It offers a rebuttal of Wallerstein's characterizations of the Han tributary system and portrayal of the economic periphery as applied to Japan and undertakes a comparison of the Chinese and Japanese historical records in which the former identifies queens as rulers but which are omitted from the latter. Furthermore, the author presents a thorough examination of the chiefly burial mound system and its research problems and an analysis of burial data to document the formation of polities and emergence of elite rulers. A reconsideration of the identification and role of elite class formation in early state society is presented along with an interpretation of political ideology underpinning the early Japanese state based on Chinese mythology.