pher--at least one instance of
something useful resulting from the penchant of the Court for the
niceties of Chinese art and letters. Any one might leave at the
palace a few coins for payment and order a fair copy of this or that
excerpt from a famous classic. The palace was overrun, the chronicler
says. Its garden became a resort for tea-drinking among the lower
classes and children made it a play-ground. It was no longer walled
in, but merely fenced with bamboo. The whole city was in a similar
desolation, things having become worse and worse beginning with the
Onin disturbance of 1467 and the general exodus of the samurai from
the capital at that time. At this time the military nobles came to
the city only to fight, and the city's population melted away. All
was disorder. The city was flooded and the dike which was built to
check the flooded rivers came to be thought a fine residence place in
comparison with lower parts of the town.

It was at this time that men might be observed begging for rice in
the streets of the capital. They carried bags to receive
contributions which were designated kwampaku-ryo (regent's money).
Some of the bags thus used are preserved by the noble family of Nijo
to this day. Another record says that the stewardess of the Imperial
household service during this reign (Go-Nara), on being asked how
summer garments were to be supplied for the ladies-in-waiting,
replied that winter robes with their wadded linings removed should be
used. The annals go so far as to allege that deaths from cold and
starvation occurred among the courtiers. An important fact is that
one of the provincial magnates who contributed to the succour of the
Court at this period was Oda Nobuhide of Owari, father of the
celebrated Oda Nobunaga.

ENGRAVING: SHINRAN SHONIN

BUDDHIST VIOLENCE

The decline of the Muromachi Bakufu's authority encouraged the monks
as well as the samurai to become a law to themselves. Incidental
references have already been made to this subject, but the religious
commotions of the Sengoku period invite special attention. The
Buddhists of the Shin sect, founded by Shinran Shonin (1184-1268),
which had for headquarters the great temple Hongwan-ji in Kyoto, were
from the outset hostile to the monks of Enryaku-ji. Religious
doctrine was not so much concerned in this feud as rivalry. Shinran
had been educated in the Tendai tenets at Enryaku-ji. Therefore, from
the latter's point of view he was a rene