influence. Not content with mere spiritual weapons, the inmates of these establishments were always ready, on the smallest provocation, to don their armour over their monastic frocks and troop down to the streets of Kiōto to place their swords in whatever scale of the politics of the day seemed to them most expedient. They were the terror of the Mikados, one of whom is recorded to have said: "There are three things I cannot control—the water of the Kamogawa (a river which does frequent damage to Kiōto by its floods), the fall of the dice, and the monks of Buddha."
It was, however, the Buddhist monks who were the chief maintainers of learning during this period. Some of the men of letters were ecclesiastics, and even when this was not the case, their writings are deeply imbued with Buddhist teachings and sentiments. The vanity of wealth and power, and the uncertainty of human things, form the constant refrain of their moralisings.
In comparison with the Heian period, the contributions by women to the literature of this time are insignificant, and altogether a more virile, if less refined, spirit is discernible. There are hardly any of those debonair romances which in the preceding period amused the leisure of the nobles of Kiōto. The newer literature, with its tales of combats and battles, reflects the more warlike temper of the times of which it is the product. As a Japanese writer has observed, "The Heian literature is like the Kaidō (Pyrus spectabilis) drooping after rain; that of the Kamakura period resembles the plum-blossom which exhales its perfume in the snow and frost."
It is to be noted that the more important writings of this period belong to the earlier part of it.
