Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/208

JAPAN funds were never spared for these purposes, or for the building of splendid temples. The Fujiwara family behaved as though it considered that its fortunes depended solely on the intervention of the priests, and the example thus set by the greatest nobles in the land did not fail to produce its effect on their inferiors. This delirious devotion to Buddhism reached its acme at the close of the eleventh century, when, during a reign of only thirteen years, the Emperor Shirakawa caused 5,470 religious pictures to be painted, ordered the casting of one hundred and twenty-seven statues of Buddha, each sixteen feet high, of 3,150 life-size images and of 2,930 smaller idols, and constructed twenty-one large temples and 446,630 religious edifices of various kinds. This same sovereign, in obedience to the Buddhist commandment against taking life, issued an edict prohibiting the slaughter of any living thing, ordering the release of all hawks, falcons, and other caged birds, forbidding the presentation of fish to the Palace, and requiring the destruction of all fishing nets, which last mandate was carried out in 8,800 cases. It became customary also to have services performed at temples on festive occasions. The enormous expense thus entailed may be inferred from the fact that, when a man reached the age of forty, he purchased a further span of life and happiness by causing masses to be said in forty temples; at fifty he enlisted the services of fifty temples; and 182