Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/166

 agement of the study of Chinese philosophy. Iyeyasu, as has been shown above, did not possess sufficient knowledge of that philosophy to forecast the effect of its adoption, and similarly his grandson, Kōmon of Mito, swayed by the spirit of pure studentship, discerned nothing of the goal to which the new researches and speculations must lead the literati of his fief. He and they, for the sake of history and without any thought of politics, undertook a retrospect of Japanese annals, and their frank analysis, having been embodied in a book called Dai-Nihon Shi, furnished conclusive proof that the Emperor was the prime source of administrative authority, and that its independent exercise by the Shōgun must be regarded as a usurpation. They did not attempt to give practical effect to their discoveries. The era was essentially academical. But its galaxy of scholars projected into the future a light which burned with growing force in each succeeding generation, and ultimately burst into flames that consumed feudalism and the Shogunate. No such result suggested itself to the men of the time, however. Not until the lapse of several years had furnished a true perspective did it become possible to perceive that all these currents of unwonted thought—the democracy of Masatoshi, the anti-feudalism of Banzan, the Shintō revival of Masayuki and Ansai, the imperialism of Kōmon, the Confucianism of Fujiwara Tōru and Hayashi Doshin—flowed