charged[1] me, saying: ‘I and thou will together rule the Empire; so the Heavenly Sovereign must be slain;’—and so saying, he made an eight times tempered stiletto, and handed it to me. Therefore I wanted to cut thine august throat; but though I thrice lifted [the weapon], a feeling of regret suddenly arose, so that I could not cut thy throat, and the tears that I wept fell and wetted thine august face. [The dream] was surely the omen of this.” Then the Heavenly Sovereign said: “How nearly have I been betrayed!—and forthwith he raised an army to smite King Saho-biko, whereupon the King made a rice-castle[2] to await the fray. At this time Her Augustness Saho-bime, unable to forget her elder brother, fled out through the back-gate [of the palace], and came into the rice-castle.
[Sect. LXXI.—Emperor Sui-nin (Part III.—Birth of Prince Homu-chi-wake and Death of the Conspirators).]
At this time the Empress[3] was pregnant. Thereupon the Heavenly Sovereign could not restrain [his pity for] the Empress, who was pregnant and whom he had loved for now three years. So he turned his army aside, and did not hasten the attack. During this delay, the august child that she had conceived was born. So having put out the august child and set it outside the rice-castle, she caused [these words] to be said to the Heavenly Sovereign: “If this august child be con-
- ↑ Or “enticed.”
- ↑ This expression, which is repeated elsewhere, is one which has given rise to a considerable amount of discussion. The “Chronicles” tell us expressly that “rice [-stalks] were piled up to make a castle,”—an assertion which, as Motowori remarks, is simply incredible. He therefore adopts Mabuchi’s suggestion that a castle like a rice-castle is what is intended,—“rice-castle” being taken to mean “rice-store” or “granary,” such granaries having probably been stoutly built in order to protect them from thieves. The historian of the T’ang dynasty quoted in the “Exposition of the Foreign Notices of Japan” says that the Japanese had no castles, but only palisades of timber. The latter might well however have been called castles by the Japanese, though they would not have been accounted such by the Chinese, who already built theirs of stone.
- ↑ I.e., Her Augustness Saho-bime, who was the subject of the preceding sentence.
