The date Chinese Buddhism was introduced to Japan has traditionally been set at A.D. 552. In that year, the records state, a Korean monarch, fearful of belligerent neighbors, appealed to the Japanese for military assistance, accompanying his plea with a statue of the Buddha and a missal of _sutras_. Since the Japanese had for many centuries reserved their primary allegiance for their sun-goddess, whose direct descendant the emperor was thought to be, they were wary of new faiths that might jeopardize the authority of the native deities. After much high-level deliberation it was decided to give the Buddha a trial period to test his magical powers, but unfortunately no sooner had the new image been set up than a pestilence, apparently smallpox, swept the land. The new Buddha was swiftly consigned to a drainage canal by imperial decree. Twenty years later a new emperor came to the throne, and he was persuaded to give the Buddha another try by a political faction which thought a new religion might undermine the theological position of the established nobility. By odd coincidence, no sooner had a new Buddha been imported than another plague broke out. The new Buddha statue and all accompanying trappings were disposed of, but the plague only worsened, allowing the pro-Buddhist faction to turn the tragedy to their advantage by blaming those who had desecrated the statue. After more political maneuvering, this faction took the somewhat unprecedented step of assassinating the hesitant emperor in order to ensure a place for Buddhism in Japanese life. Finally the faith did catch hold, and, by the beginning of the seventh century, temples and pagodas were being built. As interest grew in both the doctrines of the Buddha and the political innovations of the new T'ang dynasty, which had come to power in China in 618, the Japanese aristocracy began to copy Chinese civilization, gradually abandoning much of their indigenous culture. Although new Japanese monks were soon writing and reciting Chinese _sutras_, Buddhist ideas, now twice removed from their Indian origins, were grasped imperfectly if at all by most Japanese. Indeed, few of the early aristocracy who professed Buddhism viewed it as anything other than a powerful new form of magic--a supplement to the native gods, or _kami_, who presided over harvests and health. Given the difficulty Japanese scholars had in understanding Chinese texts, it is easy to sympathize with later Zen monks who claimed the _sutras_ were mainly a barrier to enlightenment.