Читать книгу A History of the Japanese People - Kikuchi Dairoku - Страница 143

This sovereign was the Ohatsuse of whose unscrupulous ambition so much has just been heard. Some historians have described him as an austere man, but few readers of his annals will be disposed to endorse such a lenient verdict. He ordered that a girl, whose only fault was misplaced affection, should have her four limbs stretched on a tree and be roasted to death; he slew one of his stewards at a hunt, because the man did not understand how to cut up the meat of an animal; he removed a high official—Tasa, omi of Kibi—to a distant post in order to possess himself of the man's wife (Waka), and he arbitrarily and capriciously killed so many men and women that the people called him the "Emperor of great wickedness." One act of justice stands to his credit. The slanderer, Ne no Omi, who for the sake of a jewelled coronet had caused the death of Prince Okusaka, as related above, had the temerity to wear the coronet, sixteen years subsequently, when he presided at a banquet given in honour of envoys from China; and the beauty of the bauble having thus been noised abroad, Ne no Omi was required to show it at the palace. It was immediately recognized by the Empress, sister of the ill-starred prince, and Ne no Omi, having confessed his crime, was put to death, all the members of his uji being reduced to the rank of serfs. One moiety of them was formed into a hereditary corporation which was organized under the name of Okusakabe, in memory of Prince Okusaka.