Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/152

 it is to believe that they should have derived so little advantage from the neighbourhood of a people like the Chinese, whose literary talents were already well developed when the earliest Japanese colonists crossed from the continent. The coming of two Korean literati to the Court of the Emperor Ojin at the close of the third century of the Christian era is regarded as the event that inaugurated the study of books in Japan. These two men were naturalised, and having received official recognition as instructors, settled, one in the province of Yamato, the other in that of Kawachi, and there founded, respectively, the families of Bunshi and Shishi, whose scions, during several generations, enjoyed a monopoly of literary teaching. Little is known as to the nature of the instruction imparted by them, but it was doubtless confined to the ideographs and to the exposition of some elementary Chinese works. Generally, however, the philosophy of the Middle Kingdom then began to unfold its pages, and before the close of the fifth century a tolerably intimate acquaintance with the Chinese sages' writings had been acquired by the Court and by the heads of the Government, though the great mass of the people still remained in profound ignorance. Thenceforth a constant ingress of literati took place from the neighbouring continent, especially after the introduction of Buddhism, and, in the sixth century, the medical science of the Chinese, their