Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/51

 At the close of this long struggle Kyōtō lay almost in ruins. Temples, palaces, and dwellings had been razed to the ground, and the people were so demoralised that robbery and gambling became their chief occupations. Yet this was only the prelude to a wider contest of still more promiscuous nature. The incidents of the time recall the scenes of tumult and confusion produced upon a theatrical stage when "excursions and alarums" are prescribed by the playwright to create an impression of universal and bewildering unrest. The details cannot be reduced to any easily intelligible shape. They are nothing more than the vicissitudes that befell lord after lord, family after family, in an universal assault of arms. Nobody took any thought about the Imperial Court. Resources to bury an Emperor or to crown him had to be begged or borrowed, and even the necessaries of daily life could scarcely be procured by the sovereign's household. The Shōgun himself was an object of almost equal neglect. If splendid examples of fealty and heroism illumine the miserable story, its gloom is deepened by as many instances of treachery and self-seeking. Retainers did not hesitate to murder their lords; lieutenants to mutiny against their captains. The probable reward of treason become the commonest measure of fidelity. Short intervals of peace and rest varied the long battle, and once, under the rule of a Nagato chieftain, Ouchi Yoshitoki, Kyōtō