was first deposited for some days in a “mourning-house,” during which interval the survivors (though their tears and lamentations are also mentioned) held a carousal, feasting perhaps on the food which was specially prepared as an offering to the dead person. Afterwards, the corpse was interred, presumably in a wooden bier, as the introduction of stone tombs is specially noted by the historian as having taken place at the end of the reign of the Emperor Sui-nin, and was therefore believed by those who handed down the legendary history to have been a comparatively recent innovation, the date assigned to this monarch by the author of the “Chronicles” coinciding with the latter part of our first, and the first half of our second centuries. To a time not long anterior is attributed the abolition of a custom previously observed at the interments of royal personages. This custom was the burying alive of some of their retainers in the neighbourhood of the tomb. We know also, both from other early literary sources and from the finds which have recently rewarded the labours of archæologists, that articles of clothing, ornaments, etc., were buried with the corpse. It is all the more curious that the “Records” should nowhere make any reference to such a custom, and is a proof (if any be needed) of the necessity of not relying exclusively on any single authority, however respectable, if the full and true picture of Japanese antiquity is to be restored. A few details as to the abolition of the custom of burying retainers alive round their master’s tomb, and of the substitution for this cruel holocaust of images in clay will be found in Sect. LXIII, Note 23, and in Sect. LXXV, Note 4, of the following translation.[1] If the custom be one which is properly included under the heading of human sacrifices, it is the only form of such sacrifices of which the earliest recorded Japanese social state retained any trace. The absence of slavery is another honourable feature. On the other hand, the most cruel punishments were dealt out to enemies and wrongdoers. Their nails were extracted, the sinews of their knees were cut, they were buried up to the neck so that their eyes burst, etc. Death, too, was inflicted
- ↑ Representations of these clay images (tsuchi-nin-giyō) will be found in Table XII of Mr. Henry von Siebold’s “Notes on Japanese Archæology,” and in Mr. Satow’s paper on “Ancient Sepulchral Mounds in Kaudzuke” published in Vol. VII, Pt. III, pp. 313 et seq. of these “Transactions.”
