The fifteenth Sovereign, Ojin, came to the throne at the age of seventy, according to the Chronicles, and occupied it for forty years. Like a majority of the sovereigns in that epoch he had many consorts and many children—three of the former (including two younger sisters of the Emperor) and twenty of the latter. Comparison with Korean history goes to indicate that the reign is antedated by just 120 years, or two of the sexagenary cycles, but of course such a correction cannot be applied to every incident of the era.
MARITIME AFFAIRS
One of the interesting features of Ojin's reign is that maritime affairs receive notice for the first time. It is stated that the fishermen of various places raised a commotion, refused to obey the Imperial commands, and were not quieted until a noble, Ohama, was sent to deal with them. Nothing is stated as to the cause of this complication, but it is doubtless connected with requisitions of fish for the Court, and probably the fishing folk of Japan had already developed the fine physique and stalwart disposition that distinguish their modern representatives. Two years later, instructions were issued that hereditary corporations (be) of fishermen should be established in the provinces, and, shortly afterwards, the duty of constructing a boat one hundred feet in length was imposed upon the people of Izu, a peninsular province so remote from Yamato that its choice for such a purpose is difficult to explain. There was no question of recompensing the builders of this boat: the product of their labour was regarded as "tribute."
Twenty-six years later the Karano, as this vessel was called, having become unserviceable, the Emperor ordered a new Karano to be built, so as to perpetuate her name. A curious procedure is then recorded, illustrating the arbitrary methods of government in those days. The timbers of the superannuated ship were used as fuel for roasting salt, five hundred baskets of which were sent throughout the maritime provinces, with orders that by each body of recipients a ship should be constructed. Five hundred Karanos thus came into existence, and there was assembled at Hyogo such a fleet as had never previously been seen in Japanese waters. A number of these new vessels were destroyed almost immediately by a conflagration which broke out in the lodgings of Korean envoys from Sinra (Shiragi), and the envoys being held responsible, their sovereign hastened to send a body of skilled shipmakers by way of atonement, who were thereafter organized into a hereditary guild of marine architects, and we thus learn incidentally that the Koreans had already developed the shipbuilding skill destined to save their country in later ages.
IDEALISM OF THE THIRD CENTURY
In connexion with the Karano incident, Japanese historians record a tale which materially helps our appreciation of the men of that remote age. A portion of the Karano's timber having emerged unscathed from the salt-pans, its indestructibility seemed curious enough to warrant special treatment. It was accordingly made into a lute (koto),* and it justified that use by developing "a ringing note that could be heard from afar off." The Emperor composed a song on the subject:
"The ship Karano
"Was burned for salt:
"Of the remainder
"A koto was made.
"When it is placed on
"One hears the saya-saya
"Of the summer trees,
"Brushing against, as they stand,
"The rocks of the mid-harbour,
"The harbour of Yura." [Aston.]
*The Japanese lute, otherwise called the Azuma koto, was an instrument five or six feet long and having six strings. History first alludes to it in the reign of Jingo, and such as it was then, such it has remained until to-day.
LAW, INDUSTRY, LOYALTY
Five facts are already deducible from the annals of this epoch: the first, that there was no written law, unless the prohibitions in the Rituals may be so regarded; the second, that there was no form of judicial trial, unless ordeal or torture may be so regarded; the third, that the death penalty might be inflicted on purely ex-parte evidence; the fourth, that a man's whole family had to suffer the penalty of his crimes, and the fifth, that already in those remote times the code of splendid loyalty which has distinguished the Japanese race through all ages had begun to find disciples.