All accounts in the vernacular Japanese agree, that their Butsu-d[=o] or
Buddhism was imported from Korea. In the sixteenth year of Keitai, the
twenty-seventh Mikado (of the list made centuries after, and the
eleventh after the impossible line of the long-lived or mythical
Mikados), A.D. 534, it is said that a man from China brought with him an
image of Buddha into Yamato, and setting it up in a thatched cottage
worshipped it. The people called it "foreign-country god." Visitors
discussed with him the religion of Shaka, as the Japanese call
Shakyamuni, and some little knowledge of Buddhism was gained, but no
notable progress was made until A.D. 552, which is generally accepted
and celebrated as the year of the introduction of the faith into Japan.
Then a king of Hiaksai in Korea, sent over to the court and to the
Mikado golden images of the Buddha and of the triad of "precious ones,"
with Sutras and sacred books. These holy relics are believed to be still
preserved in the famous temple of Zenk[=o]ji,[32] belonging to the
temple of the Tendai Sect at Nagano in Northern Japan, this shrine being
dedicated to Amida and his two followers Kwannon (Avalokitesvara) and
Dai-sei-shi (Mahastanaprapta). This group of idols, as the custodian of
the shrine will tell you, was made by Shaka himself out of gold, found
at the base of the tree which grows at the centre of the universe.
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