ding to bishops (sojo), high priests (sozu) and abbots
(hotto) were appointed from the ranks of Buddhism, and the duty of
prescribing law and order was entrusted to them. This involved
registration of all the priesthood, and it was thus found (623) that
the temples numbered 46; the priests 816, and the nuns 569.

*The endowment of religious edifices was not new in Japan. A
conspicuous instance was in A.D. 487, when rice-fields were dedicated
to the Moon god and to the ancestor of the Sun goddess.

**The metal employed was of gold and copper; in the proportion of one
part of the former to 430 of the latter. It is related that when
these images were completed, the temple door proved too low to admit
them, and the artisan--Tori the Saddle-maker--whose ingenuity
overcame the difficulty without pulling down the door, received large
honour and reward.

INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA

That not a few Chinese migrated to Japan in remote times is clear.
The Records show that in the year A.D. 540, during the reign of
Kimmei, immigrants from Tsin and Han were assembled and registered,
when their number was found to be 7053 households. The terms "Tsin"
and "Han" refer to Chinese dynasties of those names, whose sway
covered the period between 255 B.C. and A.D. 419. Hence the
expression is too vague to suggest any definite idea of the advent of
those settlers; but the story of some, who came through Korea, has
already been traced. It was in A.D. 552, during the reign of this
same Kimmei, that Buddhism may be said to have found a home in Japan.
China was then under the sceptre of the Liang dynasty, whose first
sovereign, Wu, had been such an enthusiastic Buddhist that he
abandoned the throne for a monastery.. Yet China took no direct part
in introducing the Indian faith to Japan, nor does it appear that
from the fourth century A.D. down to the days of Shotoku Taishi,
Japan thought seriously of having recourse to China as the
fountain-head of the arts, the crafts, the literature, and the moral
codes which she borrowed during the period from Korea.

Something of this want of enterprise may have been attributable to
the unsettled state of China's domestic politics; something to the
well-nigh perpetual troubles between Japan and Korea--troubles which
not only taxed Japan's resources but also blocked the sole route by
which China was then accessible, namely, the route through Korea. But
when the Sui dynasty (A.D. 589-619) came to the Chinese