as living there, and
the Imperial forces had no little difficulty in subduing them. Their
chiefs are described as "mighty of frame and having numerous
followers." In dealing with the first band, Keiko caused his bravest
soldiers to carry mallets made from camellia trees, though why such
weapons should have been preferred to the trenchant swords used by
the Japanese there is nothing to show. (Another account says
"mallet-headed swords," which is much more credible). In dealing with
the second, he was driven back once by their rain of arrows, and when
he attacked from another quarter, the Tsuchi-gumo, their submission
having been refused, flung themselves into a ravine and perished.

Here again certain points have to be noticed: that there were
Tsuchi-gumo in Kyushu as well as in Yamato; that if one account
describes them as pigmies, another depicts them as "mighty of frame,"
and that in Kyushu, as in Yamato, the Tsuchi-gumo had Japanese names.
Only once again do the annals refer to Tsuchi-gumo. They relate
curtly that on his return from quelling the Kumaso the Emperor Keiko
killed a Tsuchi-gumo in the province of Hizen. The truth seems to be
that factitious import has been attached to the Tsuchi-gumo. Mainly
because they were pit-dwellers, it was assumed for a tune that they
represented a race which had immigrated to Japan at some date prior
to the arrival of the Yemishi (modern Ainu). This theory was founded
on the supposed discovery of relics of pit-dwellers in the islands of
Yezo and Itorop, and their hasty identification as Kuro-pok-guru--the
Ainu term for underground dwellers--whose modern representatives are
seen among the Kurilsky or their neighbours in Kamchatka and
Saghalien. But closer examination of the Yezo and Itorop pits showed
that there was complete absence of any mark of antiquity--such as the
presence of large trees or even deep-rooted brushwood;--that they
were arranged in regular order, suggesting a military encampment
rather than the abode of savages; that they were of uniform size,
with few exceptions; that on excavation they yielded fragments of
hard wood, unglazed pottery, and a Japanese dirk, and, finally, that
their site corresponded with that of military encampments established
in Yezo and the Kuriles by the Japanese Government in the early part
of the nineteenth century as a defence against Russian aggression.

Evidently the men who constructed and used these pit-dwellings were
not prehisto