with which we have considered Buddhism.

Whatever be the theological or political opinions of the observer who
looks into the history of Japan at about the year 1540, he will
acknowledge that this point of time was a very dark moment in her known
history. Columbus, who was familiar with the descriptions of Marco Polo,
steered his caravels westward with the idea of finding Xipangu, with its
abundance of gold and precious gems; but the Genoese did not and could
not know the real state of affairs existing in Dai Nippon at this time.
Let us glance at this.

The duarchy of Throne and Camp, with the Mikado in Ki[=o]to and the
Sh[=o]gun at Kamakura, with the elaborate feudalism under it, had fallen
into decay. The whole country was split up into a thousand warring
fragments. To these convulsions of society, in which only the priest and
the soldier were in comfort, while the mass of the people were little
better than serfs, must be added the frequent violent earthquakes,
drought and failure of crops, with famine and pestilence. There was
little in religion to uplift and cheer. Shint[=o] had sunk into the
shadow of a myth. Buddhism had become outwardly a system of political
gambling rather than the ordered expression of faith. Large numbers of
the priests were like the mercenaries of Italy, who sold their influence
and even their swords or those of their followers, to the highest
bidder. Besides being themselves luxurious and dissolute, their
monasteries were fortresses, in which only the great political gamblers,
and not the oppressed people, found comfort and help. Millions of once
fertile acres had been abandoned or left waste. The destruction of
libraries, books and records is something awful to contemplate; and "the
times of Ashikaga" make a wilderness for the scapegoat of chronology.
Ki[=o]to, the sacred capital, had been again and again plundered and