and young alike concluded that they were the victims of a punishment of burning inflicted by Buddha. From this it may be inferred that Buddhism had already established a hold upon the popular imagination. Shortly afterward Soga-no-Umako, having applied for permission, was allowed to worship Buddha with his own family. When the Emperor Yōmei ascended the throne in 586, he suffered so much from bodily infirmity that he felt tempted to worship Buddha. By this time the influence of Buddhists had grown so strong that they, on the pretext that their opponents were disloyal to the wishes of the throne, took this occasion to destroy the two most powerful anti-Buddhists. Then, by the combined energy of Prince Shōtoku and the minister president, Soga-no-Mako, the propagation of Buddhism made great strides, until the Empress Suiko openly encouraged its acceptance among the people of all classes. In 607, in order to obtain copies of the Sutras, there was sent for the first time in history an imperial envoy directly to China, where the Sui dynasty had just unified the long disrupted empire. This was the commencement of intercourse with China. The preamble of the dispatch sent on that occasion from the empress of Japan to the sovereign of China was couched in the following words: "The Sovereign of the Empire of the Rising Sun to the Sovereign of the Empire of the Setting Sun sends greetings." Doubtless the name "_Nippon_" (Land of the Rising Sun) had its origin in this incident. By and by, as the number of priests and nuns increased, disorders occurred among them, and for purposes of superintendence the offices of _Sōjō_ (archbishop) and _Sōzu_ (bishop) were established. From the introduction of Buddhism in the reign of the Emperor Kimmei to the time of which we are now speaking, seventy-five years elapsed. During the first thirty-two years of that period, Buddhism failed to obtain a footing in Japan, but from 584 it gradually extended throughout the empire, until in 627 there were in Japan 46 temples, 816 priests, and 569 nuns.