Japan had also changed religiously in the same direction. The end of the Ashikaga period had witnessed many wars which may be called religious, very rare examples since the time of the first introduction of Buddhism. Sectarians of Shinshu or Ikkoshu and of Nichirenshu often fought against one another. Some of them dared also to fight against powerful feudatories, and harassed them. Thus Japan was about to experience a struggle between the spiritual and the temporal powers, as Europe did in the Middle Ages. Nobunaga, therefore, gave countenance to Christian missionaries with a view to curbing the arrogance of Buddhist sectaries by the inroad of the new exotic religion. When the latter, however, proved not less dangerous to the political authority, it was interdicted by Hideyoshi. After all, the persecution of the Christians in Japan was not of religious nature, as in Europe, but essentially political. This explains why persecution could extirpate the seeds of Christianity sown so full of hope in Japan, in spite of its general failure in European countries. The failure of the Christian propaganda, however, was at the same time the signal of the downfall of the influence of Buddhist sectaries in Japan. Iyeyasu, who had the most bitter experience of the resistance of Ikko-votaries in his own province, had but to pursue the same religious policy as his predecessor, against Buddhism as well as Christianity. He ordered the personal morals of Buddhist priests to be rigorously supervised, and inflicted the severest punishment on those who violated the law of celibacy. It was natural, therefore, that secular preachers of the Ikkoshu or Shinshu, who made it their rule to lead a matrimonial life, should not have been held in so high a regard as the regular priests of other Buddhist sects, and on that account they had to recruit their believers chiefly among people in the lower strata of society. As to other sects besides the Shinshu, he showed no preference for any one of them, and he often called himself a believer in Buddhism of the Syaka Sect, which meant that he was no sectarian, for there actually existed no such sect in Japan. Such a broad tolerance, however, in religious matters is next door to indifferentism, and paved the way for the dwindling of the religious spirit in the ages to follow, at least in the prominent part of the nation.