Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/195

 managed all matters connected with worship, and stood at the head of the public offices. From the establishment of the capital at Kyōtō, however, the influence of Buddhism began to be felt, not in open opposition, but rather as an overshadowing and absorbing system, which, by appropriating the chief traditional features of its rival, gradually deprived the latter of individuality and therefore of power. Still the imported faith remained long without State recognition. Its priesthood, though growing in wealth and number, and practically autocratic within the domain of religious affairs, enjoyed no official exemptions or privileges. Their hierarchs were appointed without reference to the secular authorities, and were not included in the roll of official grades. Under the Tokugawa Government a change took place. Following the example of their great predecessor, Iyeyasu, the Shōguns ruling in Yedo spared no pains to cement their relations with Buddhism by extending to it ample patronage and support. Yet, even while striking monuments of that munificence grew up in the splendid mausolea at Shiba, Uyeno, and Nikko, the political status of the creed might have remained unaltered had not the advent of Christianity and the Government's crusade against it led the third Shōgun, Iyemitsu, to conceive the necessity of establishing a certain measure of State control over religious affairs. Regulations were then (early in the seventeenth century) issued