United States or Venezuela ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was almost perpetual fighting between the petty kingdoms which struggled for mastery in the peninsula, and Kudara, always nominally friendly to Japan, never hesitated to seek the latter's assistance against Shiragi and Koma.
The general whom she sent with five hundred warships to escort the Kudara envoys was ignominiously defeated by the men of Habe, while Shiragi seized the opportunity to invade Mimana and to occupy a large area of its territory. For several years the Yamato Court made no attempt to re-assert itself, but in 527 an expedition of unprecedented magnitude was organized.
Thus, with the bitter experience of Shiragi's treachery fresh in her recollection, she did not execute a Shiragi spy seized in Tsushima, but merely banished him to the province of Kozuke.
The forces were divided into two corps, one being ordered to march under Ki no Omaro northwest from Mimana and effect a junction with Kudara; the other, under Kawabe no Nie, was to move eastward against Shiragi. This scheme became known to the Shiragi generals owing to the seizure of a despatch intended for Kudara. They attempted to intercept Omaro's corps, but were signally defeated.
Two years later, Shiragi also sent a Buddhist eidolon, and in 584 just sixty-two years after the coming of Shiba Tachito from Liang and thirty-two years after Soga no Iname's attempt to popularize the Indian faith two Japanese high officials returned from Korea, carrying with them a bronze image of Buddha and a stone image of Miroku.* These two images were handed over, at his request, to the o-omi, Umako, who had inherited his father's ideas about Buddhism.
Shiragi did not attempt to resist. The King tendered his submission and it was accepted without a blow having been struck. But there were no tangible results. Japan did not attempt to re-establish her miyake in Mimana, and Shiragi refrained from sending envoys to Yamato except on special occasions.
Word Of The Day