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To the Emperor Konin belongs the credit of correcting some flagrant abuses in provincial administration. There was an inconvenient outcome of the religious mania which pervaded the upper classes during the reigns of Shomu and Koken.
In the very same year the Emperor Shomu, responding to an appeal from the council of State, issued an edict that officials of the fifth rank and upwards and wealthy commoners should build residences with tiled roofs and walls plastered in red. This injunction was only partly obeyed: tiles came into more general use, but red walls offended the artistic instinct of the Japanese.
Gembo, during a sojourn of two years at the Tang Court, studied the tenets of the Hosso sect, which, like the Sanron, constituted one of the five sects originally introduced into Japan. Returning in 736, he presented to the Emperor Shomu five thousand volumes of the Sutras, together with a number of Buddhist images, and he was appointed abbot of the celebrated temple, Kofuku-ji.
Nevertheless, the Empress Iwa, whose jealousy harrassed Nintoku so greatly, was a daughter of Katsuragi no Sotsu, and, as with the sole exception of the Emperor Shomu, every occupant of the throne had taken for his Empress a lady of Imperial blood, it may be assumed that the relationship between the Imperial and the Takenouchi families was recognized at that time.
As early as the year 729 we read of the Emperor Shomu giving tea to one hundred monks at his palace in Nara. The leaves were probably imported by our ambassadors to the Tang Court and prepared in the way then in fashion. In 801 the monk Saicho brought back some seeds and planted them in Yeisan.
The enigma of the people's patience under the stupendous burdens imposed on them by the fanatic piety of Shomu and his consort, Komyo, finds a solution in the co-operation of Gyogi, whose speech and presence exercised more influence than a hundred Imperial edicts.
At Temmu's obsequies mention is made of an "ornamented chaplet," the first reference to the use of flowers, which constitute such a prominent feature of Buddhist obsequies. But there is no evidence that Buddhist rites were employed at funerals until the death of the retired Emperor Shomu . Thereafter, the practice became common.
Mommu, dying, willed that the throne should be occupied by his mother in trust for his infant son afterwards Emperor Shomu. In ancient times it was customary to change the locality of the Imperial capital with each change of sovereign.
Her son, the Emperor Shomu, married another daughter of the same Fujiwara Fuhito by a different mother; that is to say, he took for consort his own mother's half-sister, Asuka. This lady, Asuka, laboured under the same disadvantage of lineage and could not properly be recognized as Empress.
Shomu, on receiving the tonsure, changed his name to Shoman, and thenceforth took no part in secular affairs. In all this, however, his procedure marked a climax rather than a departure. In fact, never did any foreign creed receive a warmer welcome than that accorded to Buddhism by the Japanese after its first struggle for tolerance. Emperor after Emperor worshipped the Buddha.
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