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Chapter III
The Coming of Chinese Civilization
The peoples of northern Europe have always been conscious of their double heritage—their primitive Teutonic ancestry and the cultural legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Similarly, the Japanese have a double historical heritage—the primitive stock of early Japan and the civilization of China. As in northern Europe, true history only started for Japan when the broad stream of a highly developed civilization reached its shores and, in a new geographic setting, combined with the simple native traditions of a primitive people to form a new culture, derived directly from the old civilization but differentiated from it by new geographic and racial ingredients.
The people who formed the early Yamato state in Japan had long had some contact with Chinese civilization, as may be seen from their early use of the Chinese bronze mirror. Fresh immigrants from Korea continued to bring to Japan the arts and sciences of the continent, and some knowledge of writing probably penetrated to the Japanese from China at a relatively early date. However, the first borrowings from China