On the establishment of the imperial capital, at Ki[=o]to, toward the
end of the eighth century, we find still further development and
enlargement of those latent artistic impulses with which the Heavenly
Father endowed his Japanese child. That capacity for beauty, both in
appreciation and expression, which in our day makes the land of dainty
decoration the resort of all those who would study oriental art in
unique fulness and decorative art in its only living school--a school
founded on the harmonious marriage of the people and the nature of the
country--is discernible from quite early ages. The people seem to have
responded gladly to the calls for gifts and labor. The direction from
which it is supposed all evils are likely to come is the northeast; this
special point of the compass being in pan-Asian spiritual geography the
focus of all malign influences. Accordingly, the Mikado Kwammu, in A.D.
788, built on the highest mountain called Hiyéi a superb temple and
monastery, giving it in charge of the Ten-dai sect, that there should
ever be a bulwark against the evil that might otherwise swoop upon the
city. Here, as on castellated walls, should stand the watchman, who, by
the recitation of the sacred liturgies, would keep watch and ward. In
course of time this great mountain became a city of three thousand
edifices and ten thousand monks, from which the droning of litanies and
the chanting of prayers ascended daily, and where the chief industries
were, the counting of beads on rosaries and the burning of incense
before the altars. This was in the long bright day of a prosperity which
has been nourished by vast sums obtained from the government and nobles.
One notes the contrast at the end of our century, when "disestablished"
as a religion and its bonzes reduced to beggary, Hiyéi-san is used as
the site of a Summer School of Christian Theology.

Along with the blossoming of the lotus in every part of the empire,
bloomed the grander flowers of sculpture, of painting and of temple