tenkai

Updated: August 2, 2026

The feature of the age in point of learning was that scholarship became a priestly specialty. These priests of the Five Temples were more than religious propagandists: they were ministers of State, as Tenkai and Soden were in after times under the Tokugawa, and they practically commanded the shoguns.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era