I have already, in a previous chapter, referred to the social miseries of the country during the period of which many writers speak as though it had been the golden age of Japanese history. With equal justice might we speak of the reign of King Stephen, or the long-protracted miseries of the Wars of the Roses, as having been the golden age of our English history. The miseries of the people, naturally passed over by chroniclers whose eyes were concentrated upon the precincts of the Imperial Palace, were truly great. They cannot have been anything else.

I have also spoken, in my last chapter, of the pathetic figure of the Odori-nembutsu, the poor, half-witted, princely priest, dancing his way through the country, with the monotonous nembutsu constantly upon his lips, in the hope

of thus awakening in the hearts of the people that sense of belief in a Power higher than ourselves, which is man's strongest rock of confidence in the hour of misery and sorrow. This is the place for me to stop my narration, and to give my readers a digression (I fear it may be a long one) on the subject of the nembutsu.

Nembutsu means "thinking of Buddha"; the Nembutsu to which I refer is the popular Japanese contraction for the phrase Namu-Amida-butsu, which is half Sanskrit and half Chinese, and means "Glory to the Buddha Amitabha," the Buddha to whom I have already so often referred in the course of this present work.

Amitabha, "the Buddha of Infinite Light," or Amitayus, "the Buddha of Infinite Life" (the two are identical in Japan, though, I believe, treated as distinct personages in Thibet), is preached in certain Sutras of

the Mahayana, to which I have already had occasion to refer, as the Supreme Being of a certain section of Buddhists. Amida is without beginning and without end, all love, wisdom, benevolence, and power. He is the Father of all the world and of all sentient beings. In

ages incalculably remote he appeared in various forms among men, all his incarnations being to bring salvation to mankind. In his last incarnation he appeared as the Bhikshu Hozo (Dharmakara), and as such registered a vow that should the Perfect Consummation of the Buddhahood ever be in his power, he would not accept deliverance unless such deliverance should also mean the salvation of suffering mankind. In fulfilment of that vow he endured much suffering and many agonies, but he triumphed in the end, and the fruit of his labours has been the opening of a Paradise in a Pure Land, into which all may enter who call upon his name with Faith. Other Buddhas also have spoken of Paradise; Amida alone can speak of it as my Paradise.