MUROMACHI AGE AND ITS AFTERMATH 425

court nobles with contempt, aspired to their elegance', and
the Ashikaga were better as connoisseurs than as rulers.

The third Shogun, Yoshimitsu, resembles Jahangir in
his passionate dilletantism and love of display. The whole
Court had a craze for novelty: to China they looked for
this, for elegant models, and also for money. We find
little of the professed horror of the Samurai for either
luxury or sordid wealth: nor did they 'let national pride
interfere with business', making trade-treaties with the
Sung, and employing Zen monks as intermediaries.

Like our own Quakers and India's Jains here were
pacific quietists engaged in the promotion of worldly
enterprises.

Zen was becoming not only the official religion but
the arbiter of taste and ethics and the promoter of com-
merce: yet Buddhist monks were soon to accuse their
Christian rivals of mixing religion with trade and politics.

The situation is made even more piquant by the nature
of their cargoes—swords and other weapons, copper and
sulphur. The latter the Chinese used largely to make fire-
works and ceremonial bowls; the former they collected,
but seldom used. In return Japan received cash, pictures
(often priceless), drugs, and printed books—the neo-Con-
fiician classics and encyclopaedias in which Sung China
delighted. The port-cities grew in importance, and a new
class of wealthy middlemen grew up, who were useful to
the military as money-lenders and contractors, and to
Japan as collectors. The religious houses, both Shinto and
Buddhist, patronized the guilds, and helped them to get
just treatment: so money made in war went, as often el^p-
where, to enrich the Church, which spent it largely in
keeping up garrisons of armed retainers.

The parallels between mediaeval Japan and mediaeval
Europe are many and interesting. The farmers and
peasants as usual paid the bill, and often complained, even
at times rioting and pillaging merchant and monastery;
and piracy became a lucrative and safe alternative to
unrequited toil.