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His principal instigator, muraji of the Nakatomi and minister of the Right, with eight other high officials, suffered the extreme penalty; Akae, omi of the Soga and minister of the Left, had to go into exile, but the rest of Kobun's followers were pardoned.
*These two are the ancestors of the Kami of the Nakatomi and the Imibe hereditary corporations, who may be described as the high priests of the indigenous cult of Japan. This kind of rope called shime-nawa, an abbreviation of shiri-kume-nawa may be seen festooning the portals of any Shinto shrine.
Very shortly afterwards, however, the country was visited by a pestilence, and the calamity being regarded as an expression of the Kami's resentment, the o-muraji of the Mononobe and the muraji of the Nakatomi urged the Emperor to cast out the emblems of a foreign faith. Accordingly, the statue of the Buddha was thrown into the Naniwa canal and the temple was burned to the ground.
Divine authority alone fulfils that definition, and it is because the throne of Japan had a superhuman foundation that its existence is perennial. Therefore the Jingi-kwan stands above all others in the State." On the day of the coronation the Nakatomi performs service to the deities of heaven and the Imibe makes offerings of three kinds of sacred articles."
At the end of each section the priests all responded 'O! which was no doubt the equivalent of 'Yes' in use in those days. As soon as he had finished, the Nakatomi retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for conveyance and presentation to the gods to whose service they were attached. But a special messenger was despatched with the offerings destined to the temples at Watarai.
Later the office of Kwambaku, or Regent, was established, and remained hereditary in the house down to modern times ages after all real power had been taken from the descendants of Nakatomi no Kamatari. But during almost five centuries the Fujiwara remained the veritable regents of the country, and took every possible advantage of their position.
In a word, the civil officials advocated the adoption of the Indian creed; the military and ecclesiastical officials opposed it. In the case of the Nakatomi, also, we have to remember that they were, in a sense, the guardians of the Shinto ceremonials: thus, their aversion to the acceptance of a strange faith is explained.
The horses which formed a part of the offerings were next brought in from the Mikado's stable, and all the congregation drew near, while the reader recited or read the norito. This reader was a member of the priestly family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their descent back to Ameno-koyané, one of the principal advisers attached to the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth.
The Nakatomi's functions were specially connected with Shinto rites, and Kamatari must be supposed to have entertained little good-will towards the Soga, who were the leaders of the Buddhist faction, and whose feud with the military party sixty-seven years previously had involved the violent death of Katsumi, then muraji of the Nakatomi.
It is a remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split up into the Five Setsuké or governing families.
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