Just a century ago, in 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson read for the first time a complete translation of “The Four Books” of the Chinese classics, copying many sentences from them in his “Journals.” Many of these quota-tions reappear in his later “Works”—and almost every volume contained one or two illustrative sayings taken from the Chinese classics. The greater part of these entries in his journals are in an appreciative tone, and his quotations from them in the “Essays” are mostly used to confirm his own beliefs.

Mount Atago lies northwest of the ancient capital of Kyoto. Because of its long history and the cult that has been associated with it from early times, the mountain provides a typical example of Japanese religion. Like all sacred mountains in Japan, a cult of ancestors was originally attached to Mount Atago. During successive centuries this cult served as a base for other cults: of fire, the tengu, the Bodhisattva Jizō, and Shōgun Jizō. It also served as the base for a large popular cult with branches all over the country, which still exists. The complex structure of the popular cult contains a harmonious blend of elements of archaic religion, Shinto, and Buddhism. From early times until the Meiji period, its organization was directed by a group of the mountain ascetics known as yamabushi, who lived on the mountain itself. A sad consequence of the Meiji Restoration was the dispersion and disappearance of this group as well as most of the documents concerning Mount Atago. In an effort to reconstruct the history of the cult, the writer has consulted the few documents that still remain, which are found among local chronicles and classical texts. The study also discusses the religious and social characteristics of the Atago confraternities (kō), which are found in towns and villages even today, and their position in relation to the general phenomenon of confraternities in Japan.

The Japanese campaign in the Shan States was a shrewd tactical maneuver in the battle for Burma. It hastened the fall of Burma by weeks, if not months, and increased greatly the amount of materiel captured by the invaders or which had to be destroyed by the British and Chinese. The righting began in that area in mid-March with patrol action on the Thailand border of Karenni, a small British protectorate adjoining the Shan States on the south; but it was not until April, following the fall of Toungoo, Burma, that serious fighting occurred. Previously the only approach the Japanese had to this mountainous district was by boat up the swift, treacherous Salween river, or over jungle trails from Thailand. But with the capture of Toungoo at the end of March, they had a road from Burma to Karenni and on to the Shan States.

Until 1945, the Japanese nation had never suffered a really major defeat. Humiliations, actual as well as imaginary, had been imposed, but never outright and final loss of a war, never invasion and occupation since the descent of the Yamato people themselves from the high plain of heaven. Her remoteness in fact, and in the calculation of her leaders, her unique polity under the rule of a dynasty established for ages eternal in the minds of her people had saved Japan on each previous threatening occasion. But this time there was no escape. Japan lost the war, and all Japanese know that she lost. Just as, at an earlier date, the country provided a unique laboratory for the student of social stability and of cultural integration–a much neglected laboratory, unfortunately–so, now Japan offers the opportunity for a study of society under the most extreme forms of stress. What have been the effects of war, of catas-trophically losing war, upon Japanese society?