"[9]
In our day, Japanese art has won its own place in the world's temple of
beauty. Even those familiar with the master-pieces of Europe do not
hesitate to award to the artists of Nippon a meed of praise which,
within certain limits, is justly applied to them equally with the
masters of the Italian, the Dutch, the Flemish, or the French schools.
It serves our purpose simply to point out that art was a powerful factor
in the religious conquest of the Japanese for the new doctrines of the
Yoga system, which in Japan is called Riy[=o]bu, or Mixed Buddhism.
We say Mixed Buddhism rather than Riy[=o]bu Shint[=o], for Shint[=o] was
less corrupted than swallowed up, while Buddhism suffered one more
degree of mixture and added one more chapter of decay. It increased in
its visible body, while in its mind it became less and less the religion
of Buddha and more and more a thing with the old Shint[=o] heart still
in it, making a strange growth in the eyes of the continental believers.
To the Northern and Southern was now added an Eastern or Japanese
Buddhism.
Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom
and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and
traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?
K[=o]b[=o] the Wonder Worker.
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