THE FIRST MONGOL INVASION

The rule of the Hojo synchronized with two events of prime importance the invasion of j.a.pan by a Mongolian army, first in 1274, and subsequently in 1281. Early in the twelfth century, the Emperor of China, which was then under the sway of the Sung dynasty, invited the Golden Tatars to deal with the Khitan Tatars, who held Manchuria, and who, in spite of heavy tribute paid annually by the Sung Court, continually raided northeastern China. The Golden Tatars responded to the invitation by not only expelling the Khitans but also taking their place in Manchuria and subsequently overrunning China, where they established a dynasty of their own from 1115 to 1234.

These struggles and dynastic changes did not sensibly affect j.a.pan.

Her intercourse with the Asiatic continent in those ages was confined mainly to an interchange of visits by Buddhist priests, to industrial enterprise, and to a fitful exchange of commodities. It does not appear that any branch of the Tatars concerned themselves practically about j.a.pan or the j.a.panese. Ultimately, however, in the first part of the thirteenth century, the Mongols began to sweep down on the Middle Kingdom under the leadership of Jenghiz Khan. They crushed the Golden Tatars, transferred (1264) the Mongol capital from central Asia to Peking (Cambaluc), and, in 1279, under Kublai, completely conquered China. Nearly thirty years before the transfer of the capital to Peking, the Mongols invaded the Korean peninsula, and brought it completely under their sway in 1263, receiving the final submission of the kingdom of Koma, which alone had offered any stubborn resistance.

It is probable that Kublai's ambition, whetted by extensive conquests, would have turned in the direction of j.a.pan sooner or later, but tradition indicates that the idea of obtaining the homage of the Island Empire was suggested to the great Khan by a Korean traveller in 1265. Kublai immediately acted on the suggestion. He sent an emba.s.sy by way of Korea, ordering the Koma sovereign to make arrangements for the transport of the envoys and to re-enforce them with a Korean colleague. A tempest interrupted this essay, and it was not repeated until 1268, when the Khan's messengers, accompanied by a Korean suite, crossed safely to Chikuzen and delivered to the Dazai-fu a letter from Kublai with a covering despatch from the Korean King. The Korean sovereign's despatch was plainly inspired by a desire to avert responsibility from himself. He explained that in transporting the emba.s.sy he acted unavoidably, but that, in sending it, the Khan was not actuated by any hostile feeling, his sole purpose being to include j.a.pan in the circle of his friendly tributaries.

In short, the Koma prince--he no longer could properly be called a monarch--would have been only too pleased to see j.a.pan pa.s.s under the Mongol yoke as his own kingdom had already done. Kublai's letter, however, though not deliberately arrogant, could not be construed in any sense except as a summons to send tribute-bearing envoys to Peking. He called himself "Emperor" and addressed the j.a.panese ruler as "King;" instanced, for fitting example, the relation between China and Korea, which he described at once as that of lord and va.s.sal and that of parent and child, and predicated that refusal of intercourse would "lead to war."

The j.a.panese interpreted this to be an offer of suzerainty or subjugation. Two courses were advocated; one by Kyoto, the other by Kamakura. The former favoured a policy of conciliation and delay; the latter, an att.i.tude of contemptuous silence. Kamakura, of course, triumphed. After six months' retention the envoys were sent away without so much as a written acknowledgment. The records contain nothing to show whether this bold course on the part of the Bakufu had its origin in ignorance of the Mongol's might or in a conviction of the bushi's fighting superiority. Probably both factors were operative; for j.a.pan's knowledge of Jenghiz and his resources reached her chiefly through religious channels, and the fact that Koreans were a.s.sociated with Mongols in the mission must have tended to lower the affair in her estimation. Further, the j.a.panese had been taught by experience the immense difficulties of conducting oversea campaigns, and if they understood anything about the Mongols, it should have been the essentially non-maritime character of the mid-Asian conquerors.

By Kublai himself that defect was well appreciated. He saw that to carry a body of troops to j.a.pan, the seagoing resources of the Koreans must be requisitioned, and on the bootless return of his first emba.s.sy, he immediately issued orders to the Koma King to build one thousand ships and mobilize forty thousand troops. In vain the recipient of these orders pleaded inability to execute them. The Khan insisted, and supplemented his first command with instructions that agricultural operations should be undertaken on a large scale in the peninsula to supply food for the projected army of invasion.

Meanwhile he despatched emba.s.sy after emba.s.sy to j.a.pan, evidently being desirous of carrying his point by persuasion rather than by force. The envoys invariably returned re infecta. On one occasion (1269), a Korean vessel carried off two j.a.panese from Tsushima and sent them to Peking. There, Kublai treated them kindly, showed them his palace as well as a parade of his troops, and sent them home to tell what they had seen. But the j.a.panese remained obdurate, and finally the Khan sent an ultimatum, to which Tokimune, the Hojo regent, replied by dismissing the envoys forthwith.

War was now inevitable. Kublai ma.s.sed 25,000 Mongol braves in Korea, supplemented them with 15,000 Korean troops, and embarking them in a flotilla of 900 vessels manned by 8000 Koreans, launched this paltry army against j.a.pan in November, 1274. The armada began by attacking Tsushima and Iki, islands lying in the strait that separates the Korean peninsula from j.a.pan. In Tsushima, the governor, So Sukekuni,*

could not muster more than two hundred bushi. But these two hundred fought to the death, as did also the still smaller garrison of Iki.

Before the pa.s.sage of the narrow strait was achieved, the invaders must have lost something of their faith in the whole enterprise. On November 20th, they landed at Hako-zaki Gulf in the province of Chikuzen There they were immediately a.s.sailed by the troops of five Kyushu chieftains. What force the latter represented there is no record, but they were certainly less numerous than the enemy.

Moreover, the Yuan army possessed a greatly superior tactical system.

By a j.a.panese bushi the battle-field was regarded as an arena for the display of individual prowess, not of combined force. The Mongols, on the contrary, fought in solid co-operation, their movements directed by sound of drum from some eminence where the commander-in-chief watched the progress of the fight. If a j.a.panese approached to defy one of them to single combat, they enveloped and slew him. Further, at close quarters they used light arms dipped in poison, and for long-range purposes they had powerful crossbows, which quite outcla.s.sed the j.a.panese weapons. They were equipped also with explosives which they fired from metal tubes, inflicting heavy loss on the j.a.panese, who were demoralized by such an unwonted weapon.

Finally, they were incomparable hors.e.m.e.n, and in the early encounters they put the j.a.panese cavalry out of action by raising with drums and gongs a din that terrified the latter's horses. But, in spite of all these disadvantages, the j.a.panese fought stubbornly. Whenever they got within striking distance of the foe, they struck desperately, and towards evening they were able to retire in good order into cover "behind the primitive fortifications of Mizuki raised for Tenchi Tenno by Korean engineers six centuries before."

*Grandson of Taira no Tomomori, admiral of the Hei fleet in the battle of Dan-no-ura.

ENGRAVING: REPULSE OF THE MONGOL INVADERS (From a scroll painting in possession of the Imperial Household)

That night the west coast of Kyushu was menaced by one of those fierce gales that rage from time to time in sub-tropical zones. The Korean pilots knew that their ships could find safety in the open sea only. But what was to be done with the troops which had debarked? Had their commanders seen any certain hope of victory, they would not have hesitated to part temporarily from the ships. The day's fighting, however, appears to have inspired a new estimate of the bushi's combatant qualities. It was decided to embark the Yuan forces and start out to sea. For the purpose of covering this movement, the Hakozaki shrine and some adjacent hamlets were fired, and when morning dawned the invaders' flotilla was seen beating out of the bay. One of their vessels ran aground on Shiga spit at the north of the haven and several others foundered at sea, so that when a tally was finally called, 13,200 men did not answer to their names. As to what the j.a.panese casualties were, there is no information.

THE SECOND MONGOL INVASION

Of course Kublai did not acknowledge this as a defeat at the hands of the j.a.panese. On the contrary, he seems to have imagined that the fight had struck terror into the hearts of the islanders by disclosing their faulty tactics and inferior weapons. He therefore sent another emba.s.sy, which was charged to summon the King of j.a.pan to Peking, there to do obeisance to the Yuan Emperor. Kamakura's answer was to decapitate the five leaders of the mission and to pillory their heads outside the city. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than the calm confidence shown at this crisis by the Bakufu regent, Tokimune. His country's annalists ascribe that mood to faith in the doctrines of the Zen sect of Buddhism; faith which he shared with his father, Tokiyori, during the latter's life. The Zen priests taught an introspective philosophy. They preached that life springs from not-living, indestructibility from destruction, and that existence and non-existence are one in reality. No creed could better inspire a soldier.

It has been suggested that Tokimune was not guided in this matter solely by religious instincts: he used the Zen-shu bonzes as a channel for obtaining information about China. Some plausibility is given to that theory by the fact that he sat, first, at the feet of Doryu, originally a Chinese priest named Tao Lung, and that on Doryu's death he invited (1278) from China a famous bonze, Chu Yuan (j.a.panese, Sogen), for whose ministrations the afterwards celebrated temple Yengaku-ji was erected. Sogen himself, when officiating at the temple of Nengjen, in Wenchow, had barely escaped ma.s.sacre at the hands of the Mongols, and he may not have been averse to acting as a medium of information between China and Kamakura.

Tokimune's religious fervour, however, did not interfere with his secular preparations. In 1280, he issued an injunction exhorting local officials and va.s.sals (go-kenin) to compose all their dissensions and work in unison. There could be no greater crime, the doc.u.ment declared, then to sacrifice the country's interests on the altar of personal enmities at a time of national crisis. Loyal obedience on the part of va.s.sals, and strict impartiality on the side of high constables--these were the virtues which the safety of the State demanded, and any neglect to practise them should be punished with the utmost severity. This injunction was issued in 1280, and already steps had been taken to construct defensive works at all places where the Mongols might effect a landing--at Hakozaki Bay in Kyushu; at Nagato, on the northern side of the Shimonoseki Strait; at Harima, on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Inland Sea; and at Tsuruga, on the northwest of the main island. Among these places, Hakozaki and Nagato were judged to be the most menaced, and special offices, after the nature of the Kyoto tandai, were established there.

ENGRAVING: HOJO TOKIMUNE

Seven years separated the first invasion from the second. It was not of deliberate choice that Kublai allowed so long an interval to elapse. The subjugation of the last supporters of the Sung dynasty in southern China had engrossed his attention, and with their fall he acquired new competence to prosecute this expedition to j.a.pan, because while the Mongolian boats were fit only for plying on inland waters, the ships of the southern Chinese were large, ocean-going craft. It was arranged that an army of 100,000 Chinese and Mongols should embark at a port in Fuhkien opposite the island of Formosa, and should ultimately form a junction in Tsushima Strait with an armada of 1000 Korean ships, carrying, in addition to their crews, a force of 50,000 Mongols and 20,000 Koreans.

But before launching this formidable host, Kublai made a final effort to compa.s.s his end without fighting. In 1280, he sent another emba.s.sy to j.a.pan, announcing the complete overthrow of the Sung dynasty, and summoning the Island Empire to enter into friendly relations.

Kamakura's answer was to order the execution of the envoys at the place where they had landed, Hakata in Chikuzen. Nothing now remained except an appeal to force. A weak point in the Yuan strategy was that the two armadas were not operated in unison. The Korean fleet sailed nearly a month before that from China. It would seem that the tardiness of the latter was not due wholly to its larger dimensions, but must be attributed in part to its composition. A great portion of the troops transported from China were not Mongols, but Chinese, who had been recently fighting against the Yuan, and whose despatch on a foreign campaign in the service of their victors suggested itself as a politic measure. These men were probably not averse to delay and certainly cannot have been very enthusiastic.

In May, 1281, the flotilla from Korea appeared off Tsushima.

Unfortunately, the annals of medieval j.a.pan are singularly reticent as to the details of battles. There are no materials for constructing a story of the events that occurred on the Tsushima sh.o.r.es, more than six centuries ago. We do not even know what force the defenders of the island mustered. But that they were much more numerous than on the previous occasion, seven years before, is certain. Already, in 1280, Tokimune had obtained from Buddhist sources information of the Mongol preparations--preparations so extensive that the felling of timber to make ships inspired a Chinese poem in which the green hills were depicted as mourning for their trees--and he would not have failed to garrison strongly a position so cardinal as the midchannel island of Tsushima. It was not reduced. The enemy were able to effect a lodgement, but could not overrun the island or put its defenders to the sword, as had been done in 1274. The Korean ships remained at Tsushima awaiting the arrival of the Chinese flotilla. They lost three thousand men from sickness during this interval, and were talking of retreat when the van of the southern armada hove in sight.

A junction was effected off the coast of Iki island, and the garrison of this little place having been destroyed on June 10th, the combined forces stood over towards Kyushu and landed at various places along the coast of Chikuzen, making Hakozaki Bay their base.

Such a choice of locality was bad, for it was precisely along the sh.o.r.es of this bay that the j.a.panese had erected fortifications. They were not very formidable fortifications, it is true. The bushi of these days knew nothing about bastions, curtains, glacis, or cognate refinements of military engineering. They simply built a stone wall to block the foe's advance, and did not even adopt the precaution of protecting their flanks. But neither did they fall into the error of acting entirely on the defensive. On the contrary, they attacked alike on sh.o.r.e and at sea. Their boats were much smaller than those of the invaders, but the advantage in dash and daring was all on the side of the j.a.panese. So furious were their onsets, and so deadly was the execution they wrought with their trenchant swords at close quarters, that the enemy were fain to lash their ships together and lay planks between them for purposes of speedy concentration. It is most improbable that either the Korean or the Chinese elements of the invading army had any heart for the work, whereas on the side of the defenders there are records of whole families volunteering to serve at the front. During fifty-three days the campaign continued; that is to say, from June 23rd, when the first landing was effected, until August 14th, when a tornado swept off the face of the sea the main part of the Yuan armada.

No account has been preserved, either traditionally or historically, of the incidents or phases of the long fight. We know that the invaders occupied the island of Hirado and landed in Hizen a strong force intended to turn the flank of the Hakozaki Bay parapet. We know, inferentially, that they never succeeded in turning it. We know that, after nearly two months of incessant combat, the Yuan armies had made no sensible impression on the j.a.panese resistance or established any footing upon j.a.panese soil. We know that, on August the 14th and 15th, there burst on the sh.o.r.es of Kyushu a tempest which shattered nearly the whole of the Chinese flotilla. And we know that the brunt of the loss fell on the Chinese contingent, some twelve thousand of whom were made slaves. But no such momentous chapter of history has ever been traced in rougher outlines. The annalist is compelled to confine himself to marshalling general results. It was certainly a stupendous disaster for the Yuan arms.

Yet Kublai was not content; he would have essayed the task again had not trouble nearer home diverted his attention from j.a.pan. The Island Empire had thus the honour of being practically the only state in the Orient that did not present tribute to the all-conquering Mongols.

But, by a strangely wayward fate, these victories over a foreign invader brought embarra.s.sment to the Hojo rulers rather than renown.

In the first place, there could not be any relaxation of the extraordinary preparations which such incidents dictated. Kublai's successor, Timur, lost no time in countermanding all measures for a renewed attack on j.a.pan, and even adopted the plan of commissioning Buddhist priests to persuade the Bakufu of China's pacific intentions. One of these emissaries, Nei-issan (Chinese p.r.o.nunciation, Ning I-shan), settled permanently in j.a.pan, and his holy ministrations as a Zen-shu propagandist won universal respect.

But the Bakufu did not relax their precautions, and for more than a score of years a heavy burden of expense had to be borne on this account.

Further, when the wave of invasion broke on the sh.o.r.es of Kyushu, the Court in Kyoto set the example of appealing to the a.s.sistance of heaven. Prayers were offered, liturgies were chanted, and incense was burned at many temples and shrines throughout the empire. Several of the priests did not hesitate to a.s.sert that their supplications had elicited signs and portents indicating supernatural aid. Rich rewards were bestowed in recognition of these services, whereas, on the contrary, the recompense given to the soldiers who had fought so gallantly and doggedly to beat off a foreign foe was comparatively petty. Means of recompensing them were scant. When Yoritomo overthrew the Taira, the estates of the latter were divided among his followers and co-operators. After the Shokyu disturbance, the property of the Court n.o.bles served a similar purpose. But the repulse of the Mongols brought no access of wealth to the victors, and for the first time military merit had to go unrequited while substantial grants were made to the servants of religion. The Bakufu, fully conscious of this dangerous discrepancy, saw no resource except to order that strict surveys should be made of many of the great estates, with a view to their delimitation and reduction, if possible. This, however, was a slow progress, and the umbrage that it caused was more than commensurate with the results that accrued. Thus, to the Bakufu the consequences of a war which should have strengthened allegiance and grat.i.tude were, on the contrary, injurious and weakening.

ENGRAVING: FIVE STRING BIWA (j.a.pANESE MANDOLIN)

ENGRAVING: KOTO, 13-STRINGED HORIZONTAL HARP

CHAPTER XXVIII

ART, RELIGION, LITERATURE, CUSTOMS, AND COMMERCE IN THE KAMAKURA PERIOD

ART

From the establishment of the Bakufu, j.a.panese art separated into two schools, that of Kamakura and that of Kyoto. The latter centered in the Imperial Court, the former in the Court of the Hojo. Taken originally from Chinese masters of the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Kyoto art ultimately developed into the j.a.panese national school, whereas the Kamakura art, borrowed from the academies of Sung and Yuan, became the favourite of the literary cla.s.ses and preserved its Chinese traditions. Speaking broadly, the art of Kyoto showed a decorative tendency, whereas that of Kamakura took landscape and seascape chiefly for motives, and, delighting in the melancholy aspects of nature, appealed most to the student and the cen.o.bite.

This distinction could be traced in calligraphy, painting, architecture, and horticulture. Hitherto penmanship in Kyoto had taken for models the style of Kobo Daishi and Ono no Tofu. This was called o-ie-fu (domestic fashion), and had a graceful and cursive character. But the Kamakura calligraphists followed the pure Chinese mode (karayo), as exemplified by the Buddhist priests, Sogen (Chu Yuan) and Ichinei (I Ning).

In Kyoto, painting was represented by the schools of Koze, Kasuga, Sumiyoshi, and Tosa; in Kamakura, its masters were Ma Yuan, Hsia Kwei, and Mu Hsi, who represented the pure Southern Academy of China, and who were followed by Sesshu, Kao, and Shubun. So, too, the art of horticulture, though there the change was a transition from the stiff and comparatively artificial fashion of the no-niwa (moor garden) to the pure landscape park, ultimately developed into a j.a.panese specialty. Tradition ascribes to a Chinese bonze, who called himself Nei-issan (or Ichinei), the planning of the first landscape garden, properly so designated in j.a.pan. He arrived in Kyushu, under the name of I Ning, as a delegate from Kublai Khan in the days of Hojo Sadatoki, and was banished, at first, to the province of Izu.

Subsequently, however, the Bakufu invited him to Kamakura and a.s.signed the temple Kencho-ji for his residence and place of ministrations. It was there that he designed the first landscape garden, furnishing suggestions which are still regarded as models.

LITERATURE

The conservatism of the Imperial city is conspicuously ill.u.s.trated in the realm of literature. Careful perusal of the well-known work, Masukagami, shows that from year's end to year's end the same pastimes were enjoyed, the same studies pursued The composition of poetry took precedence of everything. Eminent among the poetasters of the twelfth century was the Emperor Go-Toba. The litterateurs of his era looked up to him as the arbiter elegantiarum, especially in the domain of j.a.panese versification. Even more renown attached to Fujiwara no Toshinari, whose nom de plume was Shunzei, and who earned the t.i.tle of the "Matchless Master." His son, Sadaiye, was well-nigh equally famous under the name of Teika.

After the Shokyu disturbance (1221), the empire enjoyed a long spell of peace under the able and upright sway of the Hojo, and during that time it became the custom to compile anthologies. The first to essay that task was Teika. Grieving that the poets of his time had begun to prefer affectation and elegance to sincerity and simplicity, he withdrew to a secluded villa on Mount Ogura, and there selected, a hundred poems by as many of the ancient authors. These he gave to the world, calling the collection Hyakunin-isshu, and succeeding generations endorsed his choice so that the book remains a cla.s.sic to this day. Teika's son, Tameiye, won such favour in the eyes of the Kamakura shogun, Sanetomo, that the latter conferred on him the manor of Hosokawa, in Harima. Dying, Tameiye bequeathed this property to his son, Tamesuke, but he, being robbed of it by his step-brother, fell into a state of miserable poverty which was shared by his mother, herself well known as an auth.o.r.ess under the name of Abutsu-ni. This intrepid lady, leaving her five sons in Kyoto, repaired to Kamakura to bring suit against the usurper, and the journal she kept en route--the Izayoi-nikki--is still regarded as a model of style and sentiment. It bears witness to the fact that students of poetry in that era fell into two cla.s.ses: one adhering to the pure j.a.panese style of the Heian epoch; the others borrowing freely from Chinese literature.

Meanwhile, at Kamakura, the Bakufu regents, Yasutoki, Tokiyori and Tokimune, earnest disciples of Buddhism, were building temples and a.s.signing them to Chinese priests of the Sung and Yuan eras who reached j.a.pan as official envoys or as frank propagandists. Five great temples thus came into existence in the Bakufu capital, and as the Chinese bonzes planned and superintended their construction, these buildings and their surroundings reflected the art-canons at once of China, of j.a.pan, and of the priests themselves. The same foreign influence made itself felt in the region of literature. But we should probably be wrong in a.s.suming that either religion or art or literature for their own sakes const.i.tuted the sole motive of the Hojo regents in thus acting. It has already been shown that they welcomed the foreign priests as channels for obtaining information about the neighbouring empire's politics, and there is reason to think that their astute programme included a desire to endow Kamakura with an artistic and literary atmosphere of its own, wholly independent of Kyoto and purged of the enervating elements that permeated the latter.

This separation of the civilizations of the east (Kwanto) and the west (Kyoto) resulted ultimately in producing asceticism and religious reform. The former, because men of really n.o.ble instincts were insensible to the ambition which alone absorbed a Kyoto litterateur--the ambition of figuring prominently in an approved anthology--and had, at the same time, no inclination to follow the purely military creed of Kamakura. Such recluses as Kamo Chomei, Saigyo Hoshi and Yoshida Kenko were an outcome of these conditions.

Chomei has been called the "Wordsworth of j.a.pan." He is immortalized by a little book of thirty pages, called Hojoki (Annals of a Cell.) It is a volume of reflections suggested by life in a hut measuring ten feet square and seven feet high, built in a valley remote from the stir of life. The style is pellucid and absolutely unaffected; the ideas are instinct with humanity and love of nature. Such a work, so widely admired, reveals an author and an audience instinct with graceful thoughts.

In the career of Saigyo--"the reverend," as his t.i.tle "hoshi"

signifies--there were episodes vividly ill.u.s.trating the manners and customs of the tune. Originally an officer of the guards in Kyoto, he attained considerable skill in military science and archery, but his poetic heart rebelling against such pursuits, he resigned office, took the tonsure, and turning his back upon his wife and children, became a wandering bard. Yoritomo encountered him one day, and was so struck by his venerable appearance that he invited him to his mansion and would have had him remain there permanently. But Saigyo declined.

On parting, the Minamoto chief gave him as souvenir a cat chiselled in silver, which the old ascetic held in such light esteem that he bestowed it on the first child he met. Yoshida Kenko, who became a recluse in 1324, is counted among the "four kings" of j.a.panese poetry--Ton-a, Joben, Keiun, and Kenko. He has been called the "Horace of j.a.pan." In his celebrated prose work, Weeds of Tedium (Tsure-zure-gusa), he seems to reveal a lurking love for the vices he satirizes. These three authors were all pessimistic. They reflected the tendency of the time.

RELIGION

The earliest Buddhist sect established in j.a.pan was the Hosso. It crossed from China in A.D. 653, and its princ.i.p.al place of worship was the temple Kof.u.ku-ji at Nara. Then (736) followed the Kegon sect, having its headquarters in the Todai-ji, where stands the colossal Daibutsu of Nara, Next in order was the Tendai, introduced from China by Dengyo in 805, and established at Hiei-zan in the temple Enryaku-ji; while fourth and last in the early group of important sects came the Shingon, brought from China in 809 by Kukai, and having its princ.i.p.al metropolitan place of worship at Gokoku-ji (or To-ji) in Kyoto, and its princ.i.p.al provincial at Kongobo-ji on Koya-san. These four sects and some smaller ones were all introduced during a period of 156 years. Thereafter, for a s.p.a.ce of 387 years, there was no addition to the number: things remained stationary until 1196, when Honen began to preach the doctrines of the Jodo sect, and in the s.p.a.ce of fifty-six years, between 1196 and 1252, three other sects were established, namely, the Zen, the Shin, and the Nichiren.

THE TWO GROUPS OF SECTS

In what did the teachings of the early groups of sects differ from those of the later groups, and why did such a long interval separate the two? Evidently the answers to these questions must have an important bearing on j.a.panese moral culture. From the time of its first introduction (A.D. 522) into j.a.pan until the days of Shotoku Taishi (572-621), j.a.panese Buddhism followed the lines indicated in the land of its provenance, Korea. Prince Shotoku was the first to appreciate China as the true source of religious learning, and by him priests were sent across the sea to study. But the first sect of any importance--the Hosso--that resulted from this movement does not seem to have risen above the level of idolatry and polytheism. It was a "system built up on the worship of certain perfected human beings converted into personal G.o.ds; it affirmed the eternal permanence of such beings in some state or other, and it gave them divine attributes."* Some of these were companions and disciples of Shaka (Sakiya Muni); others, pure creations of fancy, or borrowed from the mythological systems of India. It is unnecessary here to enter into any enumeration of these deities further than to say that, as helpers of persons in trouble, as patrons of little children, as healers of the sick, and as dispensers of mercy, they acted an important part in the life of the people. But they did little or nothing to improve men's moral and spiritual condition, and the same is true of a mult.i.tude of arhats, devas, and other supernatural beings that go to make up a numerous pantheon.