The Early Japanese
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cal progenitress of the chiefs of the Yamato clan, became the supreme cult of Japanese Shinto.
From the priest-chiefs of the Yamato clan, who gained supremacy over their fellow priest-chiefs during the third or fourth century, stemmed the Japanese imperial family. This was not so spectacular an origin as the direct descent from a Sun Goddess claimed in Japanese tradition. Nevertheless it was an origin of great antiquity when compared with the origins of other ruling families of the world. And the suzerainty of the Yamato clan was the start of the Japanese state itself, a loose association of clans under one supreme clan—scarcely the empire described in traditional Japanese history, but unmistakably the beginning of a new nation.
