dings, burnt to death nearly all its
inmates, including women, confiscated its estates, and built, for
purposes of future prevention, a castle at Sakamoto, which was placed
under the command of Akechi Mitsuhide. When, in after years, this
same Mitsuhide treacherously compassed Nobunaga's death, men said
that the opening of the Demon's Gate had entailed its due penalty.

OTHER PRIESTLY DISTURBANCES

It was not in Settsu and at Hiei-zan only that the Buddhist soldiers
turned their weapons against Nobunaga. The Asai sept received
assistance from no less than ten temples in Omi; the Asakura family
had the ranks of its soldiers recruited from monasteries in Echizen
and Kaga; the Saito clan received aid from the bonzes in Izumi and
Iga, and the priests of the great temple Hongwan-ji in Osaka were in
friendly communication with the Mori sept in the west, with the
Takeda in Kai, and with the Hojo in Sagami. In fact, the difficulties
encountered by Nobunaga in his attempts to bring the whole empire
under the affective sway of the Throne were incalculably accentuated
by the hostility of the great Shin sect of Buddhism. He dealt
effectually with all except the monastery at Ishi-yama in Osaka. The
immense natural strength of the position and the strategical ability
of its lord-abbot, Kosa, enabled it to defy all the assaults of the
Owari chief, and it was not until 1588--six years after Nobunaga's
death--that, through the intervention of the Emperor, peace was
finally restored. After eleven years of almost incessant struggle,
his Majesty's envoy, Konoe Sakihisa, succeeded in inducing the Ikko
priests to lay down their arms. It will be presently seen that the
inveterate hostility shown by the Buddhists to Nobunaga was largely
responsible for his favourable attitude towards Christianity.

THE CASTLE OF AZUCHI

The lightness and flimsiness of construction in Japanese houses has
been noted already several times. Even though there was continual
warfare in the provinces of family against family, the character of
the fighting and of the weapons used was such that there was little
need for the building of elaborate defenses, and there was
practically nothing worthy the name of a castle. Watch-towers had
been built and roofs and walls were sometimes protected by putting
nails in the building points outward,--a sort of chevaux de frise.
But a system of outlying defenses, ditch, earthen wall and wooden
palisade, was all that was used so