This movie paints an honest picture of the thousand-year long Sino-Japanese friendship and the spreading of Buddhism from China to Japan, but what was not shown in the movie was the tragic end of Buddhism in China during Tang dynasty due to the constant battles between warlords, everyone of them preached Buddhism. This was exactly the reason that prevented later Japanese monks who wanted to go to China to study.
This part of the history was willfully left out because a good story with such tragic ending would tarnish the original theme and the writers left it out instead of governmental censorship.