Such was the result which, it was natural to anticipate, was likely to accompany the growth of Japan under the rule of a predominant stock. It could not be said, however, to be very beneficial to the real consolidation of a coherent Empire. For a sovereign, even if he had had strength enough to exercise absolute rule, it must have been far more difficult to govern a few powerful chieftains than to rule over many of lesser influence. It is needless to say that such must have been the case in an age when the relations of the reigning emperor and of the imperial family were not well organised in favour of the former. Many like examples may be cited from the early history of the Germans, especially from that of the Merovingian and the Carlovingian dynasties. Among the few prominent chieftains, a certain one family, _primus inter pares_, might become exceedingly powerful and then overshadow the rest. In Japan, too, there was not lacking a majordomo who was growing great at the cost of the imperial prerogative. This tendency was too apparent not to be perceived by the sagacious emperors of succeeding ages. Increasing their material resources, therefore, was thought by them the best means of strengthening themselves and of guarding against the usurpation of their power by ambitious vassals. Long before the Korean expedition of the Empress Jingu, accordingly, the increase of the royal domains was assiduously aimed at. The Korean expedition itself may be considered as one of the evidences of the endeavour to develop the imperial power. For to lead an expedition oversea necessarily connotes a consolidated empire. War, however uncivilised the age in which it is carried on, must be, more than any other undertaking, a one man business. So we can not err much in supposing that, at the time of the expedition, the centralisation of the country with the emperor as its nucleus was already in course of progress. Without being socially organised and consolidated, it would have been very hard to muster a people not yet sufficiently organised in a political sense. It was enacted just about this time, that all the royal granaries or domains which were situated in the province of Yamato, where successive royal residences had been established, should be the inalienable property of the reigning emperor himself, and that even the heir to the throne should not be allowed to own any of them. This enactment may be said to have been the beginning of the separation of the interests of the reigning emperor himself from those of the imperial family, and it has a great historical importance in the sense that the process of centralisation with an individual, and not a family, as its centre, was already in course of development.