Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 127

This sovereign is represented by the Chronicles as having reigned eighty-six years, and by the Records as having died at the age of eighty-three. The same Chronicles make him the lover of a girl whom his father, also her lover, generously ceded to him. This event happened in A.D. 282. Assuming that Nintoku was then sixteen, he cannot have been less than 133 at the time of his death. It is thus seen that the chronology of this period, also, is untrustworthy. Nintoku's reign is remembered chiefly on account of the strange circumstances in which he came to the throne, his benevolent charity, and the slights he suffered at the hands of a jealous consort. His father, Ojin, by an exercise of caprice not uncommon on the part of Japan's ancient sovereigns, had nominated a younger son, Waka-iratsuko, to be his heir. But this prince showed invincible reluctance to assume the sceptre after Ojin's death. He asserted himself stoutly by killing one of his elder brothers who conspired against him, though he resolutely declined to take precedence of the other brother, and the latter, proving equally diffident, the throne remained unoccupied for three years when Waka-iratsuko solved the problem by committing suicide.

Such are the simplest outlines of the story. But its details, when filled in by critical Japanese historians of later ages, suggest a different impression. When Ojin died his eldest two sons were living respectively in Naniwa (Osaka) and Yamato, and the Crown Prince, Waka-iratsuko, was at Uji. They were thus excellently situated for setting up independent claims. From the time of Nintoku's birth, the prime minister, head of the great Takenouchi family, had taken a special interest in the child, and when the lad grew up he married this Takenouchi's granddaughter, who became the mother of three Emperors. Presently the representatives of all branches of the Takenouchi family came into possession of influential positions at Court, among others that of o-omi, so that in this reign were laid the foundations of the controlling power subsequently vested in the hands of the Heguri, Katsuragi, and Soga houses. In short, this epoch saw the beginning of a state of affairs destined to leave its mark permanently on Japanese history, the relegation of the sovereign to the place of a fainéant and the usurpation of the administrative authority by a group of great nobles.

Nintoku had the active support of the Takenouchi magnates, and although the Crown Prince may have desired to assert the title conferred on him by his father, he found himself helpless in the face of obstructions offered by the prime minister and his numerous partisans. These suffered him to deal effectively with that one of his elder brothers who did not find a place in their ambitious designs, but they created for Waka-iratsuko a situation so intolerable that suicide became his only resource. Nintoku's first act on ascending the throne explains the ideographs chosen for his posthumous name by the authors of the Chronicles, since nin signifies "benevolence" and toku, "virtue." He made Naniwa (Osaka) his capital, but instead of levying taxes and requisitioning forced labour to build his palace of Takatsu, he remitted all such burdens for three years on observing from a tower that no smoke ascended from the roofs of the houses and construing this to indicate a state of poverty. During those three years the palace fell into a condition of practical ruin, and tradition describes its inmates as being compelled to move from room to room to avoid the leaking rain.*

*Doubts have been thrown on the reality of this incident because a poem, attributed to Nintoku on the occasion, is couched in obviously anachronistic language. But the poem does not appear in either the Records or the Chronicles: it was evidently an invention of later ages.

Under Nintoku's sway riparian works and irrigation improvements took place on a large scale, and thus the eminent historian, Rai Sanyo, may not be without warrant for attributing to this ruler the sentiment quoted in the Chronicles: "A sovereign lives for his people. Their prosperity is his enrichment; their poverty, his loss." Yet it is in connexion with Nintoku's repairs of the Manda river-bank that we find the first mention of a heinous custom occasionally practised in subsequent ages—the custom of sacrificing human life to expedite the progress or secure the success of some public work.

At the same time, that habits indicating a higher civilization had already begun to gain ground is proved by an incident which occurred to one of the Imperial princes during a hunting expedition. Looking down over a moor from a mountain, he observed a pit, and, on inquiry, was informed by the local headman that it was an "ice-pit." The prince, asking how the ice was stored and for what it was used, received this answer: "The ground is excavated to a depth of over ten feet. The top is then covered with a roof of thatch. A thick layer of reed-grass is then spread, upon which the ice is laid. The months of summer have passed and yet it is not melted. As to its use—when the hot months come it is placed in water or sake and thus used." [Aston's Nihongi.] Thenceforth the custom of storing ice was adopted at the Court. It was in Nintoku's era that the pastime of hawking, afterward widely practised, became known for the first time in Japan. Korea was the place of origin, and it is recorded that the falcon had a soft leather strap fastened to one leg and a small bell to the tail. Pheasants were the quarry of the first hawk flown on the moor of Mozu.

Light is also thrown in Nintoku's annals on the method of boatbuilding practised by the Japanese in the fourth century. They used dug-outs. The provincial governor* of Totomi is represented as reporting that a huge tree had floated down the river Oi and had stopped at a bend. It was a single stem forked at one end, and the suzerain of Yamato was ordered to make a boat of it. The craft was then brought round by sea to Naniwa, "where it was enrolled among the Imperial vessels." Evidently from the days of Ojin and the Karano a fleet formed part of the Imperial possessions. This two-forked boat figures in the reign of Nintoku's successor, Richu, when the latter and his concubine went on board and feasted separately, each in one fork.

*This term, "provincial governor," appears now for the first time written with the ideographs "kokushi." Hitherto it has been written "kuni-no-miyatsuko." Much is heard of the koushi in later times. They are the embryo of the daimyo, the central figures of military feudalism.