Ken@Japan

(Continued from Emperor Jinmu (1) ) Geographically, there are three routes from Miyazaki to Yamato (currently Nara prefecture); 1.to go to North Kyushu (Kitakyushu) and take a route in land like the current bullet train's route from Kyushu to Osaka, 2. to take a ship and go to Pacific Ocean in south and detour along the current Shikoku Island to Kii promontory [1] , 3. to take a ship in Seto-Naikai (Inland Sea; straits between San-in area and Shikoku Island. Kyushu itself is an island as one component of Japan's archipelago so there is small straits between the main land and Kyushu Island. Currently we have a bridge called Kan-mon Bridge (関門橋）and we can take the option 1 to go to Osaka but there was not the bridge about 2,700 years ago. Namely, this option was not realistic to the Prince and his party. Brinkley has a detail about boat techniques at that time. He argues that the boats were simply hollow trunks of trees [2] and they were propelled by oars, not sails [3]

The current imperial majesty of Japan is Emperor Akihito and he is said to be the 126th emperor in its imperial throne line. In Japan's constitution, the Emperor is a symbol of Japan; Nation, People and its unification. Recently, it has been somehow shown that The Emperor is a spiritual piller among Japanese as their reaction was vehement when the president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak, asked for the Emperor's apology against the imperial colonization, claiming that Akihito's father, the former 125th emperor Hirohito was responsible for damages to people and land of Korea during the Second World War before the Emperor's visit in Korea 1 2 .  As partially evidenced by this recent event, the Emperor of Japan is always set with the war-responsibility and/or its colonization in Asia during the war time. However, in Japanese native religion; Shintoism, the Emperor has seen as a descendent of god of Japan. In this article, I would like to focus on the very first emperor Jinmu