Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/164

 ruled; that the Emperor was the true head of the nation, the Shōgun only his representative; that official attempts to extirpate Christianity were futile, for, if a true creed, it would survive all opposition, and, if false, it would die a natural death; that Buddhism was destined to be a source of national trouble, and that its priests would ultimately become vagrant thieves; and that the samurai were virtually bandits, subsisting on unearned salaries and regarding the Emperor as a mere effigy, the people as dirt.

At the time when these theories were proclaimed by Banzan, any profession of Christianity involved terrible punishment; every unit of the nation had to be inscribed on the nominal roll of some Buddhist temple and to be prepared to bear public testimony to anti-Christian sentiment by trampling upon a picture of the Cross; the Buddhists bathed in the favour of the two Courts; the Shōgun's power overshadowed the whole Empire, and the samurai, of whom Banzan himself was one, had lost nothing of their old prestige nor forfeited anything of their exclusive privileges. Courage to stand in open and flagrant opposition to such conditions savours of fanaticism. But Banzan had nothing of the fanatic. In Okayama where, as chief factor, he wielded large powers, his irrigation works, his conservation of forests, his encouragement of general education, and his suppression of priestly abuses furnished a striking object lesson in the