The Buddhist missionaries, in their first “enthusiasm of humanity,” were not satisfied to bring in their train, art, medicine, science and improvements of all sorts, but they themselves, being often learned and practical men, became personal leaders in the work of civilizing the country.  In travelling up and down the empire to propagate their tenets, they found out the necessity of better roads, and accordingly, they were largely instrumental in having them made.  They dug wells, established ferries and built bridges.[7] They opened lines of communication; they stimulated traffic and the exchange of merchandise; they created the commerce between Japan and China; and they acted as peacemakers and mediators in the wars between the Japanese and Koreans.  For centuries they had the monopoly of high learning.  In the dark middle ages when civil war ruled, they were the only scholars, clerks, diplomatists, mediators and peacemakers.

Japanese diet became something new under the direction of the priests.  The bonzes taught the wickedness of slaughtering domestic animals, and indeed, the wrong of putting any living thing to death, so that kindness to animals has become a national trait.  To this day it may be said that Japanese boys and men are, at least within the limits of their light, more tender and careful with all living creatures than are those of Christendom.[8] The bonzes improved the daily fare of the people, by introducing from Korea and China articles of food hitherto unknown.  They brought over new seeds and varieties of vegetables and trees.  Furthermore, necessity being the mother of invention, not a few of the shorn brethren made up for the prohibition of fish and flesh, by becoming expert cooks.  They so exercised their talents in the culinary art that their results on the table are proverbial.  Especially did they cultivate mushrooms, which in taste and nourishment are good substitutes for fish.

The bonzes were lovers of beauty and of symbolism.  They planted the lotus, and the monastery ponds became seats of splendor, and delights to the eye.  Their teachings, metaphysical and mystical, poetical and historical, scientific and literary, created, it may be said, the Japanese garden, which to the refined imagination contains far more than meets the eye of the alien.[9] Indeed, the oriental imitations in earth, stone, water and verdure, have a language and suggestion far beyond what the usual parterres and walks, borders and lines, fountains and statuary of a western garden teach.  It may be said that our “language of flowers” is more luxuriant and eloquent than theirs; yet theirs is very rich also, besides being more subtle in suggestion.  The bonzes instilled doctrine, not only by sermons, books and the emblems and furniture of the temples, but they also taught dogma and ethics by the flower-ponds and plots, by the artificial landscape, and by outdoor symbolism of all kinds.  To Buddhism our thanks are due, for the innumerable miniature continents, ranges of mountains, geographical outlines and other horticultural allusions to their holy lands and spiritual history, seen beside so many houses, temples and monasteries in Japan.  In their floral art, no people excels the Japanese in making leaf and bloom teach history, religion, philosophy, aesthetics and patriotism.