cont}Japanese. Shotoku even went further in asserting the dignity of his country. He dared to claim for Japan an equal Imperial dignity with China, which Wen-ti of the Sui Dynasty had just united once more under one sceptre. Wen-ti had stretched his dominions from the frontiers of Koma in the east, to those of the Turki kingdoms in the west, and his successor, Yangti, who ruled from 606 to 618, had extended his power still further. Shotoku's Korean policy brought him into collision with Yangti, who also had designs on the peninsula, and in 609 a letter came from the Chinese sovereign, which the Japanese Court received. Shotoku answered it, but in a tone of equality, "The Eastern Emperor begs respectfully to speak to the Emperor of the West." The Chinese Court did not altogether appreciate the tone of the letter; but in 610 Koma sent presents to the Court of Japan, and Shiragi in 616. Bluff, or rather the proper assertion of dignity, is at times a very paying line of policy for a statesman to adopt.

Shotoku's home administration is chiefly connected with an attempt made in 603 to arrange the official ranks of persons in Government service according to the model of the Chinese Court, and the Constitution of the Seventeen Articles issued in the following year. The newly graded official ranks were named after the Confucianist virtues, as though to remind the holders of the paramount importance of virtue above all things else; in the Constitution we have traces of Confucianist influence, together with an outspoken advocacy of Buddhism, as being, in the writer's mind at least, the sole religion for a wise man to follow.

The seventeen Articles of the Constitution throw a very bright light on the conditions of the country which Shotoku sought to amend. It was a period of disunion and discord, dating probably from days prior to the introduction of Buddhism, but also probably accentuated by the same. The results of this discord were visible in the loss of Mimana and of almost all prestige in Korea, and in the backwardness of Japanese culture. Shotoku appeals to the country on behalf of concord, in his first Article: in the second, he points his countrymen to what he feels to be the best and truest way of arriving at the same--the whole-hearted acceptance of Buddhism. We cannot but admire the boldness of his words, in view of the still constant opposition to foreign doctrines. Neither can we forget that, just about this time, an Emperor of China was coming to the conclusion that, whenever a ruler showed himself too partial towards the doctrines of Buddhism, he always brought ruin on his dynasty. In Shotoku's eyes, Buddhism wore a very different aspect.