ON THE VERGE OF HISTORY
That custom appears to have existed from the earliest time, and cannot be said to have yet become wholly extinct.
The accounts that Chinese annalists in the third century gave of contemporaneous Japan, indicate that intercourse existed between the two countries at that remote epoch. Indeed China and Korea began at an early date to act some part in the civilisation of Japan, and the Japanese themselves have always frankly admitted that they owe many of their refinements and accomplishments to their continental neighbours. But the common belief about that matter needs modification.
One naturally expects that since a section of the original Japanese colonists arrived viâ Korea, they must have received some impress of that country's civilisation during their passage through it, and must also have preserved permanent touch with it subsequently. The former anticipation is largely borne out by a comparison of the two countries' customs, for they practised in common the rules that prisoners taken in war and members of a criminal's family should be reduced to slavery; that the corpses of persons executed for crime should be exposed; that the personal attendants of a high dignitary should be buried alive at his interment; that a bridegroom should visit his bride at her own house; that before engaging in war or undertaking any important enterprise, prayer should be addressed to heaven and augu-
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