HISTORY OF JAPAN LIBRARY

DURING the last three-quarters of the thirteenth century the Empire of Japan enjoyed the benefit of an administration more economical, more honest, and more efficient than was known anywhere in contemporary Europe. And yet we are assured by one distinguished authority that the period of seventy-two years between 1214 and 1286 (under the Alexanders, II and III) was the golden age of Scottish history; and by another that “nowhere had better government been seen in Europe than that which Louis IX carried on for the sixteen peaceful years which followed his first crusade (1254-1270).” Surely the reflection that mediaeval Japan was able to produce not one single ruler, but a succession of rulers, the equals, if not the superiors, of the two great Scottish Kings, and of St. Louis himself, in ability, personal disinterestedness, and moral elevation of character, might well be expected to be something on which Japanese patriotism would dwell with pride. But the ways of Japanese patriotism are now and then wont to be fearful and wonderful and past finding out. By it, until recent years, these great men,—among the truest patriots that have ever appeared in the Empire,—have been most ignominiously placed in the dock and arraigned at the bar of history as the most flagrant and deep-dyed criminals ever known in the political annals of Japan. Latterly, it is true, there has been a revulsion; and saner and juster judgements have been passed in certain quarters.

What has brought such a load of obloquy upon the memory of the Hojos was their treatment of the Emperors. In the first third of the fourteenth century, their conduct in this respect is open to grave censure, as it was indeed, in others besides; but during the period we are now dealing with, it is difficult to see in what the attitude of the Kamakura Regents towards the throne was at fault.

Just before the great tumult of 1221, the ex-Emperor, Toba II, was making a plaything of the Imperial Seat. This was no doubt in accordance with the wont of ex-Emperors; but it was none the less highly reprehensible. When the Bakufu was forced to deal with the situation, it was the son of Toba II’s elder brother that was made Sovereign. Now, by the present Imperial Succession Law, this Prince’s title was certainly superior to that of the deposed infant Kanenari. Horikawa II, after a reign of ten years, abdicated in favour of his infant son, Shijo; and died two years later on. Neither during the times of Horikawa II nor those of Shijo, was there any friction between Kamakura and Kyoto.

With the sudden and totally unexpected death of Shijo in February 1242 the line of Toba II’s elder brother became extinct; and no Crown Prince had been designated. According to the present Imperial House Law, the succession would then naturally have devolved upon the second son of Toba II’s eldest son, Tsuchimikado, for the latter’s first-born had meanwhile entered the priesthood and so abandoned all claim to the throne. But a strong party in Kyoto wished to pass over this second son of Tsuchimikado’s, and make the son of Juntoku (Tsuchimikado’s younger brother) Sovereign. This latter was a grandson of Fujiwara Michiiye, the father of the Shogun Yoritsune; and besides his grandfather, the powerful Saionji Kintsune also supported his candidature. Both these great nobles had hitherto been on good terms with the Bakufu, whose support had greatly contributed to the influence they wielded. At this juncture they did not venture to proclaim a new Sovereign without consultation with Kamakura; but after sending off express couriers with news of Shijo’s death, they presently sent others urgently requesting the Bakufu to sanction the elevation of Juntoku’s son to the throne; and went on making all due preparations for the installation of their candidate. But Tsuchimikado’s son; although hitherto living on straitened means in a private situation, also had his partisans and protectors, among whom some were connected with the Hojos by marriage; and these also had hurried off couriers to lay the case before the Bakufu. The result was that ten days after the death of Shijo, during which time the throne had been vacant, Adachi and Nikaido arrived as Bakufu commissioners in Kyoto, with a mandate to see to it that Tsuchimikado’s, and not Juntoku’s son should be made Emperor! What undoubtedly weighed much with Hojo Yasutoki in reaching this decision was the fact that the accession of Tadanari, Juntoku’s son, would bring back Juntoku from Sado to the capital; and that the real sovereign power would fall into the hands of the banished ex-Emperor, who had a long-standing grudge against the Bakufu to settle. Juntoku possessed a considerable degree of ability of a certain kind; and the exercise of this might just possibly lead up to an issue similar to that which had to be faced in 1221. It is true that Juntoku died only eight months later on in the same year; but in February Yasutoki had no reason to believe that his ex-Majesty’s end was so close at hand.

Later writers have asserted that Adachi, on the point of starting to fulfil his Kyoto mission, asked Hojo Yasutoki what course was to be pursued in rase he found that Juntoku’s son had been proclaimed Sovereign before he reached the capital; and that Yasutoki replied that, in such an eventuality, the new Emperor must be deposed. But Yasutoki must have been morally sure that neither Fujiwara Michiiye nor Saionji Kintsune would be likely to take any irrevocable step without his own sanction. It is to be observed here that this was not a contest between Sovereign and subject. The extinction of the line of Horikawa II, the failure to provide for any successor to the throne before the death of Shijo,—and the absence of any Imperial House Law automatically solving succession questions at such a conjuncture, made it necessary that the succession question on this occasion should be decided by mere subjects, for Fujiwara Michiiye and Saionji Kintsune and their partisans were as much subjects as Yasutoki was. The very remarkable thing is that here again once more, the decision of the Bakufu, if tried by the provisions of the present Imperial House Law, must be pronounced to have been perfectly correct.

Prince Kunihito, who now ascended the throne as Saga II at the age of twenty-two, quickly made way for his second son, Fukakusa II (1246-1259), who in turn abdicated in favour of his younger brother, Kameyama (1259-1274); but it was by Saga II that the real Imperial power was wielded down to the year of his death,—which was the same as that of Henry III of England (1272). This Saga II was a Sovereign of fair ability and of highly amiable and respectable qualities. The friendship between him and his elder brother, the priest, was close, firm and enduring. From first to last his relations with the Bakufu, in the honesty of whose intentions his faith was at once profound and unwavering, were agreeable and harmonious. And yet, such is the irony of fate, it was this large-souled, fine-minded man,—perhaps, from a moral point of view, the very best of all the ex-Emperors,—that sowed the most prolific and the most baneful crop of Dragon’s teeth that was ever scattered abroad by a Sovereign of Japan. As has been urged over and over again, the mere fact of being the first-born son of a reigning Sovereign did not in itself constitute any indefeasible or imprescriptible claim to the throne on the death or abdication of the Imperial father. Practically, since the institution of the Insci system, succession questions had in the majority of instances been decided by the fiat of the ex-Emperor; by the older ex-Emperor when there were as many as two, and by the oldest when there were as many as three. The ex-Emperor, Saga II, aspired to settle such questions for future ages in a peculiarly unfortunate fashion. In his will he directed that on the death or abdication of his seventh son Kameyama, the reigning Emperor, the new Sovereign should be of the stock of his second son, Fukakusa II, the previous Emperor; and on the death or abdication of this new Sovereign, his successor was to be of the line of Kameyama, and so on thereafter, it being his intention that the two lines should henceforth alternate in the occupation of the throne for ever.

A very moderate degree of prescience should have been ample to discern that this agreement could not fail to be productive of trouble and strife sooner or later. As a matter of fact, before the century was out, Court and courtiers were divided into two bitterly hostile camps, at such serious variance with each other that the trenchant intervention of the Bakufu was provoked on more than one occasion. For example, the 92nd Emperor, Fushimi, after a reign of ten years, during which the real power was exercised by his father, Fukakusa II, abdicated in favour of his own son Fushimi II. This was a breach of Saga II’s will; and so the head of the Kameyama line, Uda II, appealed to the Hojo Regent (Sadatoki), and induced him to depose Fushimi II and replace him by Uda II’s own son (1301). The point to be attended to here is that what first brought the Bakufu into conflict with one of the two Court factions was the operation of that most unfortunate document, the will of Saga II; and that during the eighty years following the great tumult of 1221 the relations between the Sovereigns in Kyoto and the Hojos in Kamakura had been thoroughly satisfactory, and often exceedingly amicable.

One point is specially worthy of attention. During the Tokugawa régime (1603-1868) the Imperial Court of Kyoto was but meagrely and slenderly provided for by the Yedo authorities, who assigned little more than some 120,900 koku of rice for the support of the Imperial Family and the 137 Kugé houses. For such exalted personages this was little better than penury; but between 1470 and 1550 the penury of the Court and courtiers had been of a still more grinding order, amounting as it did to a degree of .absolute destitution which the arts of the most astute contemporary Caleb Balderstones found it hopeless to cope with. Now a comparison of the condition of the Imperial Court during the eighty years between 1470 and 1550 with the condition of that same Court during the eighty years between 1221 and 1301 is most instructive. It must be at once perceived that the comparison amounts not only to a contrast, but to one of the most glaring of contrasts. For at no time for generations had the Imperial Family been so well off financially as it was between 1221 and 1301 at least.

By 1221 the Insci system had been in operation for a century and a half. Now, whatever merits might have to be imputed unto it for righteousness, economy could at no time, except for a few brief years under Sanjo II, be reckoned among them. Hitherto the Insci system had almost invariably been waste- fully and criminally profuse in its expenditure,—and in order to procure the immense revenue needed for its support it time and again had had recourse to most undignified and most demoralising expedients, among which the open sale of offices and Court rank had not been one of the least blameworthy. Before 1221, in the times of Toba II, this special scandal had been as flagrantly pronounced as ever. After 1221 we meet with very little reference to it in contemporary records for at least two generations. One reason is that Kamakura exerted itself rigorously to repress, if not actually to suppress it. Another unmistakably is that the Court was now amply provided with means of support from legitimate sources. In his will (1272) Saga II was able to deal with a vast amount of landed property, consisting of the 180 manors attached to the Abbey of Chokodo, and the revenue of wide domains in Harima and Owari. All this was henceforth to constitute the resources of ex-Emperors; the reigning Sovereign being supposed to be provided for by the Bakufu. At this date certain of the great Court nobles were also exceedingly wealthy, while not a few of them were even more than tolerably well off. They still held extensive Sho-en, administered by their own Jito or stewards; and into these Bakufu officers found no entrance unless by virtue of a social commission which was issued only in rare and extreme cases, for instance, when it was proved that brigands and malefactors were being harboured there. In its own domains, and over its own vassals and officers the authority exercised by the Bakufu was absolute and final. With such functionaries as Shugo the Court could not interfere directly; in this matter the original regulations of the time of Yoritomo were now again strictly enforced. But outside all this, for any special or exceptional measure the Bakufu seems on the whole to have been as careful to have its proceedings sanctioned by an Imperial Decree as Yoritomo had been.

From 1224 or 1225 onwards, the history of the Bakufu is largely that of the Hojo Shikken or Regents. Of these from first to last there were nine; Yasutoki (1224-1242) being the third of the line. Of Yasutoki’s two sons, one was assassinated at the age of sixteen, and the other died in 1230 (aged 28) twelve years before his father. From 1242 to 1246 the Shikken was Yasutoki’s grandson Tsunetoki, and from 1246 to 1256 Tsunetoki’s younger brother, Tokiyori, who really held the reins of administration down to his death in 1263. He had meanwhile been nominally succeeded by his young son Tokimune, who on his death in 1284 transmitted his office to his eldest son Sadatoki. In 1301 Sadatoki professedly retired: but he it was who truly directed the policy of the Bakufu during the nominal regency of his younger brother, Morotoki (1301-1311), who died about a month before him.

Upon the death of Sadatoki the decline of the Bakufu in moral no less than in material influence was portentously rapid. But four of these Shikken—from the third to the sixth inclusive—must be candidly admitted to have been great and able rulers, worthy of all respect. Possibly no other great family in Japan can boast of such an unbroken succession of men of lofty character and administrative ability as the house of Hojo displayed. And to estimate the house of Hojo by the line of Shikken alone, would be to do it something of an injustice. The Hojo stock was a wonderfully prolific one; Yasutoki, for example, had seven brothers, several cousins, and at least a dozen nephews; and most of these, in common with later collateral members of the family, gave abundant evidence of the possession of high intellectual powers and an excellent capacity for hard and conscientious work, while their devotion to the wholesome traditions of the simple and strenuous life seems to have been unquestioned and unquestionable.

In one respect the early Hojos stand in open and glaring contrast to that blood-stained house of Minamoto which they had first supported, and then supplanted in the exercise of the governing authority. Down to 1272 not one Hojo brother was done to death by another; and down to that date there are but few instances of a Hojo meeting with harsh or unjust or ungrateful treatment at the hands of a blood relation. The first Hojo, Tokimasa, had been compelled to retire from public life by his own son and daughter and their counsellors (1205); but the penalty exacted from him for his mistaken policy, if not actual misdeeds, on this occasion, was neither unjust, nor harsh, nor excessive. In the plot against Yasutoki in 1224, his half-brother Masamura, whose name had been used by the conspirators, was not at all seriously compromised. At that date Masumura was a youth of no more than nineteen; and for long years before his death in 1273 he had been and continued to be one of the main supports of Yasutoki’s grandsons and great-grandson in their exercise of the office of Shikken. The only really serious menace to the almost invariable harmony that prevailed among the Hojos was the episode of 1247, when the ex-Shogun Fujiwara Yoritsune tried to induce Hojo Mitsutoki to assassinate his nephew the new Shikken, Tokiyori, the proffered guerdon of the crime being investiture with the intended victim’s office. Even on this occasion all that happened was that Mitsutoki was stripped of his offices, and relegated to the ancestral manors in Izu, there to enter upon an uninterrupted enjoyment of that dignified leisure which Cicero calls the haven of repose. Under a Minamoto régime even for an infinitely less flagrant offence, Mitsutoki’s fate would have been less lenient by a good many degrees.

Then, behind the Hojo Regents, was that most invaluable legacy bequeathed to them and the Empire by men like Oe Hiromoto and Miyoshi Yasunobu; the mere outcasts of caste-ridden Kyoto, and the glories of Kamakura with its carrière ouverte aux talents.

One thing to which Yasutoki and his counsellors devoted assiduous and unremitting attention was the administration of justice in the Bakufu domains. In Kamakura the first fifteen days of every month were given up to judicature, decisions being pronounced on the tenth, twentieth, and thirtieth days, after important and difficult cases had been discussed at the Council of Government. A bell was hung up at the gate of the Record Office; and, when a suitor struck it, his petition or complaint was at once attended to. To meet the peculiar circumstances and needs of a feudal society, the Bakufu had gradually to build up a special jurisprudence of its own; and after long and careful study of cases and precedents from the times of Yoritomo down to 1232, Yasutoki and Miyoshi Yasutsura, in that year, presented the draft of the famous Joei Shikimoku to the Council of Government for discussion and approval.

Such a Code was indeed sorely needed. It was not because there were no codes or bodies of law in the Empire at the time. Truly it was quite the reverse. Since the beginning of the eighth century, a constant stream of laws and ordinances had been issuing, first from Nara, and then from Kyoto; and, for the last few preceding centuries, decrees and edicts had been pouring, not from one, but from at least three, and sometimes more, different sources in the latter capital. In numerous cases the edicts issued by the Imperial Chancery, the ex-Emperor’s Chancellery, and the Kebiishi Board were in serious conflict with each other; and this, added to the fact that the accumulated mass of legislation of all sorts had swelled to such proportions that scarcely any one could be expected to master more than a fraction of it, imported such an element of difficulty and uncertainty into Japanese jurisprudence that the study of it had fallen into all but utter desuetude. Besides, in Kyoto the rewards for a profound knowledge of law had for long been insignificant compared with those accorded to such as could master the elementary principles of the facile art of pleasing the blue-blooded non­entities in authority. Hence it came to pass that by 1200 AD there was scarcely a single jurisconsult in Kyoto. Oe Hiromoto, and Miyoshi Yasunobu, and their friends had removed to the Kwanto in disgust, carrying their knowledge of the Law of the Empire with them.

But in the Kwanto it would have been utterly impracticable to endeavour to enforce the Law of the Empire. The basis of that was still supposed to be the Code of Taiho. One prime object of that Code had been to guard against the danger of any development of a feudal system and the rise of any specially privileged military class. But when Oe and Miyoshi went to Kamakura, they found that the organisation of society there was distinctly and pronouncedly feudal, and that it was the interests of the military class that had to be chiefly and primarily consulted and provided for in the administration of justice and in any legislation that they might contemplate. As this feudal system and this privileged military class had arisen only by the flagrant and systematic flouting of the Land-Provisions of the Code of Taiho, and as the whole economy of Japan rested upon an agricultural basis, it must have very quickly dawned upon the acute intelligence of Oe and Miyoshi that in settling the disputes of the Bushi the judgements they delivered must generally be in accordance with something very different from the ordinary Imperial law. It was what had become the traditional customs of the district, and, perhaps, the House Laws of the Minamoto, that they had to take primarily and chiefly into account. The decisions rendered in accordance with these formed the basis of what was virtually a new system of jurisprudence; and the Code of Joei (so named from the year-period, 1232), framed in consonance with the tenor of the recorded precedents of the previous fifty years, might be described as the Great Customary of the Kwanto.

It is to be carefully noted that the Bakufu more than once emphatically declared that this “Customary” was intended for its own domains and its own vassals solely; and that it made it plain to all that it had no intention of interfering with the infernal administration of such fiefs and such districts as did not depend upon it. This, of course, meant the tracts still under the control of the Civilian Provincial Governors appointed by Kyoto, the manors of the Great Monasteries in the Home Provinces and elsewhere, and the estates held by the Court and the Court nobles, and even by military men who had continued to be independent of Kamakura. But in course of time, many of such proprietors, finding certain of the provisions of the Kwanto Customary highly suitable for the state of things on their estates, began gradually to enforce them there; and in a few generations it had supplanted the common law of the Empire over the greater part of its extent.

A compendium of fifty-one brief articles, whose contents may be mastered in an hour or so, can have no pretensions to be an exhaustive exposition of law. Neither is it a systematic one, for the various subjects are not dealt with in any strict logical sequence, while the sections were not even numbered, either when the Code was in force in Kamakura times, or when in use as a school-book in the Tokugawa age. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly interesting and instructive; all the more so, when we remember that it was the wont of the Kamakura Bakufu to see to it that its laws should be really and strictly enforced. One result of this is that the hints the Hojo Code supplies us with about the social conditions of the time are exceedingly valuable, because trustworthy. If one section (41) indicates that slavery was still an institution not unknown on the Bakufu domains, others furnish conclusive evidence that the free farmer there was in a better position than his descendant was under the Tokugawa régime. The cultivator was carefully guarded against undue rigour of process in exacting arrears of taxation from him; and on payment of his dues he was at entire liberty to remove elsewhere if he found the conditions unfair or unfavourable to him in the place of his abode (42). Another paragraph, while forbidding the sale of fiefs, sanctions the sale of their holdings by peasants in case of necessity. Under the Yedo Government, the right of migration and that of sale of his fields were alike denied to the farmer. What the exact social status of a village headman was,—whether samurai or commoner,—does not clearly appear; but village headmen, while held to a strict discharge of their duties, and severely punished for various malpractices, were safeguarded against all aggression or undue interference on the part of the Jito.

The law of property was almost entirely synonymous with that of fiefs. These, if originally conferred for public services rendered by the grantee, could not be sold. On the death of the holder it was not necessarily the eldest son,—even though legitimate,—that succeeded. The only provision affecting the father’s complete liberty of bequest or gift to his widow—(or concubine, in one article)—or children was that a thoroughly deserting eldest son whether of wife or concubine could claim one-fifth of the estate. Not only could women be dowered with, or inherit fiefs, and transmit a legal title to them to their own children, but a childless woman was even fully empowered to adopt an heir. Yoritomo had been the first to sanction this broad-minded and liberal principle; and although the language of section 18 of this Hojo Code evinces that the Solons of Kamakura were beginning to be somewhat anxious about the possible risks of the “monstrous regiment of women”—and this within seven years of the death of the great Lady Masa,—the truly lion-hearted Nun-Shogun, the full equal in courage and ability of the best man Kamakura ever produced! Doubtless it was his appreciation of the sterling worth of his masterful, yet dutiful, spouse that induced Yoritomo to treat the best women of his time with such an extraordinary amount of confidence and respect.

As the existence of the Kamakura Bakufu depended in no small measure upon the perpetuation and diffusion of the Yoritomo legend, the legists of 1232, while fully aware of the fact that neither Lady Masas nor Widow Oyamas were to be found in every second wayside hamlet, felt that it would be injudicious to attempt any curtailment of the privileges accorded to women by the Great Lord of Kamakura; in the enjoyment of which they had been tacitly confirmed by a prescriptive term of nearly fifty years. In other respects, too, the women of the Kamakura Bushi class were in a more favoured position than were those of the Tokugawa samurai. In the Yedo period a samurai husband wounded in his marital honour could take the law into his own hands, and put the offending spouse to death. In Kamakura an adulterer was stripped of half of his fief if he held one; and if he had none, he was banished. For an adulteress, the punishment was no severer, except that, if possessed of a fief, the whole of it was forfeited.

A good many sections of the Code deal with legal procedure. and the conduct and duties of magistrates,—the great objects being to make the administration of justice simple, prompt, and pure, while repressing everything in the shape of pettifogging or factious litigiousness. The penalties were neither cruel nor ferocious. Death for the worst offences—among which theft is especially mentioned, —confiscation of fief and banishment —these about exhaust the list. The only other punishment mentioned is that of branding on the face, inflicted on a commoner for the crime of forgery, a Bushi’s punishment, in this case, being banishment, or simply confiscation of his fief, if possessed of one.

Bakufu vassals were strictly forbidden directly to solicit the Imperial Court for rank or office; they must be provided with a special recommendation from Kamakura. But once invested with Court rank, they might be promoted in grade without any further recommendation, while they were free to accept the position of Kebushi, an office about which sufficient has already been said. Analogous restrictions were placed on the Kwanto clergy, who were to be summarily removed from their benefices if found appealing to Kyoto for promotion, the only exception being in favour of Zenshu priests. In their case, the erring brother guilty of such an offence got off comparatively lightly—“an influential member of the same sect will be directed to administer a gentle admonition.”

The clergy within the Bakufu domains were to be kept strictly in hand; if they squandered the revenues of their incumbency and neglected the fabric and the established services therein they were to be displaced. As regards the monasteries and priests outside the Bakufu domain, the case was entirely different; they were virtually independent, and Kamakura interfered there only when instructed to do so by Imperial Decree. What the position of the Shu go and the Jito was has already been pretty fully set forth.

It is to be carefully noted that this “Code of Joei” was only a fraction of the legislation of the Kamakura Bakufu. In Ogino’s Ancient Statute-Law of Japan it occupies no more than 33 pages. During the subsequent century this rudimentary Kwanto Customary was amplified and modified by numerous enactments (some of them it is true of but trivial consequence)—which occupy as much as 204 pages of the work just alluded to.

Then, in 1330, a few years after the fall of Kamakura, the Kemmu-Shikimoku, of 17 sections, was drawn up by the former Councillors of the Bakufu,—Shoni, Akashi, Ota, Fuse, in collaboration with the monks Zeen, Sen-e, and others. By 1430 some 208 articles had been added to this by the Ashikaga Shoguns or their Ministers.

But during the Kamakura Bakufu régime, it must not be supposed that the Kyoto legislative factories had suspended operations. During all that age they were extremely active. The great difference between Kyoto and Kamakura was simply this: Kamakura issued comparatively few laws, but these were rigorously enforced in the Bakufu domains. Kyoto issued many laws; and in most quarters they were more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

One of the most interesting things in connection with this Joei Shikimoku is the “Solemn Oath” appended to the document:—

“Whereas a simple individual is liable to make mistakes through defect of judgement, even when the mind is unbiassed; and besides that, is led, out of prejudice or partiality, whilst intending to do right, to pronounce a wrong judgement; or again, in cases where there is no clue, considers that proof exists; or being cognisant of the facts and unwilling that another’s shortcomings should be exposed refrains from pronouncing a judgement one way or the other; so that intention and fact are in disaccord and catastrophes afterwards ensue.

“Therefore: in general, at meetings of Council, whenever questions of right or wrong are concerned there shall be no regard for ties of relationship, there shall be no giving into likes or dislikes, but in whatever direction reason pushes and as the inmost thought of the mind leads, without regard for companions or fear of powerful houses, we shall speak out. Matters of adjudication shall be clearly decided, and whilst not conflicting with justice the sentence shall be a statute of the whole Council in session. If a mistake is made in the matter, it shall be the error of the whole Council acting as one. Even when a decision given in a case is perfectly just it shall be a constitution of the whole Council in session. If a mistake is made and action taken without good grounds, it shall be the error of the whole Council acting as one. Henceforward, therefore, as towards litigants and their supporters we shall never say, ‘Although I personally took the right view of the matter some or such a one amongst my colleagues of the Council dissented and so caused confusion, etc.’ Should utterance be given to any such reports the solidarity of the Council would be gone, and we should incur the derision of men in after times.

“Furthermore, again, when suitors having no colour of right on their side fail to obtain a trial of their claim from the Court of the Council and then make an appeal to one of its members, if a writ of endorsement is granted by him it is tantamount to saying that all the rest of the members are wrong. Like as if one man shall we maintain judgement.”

This Oath, subscribed by the Shikken and twelve others of the Council of State, indicates, among other things, the deep sense of the importance of unanimity, of a united front, of the individual sharing fully in the collective responsibility, that was cherished by the Bakufu Councillors. This was indeed one of the chief secrets of the wonderful stability and efficiency of the machine. It is but rarely that we meet with references to divided counsels in the history of the Kamakura authorities; but when they did make their appearance, the results were exceedingly serious. The instances of these under Yoriiye and Sanetomo have been already dealt with. In the course of the half-century following 1221, there was no more than one great similar tragedy—in 1247.

The greatest family in Kamakura, after the Hojos, was the Miuras, as has already been said. The Miura stock was even more prolific than that of the Hojos, while its landed possessions were much more extensive than those of the Shikken and his relatives. For long the two families had been on the most friendly terms. Meanwhile, however, the Adachis, of Dewa Fujiwara descent, had been rising in wealth and prestige; and an Adachi lady had become the mother of the fourth and fifth Shikken. Tsunetoki and Tokiyori. During the rule of Tsunetoki (1242—1246), the Adachis had waxed exceedingly powerful in the Councils of the Bakufu; and this excited the jealousy of the great Miura clan, and ultimately brought about an estrangement between Miuras and Hojos. The elder Miura chief, a son-in-law of Yasutoki’s, finding his counsels no longer so frequently sought for as they had been, and often rejected when tendered, appears to have fallen into an attitude of lukewarm indifference to the interests of the administration, which presently came to be construed as intriguing and factious opposition. The other chief, his younger brother, Mitsumura, had for long been a personal attendant and friend of the young Shogun, Fujiwara Yoritsune; and when Yoritsune was induced to resign, professedly on account of menacing portents in the heavens, in 1244, Mitsumura had been deeply grieved and chagrined. Now, in 1247, it was determined to remove the ex-Shogun to Kyoto; and on his departure from Kamakura, Mitsumura, with tears in his eyes, assured him that he cherished the hope of yet being able to welcome him back there some day. Yoritsune had just been implicated in the plot to kill the new Shikken, Tokiyori, and replace him by his uncle Mitsutoki, who had no affinity with the Adachis. All this, with other circumstances deemed to be significant, combined to expose the Miuras to suspicion. Old Adachi Kagemori, Tokiyori’s maternal grandfather, who had been living as a monk in Koyasau for nearly twenty years, suddenly hurried up to Kamakura to have long secret conferences with his grandson, the new Shikken, Tokiyori. The result was that the Miura mansion was, without any warning, invested by a strong body of troops, and fired. The two chiefs, Yasumura and Mitsumura, made good their escape to the Hokkedo, a huge temple in the neighbourhood; and there, with their clansmen who rapidly rallied to their summons, stood stubbornly on the defensive for some time. When finally overborne by numbers they committed harakiri, as did more than 270 of their followers. Orders had meanwhile been issued for the slaughter of the Miuras in the various provinces; and in a few days this fine and great and powerful clan was virtually extirpated, and its immense landed possessions, amounting to many tens of thousands of acres of cultivated soil, were confiscated, and disposed of in various ways. Some of its manors were bestowed on meritorious Bakufu vassals, others were “contributed” to temples or shrines, while yet others were utilised to augment the Civil List of the Imperial Court.

With such drastic and heroic remedies for the malady of intrigue and self-seeking, it is not perhaps so very surprising that we should meet with such scant mention of divided counsels in the records of Kamakura. Besides, the secrecy of certain meetings of the Council of State was much better preserved than those of the British Cabinet. Tradition has it that when all-important questions were to be dealt with, the Councillors assembled in the Takibi no Ma (“Burning-fire room”) in the Shogunal palace. Here they deliberated without uttering a word, expressing themselves merely by tracing characters on the ashes of the fire lighted on the hearth. That Kyoto, with its rival Courts, its rival Chancelleries, and its intriguing functionaries, mostly all eager to trip each other up by any means, fair or foul, should have gone down before Kamakura with this wonderfully organised Bakufu machine, the embodiment not only of ability and power of work, but of discipline of the finest order, was almost a matter of course. Furthermore, the Bakufu was thoroughly in touch with the times; and Kyoto remained oblivious to the social changes that had passed and were passing over the fare of the Empire at large. And not the least of all was. as the events of 1221 had shown, that Kyoto was impotent if a conflict of opinions or of interests had to be settled by the sharp and decisive arbitrament of the sword.

Here a few words about the special machinery employed by the Great Boards of Kamakura, and their duplicates in the Rokuhara, to enable them to keep in close touch with the whole wide-spreading extent of Bakufu domains. These domains, besides embracing practically the whole of the Kwanto, were to be found in almost even province of the Empire, from the Straits of Tsuruga to the extreme south of Kyushu. In some provinces they were less extensive than those belonging to owners exempt from Kamakura or Rokuhara jurisdiction; in Yamato especially, where the soil was mostly held by the Great Monasteries of Nara, the Bakufu foothold was so slender that it had no need for a Shugo there. In several other provinces, a map of, say, 1250 AD would show as many enclaves as could be found in Germany at any time. In most of the provinces, the Bakufu had a High Constable, or Shugo; and in those counties or districts where it had virtually superior proprietary, as well as administrative rights, a Jito, or Land-Steward. These provincial Shugo and district Jito (who in course of time were destined entirely to supplant the Provincial and District Governors of the old centralised civil government) were the local agents through which the Bakufu acted. Now, how were these agents held to the honest discharge of their duties, and restrained from all attempts at playing the part of local despots? In the first place, a well- founded plaint of aggression from any non-Bakufu proprietor, addressed to Kamakura or the Rokuhara through the Imperial Court, would almost infallibly lead to the reprimand or removal of the offending Shugo or Jito. In the original contemporary records, I have come across not one, but scores of cases of this. But not only were neighbouring proprietors safe­guarded from outrage at the hands of the local representatives of Kamakura; its own tax-paying subjects and thralls had their legitimate rights and interests carefully protected by the Bakufu during the greater portion of the thirteenth century at least. Shugo and Jito alike had their administration subjected to a rigorous examination by envoys, both ordinary and extraordinary, dispatched on appointed circuits by the Great Central Boards. Of these envoys there were at least four categories; the Jikkenshi (Messengers to Examine the Truth), Special Commissioners expedited for the most serious reasons; the Kenkenshi (Examine-Look-Envoys), Commissioners to investigate special matters of less serious import; the Junkenshi (Go-round-Examine-Messengers), sent out annually at a fixed date to traverse a circuit, to take note of the economic and social condition of the people, to listen to complaints, and to compose disputes; and lastly the Naikenshi, sent out early every autumn to report on the actual yield of the rice harvest so as to enable the Central authorities to settle the amount and incidence of taxation justly and fairly and reasonably. In addition to these, each High Constable (Shugo) had a staff of Kenchfi-shi whose duty it was to see to it that the land-survey in the Bakufu domains in his province was just and fair.

All these officials were embraced under the generic term of the “Kamakura-Bakufu-Officers.” These most hard-worked and meritorious public officials must be carefully distinguished from the Kamakura Banshu,—pampered minions of lower degree mentally and morally, whose only claim to distinction was that they had been selected to fill the dignified offices of lacqueys and superior flunkeys to the temporary figure-head of the Kamakura ship of State. The best known of these Ban were perhaps the oldest of them, the Gakumonjo Ban, organised in 1213, and the O-Ban (or Great Ban), dating from about 1225. The first of these two had to deal with the riding­school, archery, and the study of the old etiquette and usages of China and Japan; the second was of the nature of a guard for the person and palace of the titular Shogun. The Kinju- Ban (1223) had to select and supervise the employees in the Palace; the Koshiban was charged with the opening and closing of the shutters and gates at morning and evening tide respectively, the Hisashi-Ban were guardians of the Shogunal pavilions or villas outside the Palace, while the Monken-zankettu-Ban were, practically, Masters of Ceremony. The most notorious, if not the most famous, of all was the Hayahiru-Ban, whose personnel consisted of petits maîtres proficient in polite accomplishments,—the manufacture of verselets, vocal and instrumental music, dancing, hand-ball, and, above all, Japanese football, which has, or had, as much affinity with the rough-and-tumble of the Rugby or Association form of the game as chalk has with cheese.

I have asserted that mere civilian grandees never exercised any authority in Kamakura. By this, political or administrative authority is meant. From first to Iasi,—from the death of Sanetomo, in 1219, down to the overthrow of the Hojo, in 1333,—the six civilians successively invested with the Shogunate were little more than puppets, as far as the real work of the Bakufu was concerned.

Of these six puppet Shoguns, the first two—father and son,—were Fujiwaras. About Fujiwara Yoritsune a good deal has already been said. Taken to Kamakura as Shogun designate in 1219 at the age of two, he received his patent of investiture only in 1226. Eighteen years later on, in 1244, when Yoritsune was in his twenty-seventh year, there was a succession of menacing omens and portents in the heavens; and to evade the threat of mysterious impending evil thus conveyed, Yoritsune was induced to resign his high office in favour of his son, Yoritsugu, then five years old. Removed to Kyoto in 1246, Yoritsune there became implicated in an abortive plot to overthrow the Hojos, six years later on. The chief outcome of the intrigue was that Yoritsugu, then thirteen, was stripped of his position. Shortly after, it was discovered that his grandfather, and Yoritsune’s father, Fujiwara Michiiye, who had just died at the age of 60, had been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the ex-Emperor Saga II. Saga II owed his position to Hojo Yasutoki; and he had always been, and was, on the very best terms with Kamakura. It now became very easy for Kamakura to attain its long-cherished project,—a project in which it had been baulked by Toha II in 1219,—of procuring an Imperial Prince to fill the office of Shogun. And not only was an Imperial Prince now obtained to fill that office; the Imperial Prince, Munetaka (son of Saga II), now obtained was the brother of the reigning Emperor, and a year his senior! At the same time, as he was then (1252) no more than ten years of age, even if he should ultimately prow to be possessed of a measure of ability and a will of his own. it would be long before he would be in any position to interfere with the Shikken and his projects. In course of time, this first Imperial Shogun, at the instigation of His Reverence Ryoki and others, did make an effort to shake off the Hojo tutelage upon attaining years of discretion (1266); but the outcome of the effort was that he was deposed, sent to Kyoto and confined in the Rokuhara then, and replaced in Kamakura by his own son, Prince Koreyasu, then little more than out of his swaddling-clothes. Koreyasu was the Bakufu figure-head for twenty-three years (1266— 1289); then, just as he was beginning to evince a disposition to think and act for himself, he was suddenly relegated to Kyoto with as little ceremony as if he had been a bale of damaged goods or a “returned empty.” Prince Koreyasu was replaced by his cousin, Prince Hisa-akira, the son of the ex-Emperor, Fukakusa II, and the brother of the reigning Sovereign, Fushimi. At the time of his investiture, he was older than any of the other five civilian Fujiwaras or Imperial Princes hitherto selected to fill the position of head of the military class. But even so, Prince Hisa-akira was only in his fifteenth year. For nearly a score of years he managed to continue to be the nominal head of the house of Minamoto; and then one fine morning in 1398, he was forced to make way for his own son, Prince Mikuni. The latter lived to see the overthrow of the Hojo Regents in 1333. He then resigned the office of Shogun, became a monk, and died before the year was out, at the age of thirty-two.

Such in brief was the tame and impotent record of all these blue-blooded civilian Shoguns as statesmen and administrators. But politics, law, and administration constitute only a part of the regulative machinery by which any nation or society is governed. The sanctions of religion and the moral sentiments of the age must also always be taken into account. And in many cases, the dictates of ceremonial and of fashion are even more imperious and better obeyed than either the law of the land, the thunders of the Church, or the promptings of the conscience. Such for long ages had been the case at the Court of Kyoto; and with the advent of the civilian Kyoto Shoguns in Kamakura, these stern and rugged traditions of a wholesome simplicity of life, which Yoritomo had strenuously fostered, and which the Hojos, to their eternal honour, did so much to maintain as an ideal, presently found themselves confronted with standards of a vastly different kind.

The blue-blooded Kyoto Shoguns did not come to Kamakura alone and unattended. Several of them had actually to be nursed, and all of them educated, while on reaching man’s estate they had all to be kept amused, for otherwise their exile to the wilds of the not inhospitable, but uncouth and uncourtly, Kwanto would have been insupportable. Accordingly in the Court of every successive Shogun there was a strong Kyoto element, selected from among the more needy masters and exponents of the arts and accomplishments that were held in highest esteem in the gay and effeminate capital. Such people would not readily go down to the Kwanto for nothing; their emoluments had to be very substantial indeed. To these in the Shogunal Palace were added Kwanto Instructors of his Highness in Equitation, Archery, Swordsmanship, and all the arts of the warrior. But these latter generally found their offices little better than mere sinecures; and yet their emoluments were such as had been seldom bestowed for the most daring and gallant services on the battlefield. And from 1221 onwards, for long years, those were emphatically the “piping times of peace”; and under the strong and firm rule of the Hojo all opportunities for distinction on the battlefield seemed to have vanished, if not for ever, at all events for generations. Now the Kwanto Bushi were rapidly increasing in numbers, and in spite of all the tracts of new land that were being reclaimed and brought under cultivation, the economic problem among them was becoming more and more pressing. Hence lucrative appointments in the Shogun’s household gradually came to be eagerly coveted; and as these appointments only went to such as had some proficiency in the polite accomplishments so much valued in Kyoto, many of the young warriors began to devote their best efforts to acquiring the arts and graces of the fine and fashionable gentleman. This led to a rage for finer clothes, and for elaborate banquets, while presently the samurai began to vie with each other in the beauty and grandeur of their dwellings. The result was that the Bushi had to borrow money, and by the end of the century the number of mortgaged estates in the Kwanto was enormous. Even under Yasutoki (1224-1242) these evils had begun to make their appearance, and to cause that sagacious ruler serious disquietude, while his grandson Tokiyori (1246-1263) tried to grapple with them in a series of sumptuary regulations. In 1252, 1253, 1254 (and later on in 1281 and 1330) the prices of commodities were fixed, for extravagant and wasteful living in certain circles had driven them up tremendously. In 1261, Bakufu vassals were forbidden to build houses at a cost incompatible with their rank and fortune. In the same year an order was issued prohibiting persons visiting the Kwanto on official business from dressing expensively and above their station in life. In 1256 the Bakufu retainers were severely censured for their crying and scandalous neglect of the traditional military arts of the Kwanto, and the assiduous practice of the old sports and exercises was again made compulsory.

It is undoubted that the social influence,—direct and indirect—of the Shogun’s Court was at no time inconsiderable, and that it became very great in the three or four decades preceding the overthrow of the Hojo rule. In fact, in the complex of factors that led to the downfall of the Bakufu, the ultimate ascendancy of Kyoto social standards in Kamakura must probably be regarded as the most important.

In the previous chapters incidental references have been made to ecclesiastical affairs when they have been entangled with political developments. Here a few paragraphs must be devoted to a somewhat minuter view of the contemporary fortunes of Buddhism. At the same time, the exigencies of space forbid anything beyond the merest outlines of the general religious situation.

Down to nearly the end of the twelfth century, the six old sects of Nara, the Shingon, with its headquarters on Koyasan and in the temple of Toji to the south of Kyoto, and the Tendai, with its great monastery of Enryakuji, on Hi-ei-zan, and its offshoot and rival Mudera on Biwa strand below, remained in possession of the field. At, or somewhat subsequent to, that date, these eight sects had altogether some 11,000 fanes scattered over the length and breadth of the Empire. Today, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the six old Nara Recta combined have no more than 66 temples, the Tendai about 4.600 and the Shingon a little under 13.000. In other words, the eight old sects have now 17,388 places of religious worship, and no more than 4,700,000 adherents,—something considerably under ten per cent, of the total population of these islands, At the beginning of this twentieth century there are about 72,000 Buddhist temples in Japan, and perhaps 29,000,000 or 30,000,000 Buddhists. Of these as many as 53,000 fanes with 24,000,000 adherents belong to four great new sects whose first appearance was synchronous with that of the Dominican and Franciscan Friars in Europe. Now, in connection with these new sects, two points are to be especially noted. In the first place, their founders had all without exception been some time or other connected with the great Tendai Monastery of En-ryakuji on Mount Hi-ei; and secondly it was either in the Kwanto itself, or within the Bakufu domains, that three of these prophets, if not of a new religion, at all events of a new method of securing one’s bliss in a present or future state of existence, found their earliest adherents, and the most fruitful field of their activity.

The Tendai system was exceedingly comprehensive in its doctrines and teachings; and this comprehensiveness, while at first ensuring for it a speedy and wide-spreading success, naturally made it the parent of so many schisms. “It tried to reconcile contradictory systems, and sooner or later the contradictories were bound to come to the light and to separate.’’ The earliest of these schismatic offshoots of the Tendai system was the Jodo (Pure Land) sect established by Genku, now generally known as Honen Shonin. Born in Mimasaka about 1133, he entered Hi-ei-zan at the age of fifteen in 1148. His progress in scholarship was extraordinarily rapid: but by these times scholarship had become a very subordinate interest among the proud, worldly-minded turbulent priests of the great monastery. Accordingly, after four years there, Genku withdrew to the solitude of the neighbouring valley of Kurodani, and during his twenty-five years’ stay here read through the whole Buddhistic canon. These were stirring and troublous time in the capital; and then, later on, came the terrible disasters of 1182 and subsequent years. How these affected many minds appears from Chomei’s record of the Ho-jo-ki; people seemed to be living in a hideous nightmare of despair. Truly the first fifteen centuries of the splendour of Buddhism appeared to have yielded to those prophesied five hundred years of degradation and misery,—“the Latter Days of the Law, when iniquity should abound and the love of many should wax cold.” During this lamentable period, it was taught, “the gate of self-exertion which stands at the end of the Holy Path should be closed, but the gate opened by the exertion of another should be opened wide, and men should be saved by their faith in Amida.”

The characteristics of the special doctrine now inculcated by Genku have thus been summarised: “It is salvation by faith, but it is a faith ritualistically expressed. The virtue that saves comes not from the imitation of and conformity to the person and character of the Saviour Amida, but from the blind trust in his efforts and the ceaseless repetition of pious formulae. It does not therefore necessitate any conversion or change of heart. It is really a religion of despair rather than of hope. It says to the believer:—The world is so very evil that yon cannot possibly reach to Buddhaship here. Your best plan therefore is to give up all such hope, and simply set your mind upon being born in Amida’s Paradise after death; and if you once get admission into that land your ultimate salvation is secure.”

That this gloomy creed of self-abandonment should have won large numbers of adherents in the capital and in the Court is not at all surprising; for the miserable social and political conditions of the time, and an almost uninterrupted succession of natural calamities,—earthquakes, typhoons, fires, floods, droughts, famine, and pestilence,—had made the general outlook upon life there profoundly pessimistic. The new cult simply gave articulate and emotional expression to what most people felt and thought. The Emperors Shirakawa II and Takakura had both suffered much, and that these should have been found among Genku’s disciples is not strange. But Toba II, a man of a far robuster type, also followed in their foot­steps in this matter. However, in 1207, Toba II and his ghostly mentor came into collision, and Genku had to spend three years in exile in Sanuki. According to some accounts, one of Toba II’s female favourites had been induced by Genku to abandon the world, and his Majesty resented this deeply.

On the other hand, for long years, indeed for generations, the Jodoshu made no headway in the Kwanto. There, first under Yoritomo, and then under the Hojo Regents, peace and order were maintained; there life was simple, strenuous, and hopeful; in fact the outlook on the world was just as optimistic in Kamakura as it was the reverse in Kyoto. Plainly a creed of hopeless despair had but small prospects of general acceptance in such a social and moral atmosphere. Yet what purported to be a form of the Jodo cult,—in fact it called itself the True Jodo,—became very popular in the Bakufu domains before the middle of the thirteenth century.

Hino Arinori, of Fujiwara stock, had sent his son to Hi-ei-zan to be educated for the priesthood. In 1202, at the age of twenty-nine, this priest attached himself to Genku, whose favourite disciple he became. On Genku’s death in 1212 the subsequent policy of the sect did not commend itself to Shinran’s mind as a true development of his master’s teachings. Much discussion and dissension arose about this; and the Hi- ei-zan monks profited by the disorder to get Shinran exiled to Hitachi. Here, about 1224, he began to preach the doctrines of the Jodo Shinshu, or “ True Sect of Jodo.”

The modifications introduced into or superimposed upon the original Jodo doctrines and practices by Shinran were so important as virtually to constitute another and a new cult. As regarded the great question of the method of attaining ultimate salvation, Genku had taught that if we call the mercy of Amida to remembrance, then Amida will meet us at the hour of death, and conduct us to Paradise. Shinran insisted that the coming of Amida is present and immediate, that the believer receives, even in this life, the assurance of his salvation. The original Jodo did not forbid supplications to the other Buddhas; but Shinran forbade all worship to any but Amida. Genku’s followers might offer petitions for temporary blessings; Shinran insisted that prayer should only be offered for what concerns man’s ultimate salvation. The older sects insisted upon the performance of many acts of religion and devotion as necessary, and the Jodo had retained this as advisable; Shinran would have none of this—faith in Amida, “the way of easy acts,” was alone amply sufficient. Shinran also prohibited all resort to spells, incantations, and exorcism,—a step which appears to have specially brought upon him the Wrath of the monks of Hi-ei-zan, for it struck a severe blow to what was one great and perennial source of priestly revenue. Furthermore, to quote Mr. Lloyd, “if faith in Amida and his vow is the sole necessary for that present salvation which is to land the believer in Paradise at his death, it is dear that to trouble the mind of the believer with metaphysical subtleties and high speculations which form so important a part in the teachings of other sects, such as, for instance, the Tendai and Shingon, is a very needless work. Once in Paradise, and the whole of the speculative and metaphysical system of the Truth will come spontaneously to the mind without any teaching at all. The Shinshu therefore, at any rate in its earlier and more popular presentments, divests itself of all metaphysics. It knows nothing of a Philosophy of Religion: faith in Amida is all in all.”

Now, put all this in its proper historical setting, and the genius of Shinran will begin to become apparent. He was sent down to the Kwanto in 1224 three years after the great commotion of Shokyu (1221) had made it plain to all that it was really Kamakura and not Kyoto that gave the law to the Empire. And among the 100,000 Bakufu vassals that had been thrown against Kyoto in that year, it was notorious that not five in a hundred could make anything, whether sense or nonsense, out of Toba II’s Decree scattered broadcast among them. To trouble these people with wire-drawn metaphysical subtleties would have been just as injudicious as to commend a creed of despair and self-abandonment to a brood of lusty, sturdy dare-devils who had the best of all reasons for regarding the present world as very good—for their overwhelming success in the fortnight’s war of 1221 had just brought them manors and glory in plenty.

And meanwhile, yet another new sect had established itself in the Kwanto, where it had actually captured the Hojo Regents themselves. The Zenshu, whose chief aim was to inspire its followers directly with the “heart mark” of Buddha by “device and diligent practice,” and not to teach its doctrines by words or letters as did other sects, was indeed a formidable rival in the latitude and atmosphere of Kamakura, where contentment with the present “vile” world was general, where trust in one’s own right arm and one’s own best endeavours prevailed, where the schoolmaster had never “been abroad” to any marked extent, where all great issues were ’ decided not by sentimentality but by real honest fundamental sentiment and an appeal to rustic yet robust common-sense, and where the cobwebs of priestly metaphysics would have been as hateful to the male head of the household as the real cobwebs of the spider were to his strong-minded garment-weaving spouse and her bevy of buxom, cherry­cheeked, merry maid-servants. With the Zenshu already largely in possession of the religious field among the Bakufu vassals, the Jodo in its original form could never hope to root itself in the soil of the Kwanto. The Zen believer had to acknowledge—(1) that “the ‘way’ he had been taught was perfect, and there was consequently no need to prove it; (2) that religion is liberty, and that there is therefore no hope of forcing the reason to accept what the will refuses; and (3) that the whole body of the law is not far removed from this place, and that consequently we do not need the feet of asceticism to help us to reach it.” The believer had to prepare for his meditation by moderate eating and drinking, for while satiety is an obstacle to high thinking, so is also the weakness resulting from too rigorous a fast. He is further to expel from his mind, as far as possible, all thoughts of a worldly nature, so as to leave himself absolutely unfettered for the work before him. The Zen doctors protested against the Tendai and Jodo view that Buddhaship can be attained to only by the strict observance of the commandments. Here also, to meet the Zenshu with some hopes of success, Shinran modified the original Jodo doctrine. According to the “True Jodo,” the thankful remembrance of the mercies of Amida summed up the law. Whoever kept that mercy ever before him would, without fail, keep all the commandments. Shin- ran’s confining all worship to a single Buddha—Amida—was also a highly politic stroke,—for the ideal samurai was taught that it was a shame for him to serve more than a single lord.

But Shinran’s most daring innovation was in connection with the discipline and organisation of the priesthood. “If faith is the sole means of salvation it follows that there is no need for the candidate for salvation to become a priest, leave his home, renounce matrimony, and live by rule. The lay­man’s, and even the laywoman’s, chance of salvation is quite as good as the priest’s. The object therefore for which the priesthood exists is changed. It is no longer, as it was in Shaka’s conception, a body of men striving after perfection, but a body of men living to teach others,—the corporate depository of the Faith and Worship of the Church. The Shinshu sect therefore allows its priests to marry, to dress like laymen, and even when necessary to eat meat. In this sect priestly marriage is encouraged in every way; the family is considered the best sphere in which to lead the religious family life, and the incumbency not only of the ordinary temples, but even of their bishoprics and primacies, is hereditary in certain families.”

Thanks to the genius of Shinran, the “True Jodo” achieved a great and rapid success in the Kwanto where the prospects of the original Jodo would have been utterly hopeless. Takata, in Shimotsuke, was the seat of the first great Shinshu monastery, and this continued to be the headquarters of one branch of the sect from 1226 down to 1465, when these were transferred to Isshinden, not far from Tsu in Ise. In the early days, Kibe in Omi was the chief Shinshu fane in the neighbourhood of Kyoto. Before the end of the fifteenth century, the Shinshu priesthood had developed into a great feudal power, ruling the whole province of Kaga and wide domains in many other quarters of the Empire.

The fourth, and last, of the new sects was not only founded in the Kwanto, but founded there by a Kwanto man. Nichiren, the son of a Kyoto exile, was born at Kominato in Awa in 1222, and after passing some time in a Shingon monastery there, was sent up to Hi-ei-zan for a fuller course of study. Like other earnest students before him, he was profoundly dissatisfied with the conditions prevailing, and the doctrines taught, in the great Tendai monastery; and he went back to the Kwanto in indignation and disgust. “Returning to his little temple of Kiyosumidera, before an audience of people whom he had known from his youth, he preached the sermon which has generally been considered as the foundation of his sect. Commencing with the new formula, ‘Namu myo ho renge kyo’ (‘Hail to the Scripture of the Lotus of Good Law’), he preached on the shortcomings of all the existing sects and pointed out that in the Hokke-Kyo alone was to be found the true and highest teaching of Sakyamuni. This sermon caused a great commotion, and Nichiren was forced to escape for his life from his indignant auditors.” In Kama­kura he began street-preaching—a practice hitherto virtually unknown in Japan,—resorting to the drum and similar Salvation Army devices to enable him to assemble audiences. One great feature in Japanese Buddhism bad been a spirit of toleration for differences of opinion. Shinran had infringed this so far as to forbid worship to any one save Ami da. But Nichiren went much farther than this; he alone preached the true doctrine; all others were false, and because false, deadly and damnable. “He regarded the influence of Buddhism in its relation, not only to individual adherents, but to the State as a corporate whole: and it was this connection of his new principles with the idea of nationality that formed one of his most prominent characteristics.” In his Rissho-an-koku Ron he lays down the axiom that the prosperity or decline of a State depends entirely upon the truth or perversion of its religion; and says boldly that both the rulers and the ruled were at that time wandering in error. He insists upon the substitution of truth for falsehood as a sine qua non for the peace and prosperity of the country, and launches defiance at the authority of the Government, because of its failure to sup­press all the “heretical” sects then in existence, the Zenshu among them. As Hojo Tokivori was at once a devout adherent of the Zen sect and numbered some of its priests among his closest friends and confidants, it is hot surprising that he evinced but little inclination to fall in with the views of this rabidly intolerant street-preacher. At last Nichiren was banished to Ito in Izu as a disturber of the public peace (1261). On his return he resumed his propaganda; and in 1272, after narrowly escaping the death penalty, he was again banished to Sado for about two years. The rest of his life,—eight years or so,—was spent in comparative quiet at his new monastery of Minobu in Koshu. About some undoubtedly beneficent effects of his activity something will be said in the following chapter. w To this day, the Nichiren sect maintains the characteristics of its founder. It is pugnacious, defiant, proud, as he was.”

However, from first to last, it was the priests of the Zen sect who continued to command the respect and reverence of the highest classes of society in Kamakura and the Kwanto in the fullest measure. This statement may at first occasion some surprise; for the Bushi were above all things men of action, while Zen is simply the Japanese form of the Sanskrit Dhyana, which means “Meditation,” and the three divisions of the Zenshu—the Rinzai (1175), the Soto (1223), and the Obaku (1G50),—are known as the “Contemplative Sects.” Now, as Mr. Lloyd points out, in these “Contemplative Sects” there is a great deal that savours of the original teachings of the Founder, and a very great deal that is eminently Hindoo, for neither Japan nor China could of themselves have produced a method so utterly unpractical as that of arriving at the Truth by pure contemplation. But it must never for a moment be forgotten that the peculiar genius of Japan is analogous to that of the Normans. It originates little, but it seizes upon the original ideas of other peoples, or nations, or races, and not so much adopts them, as adapts them to suit the peculiar, and not infrequently the mere temporary, exigencies of the social and political fabric of the Empire. Now, it was a peculiar tenet of the newly introduced, or rather newly re introduced Zen sect, that “Knowledge can be transmitted from heart to heart without the intervention of words. In its early form, as introduced to Japan by the Rinzai subsect (1175), the Zen system differed but little, if at all, from the form of contemplation practised in India and China. It was purely contemplative, and the teaching of the Faith was handed down directly from heart to heart without much need being felt for the use of religious books, or manuals of doctrines.” Now in the Kamakura of 1203 AD how many of even the upper classes could read ?

“Thanks to Saint Bothan, son of mine,

Save Gawain, ne’er could pen a line!”

Thousands of Yoritomo’s most doughty vassals cherished old Bell-the-Cat’s lordly scorn and contempt for effeminate literary accomplishments to the full. Then just recall the fashion in which discussions on the most grave and weighty matters of State policy were wont to be conducted by the chosen and most trusted Bakufu Councillors in the Taki-bi-no-ma, with nothing more than a pair of “fire chop­sticks” tracing transitory and evanishing Chinese characters upon the miniature Sahara of ashes in the big hibachi or “fire-basin.”

But above all things it was the robust and stern virility of the Zen doctrines and practices that made the fortunes of this new sect among the warriors of the Kwanto. This may indeed seem something of a paradox to Western readers, for the Zen was a meditative sect; and the occupants of the great military camp of Kamakura were supposed to be men of action entirely. There we find great chiefs, possessed of wide domains and with hundreds of vassals at their beck and call, sleeping on a veranda, with their guards beside the middle gate and their servants on the stable-floor; an arrangement typical of preparedness for any emergency. Surely a fierce brood of ever-ready fighters like this could have found but few charms in contemplation. It would have been inconsistent with their instincts, and subversive of their training and discipline, to have their “native hue of resolution sickbed o’er with the pale cast of thought.’’ But the Zen doctrine and practice of abstraction were supposed to render the devotee superior to all his surroundings, and to educate a heart and inculcate a spirit that defied fate. “The mood it produced seemed to him an ideal temper for displays of military valour and sublime fortitude; the austere discipline it prescribed for developing that mood appealed to the conception of a soldier’s practice.” His ultimate salvation had to be worked out for himself by the Zen believer; not by easy and vicarious trust in another. In this special respect the Zenshu stood in direct antithesis to the “True Jodo.” Both Zenshu and True Jodo were at one in rejecting spells, incantations, lengthy prayers, and elaborate ritual. It was this special peculiarity that brought upon both sects the bitter hostility of the Kyoto monks, who were scandalised, not so much by the heresy, as by its economic results.

The Zenshu had originally been introduced into Japan early in the ninth century, by a Chinese priest who obtained the patronage of the Emperor Saga, and of his Tachibana Empress, who founded the temple of Danrinji. But at that date it obtained no permanent foothold in the Empire. After one visit to China in 1168, and another in 1187, Eisai, originally a monk of Hi-ei-zan, built a Zen temple at Hakata from whence he transferred himself to Kyoto in 1202. Three years later the capital was devastated by a terrible typhoon; and the Kyoto monks persuaded the ex-Emperor Toba II that this was the punishment of Heaven for tolerating the promulgation of heretical doctrines. Eisai was thereupon driven from Kyoto, and withdrew to Kamakura, where his new cult at once met with ready acceptance, the great Hojo family, among ethers, becoming zealous adherents of the Zenshu.

Japanese historians dwell on the fact that with the rise of the new sects there was a great revival of priestly activity in making and repairing roads, in bridging streams, and improving ferry services. As in Europe in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, in certain European countries down to the eighteenth century, all these were regarded as most commendable works of public charity. And so they were no doubt; but that they were entirely disinterested may well be open to question. The priests have always had a high appreciation of picturesque scenery and the beauties of nature, and have been wont to rear their monasteries on the most pleasant and romantic sites, often far removed from the busy haunts of men. It was their business, of course, to attract worshippers to their fanes, for temple finance was always a matter of prime importance to the ecclesiastical mind. In these days hotels were unknown in Japan; and devotees from afar were generally lodged in the priests’ quarters, or some of the out­buildings of the monastery. Plainly in the interests of revenue, it was sound economy to facilitate communications between the secluded mountain fane and the centres of population. Besides, all the expenses of driving the road and bridging the stream need not necessarily come from the sacerdotal coffers; many workers would cheerfully labour without any wage on an undertaking which, they were assured, would benefit them not only in this life, but in that which was to come.

Among the many material enterprises originated by the priests in the Kwanto in this age, the great Buddhas of Kamakura must not be overlooked. The earlier of these, a wooden statue, 80 feet in height, erected in 1238, was blown down by a typhoon, and no longer exists. But the great bronze Buddha still sits upon his pedestal here calmly looking out upon the centuries as they go by, and placidly watching the successive generations of stooping-shouldered peasants being gathered to their fathers.

Tradition has it that when celebrating the dedication of the restored temple of the Dai Butsu in Nara, Yoritomo resolved to have a similar image in Kamakura. Be this as it may, it is plain from hints in the Kagami that the collection of funds and materials for this enterprise went on for long, voluntary contributions being supplemented by fines for certain kinds of offences inflicted by the Bakufu law courts. It was not until 1252 that the work of casting the great image was begun by a certain Ono Goroemon.

A few words remain to be devoted to the subject of the Hojos’ attitude towards religion. That they were sincere and devout believers in Buddhism, and that their religion was a religion of the rational moral conscience exercising a deep and abiding salutary influence upon their conduct cannot admit of any doubt. In a measure they were Reformers. While the legitimate interests of religion and of religieux were carefully protected and fostered in the Bakufu domains, sacerdotal abuses were sternly checked and repressed there. One result of this was that earnest ecclesiastics from other sections of the Empire showed a willing readiness to place themselves. 1heir services, and their advice at the disposal of the Regents. One of Yasutoki’s cherished friends was that Koben (or Myo-e) of Takao-zan in Yamashiro, who boldly declared that “if Buddhism were such a religion as it is represented to be by the present generation of monks, it would be the worst in the world”, and from Koben, who was a Zen priest, Yasutoki got many valuable hints.

One of the very highest European authorities on ancient Japanese history maintains that “the emotional basis of religion is gratitude, love, and hope, rather than fear. If life is worth living—and what sane man doubts it ?—there are far more frequent occasions for the former than for the latter.” Now, this last statement is emphatically untrue of Kyoto between, say, 1180 and 1232 AD, if the contemporary records are to go for anything better than the mere figments of ultra-imaginative pessimists. Again, the same learned authority remarks, later on, in the same work: “The true reason for making offerings, whether to Gods or to the dead, is to be sought elsewhere. Men feel impelled to do something to show their gratitude for the great benefits which they are daily receiving, and to conciliate the future favours of the powers from whom they proceed.’’ Again, in dealing with the ohonihe (or Great Food Offering of First-fruits) Dr. Aston tells us it is “gratitude rather than fear which animates the Japanese.” However, on page 285 of the same excellent work, after a capital translation of the ritual prayer in the harvest-praying service, Dr. Aston is constrained to admit that “this norito contains paragraphs—possibly later accretions— which have nothing to do with the hardest. In some of the petitions the do ut des principle is very thinly disguised.” But indeed there is often no disguise about the matter at all. Witness the following blunt avowal in an essay by a Japanese student of some two- or three-and-twenty years of age—a man of a good deal more than average ability, too:—

“It is impossible to demand to shiver with cold in the midsummer day as well as in winter. It is also unreasonable request to demand that he must not take a bit of beef in his whole life, since he did not take even a bit when he was suffering from disease. The danger is past and God is forgotten. It is quite proper to forget God when the danger is past, One who says that he does not forget God, though the danger is past, is a liar.’’

In the history of Buddhism in Japan at least it is abundantly clear the gratitude which Dr. Aston would have us believe to be one of the three emotional bases of religion has often been of that species of the feeling which consists in a very lively sense of favours to come. It was the great smallpox epidemic of 735-737 that made the fortunes of the continental religion in this Empire; and in subsequent ages seasons of the direst national calamity and disaster continued to be the richest of godsends to the priests. It was mainly in such seasons—when people were starving, or dying in tens of thousands of pestilence—that the monks in the great Kyoto and Nara monasteries fared most sumptuously; for it was in times like these that believers were most lavish in their gifts and benefactions. At such crises in the fortunes of the Empire and of the Japanese people, the mailed men of God could safely count upon being allowed to carry their armed outrage and insolence to the utmost extremes without much risk of interference by the constituted civil powers. For example, the years between 1226 and 1231 are filled with bewildering records of mutual temple-burning and internecine sacerdotal strife in Yamato and the environs of Kyoto. At last, about 1230 or 1231, the civil authorities had perforce to interfere, and in the latter year. They were actually on the point of taking strong and rigorous measures against these most un- clericallv-minded of clerics. But just at this point a series of unfruitful years culminated in a season of famine, almost as keen in its pinch as that of 1181-2; and this was, as was almost always unfailingly the case, followed by a terrible death­dealing pestilence, nearly as fatal as that of half-a-century before. Thereupon, proceedings against the monks were stopped; their services as “devil-dodgers” had to be secured at all costs.

Five years later on these turbulent Reverences did receive a sharp and much-needed lesson for once. In 1235, the monks of Nara got into a dispute with the priests of Iwashimidzu about the boundaries of some of their manors; and it was only Rokuhara troops that kept the dreaded Shimboku out of Kyoto. Ten months later, the Nara bonzes, failing to get satisfaction from the Emperor, actually began to throw up fortifications and to prepare for open war. The Court thereupon appealed to the Bakufu; and Hojo Yasutoki took very prompt and drastic measures. A strong force blockaded the monks; their manors were confiscated, and a Wuiyo placed in Yamato. The result was that they had to beg for terms; and thereupon their states were restored and the Shugo withdrawn. It was only when specially requested by the Court to do so that the Bakufu ventured to interfere with the Kyoto and Nara monasteries. As a matter of fact, Hi-ei-zan was at least once burned by Miidera, and Miidera several times burned and sacked by Hi-ei-zan in the latter half of the thirteenth century; while scarce a decade of that half-century passed without serious armed strife between some or other of the great fanes and shrines in and around the capital. And that too at a time when elsewhere throughout the Empire the strong hand of the Kamakura regents had little difficulty in preserving the public peace. In this thirteenth century there cannot be the least doubt that it was by terrorising the nation, from the Emperor or ex-Emperor down to the scavenger, that the Kyoto and Nara priests of the old sects maintained their ascendancy.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MONGOL INVASIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES.