This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Buddhism reaches Japan through an official diplomatic channel, when King Seong of the Korean kingdom of Baekje sent Emperor Kinmei of Japan a mission carrying an image of the Buddha Shakyamuni, sutras, and by most accounts Buddhist ritual specialists themselves, formally introducing the teaching to the Yamato court in 538 CE, a date scholars still debate against a rival later reckoning.
The introduction did not settle the matter at court. The Soga clan championed the new religion, while the Mononobe and Nakatomi clans opposed it, and that conflict shaped Buddhism's early political fortunes in Japan as much as any doctrinal encounter did. Only across the following decades, under Prince Shotoku and the Asuka period court, did the tradition become securely established there.
What changed for Buddhism's spread is the completion of a chain running from India through China and Korea to Japan, each link carried by an official mission between royal courts rather than by trade or conquest alone. This atlas records the event as merely arrived rather than established, since it names the formal introduction itself and not the later Asuka period consolidation that actually secured the teaching's lasting place at the Japanese court.