es showing that wives
often accompanied their husbands on campaigns.

These things happened in the year 603, and for the next five years
all relations with Korea seem to have been severed. Then (608) a
brief paragraph in the Chronicles records that "many persons from
Shiragi came to settle in Japan." It is certainly eloquent of the
Yamato Court's magnanimity that it should have welcomed immigrants
from a country with which it was virtually at war. Two years later
(610), Shiragi and Mimana, acting in concert, sent envoys who were
received with all the pomp and ceremony prescribed by Shotoku
Taishi's code of decorum. Apparently this embassy was allowed to
serve as a renewal of friendly relations, but it is not on record
that the subject of former dispute was alluded to in any way, nor was
the old-time habit of annual tribute-bearing envoys revived. Visitors
from Korea were, indeed, few and far-between, as when, in 616,
Shiragi sent a golden image of Buddha, two feet high, whose
effulgence worked wonders; or in 618, when an envoy from Korea
conveyed the important tidings that the invasion of the peninsula by
the Sui sovereign, Yang, at the head of three hundred thousand men,
had been beaten back. This envoy carried to Yamato presents in the
form of two captive Chinese, a camel, and a number of flutes,
cross-bows, and catapults (of which instruments of war mention is
thus made for the first time in Japanese history).

The Yamato Court had evidently now abandoned all idea of punishing
Shiragi or restoring the station at Mimana; while Shiragi, on her
side, was inclined to maintain friendly relations though she did not
seek frequent intercourse. After an interval of five years'
aloofness, she presented (621) a memorial on an unrecorded subject,
and in the following year, she presented, once more, a gold image of
Buddha, a gold pagoda, and a number of baptismal flags.* But Shiragi
was nothing if not treacherous, and, even while making these valuable
presents to the Yamato Court, and while despatching envoys in company
with those from Mimana, she was planning another invasion of the
latter. It took place that very year (622). When the news reached
Japan, the Empress Suiko would have sent an envoy against Shiragi,
but it was deemed wiser to employ diplomacy in the first place, for
the principalities of Korea were now in close relations with the
great Tang dynasty of China and might even count on the latter's
protection in case