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the rivers Han and Tadong which flowed through them to the Yellow Sea; but of course in this respect they could not compare with Shiragi (Sinra) and Kara, of which latter place the Japanese usually spoke as Mimana. There can scarcely be any doubt that the Korean peninsula was largely permeated with Chinese influences from a very early date, but the processes which produced that result need not be detailed here. It has been also shown above that, in the era prior to Jimmu, indications are found of intercourse between Japan and Korea, and even that Susanoo and his son held sway in Shiragi. But the first direct reference made by Japanese annals to Korea occurs in the reign of Sujin, 33 B.C. when an envoy from Kara arrived at the Mizugaki Court, praying that a Japanese general might be sent to compose a quarrel which had long raged between Kara and Shiragi, and to take the former under Japan's protection. It appears that this envoy had travelled by a very circuitous route. He originally made the port of Anato (modern Nagato), but Prince Itsutsu, who ruled there, claimed to be the sole monarch of Japan and refused to allow the envoy to proceed, so that the latter had to travel north and enter Japan via Kehi-no-ura (now Tsuruga.) Incidentally this narrative corroborates a statement made in Chinese history (compiled in the Later Han era, A.D. 25-220) to the effect that many Japanese provinces claimed to be under hereditary rulers who exercised sovereign rights. Such, doubtless, was the attitude assumed by several of the Imperial descendants who had obtained provincial estates. The Emperor Sujin received the envoy courteously and seemed disposed to grant his request, but his Majesty's death (30 B.C.) intervened, and not until two years later was the envoy able to return. His mission had proved abortive, but the Emperor Suinin, Sujin's successor, gave him some red-silk fabrics to carry home and conferred on his country the name Mimana, in memory of Sujin, whose appellation during life had been Mimaki. These details furnish an index to the relations that existed in that era between the neighbouring states of the Far East. The special interest of the incident lies, however, in the fact that it furnishes the first opportunity of comparing Japanese history with Korean. The latter has two claims to credence. The first is that it assigns no incredible ages to the sovereigns whose reigns it records. According to Japanese annals
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