Political and Military Influences.

A volume might be written and devoted to Japanese Buddhism as a political power; for, having quickly obtained intellectual possession of the court and emperor, it dictated the policies of the rulers.  In A.D. 624, it was recognized as a state religion, and the hierarchy of priests was officially established.  At this date there were 46 temples and monasteries, with 816 monks and 569 nuns.  As early as the eighth century, beginning with Sh[=o]mu, who reigned A.D. 724-728, and who with his daughter, afterward the female Mikado, became a disciple of Shaka, the habit of the emperors becoming monks, shaving their heads and retiring from public life, came in vogue and lasted until near the nineteenth century.  By this means the bonzes were soon enabled to call Buddhism “the people’s religion,” and to secure the resources of the national treasury as an aid to their temple and monastery building, and for the erection of those images and wayside shrines on which so many millions of dollars have been lavished.  In addition to this subsidized propaganda, the Buddhist confessor was too often able, by means of the wife, concubine, or other female member of the household, imperial or noble, to dictate the imperial policy in accordance with monkish or priestly ideas.  Ugeno D[=o]-ki[=o], a monk, is believed to have aspired to the throne.  Being made premier by the Empress K[=o]-ken, whose passion for him is the scandal of history, he made no scruple of extending the power as well as the influence of the Buddhist hierarchy.

Buddhism had also a distinct influence on the military history of the country,[37] and this was greatest during the civil wars of the rival Mikados (1336-1392), when the whole country was a camp and two lines of nominees claimed to be descendants of the sun-goddess.  Japan’s only foreign wars have been in the neighboring peninsula of Korea, and thither the bonzes went with the armies in the expeditions of the early centuries, and in that great invasion of 1592-1597, which has left a scar even to this day on the Korean mind.  At home, Buddhist priests only too gladly accompanied the imperial armies of conquest and occupation.  During centuries of activity in the southwest and in the far east and extreme north, the military brought the outlying portions of the empire, throughout the whole archipelago, under the sway of the Yamato tribe and the Mikado’s dominion.  The shorn clerks not only lived in camp, ministered to the sick and shrived the dying soldier, but wrote texts for the banners, furnished the amulets and war cries, and were ever assistant and valuable in keeping up the temper and morals of the armies.[38] No sooner was the campaign over and peace had become the order of the day, than the enthusiastic missionaries began to preach and to teach in the pacified region.  They set up the shrines, anon started the school and built the temple; usually, indeed, with the aid of the law and the government, acting as agents of a politico-ecclesiastical establishment, yet with energy and consecration.