me of Nintoku's birth, the
prime minister, head of the great Takenouchi family, had taken a
special interest in the child, and when the lad grew up he married
this Takenouchi's granddaughter, who became the mother of three
Emperors. Presently the representatives of all branches of the
Takenouchi family came into possession of influential positions at
Court, among others that of o-omi, so that in this reign were laid
the foundations of the controlling power subsequently vested in the
hands of the Heguri, Katsuragi, and Soga houses. In short, this epoch
saw the beginning of a state of affairs destined to leave its mark
permanently on Japanese history, the relegation of the sovereign to
the place of a faineant and the usurpation of the administrative
authority by a group of great nobles.

Nintoku had the active support of the Takenouchi magnates, and
although the Crown Prince may have desired to assert the title
conferred on him by his father, he found himself helpless in the face
of obstructions offered by the prime minister and his numerous
partisans. These suffered him to deal effectively with that one of
his elder brothers who did not find a place in their ambitious
designs, but they created for Waka-iratsuko a situation so
intolerable that suicide became his only resource. Nintoku's first
act on ascending the throne explains the ideographs chosen for his
posthumous name by the authors of the Chronicles, since nin signifies
"benevolence" and toku, "virtue." He made Naniwa (Osaka) his capital,
but instead of levying taxes and requisitioning forced labour to
build his palace of Takatsu, he remitted all such burdens for three
years on observing from a tower that no smoke ascended from the roofs
of the houses and construing this to indicate a state of poverty.
During those three years the palace fell into a condition of
practical ruin, and tradition describes its inmates as being
compelled to move from room to room to avoid the leaking rain.*

*Doubts have been thrown on the reality of this incident because a
poem, attributed to Nintoku on the occasion, is couched in obviously
anachronistic language. But the poem does not appear in either the
Records or the Chronicles: it was evidently an invention of later
ages.

Under Nintoku's sway riparian works and irrigation improvements took
place on a large scale, and thus the eminent historian, Rai Sanyo,
may not be without warrant for attributing to this ruler the
sentiment