issolute, their
monasteries were fortresses, in which only the great political gamblers,
and not the oppressed people, found comfort and help. Millions of once
fertile acres had been abandoned or left waste. The destruction of
libraries, books and records is something awful to contemplate; and "the
times of Ashikaga" make a wilderness for the scapegoat of chronology.
Ki[=o]to, the sacred capital, had been again and again plundered and
burnt. Those who might be tempted to live in the city amid the ruins,
ran the risk of fire, murder, or starvation. Kamakura, once the
Sh[=o]-gun's seat of authority, was, a level waste of ashes.

Even China, Annam and Korea suffered from the practical dissolution of
society in the island empire; for Japanese pirates ravaged their coasts
to steal, burn and kill. Even as for centuries in Europe, Christian
churches echoed with that prayer in the litanies: "From the fury of the
Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us," so, along large parts of the deserted
coasts of Chinese Asia, the wretched inhabitants besought their gods to
avenge them against the "Wojen." To this day in parts of Honan in China,
mothers frighten their children and warn them to sleep by the fearful
words "The Japanese are coming."

First Coming of Europeans.

This time, then, was that of darkest Japan. Yet the people who lived in
darkness saw great light, and to them that dwelt in the shadow of death,
light sprang up.

When Pope Alexander VI. bisected the known world, assigning the western
half, including America to Spain, and the eastern half, including Asia
and its outlying archipelagos to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and
fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese.
In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon
was reached. Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been
driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island
called Tanegashima. This name among the country folks is still
synonymous with guns and pistols, for Pinto introduced fire-arms, and
powder.[3]

During six months spent by the "mendacious" Pinto on the island, the
imitative people made no fewer than six hundred match-locks or
arquebuses. Clearing twelve hundred per cent. on their cargo, the three
Portuguese loaded with presents, returned to China. Their countrymen
quickly flocked to this new market, and soon the beginnings of regular
trade with Portugal were inaugurated. On