acquire anything specially
new in the way of moral tenets. They must have been surprised to find
that in China men did not respect the occupants of the throne. A
subject might murder his sovereign and succeed him without incurring
the odium of the people." Rai Sanyo says: "Moral principles are like
the sun and the moon; they cannot be monopolized by any one country.
In every land there are parents and children, rulers and ruled,
husbands and wives. Where these relations exist, there also filial
piety and affection, loyalty and righteousness may naturally be
found. In our country we lack the precise terminology of the
classics, but it does not follow that we lack the principles
expressed. What the Japanese acquired from the classics was the
method of formulating the thought, not the thought itself."

THE SIXTEENTH SOVEREIGN, NINTOKU (A.D. 313-399)

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 ti