of the event, the outraged wife set fire to the parturition house and attempted to commit suicide. "Many years have passed," she is recorded to have said to the Emperor, "since I first bound up my hair and became thy companion in the inner palace. It is too cruel of thee, O Emperor! Wherefore just on this night when I am in childbirth and hanging between life and death, must thou go to Fujiwara?" Inkyo had the grace to be "greatly shocked" and to "soothe the mind of the Empress with explanations," but he did not mend his infidelity. At Oto's request he built a residence for her at Chinu in the neighbouring province of Kawachi, and thereafter the compilers of the Chronicles, with fine irony, confine their record of three consecutive years' events to a repetition of the single phrase, "the Emperor made a progress to Chinu." It is not, perhaps, extravagant to surmise that the publicity attending this sovereign's amours and the atmosphere of loose morality thus created were in part responsible for a crime committed by his elder son, the Crown Prince Karu. Marriage between children of the same father had always been permitted in Japan provided the mother was different, but marriage between children of the same mother was incest. Prince Karu was guilty of this offence with his sister, Oiratsume, and so severely did the nation judge him that he was driven into exile and finally obliged to commit suicide. With such records is the reign of Inkyo associated. It is perplexing that the posthumous name chosen for him by historians should signify "sincerely courteous." Incidentally, four facts present themselves--that men wore wristbands and garters to which grelots were attached; that a high value was set on pearls; that metal was used for the construction of great men's gates, and that the first earthquake is said to have been experienced in A.D. 416. ANKO The records of this sovereign's reign make a discreditable page of Japanese history. Anko, having ascended the throne after an armed contest with his elder brother, which ended in the latter's suicide, desired to arrange a marriage between his younger brother, Ohatsuse, and a sister of his uncle, Okusaka. He despatched Ne no Omi, a trusted envoy, to confer with the latter, who gladly consented, and, in token of approval, handed to Ne no Omi a richly jewelled coronet for conveyance to the Emperor. But Ne no Omi, covetous of the gems, secreted the coronet, and told the Emperor that Okusaka had rejected the proposal with scorn. Anko took no steps to investigate the truth of this statement. It has been already seen that such investigations were not customary in those days. Soldiers were at once sent to slaughter Okusaka; his wife, Nakashi, was taken to be the Emperor's consort, and his sister, Hatahi, was married to Prince Ohatsuse.