Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/27

 originally made of tree-trunks—which so many mistake for a gateway—which was erected in front of the Sun-Goddess's shrines so that fowls might perch on it and salute at dawn the first rays of the rising sun.

Chinese history shows that between the years 57 and 247 of our era Japan sent four embassies to the Courts of the Han and Wei dynasties; but it is not until the sixth century that the light on the relations between Japan and China begins to grow clear. With the spread of Buddhism from across the Yellow Sea came the first real knowledge of the Chinese classics,