A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

THE TSUCHI-GUMO

In ancient Japan there was a class of men to whom the epithet "Tsuchi" (earth-spiders) was applied. Their identity has been a subject of much controversy. The first mention made of them in Japanese annals occurs in connexion with the slaughter of eighty braves invited to a banquet by the Emperor Jimmu's general in a pit-dwelling at Osaka.* The Records apply to these men the epithet "Tsuchi-gumo," whereas the Chronicles represent the Emperor as celebrating the incident in a couplet which speaks of them as Yemishi. It will be seen presently that the apparent confusion of epithet probably conveys a truth.

*This incident has been already referred to under the heading "Yemishi." It is to be observed that the "Osaka" here mentioned is not the modern city of Osaka.

The next allusion to Tsuchi-gumo occurs in the annals of the year (662 B.C.) following the above event, according to the chronology of the Chronicles. The Emperor, having commanded his generals to exercise the troops, Tsuchi-gumo were found in three places, and as they declined to submit, a detachment was sent against them. Concerning a fourth band of these defiant folk, the Chronicles say: "They had short bodies and long legs and arms. They were of the same class as the pigmies. The Imperial troops wove nets of dolichos, which they flung over them and then slew them."

There are four comments to be made on this. The first is that the scene of the fighting was in Yamato. The second, that the chiefs of the Tsuchi-gumo had Japanese names—names identical, in two cases, with those of a kind of Shinto priest (hafuri), and therefore most unlikely to have been borne by men not of Japanese origin. The third, that the presence of Tsuchi-gumo in Yamato preceded the arrival of Jimmu's expedition. And the fourth, that the Records are silent about the whole episode. As for the things told in the Chronicles about short bodies, long limbs, pigmies, and nets of dolichos, they may be dismissed as mere fancies suggested by the name Tsuchi-gumo, which was commonly supposed to mean "earth-spiders." If any inference may be drawn from the Chronicles' story, it is that there were Japanese in Yamato before Jimmu's time, and that Tsuchi-gumo were simply bands of Japanese raiders.

ENGRAVING: AINUS (INHABITANTS OF HOKKAIDO, THE NORTHERN ISLAND)

They are heard of next in the province of Bungo (on the northeast of Kyushu) where (A.D. 82) the Emperor Keiko led an army to attack the Kumaso. Two bands of Tsuchi-gumo are mentioned as living there, and the Imperial forces had no little difficulty in subduing them. Their chiefs are described as "mighty of frame and having numerous followers." In dealing with the first band, Keiko caused his bravest soldiers to carry mallets made from camellia trees, though why such weapons should have been preferred to the trenchant swords used by the Japanese there is nothing to show. (Another account says "mallet-headed swords," which is much more credible). In dealing with the second, he was driven back once by their rain of arrows, and when he attacked from another quarter, the Tsuchi-gumo, their submission having been refused, flung themselves into a ravine and perished.

Here again certain points have to be noticed: that there were Tsuchi-gumo in Kyushu as well as in Yamato; that if one account describes them as pigmies, another depicts them as "mighty of frame," and that in Kyushu, as in Yamato, the Tsuchi-gumo had Japanese names. Only once again do the annals refer to Tsuchi-gumo. They relate curtly that on his return from quelling the Kumaso the Emperor Keiko killed a Tsuchi-gumo in the province of Hizen. The truth seems to be that factitious import has been attached to the Tsuchi-gumo. Mainly because they were pit-dwellers, it was assumed for a tune that they represented a race which had immigrated to Japan at some date prior to the arrival of the Yemishi (modern Ainu). This theory was founded on the supposed discovery of relics of pit-dwellers in the islands of Yezo and Itorop, and their hasty identification as Kuro-pok-guru—the Ainu term for underground dwellers—whose modern representatives are seen among the Kurilsky or their neighbours in Kamchatka and Saghalien. But closer examination of the Yezo and Itorop pits showed that there was complete absence of any mark of antiquity—such as the presence of large trees or even deep-rooted brushwood;—that they were arranged in regular order, suggesting a military encampment rather than the abode of savages; that they were of uniform size, with few exceptions; that on excavation they yielded fragments of hard wood, unglazed pottery, and a Japanese dirk, and, finally, that their site corresponded with that of military encampments established in Yezo and the Kuriles by the Japanese Government in the early part of the nineteenth century as a defence against Russian aggression.

Evidently the men who constructed and used these pit-dwellings were not prehistoric savages but modern Japanese soldiers. Further very conclusive testimony has been collected by the Rev. John Batchelor, who has devoted profound study to the Ainu. He found that the inhabitants of Shikotan, who had long been supposed to be a remnant of pre-Ainu immigrants, were brought thither from an island called Shimushir in the Kurile group in 1885 by order of the Japanese Government; that they declared themselves to be descended from men of Saghalien; that they spoke nothing but the Ainu language, and that they inhabited pits in winter, as do also the Ainu now living in Saghalien. If any further proof were needed, it might be drawn from the fact that no excavation has brought to light any relics whatever of a race preceding and distinct from the Yemishi (Ainu), all the pits and graves hitherto searched having yielded Yamato or Yemishi skulls. Neither has there been found any trace of pigmies.

An Ainu myth is responsible for the belief in the existence of such beings: "In very ancient times, a race of people who dwelt in pits lived among us. They were so very tiny that ten of them could easily take shelter beneath one burdock leaf. When they went to catch herrings they used to make boats by sewing the leaves together, and always fished with a hook. If a single herring was caught, it took all the strength of the men of five boats, or ten sometimes, to hold it and drag it ashore, while whole crowds were required to kill it with their clubs and spears. Yet, strange to say, these divine little men used even to kill great whales. Surely these pit-dwellers were gods."*