JAPAN
agant patronage bestowed on the Buddhist priests during the Nara epoch had educated in them a spirit of arrogance which Kwammu saw the necessity of checking. Some colour is lent to this theory by a fact, independently interesting, namely, that Kwammu worshipped the "heavenly King" with offerings of burnt sacrifices, thus apparently setting up a new supreme ruler and a new method of propitiating him. But that incident of his career probably indicates nothing more than a close study of Confucianism, which couples worship of Shang Ti, a shadowy "Supreme," with worship of ancestors, nor can any hostility to Buddhism be attributed to a monarch whose zeal in building and endowing Buddhist temples is historical. The more rational explanation of the transfer of the capital to Kyōtō is that it was part of a scheme for the better centralisation of administrative power.
At the close of the eighth century the three great difficulties of the time were the growth of provisional autocrats who ignored the mandates of the Throne; the continued revolt of the autochthons, and the reappearance of the system of hereditary office-bearers.
Less than a century had sufficed to nullify many of the Taikwa and Taihō reforms described in the last chapter. One great purpose of those reforms had been to give practical force to the principle of the Throne's eminent domain and to make the land the chief source of the State's
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