id the foreign nations know their duty
they would at once hasten to pay tribute to the Son of Heaven in
Ki[=o]to.

It is needless here to dwell upon the tremendous power of Shint[=o] as a
political system, especially when wedded with the forces, generated in
the minds of the educated Japanese by modern Confucianism. The Chinese
ethical system, expanded into a philosophy as fascinating as the English
materialistic school of to-day, entered Japan contemporaneously with the
revival of the Way of the Gods and of native learning. In full rampancy
of their vigor, in the seventeenth century these two systems began that
generation of national energy, which in the eighteenth century was
consolidated and which in the nineteenth century, though unknown and
unsuspected by Europeans or Americans, was all ready for phenomenal
manifestation and tremendous eruption, even while Perry's fleet was
bearing the olive branch to Japan. As we all know, this consolidation of
forces from the inside, on meeting, not with collision but with union,
the exterior forces of western civilization, formed a resultant in the
energies which have made New Japan.

The Great Purification of 1870.

In 1870, with the Sh[=o]gun of Yedo deposed, the dual system abolished,
feudalism in its last gasp and Shint[=o] in full political power, with
the ancient council of the gods (Jin Gi Kuan) once more established, and
purified Shint[=o] again the religion of state, thousands of Riy[=o]bu
Shint[=o] temples were at once purged of all their Buddhist ornaments,
furniture, ritual, and everything that might remind the Japanese of
foreign elements. Then began, logically and actually, the persecution of
those Christians, who through all the centuries of repression and
prohibition had continued their existence, and kept their faith however
mixed and clouded. Theoretically, ancient belief was re-established, yet
it was both physically and morally impossible to return wholly to the
baldness and austere simplicity of those early ages, in which art and
literature were unknown. For a while it seemed as though the miracle
would be performed, of turning back the dial of the ages and of plunging
Japan into the fountain of her own youth. Propaganda was instituted, and
the attempts made to convert all the Japanese to Shint[=o] tenets and
practice were for a while more lively than edifying; but the scheme was
on the whole a splendid failure, and bitter disappointment succeeded the