ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY
must have had some intercourse prior to the opening of official relations; otherwise the Japanese envoys could not have been intelligible when they reached the Chinese Court. The question here, however, is not of Chinese history relating to a remote past. The question is, Did Prince Shotoku and Premier Umako find in Chinese history, when its pages were first opened for their inspection, any explanation of the Japanese nation's origin? It has been related that the predecessors of Japan's first mortal sovereign are declared by her historians to have been heavenly deities, and that the recorded incidents of their careers are fabulous and supernatural. Now the only islands spoken of by the early Chinese historians in terms suggesting Japan, are described as the abode of genii, the land of immortals possessing the elixir of life, a corpse-reviving drug, golden peaches weighing a pound each, timber of immense strength yet so buoyant that no superimposed weight would sink it, rare trees, a mountain plant that could be plaited into mats and cushions, mulberries an inch long, and an environment of black sea, where the waves, not driven by any wind, rose to a height of a thousand feet. At the risk of challenging a cherished faith, it is difficult to avoid the hypothesis that from these fables the compilers of Japan's first written history derived the idea of an "age of the gods" and of a divinely descended emperor. The unique qualification of Shotoku and Umako
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