United States or Gabon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
During that long interval there were repeated envoys from Koma, now a comparatively feeble principality, and Shiragi made three unsuccessful overtures to renew amicable relations. At length, in 583, the Emperor announced his intention of carrying out the last testament of his predecessor.
Kotoku was then upon the Japanese throne, and Japan herself was busily occupied importing and assimilating Tang institutions. That she should have taken umbrage at similar imitation on Shiragi's part seems capricious. Shiragi sent no more envoys, and presently , finding herself seriously menaced by a coalition between Koma and Kudara, she applied to the Tang Court for assistance.
In the year 591, the ill-fated Emperor Sushun conceived the idea of sending a large army to re-establish his country's prestige in the peninsula, but his own assassination intervened, and for the space of nine years the subject was not publicly revived. Then, in 600, the Empress Suiko being on the throne, a unique opportunity presented itself. War broke out between Shiragi and Mimana.
Koma, indeed, suffered a signal defeat at the hands of the Japanese, Satehiko, muraji of the Otomo, but Shiragi remained unmolested, and nothing accrued to Japan except some attractive spoils curtains of seven-fold woof, an iron house, two suits of armour, two gold-mounted swords, three copper belts with chasings, two variously coloured flags, and two beautiful women.
After an interval of five years' aloofness, she presented 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 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.
Su embarked his forces at Chengshan, on the east of the Shantung promontory, and crossed direct to Mishi-no-tsu the modern Chemulpo thus attacking Kudara from the west while Shiragi moved against it from the east. Kudara was crushed. It lost ten thousand men, and all its prominent personages, from the debauched King downwards, were sent as prisoners to Tang.
He sought to use the foreign faith as a link to bind Japan to his country, so that he might count on his oversea neighbour's powerful aid against the attacks of Koma and Shiragi. *That is to say, the Kinai, or five provinces, of which Yamato is the centre.
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.
Even as to the ultimate movements of Satehiko and his army the annals are silent. Things remained thus for nine years. Tribute-bearing envoys arrived at intervals from Koma, but with Shiragi there was no communication. At last, in 571, an official was sent to demand from Shiragi an explanation of the reasons for the destruction of Mimana.
Word Of The Day