BUDDHISM AND CONFUCIANISM
academies were mostly monks who had been induced to return to a secular life in order to impart secular teaching. They did not give up their Buddhist costume for a long time, and used to shave their heads even after they began to wear swords like other samurai. They were all followers of the school of Shiuki, a Neo-Confucian of the Sung dynasty, and the teaching they imparted accorded well with their dress. Neo-Confucianism, a product of that remarkable age of "illumination," so rich in creative efforts both in art and literature, aimed at a synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian thought, and marks the result of a brilliant effort to mirror the whole of Asiatic consciousness. Its exponents differed in their interpretation of the Confucian classic, according to their mental affini-
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