quoted in the Chronicles: "A sovereign lives for his
people. Their prosperity is his enrichment; their poverty, his loss."
Yet it is in connexion with Nintoku's repairs of the Manda river-bank
that we find the first mention of a heinous custom occasionally
practised in subsequent ages--the custom of sacrificing human life to
expedite the progress or secure the success of some public work.

At the same time, that habits indicating a higher civilization had
already begun to gain ground is proved by an incident which occurred
to one of the Imperial princes during a hunting expedition. Looking
down over a moor from a mountain, he observed a pit, and, on inquiry,
was informed by the local headman that it was an "ice-pit." The
prince, asking how the ice was stored and for what it was used,
received this answer: "The ground is excavated to a depth of over ten
feet. The top is then covered with a roof of thatch. A thick layer of
reed-grass is then spread, upon which the ice is laid. The months of
summer have passed and yet it is not melted. As to its use--when the
hot months come it is placed in water or sake and thus used."
[Aston's Nihongi.] Thenceforth the custom of storing ice was adopted
at the Court. It was in Nintoku's era that the pastime of hawking,
afterward widely practised, became known for the first time in Japan.
Korea was the place of origin, and it is recorded that the falcon had
a soft leather strap fastened to one leg and a small bell to the
tail. Pheasants were the quarry of the first hawk flown on the moor
of Mozu.

Light is also thrown in Nintoku's annals on the method of
boatbuilding practised by the Japanese in the fourth century. They
used dug-outs. The provincial governor* of Totomi is represented as
reporting that a huge tree had floated down the river Oi and had
stopped at a bend. It was a single stem forked at one end, and the
suzerain of Yamato was ordered to make a boat of it. The craft was
then brought round by sea to Naniwa, "where it was enrolled among the
Imperial vessels." Evidently from the days of Ojin and the Karano a
fleet formed part of the Imperial possessions. This two-forked boat
figures in the reign of Nintoku's successor, Richu, when the latter
and his concubine went on board and feasted separately, each in one
fork.

*This term, "provincial governor," appears now for the first time
written with the ideographs "kokushi." Hitherto it has been written
"kuni-no-miyatsuko." Much is h