o sons, Prince Kinashi-no-Karu and Prince
Anaho-no-Oji. The courtiers all favored the latter, who was the younger
brother, and he surrounded his elder brother in the house of
Monobe-no-Omai. Seeing no way of escape he committed suicide.(81) The
younger brother then became the twentieth emperor, who is known under the
canonical name of Anko. He had another difficulty growing out of social
complications. He wanted to make the younger sister of Okusaka-no-Oji, who
was the brother of the preceding Emperor Inkyo, the wife of
Ohatsuse-no-Oji, his own younger brother, who afterwards became the
Emperor Yuriyaku. He sent as a messenger the court official, Ne-no-Omi, to
ask the consent of her elder brother, who gladly gave it, and as a token
of his gratitude for this high honor he sent a rich necklace. Ne-no-Omi,
overcome with covetousness, kept the necklace for himself, and reported to
the emperor that Okusaka-no-Oji refused his consent. The emperor was very
angry, and sent a detachment of troops against the supposed offender. They
surrounded the house and put him to death. His chief attendants, knowing
his innocence, committed suicide by the side of their dead master. The
emperor then completed his design of taking the sister of Okusaka-no-Oji
as the wife of the Prince Ohatsuse-no-Oji, and he also took his widow and
promoted her to be his empress.

Out of these circumstances arose serious troubles. His new empress had a
young son by her first husband named Mayuwa-no-O, said to have been only
seven years old. With his mother he was an inmate of the palace, and was
probably a spoiled and wayward boy. The emperor was afraid lest this boy,
when he came to understand who had been the cause of the death of his
father, would undertake to revenge himself. He talked with the empress
about his fears and explained his apprehensions. The boy accidentally
heard the conversation, and was probably stimulated thereby to do the very
thing which the emperor feared. Creeping stealthily into the room where
the emperor lay asleep he stabbed him and then fled, taking refuge in the
house of the Grandee Tsubura. The emperor was fifty-six years of age at
the time of his death. This tragical event produced a great excitement.
The younger brother of the emperor, Ohatsuse, amazed and angry because his
two older brothers were not, as he thought, sufficiently enraged by the
murder of the emperor, killed them both. Then he attacked the Grandee
Tsubura and the