All this shows plainly that many districts were still peopled by Yemishi and that their docility varied in different localities. In the Akita campaign the usual surrender was rehearsed. The Yemishi declared that their bows and arrows were for hunting, not for fighting, and the affair ended in a great feast given by Hirafu, the sequel being that two hundred Yemishi proceeded to Court, carrying presents, and were appointed to various offices in the localities represented, receiving also gifts of arms, armour, drums, and flags.*
*It is related that these flags had tops shaped like cuttlefish.
An interesting episode is recorded of this visit. One of the Yemishi, having been appointed to a high post, was instructed to investigate the Yemishi population and the captive population. Who were these captives? They seem to have been Sushen, for at the feast given by Hirafu his Yemishi guests came accompanied by thirty-five captives, and it is incredible that Japanese prisoners would have been thus humiliated in the sight of their armed countrymen. There will be occasion to recur to this point presently. Here we have to note that in spite of frequent contact, friendly or hostile, and in spite of so many years of intercourse, the Yemishi seem to have been still regarded by the Japanese as objects of curiosity. For, in the year 654, envoys from Yamato to the Tang Emperor of China took with them a Yemishi man and woman to show to his Majesty.
The Chinese sovereign was much struck by the unwonted appearance of these people. He asked several questions, which are recorded verbatim in the Chronicles; and the envoys informed him that there were three tribes of Yemishi; namely, the Tsugaru* Yemishi, who were the most distant; next, the Ara Yemishi (rough or only partially subdued), and lastly, the Nigi Yemishi (quiet or docile); that they sustained life by eating, not cereals, but flesh, and that they dispensed with houses, preferring to live under trees and in the recesses of mountains. The Chinese Emperor finally remarked, "When we look at the unusual bodily appearance of these Yemishi, it is strange in the extreme."
Evidently whatever the original provenance of the Yemishi, they had never been among the numerous peoples who observed the custom of paying visits of ceremony to the Chinese capital. They were apparently not included in the family of Far Eastern nations. From the second half of the seventh century they are constantly found carrying tribute to the Japanese Court and receiving presents or being entertained in return. But these evidences of docility and friendship were not indicative of the universal mood. The Yemishi located in the northeastern section of the main island continued to give trouble up to the beginning of the ninth century, and throughout this region as well as along the west coast from the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude northward the Japanese were obliged to build six castles and ten barrier posts between A.D. 647 and 800.