CHAPTER XXVII

THE BUDDHISM OF THE MUROMACHI AGE

THE Hojo Regents fell in the year 1333. Their fall was due to many causes, and had been in preparation for some time. The immediate and ultimate cause was the conjunction of a real, substantial grievance, which alienated the sympathies of the people, with the fact that the Imperial throne was at the time occupied by an Emperor of exceptional ability--the ill-starred Go-daigo (= Daigo II.).

The grievance was caused by the rapacity of Nagasaki , the Minister of Hojo Takatoki, the last of the Kamakura Regents. Takatoki was a very different personage from the Saimyoji who resigned his high office in order to study the wants of his people, or the Tokimune who organized the forces which beat off the Mongols. He was a weak, vain man, engrossed in intrigues against Shoguns, Barons, and Prelates, who found no time to attend to the details of administration. He left all such disagreeable matters to Nagasaki Tadasuke, and the minister made a profit of the free hand which his master gave him, by selling rice to the people during a period of famine at very high prices. What made this enormity more enormous was that the rice had been stored by the earlier Regents for the purposes of free distribution in time of need.

The consequent unpopularity of the Regent gave

[paragraph continues] Godaigo an opportunity for restoring the Imperial House to its rightful position in the country. The design was not accomplished at one blow; but Go-daigo had staunch supporters in Kusunoki Masashige, Nitta Yoshisada, Ashikaga Takauji, and other loyalist knights and barons, and with their help Kamakura was destroyed, and the Hojo Regency overthrown. It had been an unconstitutional usurpation from the very beginning, but it had done good service to the country in the earlier years of its existence.

Unfortunately, however, Go-daigo speedily offended his chief supporters by the grants of land and fiefs, which he made to unworthy parasites and favourites, instead of to the warriors whose arms had placed the reins of administrative power in his hands. The men who had, as it were, made the Emperor, felt, perhaps, that they could also unmake him, and Ashikaga Takauji, seeing an opportunity for turning the discontent against the Emperor to his own advantage, raised the standard of revolt, and proclaimed himself Shogun in the place of Moriyoshi, the newly appointed Shogun of the Imperial Blood, whose scandalously luxurious life had speedily shown him to be unfit for his office.

The Civil War which was thus commenced was a terrible one for Japan. It led to the setting up of a Rival Dynasty, intended to supplant the House of Go-daigo,