*This resemblance has been pointed out by a Japanese archaeologist, Mr. Teraishi. Dr. Munro states that the same elements are combined in an Egyptian decorative design.
To this inference it has been objected that no bells have been found in the tombs of the Yamato. The same is true, however, of several other objects known to have belonged to that people. If, then, the bells be classed as adjuncts of the Yamato culture, shall we be justified in assigning the bronze weapon to a different race? On the whole, the most reasonable conclusion seems to be that all the bronze relics, weapons, and bells alike, are "vestiges of the Yamato procession at a time anterior to the formation of the great dolmens and other tombs" [Munro]. A corollary would be that the Yamato migrated from China in the days of the Chou dynasty (1122-225 B.C.), and that, having landed in the province of Higo, they conquered the greater part of Tsukushi (Kyushu), and subsequently passed up the Inland Sea to Yamato; which hypothesis would invest with some accuracy the date assigned by the Chronicles to Jimmu's expedition and would constitute a general confirmation of the Japanese account of his line of advance.
The ancient Yamato are known chiefly through the medium of relics found in their sepulchres. Residential sites exist in comparatively small numbers, so far as research ha hitherto shown, and such sites yield nothing except more or less scattered potsherds and low walls enclosing spaces of considerable area. Occasionally Yamato pottery and other relics are discovered in pits, and these evidences, combined with historical references, go to show that the Yamato themselves sometimes used pit-dwellings.
The tombs yield much more suggestive relics of metal, stone, and pottery. Some four thousand of such sepulchres have been officially catalogued, but it is believed that fully ten times that number exist. The most characteristic is a tomb of larger dimensions enclosing a dolmen which contains a coffin hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, or a sarcophagus of stone,* the latter being much more commonly found, as might be expected from its greater durability. Burial-jars were occasionally used, as were also sarcophagi of clay or terracotta,** the latter chiefly in the provinces of Bizen and Mimasaka, probably because suitable materials existed there in special abundance. Moreover, not a few tombs belonged to the category of cists; that is to say, excavations in rock, with a single-slabbed or many-slabbed cover; or receptacles formed with stone clubs, cobbles, or boulders.