The result of this system of family life was that where the children of different mothers but of the same father discovered one another’s presence there were feuds and much fighting, especially as it was the children of the latest affection who were generally the recipients of his favour to the chagrin and anger of the less favoured children and families. Marriages between half-brothers and halfsisters were another result of the system, the only restriction on marriages of any kind being that children of the same mother should not marry. Sons of the same father were thus incited to be enemies rather than brothers, in the accepted sense, and the annals of the civil wars are replete with tales of treachery and ambition and show almost an entire absence of natural affection. The fact that the children had no claim on the love and the protection of the father and that their mother was condemned under the ancient system to the function of a mere animal, is cited by Brinkley as the reason for this cruelty and treachery.[105] This was the position of the child in the society that is depicted in the _Kojiki_ and the _Nihongi_, although the latter, written about forty years after the _Kojiki_ (A.D. 720), and under the influence of the Chinese, is more apt to depict the conditions that sprang up with the spreading Chinese culture. The fourth century brought to Japan a knowledge of Chinese classics, and Chinese morals, and in 552 A.D., there came a still greater change when the Buddhistic religion was introduced through a copy of the scripture and an image of Buddha being sent to the Yamato Court by the government of one of the Korean kingdoms. Unsuccessful preachments there had been by unofficial missionaries before this, but the arrival of the Korean ambassador served to bring to the attention of the government the new religion in a manner calculated to arouse interest in its doctrines. Whatever may be the defects of Shintoism, human sacrifice never seems really to have been part of its practice,[106] and to this fact, with the increasing regard for life that came with civilization, is undoubtedly due the little emphasis given to infanticide among the Japanese. Another influence, undoubtedly, and this is said to be the “best point of Shinto,”[107] is that the people were taught that they themselves were sons and daughters of the gods, a belief apt to save the killing of surplus members of society in a time of economic stress. According to the _Nihongi_, human sacrifice was put an end to in Japan in the year A.D. 3: “Tenth month, fifth day: Yamato-hiko, the Mikado’s younger brother by the mother’s side, died. “Eleventh month, second day: Yamato-hiko was buried at Tsukizaka in Musa. Thereupon his personal attendants were assembled, and were all buried alive upright in the precinct of the tomb. For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them.