ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author argues that the "land-pulling myth" of Japan, in which Izumo, a land across the East Sea from Silla, is said to have pulled land from Silla to make a peninsula in Izumo, suggests a memory of the hegemony of Silla in Izumo. The observation that the mounded tombs of Korea and Japan are distantly related to the kurgans of the Steppes, through the peoples who inhabited the north-eastern Steppes as well as forested Manchuria, has been made so often it hardly needs to be documented further. Silla was also connected to polities in the Japanese islands by a particular kind of shamanism. Gold artifacts, especially crowns, have been found in burials all across the Steppes. The possession of lands on either side of the East Sea would have been an enormous advantage to Silla for trade and shipping.
