The Japanese were delighted to have among them a genius who could thus Japanize Buddhism, and J[=o]-d[=o] doctrine went forth conquering and to conquer.  From the twelfth century, the tendency of Japanese Buddhism is in the direction of universalism and democracy.  In later developments of J[=o]-d[=o], the pantheistic tendencies are emphasized and the syncretistic powers are enlarged.  While mysticism is a striking feature of the sect and the attainment of truth is by the grace of Amida, yet the native Kami of Japan are logically accepted as avatars of Buddha.  History had little or no rights in the case; philosophy was dictator, and that philosophy was H[=o]-nen’s.  Those later Chinese deities made by personifying attributes or abstract ideas, which sprang up after the introduction of Buddhism into China, are also welcomed into the temples of this sect.  That the common people really believe that they themselves may attain Buddha-hood at death, and enter the Pure Land, is shown in the fact that their ordinary expression for the dead saint is Hotoke—­a general term for all the gods that were once human.  Some popular proverbs indicate this in a form that easily lends itself to irreverence and merriment.

The whole tendency of Japanese Buddhism and its full momentum were now toward the development of doctrine even to startling proportions.  Instead of the ancient path of asceticism and virtue with agnosticism and atheism, we see the means of salvation put now, and perhaps too easily, within the control of all.  The pathway to Paradise was made not only exceedingly plain, but also extremely easy, perhaps even ridiculously so; while the door was open for an outburst of new and local doctrines unknown to India, or even to China.  The rampant vigor with which Japanese Buddhism began to absorb everything in heaven, earth and sea, which it could make a worshipable object or cause to stand as a Kami or deity to the mind, will be seen as we proceed.  The native proverb, instead of being an irreverent joke, stands for an actual truth—­“Even a sardine’s head may become an object of worship.”

“Reformed” Buddhism.

We now look at what foreigners call “Reformed” Buddhism, which some even imagine has been borrowed from Protestant Christianity—­notwithstanding that it is centuries older than the Reformation in Europe.

The Shin Shu or True Sect, though really founded on the J[=o]-d[=o] doctrines, is separate from the sect of the Pure Land.  Yet, besides being called the Shin Shu, it is also spoken of as the J[=o]-d[=o] Shin Shu or the True Sect of the Pure Land.  It is the extreme form of the Protestantism of Buddhism.  It lays emphasis on the idea of salvation wholly through the merits of another, but it also paints in richer tints the sensuous delights of the Western Paradise.  As the term Pure Land is antithetical to that of the Holy Path, so the word Shin, or True, expresses the contrary of what are termed the “temporary expedients.”