lord-abbot should be banished and their property
confiscated; before which evidently earnest menaces the mob of friars
turned their faces homeward. Thereafter, Takauji, and his brother
Tadayoshi celebrated with great pomp the ceremony of opening the new
temple, and the Ashikaga leader addressed to the priest, Soseki, a
document pledging his own reverence and the reverence of all his
successors at Muromachi. But that part of his programme which related
to the provincial branch temples was left incomplete. At no time,
indeed, were the provinces sufficiently peaceful and sufficiently
subservient for the carrying out of such a plan by the Ashikaga.

GREAT PRIESTS

The priest Soseki--otherwise called "Muso Kokushi," or "Muso, the
national teacher"--was one of the great bonzes in an age when many
monasteries were repositories of literature and statesmanship. His
pupils, Myoo and Chushin, enjoyed almost equal renown in the days of
the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu, whose piety rivalled that of
Takauji. He assigned to them a residence in the Rokuon-ji, his own
family temple, and there he visited them to hear discourses on
Buddhist doctrine and to consult about administrative affairs. A
still more illustrious bonze was Ryoken, of Nanzen-ji. It is related
of him that he repaired, on one occasion, to the Kita-yama palace of
the shogun Yosh mitsu, wearing a ragged garment. Yoshimitsu at once
changed his own brocade surcoat for the abbot's torn vestment, and
subsequently, when conducting his visitor on a boating excursion, the
shogun carried the priest's footgear. It is not possible for a
Japanese to perform a lowlier act of obeisance towards another than
to be the bearer of the latter's sandals. Yoshimitsu was in a
position to dictate to the Emperor, yet he voluntarily performed a
menial office for a friar.

These four priests, Soseki, Myoo, Chushin, and Ryoken, all belonged
to the Zen sect. The doctrines of that sect were absolutely paramount
in Muromachi days, as they had been in the times of the Kamakura
Bakufu. A galaxy of distinguished names confronts us on the pages of
history--Myocho of Daitoku-ji; Gen-e of Myoshin-ji; Ikkyu Zenji of
Daitoku-ji, a descendant of the Emperor Go-Komatsu; Tokuso of
Nanzen-ji; Shiren of Tofuku-ji; Shushin of Nanzen-ji; Juo of
Myoshin-ji; Tetsuo of Daitoku-ji, and Gazan of Soji-ji. All these
were propagandists of Zen-shu doctrine. It has been well said that
the torch of religion burns bri