Osaka at the mouth of the Yodo river.

Here their conflicts with the natives began. The whole region seems to
have been occupied by tribes not unlike their own, who had probably come
thither from the settlements in Izumo. The first to dispute their progress
was Prince Nagasune (Long Legs), of Tomi, who raised an army and resisted
the landing of the invaders. It was in the battle that ensued at this
place that Prince Itsu-se, the elder brother, received a wound in his hand
from an arrow shot by Prince Nagasune. The reason given reveals a curious
superstition which seems to have prevailed from this early time. The
Japanese prince on receiving the wound exclaims, "It is not right for me,
an august child of the Sun Goddess, to fight facing the sun. It is for
this reason that I am stricken by the wretched villain's hurtful hand."
Prince Itsu-se, after a few days, died from the effects of the wound. He
is buried on mount Kama in the province of Kii.

It is needless to recount all the legends which cluster around this
invasion of the central provinces of Japan; about the wild boar which came
out of the mountains near Kumano, before which Prince Jimmu and all his
warriors fell down in a faint; about the miraculous sword which was sent
down from the heavenly plains to aid him in subduing the
Central-Land-of-Reed-Plains; about a crow eight feet long which was sent
to guide him in his expedition, and about the deities with tails who in
several places were encountered. To our conception they seem meaningless,
and do not in any measure contribute to the progress of the story. They
bear evidence of a later invention, and do not belong legitimately to the
narrative.

At Uda, on the east coast of the Yamato peninsula, there lived two
brothers named Ukashi. The elder brother undertook to deceive Prince
Jimmu, and set a trap in which to capture and slay him. But the younger
brother revealed the plot, whereupon the followers of Prince Jimmu
compelled the traitor to retreat into his own trap, where they killed him.
The younger brother was honored and rewarded by Jimmu, and appears
afterward among the hereditary princes of the country.

Again, as he was making his progress through the country Prince Jimmu came
upon a company of the savages known as pit-dwellers,(48) whom the _Kojiki_
calls earth-spiders, and describes them as having tails. There appear to
have existed at this period remnants of these tribes as far south as the
35th para