EMPEROR OF JAPAN.
But the last hundred years had wrought a considerable change. Nominally the profession of arms was still the only one a gentleman could engage in; but literature, art, and the polite accomplishments had begun to claim a fair share of attention. The strong government of the Hōjō at Kamakura had improved laws and regulations and caused them to be respected, thus imbuing the rising generation with a sense of order and obedience to which their forefathers had been strangers. It was a salutary discipline, which naturally found its counterpart in a certain self-restraint introduced into the social relations of life, into the intercourse between man and man. Every samurai was still ready and eager to serve actively as a soldier; but in the absence of such opportunities he tried to show his aptitude for other pursuits. Many descendants of the royal house of Fujiwara more especially distinguished themselves in civil employment.
The centre of the whole movement—from whence, indeed, it derived its principal support—was the Mikado’s court at Kiyoto. Soon after the close of the great struggle which saw the Minamoto family firmly established as Shôguns, the songs of the high priest Tiun, son of the Kuwambaku Tadamichi, first officer in the above court, had taken a powerful hold on the public mind. As early as the year 1232 the issuing and editing of a full and complete edition of all the valuable lyric and heroic poetry then extant had been intrusted to Fujiwara no Sada by the Mikado himself. In the succeeding reign the brother of the governing Emperor, the high priest Yen Man In,—a man equally noted for erudition, for courtly manners, and for the charm of his conversation, who, although ordained for the church, exercised, by his talent for government, supreme influence at the court,—greatly quickened the advancement of learning, of letters, and of the polite accomplishments.
By the middle of the century the intellectual current had filtered into and permeated the purely military court at Kamakura, where the reigning Shôgun had called upon Kiyowara, a celebrated sage, to review and explain to him the well-known Chinese work Tei Wan (or “Guide for the Conduct of Rulers and Sovereigns”), and Tokiyori, lord of Sagami, his first minister,—a man of the type of Yen Man In, who by mere force of character and capacity was the virtual ruler of the Shôgun’s court, as much as the other was at the imperial court,—himself copied and commented upon the work Tei Kuwan Sei Yo (“Study of the Principles of Politics”), publishing it in his own name. In the beginning of the fourteenth century the effects of this regeneration had made themselves felt more or less in every part of Japan, and although military prowess was held in as high esteem as ever, its value was greatly enhanced if added to it was some degree of polite learning, dignity, and courtliness of manner. Ono ga Sawa himself attached great value to these latter qualities, and the action of the lord of Sendai’s ambassador in ignoring and adroitly turning into a sort of joke what would certainly not have tended to the other’s credit if treated in earnest, caused him a feeling of satisfaction which he was generous enough not to conceal. The mission was a complete success, an early consummation of the marriage was agreed upon, and the ambassador on his return was loaded with presents.
EMPRESS OF JAPAN.