these conquests. Thereafter the
monobe were organized into the konoe-fu (palace guards) and the otomo
into the emon-fu (gate guards). Not military matters alone, but also
criminal jurisdiction, belonged to the functions of these two.

THE BUSHI

The earliest type of the Yamato race having thus been military, it
becomes important to inquire what tenets constituted the soldier's
code in old Japan. Our first guide is the celebrated anthology,
Manyo-shu, compiled in the ninth century and containing some poems
that date from the sixth. From this we learn that the Yamato
monono-fu believed himself to have inherited the duty of dying for
his sovereign if occasion required. In that cause he must be prepared
at all times to find a grave, whether upon the desolate moor or in
the stormy sea. The dictates of filial piety ranked next in the
ethical scale. The soldier was required to remember that his body had
been given to him by his parents, and that he must never bring
disgrace upon his family name or ever disregard the dictates of
honour. Loyalty to the Throne, however, took precedence among moral
obligations. Parent, wife, and child must all be abandoned at the
call of patriotism. Such, as revealed in the pages of the Myriad
Leaves, were the simple ethics of the early Japanese soldier. And it
was largely from the Mononobe and Otomo families that high officials
and responsible administrators were chosen at the outset.

When Buddhism arrived in the sixth century, we have seen that it
encountered resolute opposition at the hands of Moriya, the o-muraji
of the Mononobe family. That was natural. The elevation of an alien
deity to a pedestal above the head of the ancestral Kami seemed
specially shocking to the soldier class. But the tendency of the time
was against conservatism. The Mononobe and the Otomo forfeited their
position, and the Soga stepped into their place, only to be succeeded
in turn by the Fujiwara. These last, earnest disciples of Chinese
civilization, looked down on the soldier, and delegated to him alone
the use of brute force and control of the criminal classes, reserving
for themselves the management of civil government and the pursuit of
literature, and even leaving politics and law in the hands of the
schoolmen.

In these circumstances the military families of Minamoto (Gen) and
Taira (Hei), performing the duties of guards and of police, gradually
acquired influence; were trusted by the Court on all occasio