Broadly speaking, the history of Japanese Buddhism in its missionary
development is the history of Japan. Before Buddhism came, Japan was
pre-historic. We know the country and people through very scanty notices
in the Chinese annals, by pale reflections cast by myths, legends and
poems, and from the relics cast up by the spade and plough. Chinese
civilization had filtered in, though how much or how little we cannot
tell definitely; but since the coming of the Buddhist missionaries in
the sixth century, the landscape and the drama of human life lie before
us in clear detail. Speaking broadly again, it may be said that almost
from the time of its arrival, Buddhism became on its active side the
real religion of Japan--at least, if the word "religion" be used in a
higher sense than that connoted by either Shint[=o] or Confucianism.
Though as a nation the Japanese of the Méiji era are grossly forgetful
of this fact, yet, as Professor Chamberlain says,[1] "All education was
for centuries in Buddhist hands. Buddhism introduced art; introduced
medicine; created the folk-lore of the country; created its dramatic
poetry; deeply influenced politics, and every sphere of social and
intellectual activity; in a word, Buddhism was the teacher under whose
instruction the Japanese nation grew up."

For many centuries all Japanese, except here and there a stern
Shint[=o]ist, or an exceptionally dogmatic Confucian, have acknowledged
these patent facts, and from the emperor to the eta, glorified in them.
It was not until modern Confucian philosophy entered the Mikado's empire
in the seventeenth century, that hostile criticism and polemic tenets
denounced Buddhism, and declared it only fit for savages. This bitter
denunciation of Buddhism at the lips and hands of Japanese who had
become Chinese in mind, was all the more inappropriate, because Buddhism
had for over a thousand years acted as the real purveyor and disperser
of the Confucian ethics and culture in Japan. Such denunciation came