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.
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