ABSTRACT
Deducting then six centuries from our early history, we bring the foundation of our Empire to 60 B.C-some historians assign the date to 20 or 25 B.C.—instead of 660 as usually accepted, making the first ruler, Jimmu Tenno (Tenno meaning Emperor), contemporary with Julius Cæsar. Though the details of his life are mixed with more or less fabulous stories and are by no means as well substantiated as the lives of his Roman contemporaries, there is no valid ground for doubting the main events of his career. Where his family first came from, we do not know. For that matter, we cannot tell whence the Japanese race migrated. That we are the autocthons of the land which we now inhabit is more doubtful than that the Suevi or the Goths were created in Sweden. All the legends point to the so-called “High Plains of Heaven” (Taka-ama-ga-hara) as the cradle of our race; but its location is more obscure than that of Atlantis, and we have no poets or archæologists to trace its whereabouts.
