This Meiji-period label for the cloth merchant Nagatani-Kawai features Jinmu, Japan's legendary first emperor and alleged descendent of the sun. Jinmu would have been the founding human ancestor of what at this point in the text we are calling the "solar uji" and will later call the "royal uji," and, after 645, the "Imperial uji." Although in official discourse, Jinmu actually existed, there is no solid proof. The important thing for our purposes, however, is that he was widely believed to have existed.

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