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 sa