sted in
selecting rare woods and uniquely grown timber, in exquisite joinery,
and in fine plastering. Display and ornament in dwelling-houses were
not exterior but interior; and beginning with the twelfth century,
interior decoration became an art which occupied the attention of the
great schools of Japanese painters. The peculiar nature of Japanese
interior division of the house with screens or light partitions
instead of walls lent itself to a style of decoration which was quite
as different in its exigencies and character from Occidental mural
decorations as was Japanese architecture from Gothic or Renaissance.
The first native school of decorative artists was the Yamato-ryu,
founded in the eleventh century by Fujiwara Motomitsu and reaching
the height of its powers in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth
century Fujiwara Tsunetaka, a great painter of this school, took the
title of Tosa. Under him the Tosa-ryu became the successor of the
Yamato-ryu and carried on its work with more richness and charm. The
Tosa school was to a degree replaced after the fifteenth century in
interior painting by the schools of Sesshu and Kano.

RELIGION

As one of Yoritomo's first acts when he organized the Kamakura Bakufu
had been to establish at Tsurugaoka a shrine to Hachiman (the god of
War), patron deity of the Minamotos' great ancestor, Yoshiiye, so
when Takauji, himself a Minamoto, organized the Muromachi Bakufu, he
worshipped at the Iwashimizu shrine of Hachiman, and all his
successors in the shogunate followed his example. Of this shrine
Tanaka Harukiyo was named superintendent (betto), and with the
Ashikaga leader's assistance, he rebuilt the shrine on a sumptuous
scale, departing conspicuously from the austere fashion of pure
Shinto.* It may, indeed, be affirmed that Shinto had never been
regarded as a religion in Japan until, in the days of the Nara Court,
it was amalgamated with Buddhism to form what was called
Ryobu-shinto. It derived a further character of religion from the
theory of Kitabatake Chikafusa, who contended that Shinto, Buddhism,
and Confucianism were all capable of being welded into one whole.
Moreover, in the Muromachi period, the eminent scholar, Ichijo
Kaneyoshi (1402-81), wrote a thesis which gave some support to the
views of Chikafusa.

*The shrine covered a space of 400 square yards and had a golden
gutter, 80 feet long, 13 feet wide, and over 1 inch thick.

But, during the reign of Go-Tsuchimik