In other words, it is quite futile (unless we can lay hands on
definite objects, or definite facts recorded--even definite
traditions) to try and account for hypothetical movements in
prehistoric times. We are totally ignorant of early Teutonic,
Hungarian, and Celtic movements-though, thanks solely to Chinese
records, we are pretty certain, within defined limits, about early
Turkish movements. How much more, then, must we be ignorant about
the Japanese movements? If "people" must have come from somewhere,
whence did these arrivals start, and why should they not go back;
or why not meet other movers going to the place whence they
themselves started? If we are to accept the only historical
records or quasi-records we possess at all, that is, the Chinese
records, then we must accept them for what they are worth on the
face of them, and neither add to nor mutilate them; imperfect
things that do exist are necessarily better than imaginary things
that might have existed in their place. A few hundred families at
most, we are told, escaped; and if it be true that they went
intentionally to Japan, it is probable that the expert Wu sailors
(none existed elsewhere in China) had already for long known the
way thither, or to Quelpaert and Tsushima, which practically means
to both Corea and Japan; in fact, if they sailed east from Ningpo,
there is no other place to knock up against, even if the special
intention were not there. Everything tends to show that Fu-ch'ai,
though perhaps a barbarian in 473 B.C., was of orthodox if remote
pedigree dating from 1200 B.C., and that the ruling class of Wu
was very different from the "barbarians" by whom (as we are
specifically told) Wu was surrounded; the situation was like that
of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, like Cecrops and Cadmus, amongst
the earliest barbarous Greeks. It amounts, then, to this, that,
just as Chinese colonies and adventurers emerged under the stress
of increased population, or under the impulses of curiosity,
tyranny, and ambition, to found states in Ts'u, Ts'in, Tsin, Ts'i,
Lu, Wu, Yüeh, and other places round the central nucleus, so (they
being the sole possessors of that magic _POWER_, "records")
other parties would from time to time sally forth either from the
same orthodox centre, or from the semi-orthodox places surrounding
that centre, to still remoter spots, such as, for instance, Corea,
Japan, Formosa, Annam, Burma, Tibet, and Yiin Nan. Fu-ch'ai's
surviving friends had indeed a very lively stimulus indeed-the
fear of instant death-to drive them tumultuously over the seas;
and doubtless, as they must have been perfectly harmless after
tossing about hungry in open boats for weeks together, they would
be as welcome to the Japanese king, or to the petty chief or
chiefs who received the waifs, as in our own times was the honest
sailor Will Adams when he drifted friendless to Japan, and whose
statue now adorns a great Japanese city as that of a man who was,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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