Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/141

During the fourteenth century occurred the Japanese "War of the Roses," or the "War of the Chrysanthemums," which was a conflict between two rival branches of the Imperial family. It resulted in the defeat of the "Southern Court" by the "Northern Court," and the reunion of the Imperial authority in the person of the Emperor Komatsu II. It was an Ashikaga Shōgun who encouraged the quaint tea-ceremonial, called cha-no-yu; it was the same family who fostered fine arts, especially painting and architecture; it was an Ashikaga who paid tribute to China; it was "in almost the worst period of the Ashikaga anarchy" that, in 1542, "the Portuguese made their first appearance in Japan"; and it was only seven years later when Francis Xavier arrived there to begin his missionary labors, from which Christianity spread rapidly, until the converts were numbered by the millions.^[1]

The next few decades of Japanese history are crowded with civil strife, and include the three great men, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu, each of whom in turn seized the supreme power. The first-named persecuted Buddhism and was favorable to Christianity; the other two interdicted the latter. Hideyoshi, who "rose from obscurity solely by his own talents," has been called "the Napoleon of Japan." He is generally known by his title of Taikō; and he extended his name abroad by an invasion of Korea, which was not, however, a complete