first exultation of victory. Confronted by modern problems of society
and government, the Mikado's ministers found themselves unable, if
indeed willing, to entomb politics in religion, as in the ancient ages.
For a little while, in 1868, the Jin Gi Kuan, or Council of the Gods of
Heaven and Earth, held equal authority with the Dai J[=o] Kuan, or Great
Council of the Government. Pretty soon the first step downward was
taken, and from a supreme council it was made one of the ten departments
of the government. In less than a year followed another retrograde
movement and the department was called a board. Finally, in 1877, the
board became a bureau. Now, it is hard to tell what rank the Shint[=o]
cultus occupies in the government, except as a system of guardianship
over the imperial tombs, a mode of official etiquette, and as one of the
acknowledged religions of the country.

Nevertheless, as an element in that amalgam of religions which forms the
creed of most Japanese, Shint[=o] is a living force, and shares with
Buddhism the arena against advancing Christianity, still supplying much
of the spring and motive to patriotism.

The Shint[=o] lecturers with unblushing plagiarism rifled the
storehouses of Chinese ethics. They enforced their lessons from the
Confucian classics. Indeed, most of their homiletical and illustrative
material is still derived directly therefrom. Their three main official
theses and commandments were:

1. Thou shalt honor the Gods and love thy country.

2. Thou shalt clearly understand the principles of Heaven, and
the duty of man.

3. Thou shalt revere the Emperor as thy sovereign and obey the
will of his Court.

For nearly twenty years this deliverance of the Japanese Government,
which still finds its strongest support in the national traditions and
the reverence of the people for the throne, sufficed for the necessities
of the case. Then the copious infusion of foreign ideas, the
disintegration of the old framework of society, and the weakening of the
old ties of obedience and loyalty, with the flood of shallow knowledge
and education which gave especially children and young people just
enough of foreign ideas to make them dangerous, brought about a
condition of affairs which alarmed the conservative and patriotic. Like
fungus upon a dead tree strange growths had appeared, among others that
of a class of violently patriotic and half-educated young men and boys,
called _So