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 Court, but no less than five of them suffered shipwreck, or were carried by storms towards southern lands, where the ambassadors, their suites, and the crews of the vessels were massacred. It was from that time that the term "southern barbarians" (namban-jin) began to be applied by the Japanese to foreigners other than the Chinese and the Koreans. Among the enactments of the great Emperor Mommu, author of the eighth-century reforms, there was one directing that embassies to China should be carried in four ships, constructed after Chinese models. By these vessels, on the rare occasions of their voyages, Japanese students and religionists travelled to the Middle Kingdom to drink at the fountains of learning and theology that were supposed to have their sources there; and by these vessels a limited interchange of mercantile commodities took place between the two empires. But trade, in the modern sense of the term, can scarcely be said to have existed.

These scanty facts represent the sum of available information about Japanese commerce up to the end of the Nara epoch (784). Thenceforth, during the interval of four hundred years that preceded the establishment of feudalism at the close of the twelfth century, the state of affairs underwent very little change. When (794) the capital was established at Kyōtō, the eastern and western sections of the city each had its own market, that in the east being kept open continuously during