ABSTRACT
I n 1603 Ieyasu founded the Tokugawa Shogunate which lasted until 1868. The isolation of Japan during this period (though not until Ieyasu had ceased to rule) is well-known. Japanese were forbidden to leave the country and foreigners to enter it, and these rigorous proscriptions were surprisingly well observed. Isolation was nothing new to the Japanese and this long period of peace and seclusion was of value, for without it they would hardly have been able to preserve their individuality when subsequently invaded by the horrors of European and American civilization. At first it was also a healthy change for Buddhism after the irreligious militarism of the previous century. We hear no more of monastic and priestly troops. The strongholds of Hieizan, Osaka, and Negoro had been destroyed. The monasteries of the first mentioned were restored by Ieyasu but as comparatively modest and unfortified buildings. So, too, the Hongwanji temple erected by the Shinshu at Kyoto after their castle at Osaka had been burned, though magnificent, was a purely ecclesiastical foundation. But subsequently in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Buddhism sank into a torpid condition, from which it was only awakened by the somewhat active measures taken against it in 1868.
