ives and resembled the modern Japanese much more closely. They would eventually come to be called the Yamato, the descendents of the people of modern Japan.
             These new immigrants were to change the face of Jomon Japan forever, they settled in the southern and southeastern areas of the islands, chiefly in Kyushu and the Southern Honshu regions. The Yamato immigrants (or Yayoi as they are historically called) first established individual tribes within the area that eventually grew into small kingdoms, one of the strongest of which was a kingdom called "Yamatai." (Henshall, 10)
             By 300AD a central kingdom began to emerge in the Nara Bay region of Central Japan, this was later called the Yamato State, named for the main city of the area, and was the first kingdom of Japan that formed a unified island state. Yamato, its believed, formed from a city named Yamatai that was mentioned in Chinese histories of the time, Its first recorded ruler was a shaman queen named Himiko, who ruled from approx. 238-248AD.
             Although the Chinese histories name Himiko as the first sovereign of Japan the first verifiable ruler was the Emperor Suijin (?-318AD) it was under him, and the other early emperors, that Japan moved away from loose tribal leadership and formed a larger political entity, Suijin was the leader that got the majority of the existing tribes to form a coalition, or political alliance, some joined with him willingly and others were coerced or threatened into submission, the one point that is clear is that he didn't conquer all the tribes he came across, a great many of them he negotiated with. Once the tribes were unified the new emperor slowly began to increase the power of his position giving the former leaders of the tribes ranks and power in the new kingdom. The first half of the era was a first among equals type of rule, by the early 500's though power seems to have consolidated within the Yamato Imper...