hemently, however. He calls them "vicious and
ferocious," Those who take the tonsure, he says, number from two to
three thousand yearly, and about one-half of that total are wicked
men--low fellows who, desiring to evade taxation and forced labour,
have shaved their heads and donned priests vestments, aggregate
two-thirds of the population. They marry, eat animal food, practise
robbery, and carry on coining operations without any fear of
punishment. If a provincial governor attempts to restrain them, they
flock together and have recourse to violence. It was by bandits under
the command of wicked priests that Fujiwara Tokiyoshi, governor of
Aki, and Tachibana Kinkado, governor of Kii, were waylaid and
plundered.

As for the soldiers of the guards, instead of taking their monthly
term of duty at the palace, they are scattered over the country, and
being strong and audacious, they treat the people violently and the
provincial governors with contumacy, sometimes even forming leagues
to rob the latter and escaping to the capital when they are hard
pressed. (These guardsmen had arms and horses of their own and called
themselves bushi, a term destined to have wide vogue in Japan.) It is
interesting to note that they make their historical debut thus
unfavourably introduced. Miyoshi Kiyotsura says that instead of being
"metropolitan tigers" to guard the palace, they were "rural wolves"
to despoil the provinces.

APPRECIATIONS OF THE MIYOSHI MEMORIAL

This celebrated document consisted of twelve articles and contained
five thousand ideographs, so that nothing was wanting in the matter
of voluminousness. The writer did not confine himself to enumerating
abuses: he also suggested remedies. Thus he urged that no man, having
become an equerry (toneri) of the six corps of guards, should be
allowed to return to his province during his term of service; that
the spurious priests should be all unfrocked and punished; that the
office of kebiishi should be restricted to men having legal
knowledge; that the upper classes should set an example of economy in
costumes and observances; that the ranks of the Buddhist priesthood
should be purged of open violators of the laws of their creed, and so
forth. Historians have justly eulogized the courage of a memorialist
who thus openly attacked wide-spread and powerful abuses. But they
have also noted that the document shows some reservations. For
generations the Fujiwara family had virtually usurp