e significant provision,
namely, that a divorced woman is entitled to have immediately
restored to her all her gold and silver ornaments as well as her
dresses; and at the same time husbands are warned that they must not
fail to make due provision for a former wife. The impression conveyed
by careful perusal of all Tokugawa edicts is that their compilers
obeyed, from first to last, a high code of ethical principles.

ENGRAVING: "INRO," LACQUERED MEDICINE CASE CARRIED CHIEFLY BY SAMURAI

ENGRAVING: TOKUGAWA MITSUKUNI

CHAPTER XLIII

REVIVAL OF THE SHINTO CULT

RYOBU SHINTO

THE reader is aware that early in the ninth century the celebrated
Buddhist priest, Kukai (Kobo Daishi), compounded out of Buddhism and
Shinto a system of doctrine called Ryobu Shinto. The salient feature
of this mixed creed was the theory that the Shinto deities were
transmigrations of Buddhist divinities. Thereafter, Buddhism became
the national religion, which position it held until the days of the
Tokugawa shoguns, when it was supplanted among educated Japanese by
the moral philosophy of Confucius, as interpreted by Chutsz, Wang
Yang-ming, and others.

REVIVAL OF PURE SHINTO

The enthusiasm and the intolerance showed by the disciples of Chinese
philosophy produced a reaction in Japan, and this culminated in the
revival of Shinto, during which process the anomalous position
occupied by the shogun towards the sovereign was clearly
demonstrated, and the fact contributed materially to the downfall of
the Tokugawa. It was by Ieyasu himself that national thought was
turned into the new channel, though it need scarcely be said that the
founder of the Tokugawa shogunate had no premonition of any results
injurious to the sway of his own house.

After the battle of Sekigahara had established his administrative
supremacy, and after he had retired from the shogunate in favour of
Hidetada, Ieyasu applied himself during his residence at Sumpu to
collecting old manuscripts, and shortly before his death he directed
that the Japanese section of the library thus formed should be handed
over to his eighth son, the baron of Owari, and the Chinese portion
to his ninth son, the baron of Kii. Another great library was
subsequently brought together by a grandson of Ieyasu, the celebrated
Mitsukuni (1628-1700), baron of Mito, who, from his youthful days,
devoted attention to Japanese learning, and, assembling a number of
eminent scholars, composed the Dai