How much of truth there is in this narrative of Jingu it is difficult to tell. The date given cannot be trustworthy. The truth seems at least this, that Shinra was far superior to the Japan of the early Christian centuries. Buddhism was formally established in Shinra in the year 528; and as early as the sixth century a steady stream of immigrants—traders, artists, scholars, and teachers, and later Buddhist missionaries—passed from Shinra into Japan, interrupted only by the wars which from time to time broke out. The relations between Nippon and Southern Corea will be more fully related in another chapter, but it will be well to remember that the Japanese always laid claim to the Corean peninsula, and to Shinra especially, as a tributary nation. They supported that claim not only whenever embassies from the two nations met at the court of China, but they made it a more or less active part of their national policy down to the year 1876. Many a bloody war grew out of this claim, but on the other hand many a benefit accrued to Japan, if not to Shinra. Meanwhile, in the peninsula the leading state expanded her borders by gradual encroachments upon the little “kingdom” of Mimana to the southwest and upon Hiaksai on the north. The latter, having always considered Shinra to be inferior, and even a dependent, war broke out between the two states as soon as Shinra assumed perfect independence. Korai and Hiaksai leagued themselves against Shinra, and the game of war continued, with various shifting of the pieces on the board, until the tenth century. The three rival states mutually hostile, the Japanese usually friends to Hiaksai, the Chinese generally helpers of Shinra, the northern nations beyond the Tumen and Sungari assisting Korai, varying their operations in the field with frequent alliances and counter-plots, make but a series of dissolving-views of battle and strife, into the details of which it is not profitable to enter. Though Korai and Hiaksai felt the heaviest blows from China, Shinra was harried oftenest by the armies of her neighbors and by the Japanese. Indeed, from a tributary point of view, it seems questionable whether her alliances with China were of any benefit to her. In times of peace, however, the blessings of education and civilization flowed freely from her great patron. Though farthest east from China, it seems certain that Shinra was, in many respects, the most highly civilized of the three states. Especially was this the case during the Tang era (618–905 A.D.), when the mutual relations between China and Shinra were closest, and arts, letters, and customs were borrowed most liberally by the pupil state. Even at the present time, in the Corean idiom, “Tang-yang” (times of the Tang and Yang dynasties) is a synonym of prosperity. The term for “Chinese,” applied to works of art, poetry, coins, fans, and even to a certain disease, is “Tang,” instead of the ordinary word for