Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/162

 even greater popularity than the master himself, and his discourses always attracted crowds. There was no element of erudition in these lectures. Among those that flocked to hear them many could not read or write, and would have been quite unable to comprehend any abstruse doctrine. Scholars ridiculed this novel departure, but the authorities did not interfere, and there can be no question that the people derived great benefit. They had long been accustomed to listen to Buddhist sermons, which are, perhaps, the most practically useful form of religious discourse preached by the exponents of any creed. But the lectures of Baigan and Tōan raised the "commoner" into the intellectual atmosphere of the samurai, and stimulated his reasoning faculties to an unprecedented extent. Nakazawa Dōjin, a pupil of Baigan and Tōan, was the first (1789) to deliver such lectures in Yedo, and it is recorded that his teaching won many converts, not among the common people only, but also among the nobles.

The schools spoken of above were for the instruction of youths, from the age of fifteen upward, who had already received an elementary education. Such youths might have been difficult to find in any numbers prior to Tokugawa times. For throughout the first four centuries of the Military epoch, 1192 to 1590, children's education was greatly neglected. Scarcely any persons were competent to teach the reading of