rather carelessly it seems to me. But these also were only 

 burial chambers. Granting that mere opinions concerning such a 

 subject are not of much value, I would only add that until some stronger 

 evidence than von Siebold has adduced gives color to the idea that the 

 early inhabitants of Japan lived in true caves, I hold that their dwell- 

 ings were more probably of the character of the pit-dwellings to be 

 described in this article. It is true we do not find the ruins of such 



417 

 H. Mis. 129, pt. 2—27 



