rial form of
Government itself, are all stained through and through with a Chinese
dye, so much so that it is no longer possible to determine what
percentage of old native thought may still linger on in fragments here
and there. In the face of all this, moral ideals, which were of common
knowledge derived from the teaching of the Chinese sages, are now
arbitrarily referred to the "Imperial Ancestors." Such, in particular,
are loyalty and filial piety--the two virtues on which, in the
Far-Eastern world, all the others rest. It is, furthermore, officially
taught that, from the earliest ages, perfect concord has always
subsisted in Japan between beneficent sovereigns on the one hand, and
a gratefully loyal people on the other. Never, it is alleged, has Japan
been soiled by the disobedient and rebellious acts common in other
countries; while at the same time the Japanese nation, sharing to some
extent in the supernatural virtues of its rulers, has been distinguished
by a high-minded chivalry called Bushido, unknown in inferior lands.

Such is the fabric of ideas which the official class is busy building
up by every means in its power, including the punishment of those who
presume to stickle for historic truth.

*****

The sober fact is that no nation probably has ever treated its
sovereigns more cavalierly than the Japanese have done, from the
beginning of authentic history down to within the memory of living
men. Emperors have been deposed, emperors have been assassinated; for
centuries every succession to the throne was the signal for intrigues
and sanguinary broils. Emperors have been exiled; some have been
murdered in exile. From the remote island to which he had been relegated
one managed to escape, hidden under a load of dried fish. In the
fourteenth century, things came to such a pass that two rival Imperial
lines defied each other for the space of fifty-eight years--the
so-called Northern and Southern Courts; and it was the Northern
Court, branded by later historians as usurping and illegitimate, that
ultimately won the day, and handed on the Imperial regalia to its
successors. After that, as indeed before that, for long centuries the
government was in the hands of Mayors of the Palace, who substituted one
infant Sovereign for another, generally forcing each to abdicate as soon
as he approached man's estate. At one period, these Mayors of the
Palace left the Descendant of the Sun in such distress