In addition to these official boards, six official ranks were also introduced from China. These ranks were designated, first, virtue; second, humanity; third, propriety; fourth, truth; fifth, righteousness, and sixth, wisdom. Each of these ranks(91) was divided into two orders termed respectively the Greater and the Lesser. Thus there were twelve distinctions in this system. It was introduced in the reign of the Empress Suiko, A.D. 604, and is generally attributed to the Regent Shōtoku, who was a great admirer of the continental civilization. It existed in this form until the time of the Emperor Kōtoku, when, A.D. 649, it was extended to nineteen distinctions. These were not given to the individual in recognition of talent, but to families to be by them transmitted to their posterity as hereditary rank. For many years during this period of active intercourse with China and Korea, Dazaifu, situated on the west coast of Kyūshū, north of the present situation of Nagasaki, was the recognized port where strangers were received. This city was the seat of a vice-royalty, having control over the nine provinces of Kyūshū. The office of vice-governor was considered a place of honorable banishment to which distinguished men who were distasteful at court could be sent. These continental influences continued for many years and indeed have never ceased. There has always existed a class of scholars who looked upon Chinese learning as the supreme pinnacle to which the human mind could attain. This was especially true of the admirers of Confucius and Confucianism. Although it was not until a much later period that the culture of a Chinese philosophy attained its highest mark, yet even in the early arrangement of the studies in the university we see the wide influence which the writings of the Chinese classics exerted.