ns are all killed, and there now remains
only Matagoro, your father's murderer. Fight and win!"

The youth, thus encouraged, redoubled his efforts; but Matagoro,
losing heart, quailed and fell. So Kazuma's vengeance was fulfilled,
and the desire of his heart was accomplished.

The two faithful retainers, who had died in their loyalty, were buried
with great ceremony, and Kazuma carried the head of Matagoro and
piously laid it upon his father's tomb.

So ends the tale of Kazuma's revenge.

I fear that stories of which killing and bloodshed form the principal
features can hardly enlist much sympathy in these peaceful days.
Still, when such tales are based upon history, they are interesting to
students of social phenomena. The story of Kazuma's revenge is mixed
up with events which at the present time are peculiarly significant: I
mean the feud between the great Daimios and the Hatamotos. Those who
have followed the modern history of Japan will see that the recent
struggle, which has ended in the ruin of the Tycoon's power and the
abolition of his office, was the outburst of a hidden fire which had
been smouldering for centuries. But the repressive might had been
gradually weakened, and contact with Western powers had rendered still
more odious a feudality which men felt to be out of date. The
revolution which has ended in the triumph of the Daimios over the
Tycoon, is also the triumph of the vassal over his feudal lord, and is
the harbinger of political life to the people at large. In the time of
Iyeyasu the burden might be hateful, but it had to be borne; and so it
would have been to this day, had not circumstances from without broken
the spell. The Japanese Daimio, in advocating the isolation of his
country, was hugging the very yoke which he hated. Strange to say,
however, there are still men who, while they embrace the new political
creed, yet praise the past, and look back with regret upon the day
when Japan stood alone, without part or share in the great family of
nations.

NOTE.--_Hatamoto_. This word means "_under the flag_." The Hatamotos
were men who, as their name implied, rallied round the standard of the
Shogun, or Tycoon, in war-time. They were eighty thousand in number.
When Iyeyasu left the Province of Mikawa and became Shogun, the
retainers whom he ennobled, and who received from him grants of land
yielding revenue to the amount of ten thousand kokus of rice a year,
and from that down to one hundred