On the establishment of the imperial capital, at Ki[=o]to, toward the end of the eighth century, we find still further development and enlargement of those latent artistic impulses with which the Heavenly Father endowed his Japanese child.  That capacity for beauty, both in appreciation and expression, which in our day makes the land of dainty decoration the resort of all those who would study oriental art in unique fulness and decorative art in its only living school—­a school founded on the harmonious marriage of the people and the nature of the country—­is discernible from quite early ages.  The people seem to have responded gladly to the calls for gifts and labor.  The direction from which it is supposed all evils are likely to come is the northeast; this special point of the compass being in pan-Asian spiritual geography the focus of all malign influences.  Accordingly, the Mikado Kwammu, in A.D. 788, built on the highest mountain called Hiyei a superb temple and monastery, giving it in charge of the Ten-dai sect, that there should ever be a bulwark against the evil that might otherwise swoop upon the city.  Here, as on castellated walls, should stand the watchman, who, by the recitation of the sacred liturgies, would keep watch and ward.  In course of time this great mountain became a city of three thousand edifices and ten thousand monks, from which the droning of litanies and the chanting of prayers ascended daily, and where the chief industries were, the counting of beads on rosaries and the burning of incense before the altars.  This was in the long bright day of a prosperity which has been nourished by vast sums obtained from the government and nobles.  One notes the contrast at the end of our century, when “disestablished” as a religion and its bonzes reduced to beggary, Hiyei-san is used as the site of a Summer School of Christian Theology.

Along with the blossoming of the lotus in every part of the empire, bloomed the grander flowers of sculpture, of painting and of temple architecture.  It was because of the carpenter’s craft in building temples that he won his name of Dai-ku, or the great workman.  The artificers of the sunny islands cultivated an ambition, not only to equal but to excel, their continental brethren of the saw and hammer.  Yet the carpenter was only the leader of great hosts of artisans that were encouraged, of craftsmen that were educated and of industries that were called into being by the spread of Buddhism.[15] It was not enough that village temples and town monasteries should be built, under an impulse that meant volumes for the development of the country.  The ambitious leaders chose sightly spots on mountains whence were lovely vistas of scenery, on which to erect temples and monasteries, while it seemed to be their further ambition to allow no mountain peak to be inaccessible.  With armies of workmen, supported by the contributions of the faithful who had been aroused to enthusiasm by the preaching of the bonzes, great swaths were cut in the forest; abundant timber was felled; rocky plateaus were levelled; and elegant monastic edifices were reared, soon to be filled with eager students, and young men in training for the priesthood.