There is no doubt that the progress of Buddhism in Japan was largely facilitated by the adoption of tactics, which had been successfully employed in dealing with the barbarous tribes of India, and--as we have just noticed,--with China also. Indeed, its readiness to adapt itself to the circumstances, instincts, and prejudices of the people, with whom it has to do, is, as has already been implied, one of the most powerful and most striking peculiarities of Buddhism. In Japan, the Shinto demi-gods were Buddhaized, and declared to be manifestations of Gautama; while practices borrowed from the ancient national creed were introduced into the Buddhist ceremonial. In the eighth century, we find orders issued for the erection of two temples and a pagoda in every province; until, about the twelfth century, the two religions became associated in the manner indicated in our first chapter,--Buddhist and Shinto clergy officiating by turns in the same buildings, and the Shinto temples becoming filled with images, alike of their own demi-gods, and of Buddha and his companions. This state of things continued until 1868, when the Shinto cult was chosen to receive the exclusive recognition of the State, many of the Buddhist monasteries at the same time suffering spoliation. Within the last few years, however, Buddhism has been making strenuous efforts to recover its former power and position, and there is little doubt that it still exerts a real influence in Japan; while the collapse of Shintoism is, as certainly, a matter of no distant time. At Tokio, the capital, where the number of temples is enormous, the proportion of Buddhist to Shinto is in the ratio of ten to one; and on several occasions during my stay in Japan I noticed handsome new Buddhist temples in course of erection, or old ones being redecorated and restored. On the other hand, numbers are closed, or falling to pieces, for want of funds to maintain them.
At the present time, there are some twelve or more _principal_ Buddhist sects in Japan, several of these being subdivided. The distinction between the various schools is much more closely preserved than in China; and, at least in the larger cities, each sect will be found represented by a temple of its own. The difference between the schools consists not only in the varied attitudes adopted towards some controverted question, but frequently also in the degrees of importance attached to some point which is held by all in common. For, as cannot be too emphatically stated, Buddhism is a _many-sided_ religion.(16) The following extract from Sir Monier Williams' _Buddhism_, for instance, draws attention to the variety of aspects, from which it may, and indeed needs to be regarded by the student.