Turning to the southwestern part of Japan, it cannot be said that the whole island of Kyushu was already at the disposal of the Emperor of that time. In the region which roughly corresponds with the province of Higo, a tribe called the Kumaso defied the imperial power, and continued to do so to an age later than the period of which I have just spoken. It was perhaps not earlier than the middle of the fourth century that their resistance was finally broken. South of the Kumaso, there lived another tribe called the Haito in the district afterwards known as the province of Satsuma. Some of the tribesmen were wont to serve as warriors in the army of the Emperor from very early times, especially in the imperial bodyguard. Still the imperial sway could not easily be extended to their home. The last insurrection of the Haito tribe is recorded to have happened at the end of the seventh century. That these southern tribes were subdued more easily than the Ainu on the north, may be attributed to the fact that their numbers were comparatively small, and that they might have been more akin in blood to the important element of the Japanese race than the Ainu were. CHAPTER IV GROWTH OF THE IMPERIAL POWER. GRADUAL CENTRALISATION It is a privilege of historians to look back. By looking back I do not mean judging the past from the standpoint of the present. Though it is quite obvious that past things should be valued first by the standards of the age contemporaneous with the things to be valued, it would be a great mistake, if we supposed that the duty of historians was fulfilled when they could depict the past as it was seen by its contemporaries. Historians are by no means bound to adhere to the opinions of the ancients in judging of what happened in the past. How a past thing was viewed and valued by its contemporary is in itself an important historical fact, which must be subjected to the criticism of historians. Not only to have a clear idea of the views held by the people of a certain period as regards contemporaneous events, a task which is not hopelessly difficult though not very easy, but also to know why such and such views happened to be held by those people at that time, is a duty far more important and difficult to discharge. Historians ought, besides, to make clear the absolute value of such views and the effects of them on the age in question as well as on the period that followed. However necessary it may be to be acquainted with the thoughts and beliefs of former generations, it is not indeed incumbent upon us to believe blindly what was believed in the past and to think on the same lines as was thought by the ancients. Who would not laugh at our folly, for example, if we should consider the whale of old times to have been a kind of fish, simply because the ancients did not know it to be a species of mammalia, though by such a supposition we might perhaps be