Another sect of purely Japanese origin deserving notice is the “Hokke” or “Nicheren.”  Its founder, known by the name of Nichiren, was a man of extraordinary independence and religious fervor.  Wholly by his original questions and doubts as to the prevailing doctrines and customs of the then dominant sects, he was led to make independent examination into the history and meaning of Buddhistic literature and to arrive at conclusions quite different from those of his contemporaries.  Of the truth and importance of his views he was so persuaded that he braved not only fierce denunciations, but prolonged opposition and persecution.  He was rejected and cast out by his own people and sect; he was twice banished by the ruling military powers.  But he persevered to the end, finally winning thousands of converts to his views.  The virulence of the attacks made upon him was due to the virulence with which he attacked what seemed to him the errors and corruption of the prevailing sects.  Surely his was no case of servile imitation.  His early followers had also to endure opposition and severe persecution.

Glancing at the philosophical ideas brought from China, we find here too a suggestion of the same tendency toward originality.  It is true that Dr. Geo. Wm. Knox, in his valuable monograph on “A Japanese Philosopher,” makes the statement that, “In acceptance and rejection alike no native originality emerges, nothing beyond a vigorous power of adoption and assimilation.  No improvements of the new philosophy were even attempted.  Wherein it was defective and indistinct, defective and indistinct it remained.  The system was not thought out to its end and independently adopted.  Polemics, ontology, ethics, theology, marvels, heroes—­all were enthusiastically adopted on faith.  It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier he likewise asserts that “There is not an original and valuable commentary by a Japanese writer.  They have been content to brood over the imported works and to accept unquestioningly politics, ethics, and metaphysics.”  After some examination of these native philosophers, I feel that, although not without some truth, these assertions cannot be strictly maintained.  It is doubtless true that no powerful thinker and writer has appeared in Japan that may be compared to the two great philosophers of China, Shushi and Oyomei.  The works and the system of the former dominated Japan, for the simple reason that governmental authority forbade the public teaching or advocacy of the other.  Nevertheless, not a few Japanese thinkers rejected the teachings and philosophy of Shushi, regardless of consequences.  Notable among those rejecters was Kaibara Yekken, whose book “The Great Doubt” was not published until after his death.  In it he rejects in emphatic terms the philosophical and metaphysical ideas of Shushi.  An article[AE] by Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye, Professor of Philosophy in the Imperial University in Tokyo, on the “Development of Philosophical Ideas in Japan,” concludes with these words: