"MANO YOSHIMATSU."

IV

It is not true that Old Japan is rapidly disappearing. It cannot disappear within at least another hundred years; perhaps it will never entirely disappear. Many curious and beautiful things have vanished; but Old Japan survives in art, in faith, in customs and habits, in the hearts and the homes of the people: it may be found everywhere by those who know how to look for it,--and nowhere more easily than in this great city of ship-building, watch-making, beer-brewing, and cotton-spinning. I confess that I went to Osaka chiefly to see the temples, especially the famous Tennoji.

Tennoji, or, more correctly, Shitennoji, the Temple of the Four Deva Kings,[1] is one of

[1. They defend the four quarters of the world. In Japanese their names are Jikoku, Komoku, Zocho, Bishamon (or Tamon);--in Sanscrit, Dhritarashtra, Virupaksha, Virudhaka, and Vaisravana,--the Kuvera of Brahmanism.]

the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan. It was founded early in the seventh century by Umayado-no-Oji, now called Shotoku Taishi, son of the Emperor Yomei, and prince regent under the Empress Suiko (572-621 A. D.). He has been well called the Constantine of Japanese Buddhism; for he decided the future of Buddhism in the Empire, first by a great battle in the reign of his father, Yomei Tenno, and afterwards by legal enactments and by the patronage of Buddhist learning. The previous Emperor, Bitatsu Tenno, had permitted the preaching of Buddhism by Korean priests, and had built two temples. But under the reign of Yomei, one Mononobe no Moriya, a powerful noble, and a bitter opponent of the foreign religion, rebelled against such tolerance, burned the temples, banished the priests, and offered battle to the imperial forces. These, tradition says, were being driven back when the Emperor's son--then only sixteen years old--vowed if victorious to build a temple to the Four Deva Kings. Instantly at his side in the fight there towered a colossal figure from before whose face the powers of Moriya broke and fled away. The rout of the

enemies of Buddhism was complete and terrible; and the young prince, thereafter called Shotoku Taishi, kept his vow. The temple of Tennoji was built, and the wealth of the rebel Moriya applied to its maintenance. In that part of it called the Kondo, or Hall of Gold, Shotoku Taishi enshrined the first Buddhist image ever brought to Japan,--a figure of Nyo-i-rin Kwannon, or Kwannon of the Circle of Wishes,--and the statue is still shown to the public on certain festival days. The tremendous apparition in the battle is said to have been one of the Four Kings,--Bishamon (Vaisravana), worshiped to this day as a giver of victory.