Page:A history of Japanese mathematics (IA historyofjapanes00smitiala).pdf/19



The second period in the history of Japanese mathematics (552—1600) corresponds both in time and in nature with the Dark Ages of Europe. Just as the Northern European lands came in contact with the South, and imbibed some slight draught of classical learning, and then lapsed into a state of indifference except for the influence of an occasional great soul like that of Charlemagne or of certain noble minds in the Church, so Japan, subject to the same Zeitgeist, drank lightly at the Chinese fountain and then lapsed again into semi-barbarism. Europe had her Gerbert, and Leonardo of Pisa, and Sacrobosco, but they seem like isolated beacons in the darkness of the Middle Ages; and in the same way Japan, as we shall see, had a few scholars who tended the lamp of learning in the medieval night, and who are known for their fidelity rather than for their genius.

Just as in the West we take the fall of Rome (476) and the fall of Constantinople (1453), two momentous events, and convenient limits for the Dark Ages, so in Japan we may take the introduction of Buddhism (552) and the revival of learning (about 1600) as similar limits, at least in our study of the mathematics of the country.

It was in round numbers a thousand years after the death of Buddha that his religion found its way into Japan. The