l 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.

THE ISE SHRINE AND THE PRACTICE OF JUNSHI

Two events specially memorable in this reign were the transfer of the
shrine of the Sun goddess to Ise, where it has remained ever since,
and the abolition of the custom of junshi, or following in death. The
latter shocking usage, a common rite of animistic religion, was in
part voluntary, in part compulsory. In its latter aspect it came
vividly under the notice of the Emperor Suinin when the tomb of his
younger brother, Yamato, having been built within earshot of the
palace, the cries of his personal attendants, buried alive around his
grave, were heard, day and night, until death brought silence. In the
following year (A.D. 3), the Empress having died, a courtier,
Nomi-no-Sukune, advised the substitution of clay figures for the
victims hitherto sacrificed. Nominally, the practice of compulsory
junshi ceased from that date,* but voluntary junshi continued to find
occasional observance until modern times.

*Of course it is to be remembered that the dates given by Japanese
historians prior to the fifth century A.D. are very apocryphal.

WRESTLING

The name of Nomi-no-Sukune is associated with the first mention of
wrestling in Japanese history. By the Chronicles a brief account is
given of a match between Nomi and Taema-no-Kuehaya. The latter was
represented to be so strong that he could break horns and straighten
hooks. His frequently expressed desire was to find a worthy
competitor. Nomi-no-Sukune, summoned from Izumo by the Emperor, met
Kuehaya in the lists of the palace of Tamaki and