The sequence of events appears to have been this:--Japan's earliest contact with an over-sea people was with the Koreans, and she made some tentative efforts to adapt their alphabet to the expression of her own language. Traces of these efforts survived, and inspired the idea that the art of writing was practised by the Japanese before the opening of intercourse with their continental neighbours. Korea, however, had neither a literary nor an ethical message to deliver, and thus her script failed to attract much attention. Very different was the case when China presented her noble code of Confucian philosophy and the literature embodying it. The Japanese then recognized a lofty civilization and placed themselves as pupils at its feet, learning its script and deciphering its books. Their veneration extended to ideographs. At first they adapted them frankly to their own tongue. For example, the ideographs signifying _rice_ or _metal_ or _water_ in Chinese were used to convey the same ideas in Japanese. Each ideograph thus came to have two sounds, one Japanese, the other Chinese--e.g. the ideograph for _rice_ had for Japanese sound _kome_ and for Chinese sound _bei_. Nor was this the whole story. There were two epochs in Japan's study of the Chinese language: first, the epoch when she received Confucianism through Korea; and, secondly, the epoch when she began to study Buddhism direct from China. Whether the sounds that came by Korea were corrupt, or whether the interval separating these epochs had sufficed to produce a sensible difference of pronunciation in China itself, it would seem that the students of Buddhism who flocked from Japan to the Middle Kingdom during the Sui era (A.D. 589-619) insisted on the accuracy of the pronunciation acquired there, although it diverged perceptibly from the pronunciation already recognized in Japan. Thus, in fine, each word came to have three sounds--two Chinese, known as the _kan_ and the _go_, and one Japanese, known as the _kun_. For example:-- "KAN" "GO" JAPANESE SOUND. SOUND. SOUND. MEANING. _Sei_ _Jo_ _Koe_ Voice _Nen_ _Zen_ _Toshi_ Year _Jinkan_ _Ningen_ _Hito no aida_ Human being.