In later feudal days, when the soldier classes obtained the upper hand, overawed the court and Mikado and gradually supplanted the civil authority, introducing feudalism and martial law, the bonzes often represented the popular and democratic side.  Protesting against arbitrary government, they came into collision with the warrior rulers, so as to be exposed to imprisonment and the sword.  Yet even as refugees and as men to whom the old seats of activity no longer offered success or comfort, they went off into the distant and outlying provinces, preaching the old tenets and the new fashions in theology.  Thus again they won hosts of converts, built monasteries, opened fresh paths and were purveyors of civilization.

The feudal ages in Japan bred the same type of militant priest known in Europe—­the military bishop and the soldier monk.  So far from Japan’s being the “Land of Great Peace,” and Buddhism’s being necessarily gentle and non-resistant, we find in the chequered history of the island empire many a bloody battle between the monks on horseback and in armor.[39] Rival sectarians kept the country disquieted for years.  Between themselves and their favored laymen, and the enemy, consisting of the rival forces, lay and clerical, in like array, many a bloody battle was fought.

The writer lived for one year in Echizen, which, in the fifteenth century, was the battle-ground for over fifty years, of warring monks.  The abbot of the Monastery of the Original Vow, of the Shin sect, in Ki[=o]to, had built before the main edifice a two-storied gate, which was expected to throw into the shade every other gateway in Japan, and especially to humble the pride of the monks of the Tendai sect, in Hiyeizan, The monks of the mountain, swarming down into the capital city, attacked the gate and monastery of the Shin sect and burned the former to ashes.  The abbot thus driven off by fire, fled northward, and, joined by a powerful body of adherents, made himself possessor of the rich provinces of Kaga and Echizen, holding this region for half a century, until able to rebuild the mighty fortress-monasteries near Ki[=o]to and at Osaka.

These strongholds of the fighting Shin priests had become so powerful as arsenals and military headquarters, that in 1570, Nobunaga, skilful general as he was, and backed by sixty thousand men, was unsuccessful in his attempt to reduce them.  For ten years, the war between Nobunaga and the Shin sectarians kept the country in disorder.  It finally ended in the conflagration of the great religious fortress at Osaka, and the retreat of the monks to another part of the country.  By their treachery and incendiarism, the shavelings prevented the soldiers from enjoying the prizes.

To detail the whole history of the fighting monks would be tedious.  They have had a foothold for many centuries and even to the present time, in every province except that of Satsuma.  There, because they treacherously aided the great Hideyoshi to subdue the province, the fiery clansmen, never during Tokugawa days, permitted a Buddhist priest to come.[40]