CHAPTER IXIKEGAMI AND JAPANESE BUDDHISM

It is nearly seven hundred years since the man, known to us of to-day as Nichiren or “Sun Lotus,” was born in the obscure and small village of Kominato, Japan. While his doctrine and his death have served to render celebrated the two monasteries which are head-quarters of the sect he founded, his birth and boyhood there have not rescued this village from its obscurity or greatly increased the number of its inhabitants. Kominato lies on the ocean side of the peninsula which encloses Tokyo Bay,—the body of water with the capital city at its head and Yokohama, the principal port of the country, on its western shore. The railroad now runs part way down the peninsula, but does not as yet consider it worth while to extend itself into a region which, although its coast is interesting and picturesque, is occupied almost exclusively by fishermen and petty tillers of the soil. The case is by no means the same, however, with Minobu and Ikegami, the two monasteries which divide between them the welcome task of cherishing the bones oftheir saintly founder. These monasteries are much visited, not only by the members of the sect, but also by other Japanese engaged in going upon religious pilgrimages and more purely secular sight-seeing excursions. At the chief annual festivals the grounds of these monasteries, and the surrounding villages, are densely thronged with both sightseers and devotees; and indeed with all sorts of visitors. A few of these visitors, occasionally, are foreigners. I think, however, that no other foreigner has visited either of the monasteries in the same way in which it was my privilege twice to visit Ikegami, during the Autumn of 1906.

But before giving an account of this visit I wish to say a few words as to Nichiren and the Buddhist communion which has borne his name during all these centuries. As is the right of all great saints and religious reformers in the days when science had not yet claimed to have made impossible any credit given to such stories, the entire career of Nichiren was enveloped in the supernatural; it was even frequently punctuated by the miraculous. His very name, “Sun-Lotus,” is derived from a dream by his mother, in which she saw the sun on a lotus-flower and in consequence of which she became pregnant. From the first her offspring was enduedwith supernatural power, so that he acquired the most perfect knowledge of the entire Buddhist canon while yet in his youth. And later, when his zealous and uncompromising denunciation of the existing government made it possible for his enemies to persuade the Regent Tokimuné that the doctrines of Nichiren tended to subvert the state, the executioner sent to behead him could not compel his sword to act upon the neck of so holy a man. What wonder that the relics of so invulnerable a saint should be thought to have value for purposes of both protection and cure, even after the lapse of centuries of time!

The important facts of the life of Nichiren can be briefly told. He was born, 1222 A. D. He entered upon study for the priesthood at the early age of twelve, and three or four years later became a tonsured priest. His authorised biographer of to-day, Wakita Gyoziun, himself a priest of the Nichiren sect, in deference to modern views omits all references to miraculous experiences in the life of his master. He makes Nichiren spend all his youth, until thirty-two years of age, in study and travel consisting of journeys undertaken in various directions, visiting many eminent sages and teachers of Buddhism, in quest of the “True Doctrine.”But everywhere the wanderer found errors, heresies, and corruptions, both of doctrine and of life. The consequence was that Nichiren determined to “discard the opinions of the sectaries altogether, and to search for the Truth in his own consciousness and in the sacred writings.” This resolve led to the discovery that this truth is to be found only in “The Holy Book of the Lotus of the Good Law”; and, besides, it produced a courage that became audacity in the denunciation of existing error and civil wrongs; and, as well, a zealous confidence which generated intolerance in the double attempt to impress his own convictions and to controvert the heresies of the other sects. Opposition and persecution followed as a matter of course. While these things succeeded in restricting his work, so that when Nichiren entered Nirvana he left behind only some forty recognised disciples, they did not prevent the permanency of his impression upon his country. Fifteen years ago the Nichiren sect in Japan had five thousand temples, seven thousand priests, and more than two million of adherents.

If I were capable of expounding credibly the theology, whether more popular or more philosophical, of this Buddhist sect, I fear that I couldnot make it understood. For it employs that manner of clothing its conceptions in figures of speech, and of couching its syllogisms in remotely related analogies and symbols, which characterises the philosophy and theology of the Orient in general. But there are two things about the Nichiren sect to which it is quite worth while to invite attention. These are rather permanent characteristics which were impressed upon it by the character of its founder. The first is the appeal which it makes to the authority of the written word. It was originally a Protestant or reforming sect; but it became almost at once a claim to give final form to the truth in a book written by men of old time; and this scripture must not be contested or even questioned as to its right to demand submission. This sect has, therefore, been more than any of the others a church militant; and, indeed, to-day it is said to have special attractions for those religiously inclined among the military classes. But more distinctive still of the Nichiren sect is the peculiar type of its patriotism. The one tenet—it has been called the “axiom”—which the founder laid down as the basis of his life-work, was the assertion that “the prosperity or decline of the state depends entirely upon the truth or perversion of itsreligion.” Nichiren, accordingly, boldly accused both rulers and ruled as wanderers in dangerous and fatal errors. The truth, he held, must somehow be substituted for falsehood, or the peace and prosperity of the country could not be attained. In this belief he launched defiance at the government of the time; in the same belief he had the prevision that the Mongols under Kublai Khan would invade Japan, and it was as influenced by this prophetic vision that he stirred up both rulers and people to resist them. In the opinion of the faithful it was the prayers of this saint which induced the gods to overthrow the invaders. All through its history his sect has cherished the same militant spirit—not only in its methods of extending its own adherents, but also in respect to the watch it has kept over the fidelity of its members to the sect as a matter of patriotic interest in the welfare of the country at large. Instead of “God and the Czar,” it is “Buddha and Nippon,” which may be said to have hitherto been the motto of the Nichiren-Shu.

The manifold and rapid changes which are being effected in all departments of the life of the Japanese people have seldom been more forcefully illustrated in my experience than they were by the two visits to Ikegami, to which reference has alreadybeen made. Beyond their local colouring, which is in itself enough to make them interesting, they have a wider significance as showing how the popular forms of religion which characterise the various sects of Buddhism in Japan are adapting themselves to the exigencies and expediences of the modern time.

The great annual festival in honor of Nichiren is held at Ikegami from the eleventh to the thirteenth of October. But the night of the twelfth is the culminating period of the entire celebration. On the afternoon of this date, at the close of my lecture to the teachers of the Imperial Educational Society, two of my former pupils were in waiting to conduct me to Shimbashi, the “Grand Central” railway station of Tokyo. Here two more former pupils were met, whose kindly office was to see that a dinner should be prepared, suitable to those expecting to spend the night upon their feet in a drizzle of rain rather than lying dry and warm in a comfortable bed. Of these Japanese friends, all four were teachers; but one was a priest of the Nichiren sect who, after several years of study of philosophy in this country, had returned to his native land to found a school for the training of “temple boys.” The trains, which were leaving every few minutes forOmori, the station nearest to the monastery, were all crowded to their utmost capacity—so far as the third-class cars were concerned. But there was abundant room for the comparatively few who chose the second-class. By the time we left the train at Omori, darkness had come on—a darkness made more dense and gloomy by the character of the sky overhead, and more disagreeable by the condition of the ground underfoot. The sights which followed, however, were not easily to be forgotten. The roadway for the entire two miles from Omori to Ikegami was lined with either the more permanent shops of the village through which we were passing or with booths extemporised for the occasion, all gaily lighted with lamps and coloured lanterns, and so thronged with surging crowds that independent progress was nearly or quite impossible. Indeed, when we reached the one hundred stone steps which ascend the hill on whose top the buildings of the monastery are standing, there was no other way than to allow ourselves to be slowly borne upward by the weight of the human mass. But even here, there was apparent no pushing or rudeness of other kind.

Having arrived at the top of the stone stairway, and at least partially extricated ourselves from thecrowd, our attention was directed to the students of the neighbouring Nichiren College, who were posted here and there, throughout the dimly lantern-lighted grove, exhorting the people to the religious life and expounding the tenets of the sect. But the crowd on the outside, for the most part, was not on religion bent. The Hondo, or main temple, however, was solidly packed with a body of truly devout believers, all sitting on the floor and expecting to spend the entire night in silent meditation and devout prayer.

“THE CHIEF ABBOT CAME IN TO GREET US”

With great difficulty we forced our way to the beautiful and new priests-house which had been built in the place of a similar one among the several monastery buildings destroyed by a recent fire. There I was received with no small ceremony, ushered into a waiting-room that had been reserved for us, and offered cakes and tea. Soonthe chief abbot and the vice-abbots came in to greet usand to express their regret that, since all the rooms of the monastery were occupied by the faithful who had come to pass the night there, they could not entertain their guest more as they would have desired. Before excusing himself, however, the chief abbot invited me to bring Mrs. Ladd and, at some time in November, when the maple trees for whichIkegami is justly celebrated should be at their best, give them the pleasure of making us both their guests. At that future time it was promised that we should see the best of the temple’s treasures, and have the principles of the sect duly expounded. For the present, one of the vice-abbots, who seemed overflowing with religious enthusiasm, explained in a somewhat deprecatory way that, although the authorities of the monastery did not by any means approve of all which was done by the crowds who attended the festival, and would not wish to have the spiritual principles of the sect judged by this standard, they did not think it best to check the manifestation of interest. In reply I was glad to say that I had seen nothing suggestive of immoral conduct. I was indeed—although I kept the thought to myself—reminded of the answer of my Bengali friend, Mr. Kali Bannerji, who, when I asked him if the Bengalese have any proverb corresponding to ours about “killing two birds with one stone,” responded: “Yes, we say, going to see the religious procession and selling our cabbages.” But it is not in India or Japan alone that religion and cabbages are mixed up in some such way.

The promise of another visit to Ikegami, when daylight and leisure should make it possible to seethe place and hear the doctrine much better, accentuated our willingness at the present time to spend one-half rather than the whole of the night in seeing the festival, however interesting and instructive it was likely to prove to be. Not long after midnight, therefore, we began the severer task of forcing our way against the crowd and back to the railway station where we could take the train for our return to Tokyo.

But, first, let us spend a few minutes in taking in more thoroughly the remarkable scene afforded by the annual all-night festival in honour of its founder whose birth occurred nearly seven hundred years ago. The stately and somewhat gloomily beautiful cryptomerias, which are the favourites for temple-groves in Japan, when seen at night through the upward rays of myriads of coloured lanterns, form a rarely impressive and appropriate vault for a congregation of out-door worshippers. No cathedral pillars made by human hands can easily rival them. The wholly frank exposure of the mixture of motives which has brought the crowds together does not necessarily lessen the complex impressiveness of the scene. The aged peasant man or woman, bronzed and bowed nearly double with years of hard labor under a semi-tropical sun, andthe child-nurse with the wide-eyed baby on her back; the timid and lady-like maiden with her grand-dame or servant for escort, and the stalwart youth of the other sex who has the frame of an athlete and something of the manners of a “soshi”; tonsured priests, and temple boys, venders of eatables and drinkables, of toys and charms, of religious notions and bric-a-brac;—all these, and others, for various purposes have come to the festival at Ikegami. Preaching, beating of drums, praying and clapping of hands, the clinking of small coins as they fall into the collection-boxes, blend in a strange low monotone of sound; while the sight of some faces upturned in religious ecstasy and the sight of others gaping with curiosity or giving signs of mirth, invite our sympathy in somewhat conflicting ways. Doubtless, as we have just been told, all that the crowds do at the annual all-night festival at Ikegami is not to be approved in the name of religion, and perhaps not in the name of morality; but there in the temple built by men beneath nature’s greater temple were the “good few” of the truly devout and faithful, according to their light and to the inner voice which they sincerely believe has spoken to them, as it had spoken to their patron saint, the holy Nichiren, so many centuries before.

All the way from the foot of the hundred stone steps to the station of Omori the road was still packed with those coming to join for the night in the festival at Ikegami. And now we were frequently compelled to stop entirely and stand beside the way, in order to let pass by more than two-score of those sodalities of which the sect boasts, in all one hundred or more. There had obviously been no small amount of friendly rivalry to influence the splendid manner in which they had “got themselves up” for this occasion. With lanterns, banners, and illuminations, devised to give the impression of a superiority of initiative, so to say, and with beating of drums and much shouting and repeating of sacred formulas, they came tramping on in a succession quite too frequent and resistless to favour the speed of parties going in the opposite direction. And, although there was little of obvious rudeness, it was plainly good policy to step well out of the way, stand still, and let them pass by.

But all things have an end; and so did, although it seemed almost endless, the muddy and thronged road from Ikegami to Omori in the “small hours” of the dark morning of October 13, 1906.

It was the second visit to the monastery, which occurred more than a month later, and was made on invitation to a luncheon with him by the chiefabbot, that was most distinctive and informing. The invitation itself—so our host assured those who conveyed it—was entirely unique. For, although during the last fifty years foreigners who, as tourists, had visited the monastery at their own instance, had been offered refreshments, no other foreigners had ever been especially invited as the abbot’s guests. Three of the same four Japanese young men who had formerly accompanied me on my visit to Ikegami now served as escort and companions. Although it was past the middle of November in what had been an unusually cold Autumn, the day was warm and moist, but without falling rain, as a day in June. The fields were brilliant in colouring, with the ripened rice and the great store of young and green vegetables; while the sides of the hills were aglow with the red and yellow flame of the maples, made the more splendid by the dark foliage of the cryptomerias and the pines. Large crops of daikon, lettuce, onions, Brussels-sprouts, and other eatables, gave promise of plenty for the dwellers in the humble homes beside the way. It was a good day to be alive, to have no work to do, and to escape from town.

When we reached Omori, since the jinrikishas which were to be sent from the monastery had notyet arrived, we waited in the tea-house opposite the station, where we were treated to tea and a drink composed of hot water with an infusion of salted cherry blossoms. The road to Ikegami was muddy, as it was on the night when we had tramped it to attend the great annual festival in honour of Nichiren; but how different its appearance in the sober daylight from the impression made by its lining of illuminated bazaars and its throngs of thousands carrying lanterns and banners! At its end, however, we climbed the same flight of one hundred stone steps and entered the sacred grove, now scarcely less solemn than it had been at midnight, but lighted enough by such of the sun’s rays as could find a way through the over-arching cryptomerias and maples, to note its multitude of ancient and more recent tombs and memorial offerings of stone or bronze lanterns and monuments. No person, I am sure, who possesses even the beginnings of an emotional religious nature, can easily avoid having feelings of mystery, awe, and longings for inward peace, come over him on entering any one of the most typical temple-groves of Japan.

Near the priests-house a young acolyte met us; and under his escort we visited the sacred library, the shrine which covers the relics of Nichiren,—althoughmost of his bones were taken to the monastery he had founded at Minobu,—the temple and house where he spent his last days, under the hill, and the well from which the saint of such olden time drew the water to make his tea. Then climbing the hill again we wandered in the ancient cemetery where for so many centuries so many hundreds of the faithful have esteemed it a last privilege to lay themselves to rest. The tombs of some of the Tokugawa family, descendants of the great Iyéyasu, who have been patrons of the sect, are among the number buried here. At some distance from the burial ground stands the monument which was erected to commemorate the ship-wrecked American sailors to whose bodies the hospitable monks of Ikegami had given a lodgment under the trees of the consecrated grove.

“WHERE NICHIREN SPENT HIS LAST DAYS”

On returning to the monastery we were received with great distinction by the temple servants and taken almost immediately to the rooms in which luncheon was to be served. These rooms looked out throughshojion a beautiful garden of gibbous-moon shape, lying far down below the bank on whose edge the building was placed, and backed by a circular row of pines, cryptomerias, and maples, which climbed high up the opposite bank. In thegarden was a lotus pond and a goodly variety of shrubs and flowers. But the distinctive thing in the garden, as well as in the neighbouring vale near the housewhere Nichiren spent his last days, and, elsewhere in the grounds, was the “kaeri-sakura,” or “second-time-blooming cherry tree.” It ministers to the faith and affection of believers to know that these trees customarily bloom for the second time each season at about the date of the death of the founder saint. And, indeed, the one which we had just seen in blossom, in the valley, was an offshoot of a stock, a fragment of whose decayed trunk is still preserved, and which may easily have been in blossom a century ago this very day.

Our entertainment was evidently planned to be in princely fashion. The rooms had been especially decorated; and the finest of the lacquer trays and bowls and the best of the porcelain, such as were customarily used when the Tokugawas were the guests of the abbot, had been brought out of the store-house in honour of the occasion. The venerable and kindly abbot soon appeared. But our host instead of proceeding at once to luncheon, wished in person to show us the garden, the ceremonial tea-house, and some of the choicest of the temple’s curiosities and treasures. Among allthese he seemed to take a special pride and pleasure in the so-called “turtle-room.” Here was a collection of representations of this animal, of varied sorts—dried turtle-shells, turtles wrought in bronze, and turtles painted on kakemonos. But our good abbot’s first name was Hikamé (kaméis the Japanese word for turtle),—a sufficient explanation of his peculiar interest in the collections in this room.

The luncheon was in purely Japanese style. On the cushions on the floor, at the head of one room sat the abbot, and on his left, so that they might look out upon the garden, were the two principal guests; while in the second room, which was, however, completely opened into the first, were the young Japanese. The food was such as is strictly suitable for a Buddhist monk,—wholly of fruit and vegetables and nuts, but deliciously prepared with modifications of the native manner which had been learned by the cook, who, after taking a course in law in Japan, had spent some years in the United States. Before sitting down to the meal we had exchanged photographs, and had secured the consent of the abbot to write his name in the autograph-book of his guests. This consent turned out in a manner disastrous in its effect upon the part played at the table by the host. For the holy father hadscarcely begun to eat, when he rose somewhat hastily and disappeared, not to return until the luncheon was nearly over. It was then discovered that he had been inspired with a poem which was duly presented to us, beautifully inscribed upon the page that had been designated for his signature. Now every scholar knows that it is quite impossible to render the delicate suggestiveness and subtle shades of meaning of a Japanese poem into any other language, no matter how expert a linguist the translator may have become. But here is an attempt at giving some idea of what the Abbot of Ikegami wrote in the autograph-book of his guests, about noon of November 17, 1906.

Tō-ten hachi-da awogeba ki-gi tari.Ai wo haki en wo nomu, shiru iku-i zo?Saku-ya san-kō ren-gaku wo yumemu.Kin-ryū takaku maki koku-un tobu.“In Eastern skies Something appears; its eight sides raised aloft;But all of them enveloped thick with mist and smoke, drunk in and out.Last night, at watch the third, I dreamed it as a mountain lotus-shaped;And shrouded in black cloud a golden dragon flying high.”

Tō-ten hachi-da awogeba ki-gi tari.Ai wo haki en wo nomu, shiru iku-i zo?Saku-ya san-kō ren-gaku wo yumemu.Kin-ryū takaku maki koku-un tobu.

Tō-ten hachi-da awogeba ki-gi tari.

Ai wo haki en wo nomu, shiru iku-i zo?

Saku-ya san-kō ren-gaku wo yumemu.

Kin-ryū takaku maki koku-un tobu.

“In Eastern skies Something appears; its eight sides raised aloft;But all of them enveloped thick with mist and smoke, drunk in and out.Last night, at watch the third, I dreamed it as a mountain lotus-shaped;And shrouded in black cloud a golden dragon flying high.”

“In Eastern skies Something appears; its eight sides raised aloft;

But all of them enveloped thick with mist and smoke, drunk in and out.

Last night, at watch the third, I dreamed it as a mountain lotus-shaped;

And shrouded in black cloud a golden dragon flying high.”

Only a part, however, of the object of this excursion had been accomplished when we had been entertained at the Monastery of Ikegami. I particularly wished to become acquainted with the work of my pupil, Mr. Shibata, who after his return from his studies in this country had succeeded in founding a college for the young priests of the Nichiren sect in such manner as to fit them for usefulness under conditions belonging to the moral and religious development of the “New Japan.” Immediately after the luncheon, accordingly, we begged leave to depart; and this granted, we bade good-bye to the kindly, sincere, and simple-hearted abbot with feelings of respect and affection. The jinrikishas took us to “Nichiren College” over a road, which for much of the way was little more than a foot-path through the fields. The buildings of the college are seated on a hill about a half-mile from the station at Osaki and occupy at present some 3500tsubo(atsubois 6 ft. by 6 ft.) of ground. They are all new and well adapted to their collegiate uses, being constructed in modified Japanese style. Since the advertised hour of the address had already passed, we went to the chapel at once; and here I spoke to about two hundred young priests and theological students on “The Personal Qualifications for aMinister of Religion.” The address was in no important respect different from that which would be suitable on the same subject for an audience of theological students in England or the United States; nor did its reception and appropriation seem any less thorough and sincere.

After inspecting the work in drawing and water-colours of which—so the posted notice read—“An Exhibition is given in honour of ——,” Mrs. Ladd returned to Tokyo; but I remained to carry out my purpose of spending a full day and night among my priestly Buddhist friends. In our many confidential talks while we were in the relations of teacher and pupil, the latter had avowed his life-work to be the moral reform and improved mental culture of the priesthood of his sect. It had then seemed to me a bold, even an audacious undertaking. But seeming audacity was quite characteristic of the youth of all those very men who now, in middle life and old-age, are holding the posts of leadership in Japan in a way to conserve the best results of the earlier period of more rapid change. Besides, I knew well that my pupil had the necessary courage and devotion; for he was not only a priest but also a soldier, and had been decorated for his bravery in the Chino-Japanese war. And again,toward the close of the Russo-Japanese war, when he had been called out with the reserves, he had once more left the position of priestly student and teacher to take his place at arms in the defence of his country.

How wholesome and thoroughly educative of their whole manhood was the training which was being given to these young temple boys, I had abundant reason to know before leaving the Nichiren College at Osaki. After tea and welcome-addresses by one of the teachers and two of the pupils, followed by a response by the guest, an exhibition of one side of this training was given in the large dining-hall of the school. For as it was in ancient Greece, so it is now in Japan; arms and music must not be neglected in the preparation to serve his country of the modern Buddhist priest. Sword-dancing—one of the chants which accompanied the action being Saigo’s celebrated “death song”—and a duet performed upon a flute and a harp constructed by the performer out of split bamboo and strings of silk, followed bybanzaisfor their guest, concluded the entertainment.

Of the nine who sat down to dinner that evening in a private room belonging to another building of the school, four besides the host were priests of theNichiren sect. They constituted the body of the more strictly religious or theological instructors; the courses in literature and the sciences being taught for the most part by professors from the Imperial University or from the private university founded by Japan’s great teacher of youth, the late Mr. Fukuzawa. Of the priests the most conspicuous and communicative was proud to inform me that he had been the chaplain of General Noghi at the siege of Port Arthur. With reference to the criticisms passed at the time upon that great military leader he said with evident emotion that General Noghi was “as wise as he was undoubtedly brave.” This same priest had also interesting stories to tell of his experiences in China. In speaking of the ignorance of the teachers of religion in that country he declared, that of the hundreds of Tâoist priests he had met, the vast majority could not even read the Chinese ideographs when he wrote them; and none of the numbers he had known could make any pretence to scholarship. They were quite universally ignorant, superstitious, and physically and morally filthy. Among the Buddhist priests in China, however, the case was somewhat better; for perhaps three or four in every ten could make some pretence of education; and therewere even a very few who were real scholars. But neither Tâoists nor Buddhists had much influence for good over the people; and “priest, priest,” was a cry of insult with which to follow one. As to their sincerity, at one of the Tâoist temples he had asked for meat and wine, but had been told that none could be had, because they abstained religiously from both. But when he replied that he had no scruples against either, but needed them for his health and wished to pay well for them, both were so quickly produced he knew they could not have come from far away. (I may remark in this connection that if the experiences and habits of the Chinese in Manchuria resemble at all closely the experiences and customs of the Koreans in their own country, the unwillingness to furnish accommodations to travelling strangers is caused rather by the fear of having them requisitioned without pay than to any scruples, religious or otherwise, as to what they themselves eat and drink or furnish to others for such purposes).

The same subject which had been introduced at the priests-house, on occasion of the all-night festival at Ikegami, was now brought forward again. What had been my impressions received from the spectacle witnessed at that time? When to the inquiryI made a similar answer,—namely, that only a portion of the vast crowd seemed to be sincere worshippers, but that with the exception of a few rude young men in the procession, who appeared to have had too much saké, I saw no immoral or grossly objectional features—all the priests expressed agreement with my views. Where the superstitions connected with the celebration were not positively harmful, it was the policy of the reforming and progressive party of the sect to leave them to die away of themselves as the people at large became more enlightened.

After a night of sound sleep, Japanese fashion, on the floor of the study in my pupil’s pretty new home, we rose at six and hastened across the fields to attend the morning religious services in the chapel of the school. Here for a full half-hour, or more, what had every appearance of serious and devout religious worship was held by the assembled teachers and pupils. All were neatly dressed in black gowns; no evidences of having shuffled into unbrushed garments, with toilets only half-done or wholly neglected, were anywhere to be seen, nor was there the vacant stare, the loud whisper, the stolen glance at newspaper or text-book; but all responded to the sutras and intoned the appointedprayers and portions of the Scriptures, while the time was accented by the not too loud beating of a musical gong. Certainly, the orderliness and apparent devotion quite exceeded that of any similar service at “morning prayers” in the average American college or university.

A brief exhibition ofjudo, (a modified form ofjiujitsu), and of Japanese fencing, which was carried on in the dining-room while the head-master was exchanging his priestly for his military dress, in order to take part in a memorial service to deceased soldiers, at which General Noghi was expected to be present, terminated my entertainment at this Buddhist school for the training of temple boys. As we left the crowd of them who had accompanied us thus far on the way, and stood shoutingbanzaison the platform of the station, there was no room for doubting the heartiness of their friendly feeling toward the teacher of their teacher; although the two, while sharing many of the most important religious views, were called by names belonging to religions so different as Christianity and Buddhism.

The impressions from these two visits to Ikegami regarding the changes going on in Buddhistic circles in Japan, and in the attitude of Buddhism towardChristianity, were amply confirmed by subsequent experiences. At Kyoto, the ancient capital and religious centre of the empire, I was invited by the Dean of the Theological Seminary connected with the Nishi Honwangi to address some six hundred young priests of various sects on the same topic as that on which the address was given at the Nichiren College near Ikegami. It should be explained that this temple is under the control of the Shin-shu, the most numerous and probably the most wealthy sect in the Empire. The high priest of this sect is an hereditary count and therefore a member of the House of Peers. He is also a man of intelligence and of a wide-spreading interest in religion. At the time of my visit, indeed, the Count was absent on a missionary tour in China. This address also was listened to with the same respectful attention by the several hundred Buddhist priests who had gathered at the temple of Nishi Honwangi. Here again Mrs. Ladd and I were made the recipients of the same courteous and unique hospitality. Before the lecture began, we were entertained in the room which had been distinguished for all time in the estimate of the nation by the fact that His Majesty the Emperor held within its walls the first public reception ever granted to his subjects bythe Mikado; and after the lecture we were further honoured by being the first outsiders ever invited to a meal with the temple officers within one of the temple apartments.

Later on at Nagoya, further evidence was afforded of the important fact that the old-time religious barriers are broken down or are being overridden, wherever the enlightenment and moral welfare of the people seem likely to be best served in this way. Now Nagoya has hitherto been considered one of the most conservative and even bigoted Buddhist centres in all Japan. Yet a committee composed of Buddhists and of members of the Young Men’s Christian Association united in arrangements for a course of lectures on education and ethics. This was remarked upon as the first instance of anything of the sort in the history of the city.

When we seek for the causes which have operated to bring about these important and hopeful changes in the temper and practises of the Buddhism which is fast gaining currency and favour in Japan, we are impressed with the belief that the greatest of them is the introduction of Christianity itself. This influence is obvious in the following three essential ways. Christian conceptions and doctrines are modifying the tenets of the leading Buddhisticthinkers in Japan. As I listened for several hours to his exposition of his conception of the Divine Being, the divine manner of self-revelation, and of his thoughts about the relations of God and man, by one of the most notable theologians of the Shin Shu (the sect which I have already spoken of as the most popular in Japan), I could easily imagine that the exponent was one of the Alexandrine Church-Fathers, Origen or Clement, discoursing of God the Unrevealed and of the Logos who was with God and yet who became man. But Buddhism is also giving much more attention than formerly to raising the moral standards of both priests and people. It is sharing in the spirit of ethical quickening and revival which is so important an element of the work of Christian missions abroad, but which is alas! so woefully neglected in the so-called Christian nations at home. Japanese Buddhism is feeling now much more than formerly the obligation of any religion which asks the adherence and support of the people, to help the people, in a genuine and forceful way, to a nobler and better way of living. Hitherto in Japan it has been that peculiar development of Confucian ethics called Bushidō, which has embodied and cultivated the nobler moral ideals. Religion, at least in the formwhich Buddhism has taken in Japan, has had little to do with inspiring and guiding men in the life which is better and best, here and now. But as its superstitions with regard to the future are falling away and are ceasing practically to influence the body of the people, there are some gratifying signs that its influence upon the spiritual interests of the present is becoming purer and stronger.

That Buddhism is improving its means of educating its followers, and is feeling powerfully the quickening of the national pulse, due to the advancing strides in educational development, is obvious enough to any one able to compare its condition to-day with its condition not more than a score of years ago. There are, of course, in the ranks of all the Buddhist sects leaders who are ready to cry out against heresies and the mischief of changes concealed under the guise of reforms. The multitudes of believers are still far below the desirable standard of either intelligence in religious matters, or of morals as controlled by religious motives. But the old days of stagnation and decay seem to be passing away; and the outlook now is that the foreign religion, instead of speedily destroying the older native religion, will have helped it to assume a new and more vigorous and better form of life.

As the period of more bitter conflict and mutual denunciation gives way to a period of more respectful and friendly, and even co-operative attitude in advancing the welfare of the nation, the future of both Buddhism and Christianity in Japan affords a problem of more complicated and doubtful character. The nation is awakening to its need of morals and religion,—in addition to a modern army and navy, and to an equipment for teaching and putting to practical uses, the physical sciences,—as never before. The awakening is accompanied there, as elsewhere in the modern world, by a thirst for reality. Whatever can satisfy this thirst, however named, will find acceptance and claim the allegiance of both the thoughtful and the multitudes of the common people; for in Japan, as elsewhere in the modern world, men are not easily satisfied or permanently satisfied with mere names.

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