name who had so much to do with arousing the people to the menace of the Mongol invasion - all these have had a remarkable influence upon Japan. There is little direct contact with Western religion to account for these and other interesting parallels, but the wind of the Spirit, which bloweth as it listeth, was surely present in both continents to make their history one. So, in conclusion, was it with literature. If we pass for a moment from the thirteenth century to its successor, it may be taken for granted that the lover of Geoffrey Chaucer will love no less that fine flower of Kamakura Buddhism who, in his quiet hermitage, produced one of the great little books of the Far East, the Tzuredzure Gusa (Random Thoughts) of Kenko.1 The Western poet is the more virile and optimistic, but we shall surely find in Kenko, as in Chaucer, that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin and binds East and West together more firmly than could the cement of human blood employed by Jenghiz Khan.

It is fitting too, while we have Chaucer in our minds, to recall that the very materials which he and his fellow poets transmuted into the pure gold of literature were materials which travelers and merchants along the great highways of Asia made the common property of mankind. So fitly did the English poet declare to the merchants of his day, "Ye are fathers of tales and tidings both of peace and strife."

1 Translated by G. B. Sansom, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1911.

CHAPTER VI

BETWEEN THE NEW AND THE OLD

In the present chapter we begin to realize our position as at the end of a great period of Asiatic history. In one direction contact with the West is almost destroyed. It would seem that Europe and Asia are to be separated as never before in their history. But at the same time we discover the beginning of an entirely new epoch, in the course of which that contact is to be restored. We have come to a critical moment when our story passes in a manner quite unmistakable from ancient to modern history. We move from a world contracting itself more and more through circumstances we shall presently describe — to a world enlarging itself beyond all expectation of earlier ages. This enlargement begins with the discovery of America, but it involves also the rediscovery of Asia. And the end is not yet.

Before we come to the stirring story of the opening of the sea routes to the Far East, it will be necessary to make some brief survey of the story of Asia itself from the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century. This will the better enable us to comprehend the magnitude of the revolution which the sixteenth century was to bring about.

In China, as already mentioned, the Mongols failed to hold their own, and were expelled in 1368 by a new native dynasty known as the Ming, or "illustrious," dynasty. The story of the ex-Buddhist monk, turned bandit, who, almost without appreciating the magnitude of his success, drove the foreigners out of China and set up the Dragon Throne at Nanking, is a

romance which no visitor to the southern capital in sight of the Purple Mountain,' or making pilgrimage to the tomb of Hung Wu, is likely to forget. The Beggar King, as Hung Wu is often called, soon restored everything Chinese which had been temporarily obscured. He compelled the use of Chinese dress, introduced the eight-legged essay into the examination system, reëstablished schools and libraries, and encouraged the arts and industries. He was liberal to his old friends the Buddhist priests, and also to the common soldiers, whom he is said to have provided with fur coats for their winter campaigns. Altogether his thirty years' reign was a very prosperous one. On Hung Wu's death, a fourth son, the Duke of Yen, usurped the throne from a grandson whom the late Emperor had designated as his heir. The usurper, known as Yung Lo,3 was an able though unscrupulous ruler, chiefly famous for his desertion of Nanking in a fit of temper and return to Peking, which became again the capital. Most of the glory of Peking, such as the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and other things which make the northern capital attractive to strangers, are the work of Yung Lo.

Although the Mings had secured with ease the turning back of China's stream of life into the old channels, it soon became painfully evident that the "mandate of Heaven" was slipping from their incompetent grasp. For much of the decadence. eunuch rule must be held responsible. But the country was shaken also by the arrival of the foreigners in the south, in the persons of the first Portuguese sailors to find a Chinese port. Some years later, when the dynasty was already tottering to its fall, the Manchus were making raids across the frontier and anxiously awaiting their chance to invade in force.

1 So called because of the many colors seen, or imagined, in certain aspects. The colors are said to be due to treasure in the heart of the mountain.

way.

The wên chang, so called because divided into eight heads in a very artificial

1403-25 A.D.

4 In 1516.

It should here be said that the Manchus 1 were a tribe of Tatars, not essentially differing from the Chins whose conquest of the north had preceded the Mongol invasion. In the middle of the sixteenth century a great leader was born, who was destined to give the Manchus a larger place in history than they had hitherto held. Nurhachu,2 who possessed himself of the present three provinces of Manchuria, fixed his capital at Mukden, and began to cast covetous eyes upon the territory to the south. He invited conflict by promulgating the famous document of the Seven Hates, in which the main grounds of his quarrel with China were vigorously set forth. A copy of the document, moreover, was burned, in order to file it for reference with the ancestors. Nurhachu would undoubtedly at this time have invaded China, but his death in 1627 frustrated the desire. The fall of the Mings, it is to be remembered, came about not through the attack of a foreign enemy, but from the rebellion of the one-eyed bandit, Li Tze-ch'êng, who attacked Peking in 1644 and endeavored to set up what he called the Great Obedient dynasty. The last of the Mings consulted the lots in the temple and found only occasion for despair. Visitors to Peking will not fail to note the prominent hill within the Forbidden City called Mei-shan, or Coal Hill. Here it was that the desperate Emperor committed suicide, after writing upon the lapel of his robe an edict to this effect: "Do with my body as you will, but spare the people." It was when the news of this tragedy reached Wu San-kwei, the commanderin-chief of the Chinese army, that he gave the word which admitted the Manchu into the heritage of the sons of Han. It is still a matter vigorously debated whether Wu is to be considered the first of patriots or the most despicable of traitors. 1 The word signifies "pure." Earlier names for the Manchus are Nu-chens and Nu-chihs.

2 Nurhachu's reign-name is T'ien Ming.

Mukden is known by the Chinese as Fêng-t'ien.

4 Or Ta Shun.

5 So called because of the belief that Yung Lo had concealed in the hill a vast supply of coal for an emergency.

• Wu died a rebel against the Manchu power in 1678.

As for Japan during all these years, events of the greatest moment had been taking place. The burning of Kamakura in 13331 had destroyed the power of the Hojo Regents, and was intended to bring about the restoration of the emperors to their ancient status; but the restored Emperor Go Daigo2 was not wise enough to use his opportunity to good effect. The result was that the restoration lasted only two years, yet even this was long enough to prove the incapacity of the monarch for whom patriots had made prodigious sacrifices. Two men especially, Nitta Yoshisada and Kusonoki Masashige, were put in a position from which self-destruction, in one form or another, according to the ethics of the time, — seemed the only outlet. On the other hand, the ambitious scion of the Minamoto house, Ashikaga Takauji, who, unworthy as he was, had been specially favored by Go Daigo, repaid his patron by founding a new line of Shoguns. The Ashikaga Shogunate lasted actually from 1335 to 1573, a period of nearly two hundred and fifty years. During this time Japan was governed mainly by the Ashikaga Code, or the house-laws of that particular clan. It was a period of luxury and extravagance on the part of the Shoguns, of poverty and sometimes actual want on the part of the emperors, and of desperate misery and frequent famine on the part of the people. The extravagance of the Ashikagas, as in the building of the Gold and Silver Pavilions 5 at Kyoto, led also to an ignominious endeavor to borrow money from China. This act was never forgiven by the Japanese people, since the attempt to secure a loan was coincident with an apparent willingness to accept for Japan the position of a nation subject to the Middle Kingdom.

4

As in the case of the Ming dynasty in China, so in the case

1 By Nitta Yoshisada.

2 The prefix "Go" in the name of an emperor signifies "after." Go Daigo is therefore the After Daigo, or Daigo the Second.

See "The Ashikaga Code," J. C. Hall, Trans. As. Soc. Jap.

4 One emperor is said to have supported himself by writing and selling autographs. 5 The Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku-ji, was erected in 1417 by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. The Silver Pavilion was built by Yoshimasa in 1474.