and while the
library of native Buddhism, in the way of commentary or general
literature, reflects no special credit upon the priests, yet the
historian must award them high honor, because of the part taken by them
as educators and schoolmasters.[43] Education in ancient and mediaeval
times was, among the laymen, confined almost wholly to the imperial
court, and was considered chiefly to be, either as an adjunct to polite
accomplishments, or as valuable especially in preparing young men for
political office.[44] From the first introduction of letters until well
into the nineteenth century, there was no special provision for
education made by the government, except that, in modern and recent
times in the castle towns of the Daimi[=o]s, there were schools of
Chinese learning for the Samurai. Private schools and school-masters[45]
were also creditably numerous. In original literature, poetry, fiction
and history, as well as in the humbler works of compilation, in the
making of text-books and in descriptive lore, the pens of many priests
have been busy.[46] The earliest biography written in Japan was of
Sh[=o]toku, the great lay patron of Buddhism. In the ages of war the
monastery was the ark of preservation amid a flood of desolation.

The temple schools were early established, and in the course of
centuries became at times almost coextensive with the empire. Besides
the training of the neophytes in the Chinese language and the
vernacular, there were connected with thousands of temples, schools in
which the children, not only of the well-to-do, but largely of the
people, were taught the rudiments of education, chiefly reading and
writing. Most of the libraries of the country were those in monasteries.
Although it is not probable that K[=o]b[=o] invented the Kana or common
script, yet it is reasonably certain that the bonzes[47] were the chief
instrument in the diffusion and popularization of that simple system of
writing, which made it possible to carry literature down into the homes
of the merchant and peasant, and enabled even women and children to
beguile the tedium of their lives. Thus the people expanded their
thoughts through the medium of the written, and later of the printed,
page.[48] Until modern centuries, when the school of painters, which
culminated in Hok[)u]sai and his contemporaries, brought a love of art
down to the lowest classes of the people, the only teacher of pictorial
and sculptural art for the mult