In contrast to this, the Japanese, with that pliability which has helped to put them in the van of Oriental peoples, selected, as a result of contact with Buddhism, which came to them by way of China, certain signs from the wilderness of Chinese characters, and constituted these as their alphabet or _irofa_ so called, on the acrologic principle (p. 104), from the names of its first signs, like our alphabet from _alpha_, _beta_. Their language being polysyllabic, involved the result that whatever signs were used must be syllabic, and hence the adoption of a syllabary was easy. But, of course, like all syllabaries, this has the defect of necessitating the use of that larger number of signs with which the alphabet dispenses. The origin of the Japanese syllabaries, of which there are two, dates from the end of the ninth century of our Lord. One, the Hirakana, derived from a cursive form of Chinese called the _tsau_ or "grass" character, contains about three hundred syllabic sound-signs; the other, known as the Katakana, is derived from the _kyai_ or "model" type of the Chinese character, and is the simpler of the two in having only a single character for each of the forty-seven syllabic sounds in the Japanese language. But neither demands detailed treatment here, since with the intrusion of the Roman alphabet among Western imports into Japan its substitution for the cumbrous syllabaries is probably only a matter of brief time, and the Japanese script may then take its place with the Maya and the Aztec as a graphic curiosity.