prosy or
cognate diseases, unnatural offences, evil acts on the part of
children towards parents or of parents towards children, etc. Methods
of expiating crime were recognized, but, as was the universal custom
in remote times, very cruel punishments were employed against
evil-doers and enemies. Death was inflicted for comparatively trivial
offences, and such tortures were resorted to as cutting the sinews,
extracting the nails and the hair, burying alive, roasting, etc.
Branding or tattooing seems to have been occasionally practised, but
essentially as a penalty or a mark of ignominy.

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