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circumstances. On the contrary, the daimyos and their counsellors were 
ever strenuous in their endeavours to uphold and increase the power and 
honour of their clans, on the one hand by promoting the education and 
training of their retainers and stimulating their spirit, and on the other by 
encouraging the industrial arts and crafts, tending to the increase of wealth 
within their territories. Indeed, the propagation of education and the 
development of industry, fostered by peaceful rivalry, were the two great 
products of two centuries and a half of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which 
not only preserved the country from stagnation and decline during that 
period, but enabled the nation, when it was brought face to face with the 
Occidental nations at the close of that period, to assimilate their knowledge, 
and gave it flexibility enough to adopt their methods. 
Up to the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Buddhist temples 
were almost the only places where people could obtain any learning ; even 
the sons of military chiefs were mostly taught at these temples, and they 
continued to be schools for the common people long after. It is also to be re- 
marked that from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries most of the great 
generals and lords were assisted by the counsels of priests, mostly of the 
Zen sect. There were in those days, indeed, no learned scholars who were 
not Buddhist priests. Towards the close of the sixteenth century, a man 
named Fujiwara Seikwa, who had been a Buddhist priest but had renounced 
Buddhism, was the first to teach Confucian moral philosophy as interpreted 
by Shu-shi, a philosopher of the Sung dynasty, and distinct from Buddhist 
teaching. Iyeyasu was a great admirer of Seikwa, and the teachings of 
the Shu-shi school of the Confucian philosophy formed the basis of the 
teaching of Chinese classics, that is to say, of the education of the upper 
classes, thus causing the emancipation of our moral teaching from all 
religious influences. Other schools of Confucian philosophy arose, but 
none of them was so influential as the Shu-shi school. 
Iyeyasu and his immediate successors were, however, too busy with the 
work of consolidation to do very much for the advancement of learning 
and education ; but Tsunayoshi (1680-1709), the fifth Shogun, who was a 
great Chinese scholar, gave a great impulse to the study of Chinese 
literature. He himself delivered courses of expository lectures on Chinese 
classics, which were attended by daimyos and his own immediate retainers. 
An Academy was opened for the first time in Yedo, where learned scholars 
of Chinese literature gave expository lectures of classics and made com- 
mentaries on them. This Academy continued till the beginning of the 
present era of Meiji to be a sort of University for the Chinese learning. 
Daimyos established schools in their territories for their retainers, not only 
