A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

DIVINATION

As is usually the case in a nation where a nature religion is followed, divination and augury were practised largely in ancient Japan. The earliest method of divination was by roasting the shoulder-blade of a stag and comparing the cracks with a set of diagrams. The Records and the Chronicles alike represent Izanagi and Izanami as resorting to this method of presaging the future, and the practice derives interest from the fact that a precisely similar custom has prevailed in Mongolia from time immemorial. Subsequently this device was abandoned in favour of the Chinese method, heating a tortoise-shell; and ultimately the latter, in turn, gave way to the Eight Trigrams of Fuhi. The use of auguries seems to have come at a later date. They were obtained by playing a stringed instrument called koto, by standing at a cross-street and watching the passers, by manipulating stones, and by counting footsteps.

MILITARY FORCES

It has been related that when the "heavenly grandson" undertook his expedition to Japan, the military duties were entrusted to two mikoto* who became the ancestors of the Otomo and the Kume families. There is some confusion about the subsequent differentiation of these families, but it is sufficient to know that, together with the Mononobe family, they, were the hereditary repositories of military authority. They wore armour, carried swords, spears and bows, and not only mounted guard at the palace but also asserted the Imperial authority throughout the provinces. No exact particulars of the organization of these forces are on record, but it would seem that the unit was a battalion divided into twenty-five companies, each company consisting of five sections of five men per section, a company being under the command of an officer whose rank was miyatsuko.

*"August being," a term of respect applied to the descendants of the
Kami.

FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION

No mention is made of such a thing as currency in prehistoric Japan. Commerce appears to have been conducted by barter only. In order to procure funds for administrative and religious purposes, officers in command of forces were despatched to various regions, and the inhabitants were required to contribute certain quantities of local produce. Steps were also taken to cultivate useful plants and cereals and to promote manufactures. The Kogo-shui states that a certain mikoto inaugurated the fashioning of gems in Izumo, and that his descendants continued the work from generation to generation, sending annual tribute of articles to the Court every year. Another mikoto was sent to plant paper-mulberry and hemp in the province of Awa (awa signifies "hemp"), and a similar record is found in the same book with regard to the provinces of Kazusa and Shimosa, which were then comprised in a region named Fusa-kuni. Other places owed their names to similar causes.

It is plain that, whatever may have been the case at the outset, this assignment of whole regions to the control of officials whose responsibility was limited to the collection of taxes for the uses of the Court, could not but tend to create a provincial nobility and thus lay the foundations of a feudal system. The mythological accounts of meetings of the Kami for purposes of consultation suggest a kind of commonwealth, and recall "the village assemblies of primitive times in many parts of the world, where the cleverness of one and the general willingness to follow his suggestions fill the place of the more definite organization of later times."* But though that may be true of the Yamato race in the region of its origin, the conditions found by it in Japan were not consistent with such a system, for Chinese history shows that at about the beginning of the Christian era the Island Empire was in a very uncentralized state and that the sway of the Yamato was still far from receiving general recognition. A great Japanese scholar** has contended that the centralization which prevailed in later ages was wholly an imitation of Chinese bureaucracy, and that organized feudalism was the original form of government in Japan. The annals appear to support that view to a limited extent, but the subject will presently be discussed at greater length.

*B. H. Chamberlain.

**Hirata Atsutane.