at a knowledge of Chinese ideographs
was acquired by the Japanese for the first time during the reign of
Ojin. The basis of this belief are that, in A.D. 284, according to
the Japanese chronology--a date to which must be added two sexagenary
cycles, bringing it to A.D. 404--the King of Kudara sent two fine
horses to the Yamato sovereign, and the man who accompanied them,
Atogi by name, showed himself a competent reader of the Chinese
classics and was appointed tutor to the Prince Imperial. By Atogi's
advice a still abler scholar, Wani (Wang-in), was subsequently
invited from Kudara to take Atogi's place, and it is added that the
latter received the title of fumi-bito (scribe), which he transmitted
to his descendants in Japan. But close scrutiny does not support the
inference that Chinese script had remained unknown to Japan until the
above incidents. What is proved is merely that the Chinese classics
then for the first time became an open book in Japan.

As for the ideographs themselves, they must have been long familiar,
though doubtless to a very limited circle. Chinese history affords
conclusive evidence. Thus, in the records of the later Han (A.D.
25-220) we read that from the time when Wu-Ti (140-86 B.C.) overthrew
Korea, the Japanese of thirty-two provinces communicated with the
Chinese authorities in the peninsula by means of a postal service.
The Wei annals (A.D. 220-265) state that in A.D. 238, the Chinese
sovereign sent a written reply to a communication from the "Queen of
Japan"--Jingo was then on the throne. In the same year, the Japanese
Court addressed a written answer to a Chinese rescript forwarded to
Yamato by the governor of Thepang--the modern Namwon in Chollado--and
in A.D. 247, a despatch was sent by the Chinese authorities
admonishing the Japanese to desist from internecine quarrels. These
references indicate that the use of the ideographs was known in Japan
long before the reign of Ojin, whether we take the Japanese or the
corrected date for the latter. It will probably be just to assume,
however, that the study of the ideographs had scarcely any vogue in
Japan until the coming of Atogi and Wani, nor does it appear to have
attracted much attention outside Court circles even subsequently to
that date, for the records show that, in the reign of the Emperor
Bidatsu (A.D. 572-585), a memorial sent by Korea to the Yamato Court
was illegible to all the officials except one man, by name
Wang-sin-i, who