ABSTRACT
The history of Japan began with the enthronement in 660 B. C. of Jimmu, the first Emperor of Imperial line, but the Kojiki, the Nihon-shoki and the Kogo-shui, the oldest annals of the country, go back much earlier by hundreds or even thousands of years. In 1854, the Shogunate Government issued a decree by which the Rising Sun was made a maritime flag for all Japanese ships, and upon the abolition of the clans in 1869, the Rising Sun was declared to be the national flag of Japan in 1870. The Chinese ideographs were introduced to Japan for the first time in 284 A. D., and after that they were brought over to Japan through various geographical and chronological channels, till they were inseparably intermingled with the Japanese language. Japan and Korea, the Japanese language employs Kana or the syllabic alphabet of Japanese origin as particles to express the inflection, declension and other grammatical changes of the parts of speech.
