Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/115

 triarchal administration, only the premier—Soga no Iname—espoused the cause of the imported creed. The rest declared that its adoption would insult the hundred and eighty deities, celestial and terrestrial, who already had the country under their tutelage. The Emperor compromised by entrusting the image and the sutras (Buddhist canons) to Iname and postponing the final question of adoption or rejection.

There has never been any attempt to explain why the Soga family embraced Buddhism with such zealous constancy. Iname and his son and successor, Umako, gave to it equally steadfast support in the face of fierce opposition. Twice the Soga mansion was destroyed by the people, who believed that the conversion of the Prime Minister's house into a temple for strange deities had brought pestilence upon the land. Other excesses were committed. A nun was stripped and publicly whipped, and the image of the Buddha was thrown into a river. But these episodes did not shake the faith of the Soga family.

Soon, too, a powerful coadjutor appeared in the person of an imperial prince, Shotoku, whose figure justly occupies the frontispiece in the first chapter of Japan's moral and intellectual progress. Chiefly through his ardent patronage and extraordinary fervour of piety Buddhism became the creed of the Court and of the nobility.

Military strength also contributed aid. A statement frequently made with all the assurance