FOREIGN INTERCOURSE
Korea, when Japanese history is first explicitly concerned with it, was peopled by a number of semi-independent tribes, and the part of the peninsula lying southward of the Han River—that is to say, southward of the present Seoul—comprised three kingdoms. Of these Ma-Han occupied the whole of the western half of the peninsula along the coast of the Yellow Sea; while Sin-Han and Pyong-Han formed the eastern half, lying along the shore of the Sea of Japan. The three were collectively spoken of as Sam-Han (the three Han). But Japan's relations with the peninsula did not always involve these major divisions. Her annals speak of Shiragi (or Sinra), Kara, Kudara, and Koma. Shiragi and Kara were principalities carved respectively out of the southeast and south of Pyong-Han. Thus, they lay nearest to Japan, the Korea Strait alone intervening, and the Korea Strait was almost bridged by islands. Kudara constituted the modern Seoul and its vicinity; Koma, (called also Korai and in Korea, Kokuli), the modern Pyong-yang and its district. These two places were rendered specially accessible by the rivers Han and Tadong which flowed through them to the Yellow Sea; but of course in this respect they could not compare with Shiragi (Sinra) and Kara, of which latter place the Japanese usually spoke as Mimana.
There can scarcely be any doubt that the Korean peninsula was largely permeated with Chinese influences from a very early date, but the processes which produced that result need not be detailed here. It has been also shown above that, in the era prior to Jimmu, indications are found of intercourse between Japan and Korea, and even that Susanoo and his son held sway in Shiragi. But the first direct reference made by Japanese annals to Korea occurs in the reign of Sujin, 33 B.C. when an envoy from Kara arrived at the Mizugaki Court, praying that a Japanese general might be sent to compose a quarrel which had long raged between Kara and Shiragi, and to take the former under Japan's protection. It appears that this envoy had travelled by a very circuitous route. He originally made the port of Anato (modern Nagato), but Prince Itsutsu, who ruled there, claimed to be the sole monarch of Japan and refused to allow the envoy to proceed, so that the latter had to travel north and enter Japan via Kehi-no-ura (now Tsuruga.)
Incidentally this narrative corroborates a statement made in Chinese history (compiled in the Later Han era, A.D. 25-220) to the effect that many Japanese provinces claimed to be under hereditary rulers who exercised sovereign rights. Such, doubtless, was the attitude assumed by several of the Imperial descendants who had obtained provincial estates. The Emperor Sujin received the envoy courteously and seemed disposed to grant his request, but his Majesty's death (30 B.C.) intervened, and not until two years later was the envoy able to return. His mission had proved abortive, but the Emperor Suinin, Sujin's successor, gave him some red-silk fabrics to carry home and conferred on his country the name Mimana, in memory of Sujin, whose appellation during life had been Mimaki.
These details furnish an index to the relations that existed in that era between the neighbouring states of the Far East. The special interest of the incident lies, however, in the fact that it furnishes the first opportunity of comparing Japanese history with Korean. The latter has two claims to credence. The first is that it assigns no incredible ages to the sovereigns whose reigns it records. According to Japanese annals there were only seven accessions to the throne of Yamato during the first four centuries of the Christian era. According to Korean annals, the three peninsular principalities had sixteen, seventeen, and sixteen accessions, respectively, in the same interval. The second claim is that, during the same four centuries, the histories of China and Korea agree in ten dates and differ in two only.* On the whole, therefore, Korean annals deserve to be credited. But whereas Japanese history represents warfare as existing between Kara and Shiragi in 33 B.C., Korean history represents the conflict as having broken out in A.D. 77. There is a difference of just 110 years, and the strong probability of accuracy is on the Korean side.
*For a masterly analysis of this subject see a paper on Early Japanese History by Mr. W. G. Aston in Vol. XVI of the "Translations of the Asiatic Society of Japan."
THE ELEVENTH SOVEREIGN, SUININ (29 B.C.—A.D. 70)
Suinin, second son of his predecessor, obtained the throne by a process which frankly ignored the principle of primogeniture. For Sujin, having an equal affection for his two sons, confessed himself unable to choose which of them should be his successor and was therefore guided by a comparison of their dreams, the result being that the younger was declared Prince Imperial, and the elder became duke of the provinces of Kamitsuke (now Kotsuke) and Shimotsuke. Suinin, like all the monarchs of that age, had many consorts: nine are catalogued in the Records and their offspring numbered sixteen, many of whom received local titles and had estates conferred in the provinces. In fact, this process of ramifying the Imperial family went on continuously from reign to reign.
There are in the story of this sovereign some very pathetic elements. Prince Saho, elder brother of the Empress, plotted to usurp the throne. Having cajoled his sister into an admission that her brother was dearer than her husband, he bade her prove it by killing the Emperor in his sleep. But when an opportunity offered to perpetrate the deed as the sovereign lay sleeping with her knees as pillow, her heart melted, and her tears, falling on the Emperor's face, disturbed his slumber. He sought the cause of her distress, and learning it, sent a force to seize the rebel. Remorse drove the Empress to die with Prince Saho. Carrying her little son, she entered the fort where her brother with his followers had taken refuge. The Imperial troops set fire to the fort—which is described as having been built with rice-bags piled up—and the Empress emerged with the child in her arms; but having thus provided for its safety, she fled again to the fort and perished with her brother. This terrible scene appears to have given the child such a shock that he lost the use of speech, and the Records devote large space to describing the means employed for the amusement of the child, the long chase and final capture of a swan whose cry, as it flew overhead, had first moved the youth to speech, and the cure ultimately effected by building a shrine for the worship of the deity of Izumo, who, in a previous age, had been compelled to abdicate the sovereignty of the country in favour of a later descendant of the Sun goddess, and whose resentment was thereafter often responsible for calamities overtaking the Court or the people of Japan.