Prince Shotoku (574-622 AD) was a brilliant administrator, whom many scholars have credited with the creation of the Japanese state. Among his other noteworthy contributions was the introduction of Buddhism into Japan.

Philosophy professor Takeshi Umehara has even theorized that it was Shotoku himself who proposed the Japanese term "Tenno" for emperor.

But a magazine like Jitsuwa Knuckles (May) can only dwell on tidbits of history that can be made relevant to its mostly male readers. Who, above all else, crave stimulation.

Still let's face it, everything that exists today must have had a beginning. So bear with us for a few moments as we introduce this piece of historical detective work by Issei Shimoda; it's interesting.

The story goes back, as do so many other things, to ancient China. Organized prostitution, by women known as "ji-nu", is believed to originated from the enslavement of the civilian population of kingdoms captured and subdued in the course of incessant war. The more attractive females were made house slaves by the wealthy, and their duties included sleeping with the head of the household.

A scholar named Wei Shou, a man of letters during the Northern Qi dynasty (550-557), wrote an account of a fabulously wealthy and depraved aristocrat named Shi Chong, who kept over 1,000 concubines. Shi was in the habit of throwing lavish orgies, at which guests were plied with food and drinks and then invited to help themselves to the females of the household. Refusal was not an option. In fact, if a guest found the concubine's performance unsatisfactory, she would be decapitated on the spot, as a lesson to the others.

But Japan's humanitarian ruler Shotoku found such callous regard for human life to be repellent. While keen, on the one hand, to adopt China's writing system, religion and other accouterments of civilization, he realized that for Buddhism to be properly propagated in the land of the rising sun, a solution would be needed to help Buddhist nuns and priests focus on their mission -- which meant finding ways to deal with major distractions like sexual frustration.

Actually, Buddhism was no shrinking violet in 6th century China. One chronicle from around this period recounts the tale of several dozen cavalry soldiers who spent the night romping in a Buddhist convent during a campaign against Luoyang.

Moreover, it seems that as a means of popularizing Buddhism, temples at the time served not only as places of worship, but also doubled as a place of public recreation, including that of the raunchy variety.

Unfortunately the tenets of the Buddhist religion made it a sin for a priest to break his vows of celibacy and engage in "nyobon" -- the woman crime -- as fornication with a female was called.

Thus to keep Buddhism on the right track for those seeking salvation, forms of sexual gratification that did not involve actual penetration proved a practical approach.

Details of the evolution of oral sex await further discovery, but at least we know that by the 17th century it had taken root, so to speak. Shimoda refers to an old woodblock illustration from a text, titled "Mata Awase" (joining of loins), which shows a woman performing fellatio on a man.

Numerous references to oral sex can be found in the writings of the Edo Period. One, called the "Osame Kamai-jo", was an instruction manual for prostitutes at the Dogo spa in Iyo Province (present-day Ehime Prefecture). Its contents included specific references to oral love techniques, including ejaculation in the mouth.

Now it may be, uh, stretching things a bit, but at this same Dogo spa in Ehime, a stone memorial can be found, even today, which denotes that back in ancient times, the great Prince Shotoku had journeyed there for a steamy soak.

An inscription on the monument reads poetically, "Entering the waters to soak away one's ills is the same as entering a pond of flowers to rejuvenate oneself."

Can it be coincidence, Jitsuwa Knuckles asks rhetorically, that the same spa where prostitutes received written instructions in oral sex, albeit many years later, just happens to be the one visited by this revered aristocrat? And does that not, then, also suggest that the prince may have been instrumental in introducing techniques of tooting on the phallic trombone?

It was recently reported in the news that 65 percent of Japanese females in their teens engage in oral sex. What, Shimoda wonders, would the illustrious Prince Shotoku have remarked concerning such precocious behavior.

Nevertheless, Jitsuwa Knuckles does not go so far as to claim that Japanese were the first to discover fellatio. After all, some histories record that Egypt's Queen Cleopatra once lined up 100 of her guards and serviced them orally, one by one. (By Masuo Kamiyama, contributing writer)