before a large upright sheet of paper. He holds a brush-pen in his
mouth, and one in each of his hands and feet, all moving at once.[15]
Favorite portions of the Buddhist scriptures were indeed so rapidly
multiplied in Japan in the ninth century, as to suggest the idea, that,
even in this early age, block printing had been imported from China,
whence also afterward, in all probability, it was exported into Europe
before the days of Gutenberg and Coster.[16] The popular imagination,
however, was more easily moved on seeing five brushes kept at work and
all at once by the muscles in the fingers, toes and mouth of one man.
Yet, had his life lasted six hundred years instead of sixty, he could
hardly have graven all the images, scaled all the mountain peaks,
confounded all the sceptics, wrought all the miracles and performed all
the other feats with which he is popularly credited.[17]

K[=o]b[=o] Irenicon.

K[=o]b[=o] indeed was both the Philo and Euhemerus of Japan, plus a
large amount of priestly cunning and what his enemies insist was
dishonesty and forgery. Soon after his return from China, he went to the
temples of Ise,[18] the most holy place of Shint[=o].[19] Taking a
reverent attitude before the chief shrine, that of Toko Uke Bime no Kami
or Abundant-Food-Lady-God, or the deified Earth as the producer of food
and the upholder of all things upon its surface, the suppliant waited
patiently while fasting and praying.

In this, K[=o]b[=o] did but follow out the ordinary Shint[=o] plan for
securing god-possession and obtaining revelation; that is, by starving
both the stomach and the brain.[20] After a week's waiting he obtained
the vision. The Food-possessing Goddess revealed to him the yoke (or
Yoga) by which he could harness the native and the imported gods to the
chariot of victorious Buddhism. She manifested herself to him and
delivered the revelation on which his system is founded, and which,
briefly stated, is as follows:

All the Shint[=o] deities are avatars or incarnations of Buddha. They
were manifestations to the Japanese, before Gautama had become the
enlightened one, or the jewel in the lotus, and before the holy wheel of
the law or the sacred shastras and sutras had reached the island empire.
Further more, provision was made for the future gods and deified holy
ones, who were to proceed from the loins of the Mikado, or other
Japanese fathers, according to the saying of Buddha which is thus
recorded