But everything did not move smoothly. Umako, [pg 107] with all his zeal and enthusiasm for Buddhism, was suspected of personal ambition, and was looked upon with distrust. A plot to assassinate the emperor was planned by Umako, which terminated his life, after a reign of only four years, in the seventy-third year of his age.

The thirty-third sovereign was the Empress Suiko, who was the sister of the Emperor Yōmei. Her coronation took place a.d. 593. Her reign was chiefly remarkable for the active influence of Umaydo-no-Ōji (a.d. 572-622), who was the second son of the Emperor Yōmei, and who was made crown prince under the empress, and aided her in the administration of the political affairs of the government. This prince is better known by his posthumous title of Shōtoku Taishi (great teacher of the divine virtue), and is held in great reverence as the principal founder and promoter of Buddhism in Japan. His name has been linked with many legends, which are still current after the lapse of fourteen hundred years. It is said that as soon as he was born he was able to speak, and was in all respects a very clever boy. His memory was wonderfully acute. He had Napoleon the Great's talent of attending to several things at the same time. He could hear the appeals of eight persons at once, and give to each a proper answer. From this circumstance he sometimes went by the name of Yatsumimi-no-Ōji, that is, Prince of Eight Ears.

The prince threw the whole influence of the government in favor of Buddhism. Many temples were built in different central districts for the convenience [pg 108] of the new religion. Under his influence the officers of the government rivalled each other in founding temples and maintaining them at their own expense. He took as his teacher a priest who had recently come from Korea, and from him for the first time learned the five Buddhist commandments:

1. Against stealing.
2. Against lying.
3. Against intemperance.
4. Against murder.
5. Against adultery.

He gave command to an artificer in copper to make large images of Buddha for each of the officers in the government. The king of Koma in Korea hearing of this great undertaking sent a contribution of three hundred ryō of gold. The images were finished in due time and an imposing religious ceremonial was held in honor of the event. Many of the principal temples of Buddhism in different parts of Japan take their origin from the time of Shōtoku Taishi, and no single character in history is so intimately connected with the development of Buddhism.

It was not only as a religious reformer, however, that he deserves to be remembered. He was a a most painstaking and enlightened ruler. He studiously gathered from the Chinese the elements and methods of government and adapted them to his own country.[86] From his time the study of [pg 109] Chinese literature became the essential culture of the active minds of Japan.

Shōtoku Taishi died a.d. 622, having been the principal officer of the government for twenty-nine years.

The impulse which Shōtoku had given to Buddhism did not subside. In the year following his death officers were appointed to govern the growing religious communities, called Sosho and Sozu, which in dignity and power corresponded to archbishops and bishops in Christian nomenclature. The first archbishop was Kwankin, a priest from Kudara, and the first bishop was Tokuseki of Kurabe. These officials examined every priest and nun and made a register of them. A census of Buddhism is also given which belongs to this same period. According to this there were forty-six Buddhist temples and 1385 priests and nuns.

In the year a.d. 626, Soga-no-Umako the daijin and a life-long friend and promoter of Buddhism died, and two years later the Empress Suiko died. So nearly all the prominent participants in the events which had taken place since the first entrance of Buddhism into Japan, had disappeared. In the meantime a religion had taken possession of a field in which it was destined to exert a wide influence and undergo a national development.

Along with this religion had come a literature and a culture, which when absorbed into the life of this people gave them the permanent characteristics which we now recognize as the Japanese civilization. The freer and more frequent intercourse with China and [pg 110] Korea brought with it not only a knowledge of books and writing, but many improvements in arts and many new arts and agricultural industries. When the forces of the Empress Jingō returned from Korea they brought with them persons skilled in many industrial occupations. It is a tradition that a descendant of the Kan dynasty in China had fled to Korea on the fall of that dynasty, and in the twentieth year of the Emperor Ōjin (a.d. 290) had migrated to Japan with a colony who were familiar with weaving and sewing. In the thirty-seventh year of the same emperor an officer was sent to China to obtain more weavers and sewers. The cultivation of the mulberry tree and the breeding of silk-worms[87] was introduced from China in a.d. 457, and in order to encourage this industry the empress herself engaged in it. At this early period this important industry was begun, or at least received an impulse which has been continued down to the present time.