Note 254 — Chapter X
Reading edition
"King Me succeeded his brother (as Emperor of Japan) in the year of Synmu, of Christ 540.
"He was a very religious prince, and very favourably inclined to the foreign pagan Budsdo worship, which during his reign spread with great success in Japan, insomuch that the emperor himself caused several temples to be built to foreign idols, and ordered the idol of Buds, or Fotoge, to be carved in Fakkusai, that is in China.
"My Japanese author mentions what follows, as something very remarkable, and says, that it happened in the thirty-first year of his reign, and contributed very much to the advancement of the Budsdo religion. About a thousand years ago, says my author, there was in "Tsiutensiku (that is the middle Tensiku, whereby must be understood the country of the Malabarians and the coast of Coromandel in India) an eminent fotoke called Mokuren, a disciple of Siaka. About the same time the doctrine of Jambaden Gonna Niorai (that is, Amida the great god and patron of departed souls) was brought over into China, or Fakkusai, and spread into the neighbouring countries. This doctrine, continues he, did now manifest itself also in Tsinokuni, or Japan, at a place called Naniwa, where the idol of Amida appeared at the entry of a pond, environed with golden rays, nobody knowing how it was conveyed thither. The pious emperor, in memory of this miraculous event, instituted the first Nengo in Japan, and called it Konquo. The idol itself was by Tondo Josijmitz, a prince of great courage and piety, carried into the country of Sinano, and placed in the temple of Sinquosi, where it afterwards, by the name of Sinquosi Norai (that is, the Norai or Amida of Sinquosi) wrought many great miracles, which made that temple famous all over the empire. Thus far my Japanese author. He was succeeded by his son, Fit Atzu, or Fint Atz, in the year of Synmu 1232, of Christ 572. My author makes no mention of his age, but sets down the following remarkable events which happened during his reign.
"In the third year of his reign, on the first day of the first month, was born at the emperor's court Sotoktais, the great apostle of the Japanese. His birth was preceded and attended with several remarkable circumstances.
"The idol worship in general increased greatly in Japan during the emperor's reign. Abundance of idols, and idol carvers, and priests, came from several countries beyond sea.
"In the eighth year of his reign the first image of Siaka was brought over from beyond sea, and carried to Nara into the temple of Kobusi, where it is still kept in great veneration, possessed of the chief and most eminent place in that temple.
"In the fourteenth year of his reign one Moria, a great antagonist and professed enemy of Sotoktais, occasioned great troubles and religious dissensions in the empire. He bore a mortal hatred to all the Fotoge or idols of the country, which he took out of the temples and burnt wherever he could come at them: but within two years time his enemies got the better of him, for he was overcome, and paid with his life for his presumptuous enterprise. It is added, that having thrown the ashes of the idols, which he had burnt, into a lake, there arose suddenly a most dreadful storm of thunder, lightning, and rain."—History of Japan by Kempfer, vol. i. page 167.
It is remarkable, that a peculiar people seem to have traversed Mexico in the following century, and according to Humboldt in like manner to have left behind them traces of cultivation and civilization. "The Toultecs," says that eminent author, "appeared first in 648, the Chichimecs in 1170, the Nahualtics in 1178, and the Aztecs in 1196. The Toultecs introduced the cultivation of maize and cotton; they built cities, made roads, and constructed those great pyramids which are yet admired, and of which the faces are very accurately laid out. They knew the use of hieroglyphical paintings; they could found metals and cut the hardest stones, and they had a solar year more perfect than that of the Greeks or Romans. The form of their government indicated that they were the descendants of a people, who had experienced great vicissitudes in their social state." "But where," asks Humboldt, "is the source of that cultivation; where is the country from which the Toultecs and Mexicans issued?"—Humboldt's Political Essay on New Spain.