s a land at the westward, and in that land
there is abundance of various treasures dazzling to the eye, from gold and
silver downwards. I will now bestow this land upon thee."

Then the emperor replied, "If you ascend to a high place and look
westward, no country is to be seen; there is only the great sea." And he
pushed away the lute upon which he was playing and said, "They are lying
deities which have spoken to you." Then the deity was very angry and spoke
again through the empress. "This empire is not a land over which thou art
fit to rule. Go thou the one road."

The prime-minister Take-no-uchi then said to the emperor, "I am filled
with awe, my heavenly sovereign, at this fearful message. I pray thee
continue playing thy august lute." Then he played softly; and gradually
the sound died away and all was still. And they took a light and looking
in his face, behold he was dead.

The empress and the prime-minister Take-no-uchi concealed for the time the
death of the emperor, and she herself proceeded to carry out the plan for
the invasion of Korea. With indefatigable energy she gathered her forces
and equipped a fleet for the descent upon Korea. She set out from Wani in
Kyushu in the tenth month of the year A.D. 202. Even the fish of the sea
were her allies, for with one accord they bore the ship in which she
sailed across the intervening straits on their backs.

The coming of the Japanese was a complete surprise to the people of Korea.
At this time the peninsula now known to us as Korea and to the Japanese as
Chosen, was divided into three kingdoms, Korai, Shiraki, and Kudara. The
fleet of Jingo-Kogo landed in the kingdom of Shiraki. The king was so
completely unprepared for this incursion that he at once offered his
subjection and proposed to become a tributary kingdom. The proposition was
accepted. The kings of Korai and Kudara made similar proposals which also
were accepted. Each was to make an immediate contribution to the empress,
and annually thereafter to send tribute to the capital of Japan. Thus they
became the three tributary countries (_sankan_) dependent on Japan.
Although this invasion of a foreign country without cause or provocation
must be pronounced indefensible, yet it is not unlikely that the subject
kingdoms were quite as safe and free under the distant and little
intermeddlesome dominion of the Japanese empire, as they had been in the
past or were likely to be in the future from their troubleso