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THE GREAT I-DOL. 
 
HISTORY OF JAPAN 
 
 IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE 
 
 HELEN AINSLIE SMITH 
 
 ILL USTRA TED 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 
 
 New York : 9 Lafayette Place 
 London : Broadway, Ludgate Hill 
 
 U.- \::it^ c-.H'.' 
 
 ■'\ 
 
IN UNIFORM STYLE, 
 
 Words of One Syllable. 
 
 ILIiTJSTRATED. 
 
 HIS TOR Y OF ENGLAND. 
 HISTORY OF GERMANY. 
 HISTORY OF UNITED STATES. 
 HISTORY OF FRANCE. 
 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF 
 
 THE UNITED STATES. 
 HISTORY OF IRELAND. 
 HISTORY OF RUSSIA: 
 HIS TORY OF J A PA N. 
 
 George Routledge & Sons, 
 
 9 Lafayette Place, New York. 
 
 -^ 
 
 yo 
 
 
 Copyright, 1887, 
 3y Joseph L. Blamire. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The First Ra-ces in Ja-pan, . . . . . . 7 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 How THE Ml-KA-DO'S EM-PIRE BE-CAME A REAL NA-TION, . I3 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 Life and Ways in An-cient Ja-pan, . . ' . . 22 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Tales of Ear-ly Wars, ...... 37 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Ja-pan's First For-eign Con-quest,. . . , . .49 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 How Ja-pan Fell Un-der Mil-i-ta-ry Rule, . . .59 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Rule of the House of Gen,; . . . .„ , 74 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 The Ways of War in Feu-dal Times, . . . . .87 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Ways of Peace in Feu-dal Times, . . . . 100 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Long Sway of the Ho-jo Clan, . . . .112 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 A Brief Reign for the Mi-ka-do, . . . . .119 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 NiT-TA AND KU-SUN-0-KI, . . . . . . • I30 
 
 CHAPTER Xni. 
 The Ash-i-ka-ga Age, . . . . . . . 135 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Hi-de-yosh-i, or the Age of the Tai-ko, . . . .150 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 I-ye-yas-u and the House of To-ku-ja-wa, . . . 165 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Long Peace, . . . ... . . 179 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age, . . . 192 
 
HISTORY OF JAPAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FIRST RACES IN JAPAN. 
 
 The strong sea winds and the swift sea waves that 
 still bear boats and men out of their course to the 
 shores of the Ja-pan Isles, were the means, it is 
 thought, by which men were first brought there from 
 the old realms or tribes of the main land. It is said 
 that the swift Black Stream, which flows from far 
 out in the Pa-cif-ic up to the Sea of Ja-pan, as well 
 as the great storms that vex the coast of A-si-a, 
 have long brought boat-loads of folks from the 
 south and west to the shores of Ki-u-shi-u, Shi-ko-ku, 
 Hon-do, and the rest of the isles that now form the 
 south end of the realm of Ja-pan. This land you 
 know is made up of four large isles and a great host 
 of small ones that lie off the east coast of A-si-a — with 
 the Sea of Ja-pan be-tween, and forms a great bow- 
 like chain that rounds out in the Pa-cif-ic. Chi-na 
 and Co-re-a lie west of its south half, while off 
 
8 History of Japan. 
 
 Ye-zo and the North part of Nip-pon — the 
 isle — the Rus-sian land swells out till the Sea 
 is but a strait, and the hills and ports of the Tzar 
 get a much more close view of the Mi-ka-do's realm 
 than Chi-na has. It was to the south isles that the 
 high seas and great winds drove the boat-men of the 
 South ; but, in the North lands there were bands of 
 wild men who came down of their own will to Ye-zo 
 and the isles near by. Some of these were from 
 the East shores of A-si-a, and some of them may 
 have gone from a long way in-land, where tales had 
 spread to them of a land more fair to live in than 
 their own, and of much good fish to be caught in 
 the seas of these strange lands. It is known for a 
 fact that these Ai-ni-noo men dwelt in Ye-zo, and it 
 is the sons of their race who still live there. Those 
 who first made their homes in Shi-ko-ku and Ki- 
 u-shi-u were not from one race, as the men of 
 Ye-zo, but came from ma-ny parts of the South of 
 A-si-a and formed what we call a mixed race. Some 
 time af-ter these men had found their way to Ja-pan, 
 but far back in the past, when that great man of the 
 Bi-ble, Neb-u-chad-nez-zar, was on the throne of 
 Bab-y-lon, there came to the isles a great chief who 
 first fought the tribes of wild men of Ki-u-shi-u 
 and Shi-ko-ku, who dwelt in small towns, each in 
 the rule of a head-man. When he had made them 
 
The First Races in Japaii. 9 
 
 own him for their chief, he went on to Ye-zo and 
 there had more hard fight to set his sway on the 
 race from the North. But he won at last, though 
 for a long time there was but one way by which they 
 could be kept in check ; this was by the force of the 
 new chief's vast troops. The strife, which first rose 
 more than two thou-sand years a-go, was kept up for 
 
 DO-MES-TIC SCENE. 
 
 scores and scores of years ; but the race of the new 
 chief put down their foes in the end, and then all 
 the ra-ces on the isles grew to be one, and that was 
 the Jap-a-nese. 
 
 This realm, which grew in time to be large and 
 great, was first set up by Jim-mu Ten-no, 660 years 
 
lO History of Japan. 
 
 ere Christ was born, and as it still stands, it is now 
 near 2250 years old, and Mut-su-hi-to, the Mi-ka-do 
 or great chief, who now sits on its throne, is the 123d 
 em-pe-ror of his race. 
 
 Though there are tales of what took place ere 
 Jim-mu came and set up his realm in the midst of 
 the first men, naught at all is known for fact ere the 
 year 660 b. c, and much that is said of Jim-mu and 
 some of the sons of his race who came in his 
 line for a long time, is naught but tales ; and though 
 these form a part of the sto-ry of the growth of the 
 realm, all folks on our side of the globe at least, 
 know that they must not be read for truth. 
 
 The Jap-a-nese think that heav-en and earth were 
 once all one, and that the sun and the moon were god- 
 dess-es that were born to a life that has no end, at the 
 time when the earth and heav-en first grew to be in 
 two parts ; and they think, too, that there were more 
 gods and god-dess-es born at this time, and that 
 Jim-mu was one of them, and that he came (in the 
 year 660) from the great and ho-ly mount of Kir-i- 
 shi-ma, which is on the way from Hi-u-ga to O-zu-mi. 
 All the Jap-a-nese small folks are taught to look 
 with awe on that fair height which lifts its head far 
 a-bove the clouds, and to think of the time when the 
 god Jim-mu came down to it out of the blue sky of 
 heav-en, that seems so near its peak, and set up on 
 
The First Races in Japan. 
 
 1 1 
 
 earth the realm of the Mi-ka-do, and gave Ja-pan a 
 Hhe of em-pe-rors that still sit on its throne. That 
 is why all the Jap-a-nese think their em-pe-ror, 
 and all his race are born gods and can do no 
 
 BALL GAME. 
 
 wrong, and that their souls go back to dwell in the 
 sky when they die. 
 
 The tale is that when Jim-mu had made him-self 
 lord of the whole land, his next step was to set up 
 
12 History of Japa?i. 
 
 his chief town, and for that he chose the site of 
 Kash-i-wa-ba-ra, which is some miles from where 
 the town of Ki-o-to now stands. Here he set up a 
 sort of court, gave states or parts of the realm to 
 the charge of his chief men-at-arms, made gifts to 
 his troops in pay for their good work with the foe ; 
 and set out at once to give peace and good rule to 
 his new realm. It was his wish to bring all the folks 
 of the land to feel that they were all a part of one 
 great state, to put off war-like ways, and to learn 
 the arts of peace. He took a wife, the Prin- 
 cess Ta-ta-ra, and set the type of a good home- 
 life. His rule was long and wise. When he was 
 near a hun-dred and thir-ty years old he died and 
 left three sons. We can not be at all sure that this 
 man dwelt on earth, but the Jap-a-nese have been 
 taught to think that he was a real man ; they think 
 he is now a god, whom it is part of their faith to love 
 and bow down to ; the em-pe-ror now on the throne 
 speaks of him as his sire, and claims that he is come 
 from Jim-mu, and is his son through a long line in 
 which there has been no break. The first year of 
 Jap-a-nese his-to-ry is set down as that on which he 
 took the throne at Kash-i-wa-ba-ra, and the day is 
 kept (like our own 4th of Ju-ly) each year on the 7th 
 day of the 4th month, or as we would say, on the 7th 
 of A-pril. 
 
CHAPTER 11, 
 
 HOW THE mikado's EMPIRE BECAME A REAL NATION. 
 
 From the first the Ml-ka-dos have had the right to 
 name whom they choose to take the throne when 
 they should die or have to leave it ; and though as 
 a rule it goes to the first son, the son has to wait for 
 his sire to name him or to bide by his will if he 
 thinks best to name one of his broth-ers. Jim-mu 
 left his throne to one of his three sons when he died. 
 He, in turn, left it to one of his sons, and so 
 it was with a long line of whom we do not know 
 much that is truth, though their names and some 
 dates have been kept with great care in the list of the 
 Mi-ka-dos ; and one of the first who wrote Jap-a-nese 
 his-to-ry tells long tales of their reigns and great 
 deeds. Most of them were more than a hun-dred 
 years old when they died, and one of them is said to 
 have been on the throne for a hun-dred and one 
 years. Of all the eight kings who sat on the throne 
 in the years that passed from the time of Jim-mu till 
 the date when Christ was born in the lands of the 
 
14 History of Japan. 
 
 West (which was not thought of nor heard of in 
 Ja-pan), the chief Mi-ka-do of note was Su-jin, whose 
 reign was for more than half the cent-u-ry that came 
 to an end with the birth of Christ. He was both 
 brave and good, and gave much thought to the gods, 
 we are told ; and by him the rough tribes of the isles 
 were made much more like a real na-tion than they 
 had been ere this. Up to this time the Jap-a-nese 
 were but a half-wild host, made up of folks from 
 most all the lands near them. They were rude and 
 strong, fond of sports, and in all ways much like the 
 tribes of the East of those old times; but they left 
 off their wild and rough ways more soon than most 
 of them. To win in war made a man great and gave 
 him strength and force with those who knew him. 
 This Su-jin had done in the days of his youth, and 
 so he was the more able to lift his folks up when he 
 came to be Mi-ka-do, for they felt that they could 
 trust him to lead them. It was due to his zeal that 
 the old faith of the realm which had come with Jim- 
 mu was kept up; for folks had grown not to think 
 of their gods by this time; but this prince made 
 much of the rites and all that was due to the faith 
 of his sires ; and he built it up so strong that from 
 that time to this it has kept a great hold on the 
 Jap-a-nese. 
 
 The folks had grown in-to some wrong ways since 
 
A NO-BLE TRAV-EL ING. 
 
1 6 History of Japan. 
 
 the days of Jim-mu ; they did not think of their 
 gods and some of them did not try to do right nor 
 to please those who dwelt in the sky, and had sent 
 down Jim-mu and his race to live in and rule Ja-pan. 
 This gave the good Su-jin much grief. He sent 
 calls to the folks to give up their bad ways and be 
 good, but they did not heed him, till a great plague 
 came, which, the Jap-a-nese say, the gods would not 
 check till the king made long fasts and prayed much 
 to them, and had a great rite in view of "all the 
 world" — that is Ja-pan, for in old times the Jap-a- 
 nese thought their realm was the whole earth. When 
 the plague did stop (which must have been when it 
 could spread no more, or at a change in the weath-er), 
 the folks were much struck with the signs of how 
 great were their gods and their own sins ; and they 
 then took heed of the Mi-ka-do's call, and sought to 
 do the will of the gods with great zeal. By this 
 means Su-jin soon did a great deal to raise the 
 realm from the rough state in which he had found 
 it to peace, good rule, and all the fine things for a 
 realm which are meant by the one big word civ-il-i- 
 za-tion. There were in the house of the Mi-ka-do a 
 mir-ror, a sword, and a ball, which Jim-mu had put 
 there with much care as the '* sa-cred em-blems " of 
 his god-race, — that is, things which the Mi-ka-do 
 and all the men of the land were to look on as the 
 
How the Mikado s Empire Became a Real Nation. 1 7 
 
 type of what was most high to them — some-what as 
 Ro-man Cath-o-hcs look on the cross. These Su-jin 
 sent out of his house for fear it was not well for them 
 to be so near him (for his bod-y was but of earth 
 though his soul was of heav-en;) and, while he had 
 a mir-ror, a sword, and a ball made just like them 
 and put in a "place of rev-er-ence " made for them 
 in his own house, the real em-blems were put in a 
 small church built for them far off from the house of 
 an-y man, where they could not be hurt in the least 
 by aught that was not pure ; then he made his own 
 girl-child a priest-ess to take care of them — and to 
 this day these things are in the shrines of U-ji 
 in I-se — where they were put in the year 4 a. d. 
 They are still kept in the charge of a maid who 
 is of the race of the Mi-ka-do and can not wed. 
 The small church, or tem-ple, which the Mi-ka-do 
 built for the cop-ies of the em-blems was the first of 
 the shrines that have since been put up as a part of 
 each roy-al house that has been raised in Ja-pan. 
 
 Su-jin's zeal for the good of the realm came out in 
 more than one way. He did as much for its trade, 
 its growth in wealth and strength as a state, as for 
 the true faith. He made a law that all the men and 
 the wom-en of the realm should — each for a short 
 time — leave their own work and give a share of 
 their toil to the realm, the work of the men went for 
 
1 8 History of Japan. 
 
 the troops while that of the wom-en was at their 
 looms or in the field. This wise king did a great 
 deal to put good new ways of life in the place of the 
 old ones the men had learned from their sires of the 
 half-wild tribes of A-si-a. To make a just plan for 
 them to pay their tax he had the first lists made out 
 of the folks in all parts of the land, which was the 
 same scheme as that by which a cen-sus, as we call 
 it, is made in our own land each ten years or so ; and 
 he taught them, too, how to keep a count of time. 
 For Su-jin to think this out for him-self shows that 
 he was a man of a great mind. He had boats built, 
 too ; and did all he could to try to make the folks 
 work more and do more, to take more in their 
 boat-loads when they set out with fish or the stuff 
 that they made or raised in their fields to oth-er 
 ports to change for things they could not raise. In 
 this way they built up trade and their wealth grew 
 year by year as time went on ; then he taught them 
 to make more of their land than they had known 
 how to ere this, so that he is now known as the fath- 
 er of Jap-a-nese farm-ing. He made ca-nals him- 
 self and sent forth word that his folks should dig 
 them, too, so that the fields of rice need not want for 
 wa-ter. This made the rice crops more large than 
 they had been, but there were more boats to bear it 
 to parts of the realm where it did not grow, and in 
 
How the Mikado s Empire Became a Real Natio7t. 
 
 19 
 
 this way the men of the north and south, east and 
 west, came to deal with and to know each oth-er. 
 This kept them so that they did not grow not to 
 care for an-y part of the realm but just that where 
 they dwelt, which does a realm great harm. You 
 
 SHOPS AND WARE-HOUS-ES. 
 
 can see by this that the rice trade of Ja-pan is 
 an old one as well as a large one. There are 
 vast fields of flat lands with huge tanks full of 
 wa-ter to be let out on the field when the right time 
 comes — for rice is grown as well as sown in wa- 
 ter ; and the hill-sides, too, are some-times cut so as 
 
20 History of Japan. 
 
 to form sta-ges like great flights of steps, and more 
 than one swift stream is turned from its wild course 
 to flow smooth and calm through a long ditch cut 
 through the rice-fields of the hill-sides. 
 
 There was naught, it seems, that this good Mi-ka-do 
 did not think of for his realm. Home work, home 
 trade, good laws, were not all that he left his folks. 
 He made friends with Co-re-a, and let one of the 
 o^reat chiefs of that realm of the West come a-cross 
 the Sea of Ja-pan and live on his lands; and he 
 learnt from his guest good things which he made 
 use of in his realm. As there were yet in the North 
 part of the isles some wild tribes of the Ai-no's or 
 first men of the land, who still held out as foes of 
 the Jap-a-nese, and with whom these good farm 
 folks of Yu-ma-to were in a sort of line-war all the 
 time, Su-jin made up his mind to put the whole 
 realm in charge of troops to guard its bounds and 
 to keep its men and their homes safe from the 
 foe. The whole land was marked off in-to four 
 parts, and each part was put in the charge of a chief 
 man-at-arms, which the Jap-a-nese call a Sho-gun, 
 and which we would call a gen-e-ral. This was the 
 first stage of the Mi-ka-do's troop which grew 
 great as years went on, and which came at last to 
 claim a large class from the Jap-a-nese race. But 
 at first the ranks were made up from the hands in the 
 
How the Mikado's Empire Became a Real Nation. 21 
 
 field, the trades-men, and from all the folks, who left 
 their work and went out to fight un-der the Mi-ka-do 
 them-selves, when there was a call to war, and who 
 took their way back home as soon as it was done. 
 
 It was in the reign of the next king that store- 
 hous-es were set up in the realm, and that some such 
 plans as those for the troops of our own day were 
 made to keep food and arms on hand so that the 
 men could set out at an-y time to put down an out- 
 break of their foes, or quell an-y such ill in their own 
 lands — for some of the Mi-ka-do's own men were not 
 yet much less rough and wild than those of the 
 tribes from which they had sprung. In the far-off 
 parts of the realm there had to be a strict watch kept 
 on them all the time, or they would rise in host 
 and break out in much the same sort of fights 
 as we still have to dread from our red men of the 
 ■West. Some one who has dwelt in Ja-pan and 
 knows its tale well, says that the Mi-ka-do's realm 
 grew by war and fire and blood-shed, very much as 
 our own race first got its hold on the land of the red 
 men. The Jap-a-iiese were war-like men from the 
 first, and it was in the camps and field near the lines 
 of their wild foes that their race of men-at-arms 
 grew and learnt to love war and to live for naught 
 but that, and to know all its arts and have so much 
 more skill in them than the sons of oth-er parts of the 
 
2 2 History of Japan. 
 
 East. It was this ar-my plan, too, which did a great 
 deal to bind all parts of the realm in-to one em-pire, 
 so that it grew in strength as it grew in size, which 
 it could not have done if it had been cut up in parts 
 that spent their life in home-wars. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LIFE AND WAYS IN ANCIENT JAPAN. 
 
 The life and laws and ways of the Jap-a-nese 
 have seen less change since the time of the first 
 Mi-ka-dos than those of most lands, though in 
 all the East there has been far less change, from 
 age to age, than has come in the same length of time 
 to Eu-rope and all lands of the West. In the first 
 place, the Jap-a-nese got a good start ; they were 
 far less rude as a race than most of the tribes in 
 that part of A-si-a, and so have had less to learn 
 than they. Two, at least, of their first Mi-ka-dos were 
 great men, who thought out wise plans by which 
 they built up a strong realm, whose many parts 
 were bound in-to one great whole by firm ties. One 
 man ruled them all ; he was the head of their state 
 as well as their faith, and was a son of the ho-ly 
 
Life and Ways in Ancient Japan. 
 
 23 
 
 race which had been sent from on high to rule them 
 and take care of their realmx. But, with all 
 this, ii the Jap-a-nese had made friends with and 
 learned the thoughts and plans of the men of oth-er 
 lands, they could not have kept so firm in their own 
 way, and it is due to that more than aught else that 
 their realm was not split up and torn by bad home 
 wars and that in the long lapse of years, when great 
 
 SLEEP-ING ON BLOCK PIL-LOWS. 
 
 ills fell on the lands west of Ja-pan and vast chang-es 
 of all sorts shook near all the rest of the earth, this 
 realm of sea-isles kept on in her own way and grew 
 more large and more strong age by age, with not 
 more than three or four such great chang-es as Rus- 
 sia, France and Prus-sia had all the time in the 
 course of near a score of cent-u-ries. 
 
24 History of Japan. 
 
 Jim-mu had found these isles a realm most fair 
 to see. In the East and North its moors lay in 
 long tracts of grass and reeds and bam-boo cane, 
 where wild beasts dwelt and gave the sports of the 
 chase to the wild men of the soil. Its steep hills 
 and its calm dells were grand and fair, and some- 
 times set thick with trees and green with grass or 
 grown with wild flow-ers. Its men dwelt in small 
 huts that stood in groups; they had no tame beasts; 
 their ways of life were rude and wild ; they could 
 fish and hunt, but they did not know how to do 
 much else. In the course of time they learned to 
 till their ground, for the race of Jim-mu knew how 
 to raise crops and work ores, which were found 
 to lie in the earth of these isles. The men 
 soon learned to dig for them and then to work them ; 
 and their wives learned how to weave and to spin ; 
 and then some of the men bought and sold the 
 fruits of the soil and the goods that were made; and 
 so trade grew, and with that all learned to put forth 
 their strength to raise more and more each year, or 
 to push on and make some thing more fine than 
 had been yet tried ; and so arts grew and sci-ence, 
 and ere long the folks who dwelt near the Mi-ka- 
 do's court or in or near the large towns had quite 
 left off their old rude ways and were like a new 
 race. 
 
26 History of Japaji. 
 
 Like all wild men, the first Jap-a-nese thought 
 that an-y one who was so brave and so great that he 
 could lead in wars and win in large fights must be 
 a god ; and so when Jim-mu beat the tribes of the 
 South and some of the strong Ai-nos, and then set 
 up his realm in the midst of them and made him- 
 self chief lord of the sea-girt isles, it was not hard 
 for him to make the tribes whom he had o-ver-come 
 think he had been sent from on high and that he 
 had full rights to rule them. If he was a god, so 
 were his sons and all the chil-dren of his line. 
 From this grew the first Jap-a-nese faith, which is 
 known as the Shin-to. It is yet one of the chief 
 faiths of the land, and those who hold to it still 
 think that the Mi-ka-do is the son of the great sun- 
 god-dess, who is at the head of all that they pray to. 
 But there is more than one god in Shin-to. 
 Those who hold to it think that all their great 
 men who have fought in all the wars of the realm 
 are gods. They bow down and pray to their sires 
 as well as their kings, to their wise men and all who 
 have done great work of an-y kind for Ja-pan, while 
 more high than all these they hold the sun or light 
 — which they look on as a god-dess — and fire 
 and most of the torc-es of na-ture, — that is, rain 
 and wind and all those things with-out which all 
 that now has life on the earth would die. Each 
 
Life and Ways hi Ancient Japa^i. 27 
 
 fief, each town, all parts of the land, have their own 
 saints or ka-mi, and the whole realm is now set 
 thick with shrines, and there seems no end to the 
 gods and half-gods of the Shin-to. But at first 
 the folks did not have all these way-side shrines 
 that now dot the whole land. The first men met 
 on the hill-top, on the banks of the streams and 
 in the woods to lay fruits, fish, and game on a rude 
 shrine of stone or earth, and give them to their 
 gods in thanks for what they had had or when they 
 would pray for what they were in want of. They 
 still have no i-dols, but they had priests in those 
 days as now, who wore white robes, made them- 
 selves clean in the bath, and took no food ere they 
 laid these gifts of men on the shrines of the gods. 
 
 The first law of this old faith is that those who 
 hold to it must be clean and pure. The priests 
 have to bathe a great deal and to put on clean 
 clothes ere they go to pray or to their ho-ly work, 
 and all who walk in it are bound to keep them- 
 selves from all that is not thought to be pure and 
 clean. 
 
 At first none but the Mi-ka-do had a shrine to 
 the sun-god-dess, but ere long a few were set up to 
 her in the towns or where a few farm-folks dwelt in 
 a group of huts, and at last there came to be a great 
 ma-ny to her. Then there were tem-ples ; but it 
 
28 History of Japan. 
 
 was a long time ere the way-side shrines that one 
 now sees in all parts of the land were set up in the 
 woods or on the roads through the hills or tracts of 
 farm lands. 
 
 Twice a year, in the Sixth and Twelfth months, 
 the folks of the old times met on the banks of a 
 stream and there had a great Shin-to rite. It was 
 the time when all the realm could be made clean 
 of its sins and its wrong ways, when men could 
 bathe in the stream and pray and be pure. The 
 odes that were made up to be sung to the gods at 
 these rites were the first that are known to have been 
 made in the Jap-a-nese tongue. The form of pray-er 
 that they then had is still in use by those who hold 
 the Shin-to faith. But this and the odes were not 
 kept in writ-ing. The Jap-a-nese of that day did 
 not know how to write in an-y way, not e-ven by 
 signs. Men taught their sons what they knew, and 
 so for a long, long time all the his-to-ry, laws, tales 
 and odes or an-y sort of verse of the Jap-a-nese were 
 kept in the minds of a few, who passed them from 
 sire to son, till some one thought of a way to write 
 them down. Most of the world has learnt to draw 
 and paint and to make statues and has got most all 
 of this kind of art from Greece, but the art of the 
 Jap-a-nese is all their own. It was born in them, 
 and is not like that of an-y oth-er folks in the world. 
 
Life and Ways in A7icieiit Japan. 
 
 29 
 
 From the first they have known how to do their 
 work in met-als, and in chi-na, which is more fine 
 than the men oi any oth-er land have made or can 
 make ; but the world of the West had known the 
 fine arts for a long time ere the Jap-a-nese seem to 
 have thought that they could make cop-ies of men 
 
 AN ART-IST AT WORK. 
 
 and beasts in clay oY wood or that they could draw 
 or paint scenes of their folks, their life and their land. 
 When they did wake to this, it was in the reign of 
 Su-jin or his son, and was near the time that Christ 
 came to live on earth. There was a cus-tom in the 
 land that when a lord or great man died, his wife 
 
30 History of Japan. 
 
 and one or two serv-ants should die and be put in 
 the grave with him. The son of Su-jin tried to put 
 a stop to this hard rite and did check it, but not 
 quite. In a fewyears af-ter he sent out word to have it 
 done no more, the Em-press died, and the folks of 
 the land would have felt that it was not at all right 
 to put her in the grave a-lone, but one of the men of 
 the court who had made some fig-ures of clay was 
 a-ble to have these put in the place of the real 
 bod-ies. The Mi-ka-do was glad to hail this new 
 plan ; he would raise the man who made the fig-ures 
 to a high place and gave him the name of Ha-ji, 
 which means one who knows the art by which clay 
 im-a-ges are made. That put an end to the law that 
 one man should die to be put in the grave with some 
 one else, and it was the birth of fine art in Ja-pan. 
 But it was a long time ere the folks of that land did 
 an-y more than rude work of this kind. There is no 
 place in the world where men can do such fine w^ork 
 asthe Jap-a-nese have long done m theiruseof met-als, 
 in chi-na and lac-quer-ware and in the way they weave 
 silks and make it up in clothes ; but for a long time 
 they did not do much in the fine arts that are best 
 known to the West. In time they learnt how to 
 carve fig-ures as well as to form them out of clay ; 
 and they draw men and beasts with a more free and 
 true hand than the art-ists of Eu-rope have ; but they 
 
Life and Ways in Ancient Japan, 31 
 
 have had to learn how to draw out-door scenes — 
 so as to make them look right — in the last few 
 years, and they did not know at all how to paint in 
 oils. But they use their own col-ors with as much if 
 not more skill than the best paint-ers of old times or 
 late years. 
 
 In the days of long a-go the first Jap-a-nese dwelt 
 in small huts which they made for them-selves. To 
 build them, they stuck the poles of young trees 
 with the bark still on them straight up in the ground 
 and a-cross them bound more poles with a sort of 
 rope made of vines or a rush that grew wild in pools 
 near by. This made the frame, on which they put 
 walls made of mats of grass, of boughs or of rush, 
 while on the bam-boo frame-work of the peak roof 
 they put a thick thatch which was of grass. The 
 floors were of hard earth while doors and win-dows 
 were holes, o-ver which mats were some-times hung. 
 They were most plain in all ways, and in that they 
 were like the Mi-ka-do's own home, for though this 
 had more size than the huts of the folks, it was in 
 old times as now a plain house with naught in it for 
 show. For a long time it was no more fine or grand 
 than those of his lords, and but for its size and that 
 it stood a bit more high, you could not have told it 
 from a tem-ple or from the homes of most an-y of the 
 high class folks of the Jap-a-nese realm. Since 
 
2,2 History of Japmi. 
 
 it was the place where dwelt a man who was thought 
 to be half a god, it was much like a tem-ple, and as 
 is still the rule with the Shin-to, all that has an-y 
 part with that faith has no need to make a show of 
 wealth or pomp. So in his life, his home, his 
 dress and all else the Mi-ka-do was most plain. The 
 shrines of the Shin-to faith of to-day are built on the 
 same plan as the huts of these first men of the realm, 
 and the homes one now sees there are on the same 
 plan, too, though they are built with more size and 
 more taste and have some good chang-es. The 
 dress of those old times was made of the skins of 
 wild beasts, and a coarse stuff that they wove of 
 straw, grass, bark, and the fi-ber of the palm-tree. 
 For a long time the folks knew naught of the silks 
 and the cot-ton goods that are now worn so much in 
 Ja-pan. Their dress was scant and plain; some of 
 the time they wore a long cloak, with a belt, with 
 leg-gings and san-dals of straw. As that was a-bout 
 all they had for a full suit, there were, of course, 
 times when less than that was worn. Their chief 
 work was to hunt and fish ; and their food was the 
 flesh of deer or bears and most all the beasts that 
 were wild in the woods, while they al-so had much 
 fish and the roots of plants. It was a long time ere 
 the faith of Bud-dha was brought in-to the land to 
 teach them it was not right for them to eat the flesh 
 
Life and Ways hi Aficient Japan. 
 
 -hi 
 
 of beasts ; but when that time did come, they were 
 taught to plant grain and use that for food. From 
 the first, fish has been the chief food of the Jap- 
 a-nese and that is why most of the folks have made 
 their homes and their towns on the line of streams 
 and near the sea. 
 
 The good work that Su-jin be-gan when he led 
 
 OR-NA-MENl S. 
 
 his men to work their fields and raise all the fine 
 crops they could, has been kept up in all the times 
 since, and now, in the tracts where folks live, through 
 all the length and breadth of those fair isles, there 
 IS scarce an mch of ground that is good, or could be 
 made so, that has not been put to the ver-y best use 
 
34 History of Japan. 
 
 for crops. If you should go to Ja-pan, to the farm 
 lands, you would see miles of hills and vales whose 
 sides are made into stag-es, like tall pairs of broad 
 stairs, for rice fields, you would see tracts of good, 
 rich ground, with a vast net-work of tanks and wa-ter 
 way spread through them, and broad tracts of green 
 flat lands with not a fence on them, nor an-y beast, 
 wild or tame, to harm them. In all this you would 
 see what two thou-sand years of hard toil and great 
 care has done to make the land do its ver-y best to 
 bear rich fruits and great crops. 
 
 Jim-mu and his sons did not mean to let an-y part 
 of the realm he had won from the first men of the 
 isles slip from their hands; so a plan was soon made, 
 to hold it all in the sway of the "great lord." This 
 plan was to mark off the land in sort of states or 
 fiefs, each of which was put in the charge of a prince 
 or chief, who was to take care that his folks did not 
 break from the Mi-ka-do, and at the same time look 
 out for their good in all the ways that the Mi-ka-do 
 should think best. Some-times these head-men were 
 lords of the Mi-ka-do's own tribe, and some-times 
 they were chiefs of the tribes that Jim-mu had found 
 in the land ; all of them were like small kings in 
 their own fiefs ; they had their lands and their men ; 
 and no one but the Mi-ka-do was o-ver them. To 
 him they had to pay a tax, and to him they had to 
 
36 History of Japan. 
 
 bow as their great lord. Some of the Ai-no chiefs 
 did not quite hke to own the sway of the Mi-ka-do, 
 and the his-to-ry of the first years of the Jap-a-nese 
 em-pire is full of tales of how now one, now more, 
 broke out in vain tri-als to throw off the yoke. The 
 space of land be-tween Lake Bi-wa and the bays of 
 O-za-ka and O-wa-ri was known as the Ki-na-i, or 
 Five Home States, and were the Mi-ka-do's own 
 fiefs in his sole rule. The folks of these lands were 
 bound to him by firm, strong ties; but in Shi-ko-ku 
 and Ki-ush-i-u, of the South Isles, and the tribes 
 that dwelt in the far West, North and East, were 
 not yet quite put down. These fiefs were held by 
 their own chiefs, who were on good terms with the 
 Mi-ka-do, and paid court to him as their ''Su-ze- 
 rain," or head chief. When they got in feuds with 
 each oth-er they would a-gree to take the case to 
 him, and bide by what he said ; for he was so strong 
 at arms, and his realm took up so much of the best 
 part of the isles that they would have had to look 
 on him as their grand chief an-y way, but more than 
 that, they all felt that he had come from heav-en ; 
 and so there was no one a-bove him to whom they 
 could go. So he held his rank, and when word 
 came from him the tribes would hear and heed his 
 voice, though they might be in the midst of one of 
 their worst feuds. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TALES OF EARLY WARS. 
 
 When Su-jin came to name the next em-per-or, 
 the one who should take his place at his death, he 
 found it hard to say which of his two sons he would 
 choose. His love for both of them was the same, and 
 he could not make up his mind to be more good to 
 one than to the oth-er. At last he thought of a plan 
 by which he could find out which of them would 
 make the best em-per-or ; and one day he told them 
 that they should come to him the next day and tell 
 him what they dreamt that night. So when they 
 had been through their bath and put on all clean 
 night clothes, they laid down to sleep and to dream 
 the dreams that would fix their fate. The next 
 day they went to their great and good sire, and 
 the first son said, he dreamt that he went up a 
 high mount, and when he got to the top he stood, 
 so he saw far off to the East, and that he cut with 
 his sword and thrust with his spear eight times. 
 Then the sire would hear what Su-i-nin, his young-er 
 son, had dreamt. He too had gone up the high 
 
38 History of Japan. 
 
 mount, but he had stretched cords and snares on all 
 sides of him, and tried to catch the birds that ate 
 the grain. Then the em-per-or thought what these 
 dreams could mean, and at last he said to his first 
 son, that since he had looked but one way he would 
 go to the East and be the chief of that part of the 
 realm ; but Su-i-nin looked round him on all sides, 
 and he should be chief of all. ''You, my son, will 
 be my heir," he said. So it w^as : the first son came 
 to be the chief of the East and a great man at arms, 
 while his broth-er took the throne, kept up the good 
 work of his sire, and lived to reign in peace for 
 near a hun-dred years. Ere he died, Christ was 
 born in the West, and it was in the year 70, a. d., 
 that he left his rule in the hands of Ke-i-ko, whose 
 reign was made great by the deeds of his son. 
 
 This brave youth, Ya-ma-to-Da-ke, the son of the 
 twelfth em-per-or of Ja-pan, was fine to look at, as 
 well as bold to fight, and his quick wit took him 
 where his strong sword could not. The tales that 
 are told of him, which most of the Jap-a-nese of this 
 day hold to be true, are quaint and old, and show 
 us more of the strange forms of the Jap-a-nese faith 
 than of real facts in their his-to-ry ; but we are most 
 sure that such a prince as Ya-ma-to-Da-ke did once 
 dwell in the sea-girt realm, and that he did fight 
 great wars in the isles of the South and East, and 
 
Tales of Early Wars. 
 
 39 
 
 bring large tribes of the Ai-nos to own his father's 
 sway. 
 
 It is said that he was brave and fond of war while 
 he was yet a boy, and that in his youth he led a large 
 force to put down an out-break of the rude folks that 
 dwelt in the isle of Ki-ush-i-u. When he got there 
 he found that the foes were 
 in camp, and his next wish 
 was to find their chief. So 
 he made him-self look like 
 a girl, who would dance for 
 the chief, for he was fair 
 and full of grace ; and in 
 that guise he went to 
 guard of the camp, 
 who thought so fair 
 and sweet a girl 
 would please the 
 chief, and took the 
 young prince to his 
 lord at once. The chief did like the girl, and drew 
 her to his own tent, where he soon found that his 
 guest had come for a feat that was much more stern 
 than a dance, for the brave youth threw off his 
 guise and laid hold of the chief, and took his 
 life. This put an end to the strife in Ki-ush-i-u, 
 and gave the prince the name of Ya-ma-to-Da-ke, 
 
 EM-PER-OR IN AN-CIENT TIMES. 
 
40 History of Japan. 
 
 which means war-Hke. It was more than ten years 
 ere he set out on his next great war. That was in 
 the year iio, a. d., when the tribes in the East 
 part of Ja-pan broke out in wrath for the Mi-ka-do 
 and his men-at-arms. The prince at the head of his 
 troops went to put them down. 
 
 He gave word for his men to halt when they got 
 to I-se, and there he went to the shrine of the Sun- 
 god-dess where the sym-bols were kept (and are still), 
 and while he left his own sword at the foot of the pine 
 tree (all the shrines have a pine tree near them), he 
 bore off that of the shrine which the good priest-ess 
 gave him to fight his ho-ly war. With this to aid him 
 in his cause, he led the way on to the wilds of Su-ra-ga 
 to fight the rough Ai-nos. But, when they found he 
 was near, they fled from the plains to the woods and 
 the safe spots in the hills, for the Ai-nos fought 
 much as our red-men do. They would not come to 
 a fray in the field where both sides could meet on 
 the same ground, but they would hide and, with 
 trees or thick brush, or some great rocks in front of 
 them, they would shoot darts at their foes while they 
 kept them-selves out of sight. There was no trick 
 they were so fond of as to make their foes get lost 
 in the thick woods, where they were so much at 
 home. They would hide them-selves in the coat of 
 some wild beast^ and thus act as spies and scouts 
 
Tales of Early Wars. 41 
 
 while they made their guise cheat their foes and 
 serve to trap them. Then, too, they would creep by 
 stealth to the camp of the foe and set fire to the 
 tents. At last, when they had drawn Ya-ma-to- 
 Da-ke up in their woods and high haunts in the 
 hills, they set fire to the growth of brush that stood 
 thick on the ground, and it was joy to them to see 
 how the wind drove the flames on and on to the 
 camp of the Jap-a-nese troops. But, the tale says, 
 when they had come so near that the prince thought 
 his force would all be lost, the Sun-god-dess came 
 to him, and he cut the grass round him with his ho-ly 
 sword; and so great was its might that the flames 
 swept on no more, but as if they had had a check, 
 they stood still, and then ran back to where the 
 bands of Ai-nos were hid, and burnt all those that 
 did not at once run off and leave the land to the 
 prince. Ya-ma-to-Da-ke gave thanks to the gods 
 for this, and from that time the ho-ly sword no more 
 bore the old name of '*Cloud-clus-ter," which it had 
 had since the days of Jim-mu ; the prince gave it a 
 new name, the ''Grass-mow-er." 
 
 When he had made his gifts to the gods, he set 
 out to push his way far through the lands of the 
 Ai-nos and to add the great plain of the East, now 
 known as the Ku-an-to, to the Mi-ka-do's realm. 
 First he had to cross the Ha-ko-ne Mount-ains, and 
 
42 History of Japan. 
 
 then he went on through the plain till he got to the 
 Bay of Yed-do. He thought, as this was a strait 
 of no great width, that he could take his troops 
 with ease to the land be-yond, whose hills he could 
 see so plain from the shore where he stood. But 
 the brave prince did not know what winds and 
 tides surge through the straits in that part of the 
 bay, and with all his hosts he soon set out on a trip 
 that was one of great fear and grief ere it came to 
 an end. A storm came up, the seas rose high, and 
 the poor boats were used so ill that the folks 
 thought they would be lost. The prince was in a 
 great fright ; he thought that the sea-god did not 
 like some-thing he had said, and that he had sent 
 this storm to smite him. If that were so, there was 
 but one way to check the storm : that was to make 
 some gift to the god, and so put an end to his 
 wrath. It had to be some great gift too, some man 
 or wom-an, and it was hard to choose whom it should 
 be. But the prince did not have to make the 
 choice. His fair wife, Ta-chi-ba-na Hi-me, said 
 she would give her-self to the sea-god for the sake 
 of the rest, and when she had said good-by to the 
 prince, she left him in deep grief, and with one 
 leap from their boat she was lost in the mad waves. 
 The sea drove the boat on for a time, but soon 
 the storm died down, the sky grew clear, the bay 
 
Tales of Early Wars. 
 
 43 
 
 calm, and the boat made for the shore. The new 
 
 land to which Ya-ma-to - Da-ke had come was 
 
 Kad-zu-sa, and he soon made him-self lord of the 
 
 tribes he found there. In the bounds of the great 
 
 town of To-ki-o, now at the head of this land, the 
 
 site is still shown where the bold prince found his 
 
 wife's comb, which was made of some wood of sweet 
 
 scent, and which had 
 
 lain on the top of the 
 
 waves till they bore it 
 
 to the shore. He built 
 
 a shrine on the spot 
 
 where he found it, and 
 
 left the comb in it as a 
 
 gift to the gods ; and 
 
 on that spot a Shin-to 
 
 shrine still stands, where 
 
 the men who fish and 
 
 live on the bay go to 
 
 pray to the souls of the 
 
 prince and his fair wife who gave her life for the 
 
 boat -load that brought this land to own the 
 
 Mi-ka-do's rule. 
 
 When this shrine was built and when he had the 
 tribes well in hand, he set out to add more lands 
 and more folks to the em-pire. He went to the 
 north, through Shi-mo-sa, and with his hosts with 
 
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 SIGN AL-PHA-BET. 
 
44 History of Japan. 
 
 him, kept on up the coast till he got to what the 
 Jap-a-nese held to be the bounds of their realm. If 
 you find the 38th par-al-lel on your maps, you will 
 know as near as an-y one does where this was. In 
 the lands on the north side of this line dwelt wild 
 Ai-no tribes who were proud of their race, of their 
 right to their lands, and of their might and free 
 state. When they heard that a great prince was 
 come from Ja-pan to put them down, they brought 
 a vast host to meet him and show him that he must 
 fight hard ere he did with them as with the men of 
 Kad-zu-sa. Their first chiefs at the head of the 
 hosts were on the shore in wait for the prince when 
 his fleet came in view. It was a sight they had not 
 seen nor dreamt of — this crowd of boats, with their 
 full sails that bore for the shore by some strange 
 force that they could not see. " From the gods ! " 
 they cried, ''we shall die if we draw bow on them." 
 And so when Ya-ma-to-Da-ke set foot on the strand, 
 the proud fierce chiefs fell down in awe, and with 
 ease he brought all the tribes to own his lord, the 
 Mi-ka-do, as their great chief. 
 
 He was now glad to go back to his sire and his 
 friends, but he did not take the most quick way to 
 get to them, for it was his wish to learn as much as 
 he could of this new land of the East. The tale 
 which the Jap-a-nese tell of this long home-ward 
 

 IN-TE-RI-OR OF THE 1 EM-PLE 
 
46 History of Japan. 
 
 trip is full of strange things. They tell how he 
 went through some of the lands he had won on his 
 way up ; how, while he took rest at Ka-i, he made 
 the first dis-tich or po-em, of thir-ty-one syl-la-bles, 
 which is much used now-a-days. They tell how he 
 sent one of his chiefs from here to make peace in the 
 North-west, while he went on to Shi-na-no, a great 
 stretch of high land, round which range some of the 
 most high peaks and chains of mount-ains in all 
 Ja-pan. He took his men through the pass of 
 Us-u-i To-ge, which has a wide fame with all who 
 have been to these isles, and while he stood on 
 some high point from which he could see the view 
 of plain and hills and sea that spread out at his feet 
 — as fair a one as there is in Ja-pan — he thought of 
 his lost wife, and in soft, low tones he said, *' Ad- 
 zu-ma ! Ad-zu-ma ! " which means, '' My wife ! My 
 wife ! " and to this day Ad-zu-ma is the name that 
 po-ets give to the plains of Yed-do. 
 
 It was a task such as had not been tried ere this, 
 to cross the great hills of Shi-na-no. There were 
 no paths, and no one but the bold prince would 
 have thought he could pick out a way through those 
 steep, bright, smooth, la-va beds, swift streams and 
 dense fogs. The folks thought that the place was 
 full of gods, and each loose stone by which they 
 lost their hold on a ledge of rock, each fog or thick 
 
Tales of Early Wars. 47 
 
 cloud that fell on them, and all the bad smells from 
 
 the gas of the earth or the peaks that sent forth fire 
 
 were signs of the 
 
 wrath of some 
 
 ofod. Once when 
 
 a white deer came 
 
 up to Ya-ma-to- 
 
 Da-ke, it was said 
 
 that this was the 
 
 bad god of the 
 
 hills come to vex 
 
 him. He threw 
 
 some wild gar-lie 
 
 in its eyes, from 
 
 which it died. 
 
 Then fog and 
 
 mist spread in 
 
 the path of his 
 
 host, so they 
 
 would have met 
 
 their death there 
 
 if it had not been 
 
 that a good god, 
 
 in the form of a 
 
 white dog, led them to the plains of Mi-no. Then 
 
 when they got near some foul gas, it was thought 
 
 that the soul of the white deer had come on them, 
 
 
 
 
 A TEM-PLE. 
 
48 History of Japan. 
 
 SO that they were too weak to stand, which naught 
 but the wild gar-Hc that the men ate could drive off. 
 When they had gone through the plains of Mi-no 
 and come to the tall mount of I-bu-ki Ka-ma, which 
 rears its great flat head far through the clouds, Ya- 
 ma-to-Da-ke made up his mind to break the strength 
 of the bad gods who dwelt on this mount, and while 
 he left his ho-ly sword, Grass-mow-er, at its foot, he 
 set out ; but the god made it-self a snake and tried 
 to bar the way. The prince, in one leap, was past 
 it ; but the sky grew dark at once, and he lost his 
 path, grew faint and fell. • He saw a spring near 
 by, though ; and when he had had a drink he could 
 hold up his head. He had his men take him to 
 Ot-su in I-se, where he found at the foot of a pine 
 tree the sword he had laid off when he went to put 
 down the god. He was still weak, but he took 
 great care to make gifts to the god-dess at I-se, to 
 tell all he had seen and done in the three years he 
 had been gone, and to pray and give thanks that 
 he had come through it all with his life. Then he 
 sent word to his sire of what he had done, told him 
 that he was nigh to death and would like to see 
 him ; but he died ere this could be. His corpse 
 was laid at No-bo-no in I-se. The tale says that 
 a white bird flew up from his tomb, in which 
 there was naught left but the wreath and grave robes 
 
Japan s First Foreign Congest. 49 
 
 of the brave prince. The bird, it is said, flew to 
 the Plain of the Ko-lo Play- e- res in Ya-ma-to, 
 which from that time has been known as Mi-sa-za-ka 
 Shi-ra-to-ri, or Im-pe-ri-al Tomb of the White Bird. 
 That was in the year 113 a. d. Ya-ma-to was then 
 thir-ty-six years old, and since that time shrines 
 have been set up to him in most all parts of Ja-pan, 
 and to this day folks pray to him as a god. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 japan's first foreign conquest. 
 
 The Mi-ka-do Se-i-mu took the place of old Ke-i-ko, 
 whose son Ya-ma-to-Da-ke had been dead most a 
 score of years, ere his soul went to join that of the 
 brave prince. When Se-i-mu's reign of six-ty years 
 was done, Chi-na-i took his place, and he was the 
 spouse of the great Em-press Jin-gu Ko-go, who led 
 the most grand war told of in the tales of Ja-pan 
 since the first great feat of Jim-mu. 
 
 Jin-gu was fair to look at, good, quick of mind, 
 strong and brave. She paid great heed to the gods, 
 and they, the Jap-a-nese would tell you, chose her 
 out of all the eood folks of the realm to be the one 
 
50 History of Japan. 
 
 who should hear their will and know their plans for 
 the good of the realm. They told her what great 
 things the Jap-a-nese might do, and she had the 
 faith to go where they said, and a bold, brave heart 
 that knew no fear on sea or land, in peace or war. 
 
 In the first year of her lord's reign there was an 
 out-break of some of the tribes in Ku-ma-so, a part 
 of Ki-u-shi-u, and Chi-u-ai at the head of his troops 
 went down to make peace, while his wife and some 
 of his folks came on in ships. Jin-gu's heart was 
 full of hope that they might win in this war, and by 
 it join all the Ku-ma-so folks to their throne. She 
 went to pray on one of the isles of the In-land Sea, 
 and while at her shrine one of the gods spoke to her 
 and said, ''Why do you wish so much to gain sway in 
 Ku-ma-so ? That is but a poor place, not worth the 
 cost of this great war you would make. But there 
 is a rich land, sweet and fair, bright with gold and 
 ores, and gems of all sorts that have much worth ; 
 it lies in Shi-ra-ki" (that is Co-re-a), ''and if you pray 
 and make gifts to me, and keep your thoughts on 
 me, I will lead you to that land and will give it in-to 
 your hands, yet cause you to shed no blood ; and I 
 will give you sway in Ku-ma-so as well." Jin-gu 
 told this to her spouse, but he did not share her 
 faith that it was words come to them from the gods. 
 He went up to the top of a great hill, from which he 
 
Japans First Foreign Conqitest. 
 
 51 
 
 could see far to the West ; but as all sea and no land 
 
 -met his view he said, " I see no new lands ; if there 
 
 is not some in the sky, then you tell me what is not 
 
 true. My sires paid their court 
 
 to all the gods ; is there an-y to 
 
 whom they did not pray and 
 
 make gilts?" The gods, through 
 
 Jin-gu, sent word that if the 
 
 Mi-ka-do had doubts, and 
 
 thought that what they said was 
 
 not true, then they would not aid 
 
 Chi-u-ai ; but his good wife 
 
 should go to the new land and 
 
 her-self win all its wealth. But 
 
 Chi-u-ai went on in his war with 
 
 the folks of Ku-ma-so, and they 
 
 beat him. Then, while in camp, 
 
 he fell sick and died. But the 
 
 troops were not told of his death, 
 
 and the brave Jin-gu, with the 
 
 Mi-ka-do's chief man of state, 
 
 went on with the strife till they 
 
 won the field. Then the brave 
 
 em-press thought of the realm of 
 
 the West which the gods had told her of; and when 
 
 she had tried some tests to see if her course were right, 
 
 and found that the gods were still with her, she set out 
 
 TAT-IOOED MAN. 
 
52 History of Japan. 
 
 to cross that great stretch of strange sea, which is so 
 broad that she could find no trace of the land that 
 bounds it on the West. 1 1 was a great task to make up 
 all the troop and to build all the ships she would need. 
 But she had no fear of great tasks. She sought the 
 aid of her chief men-at-arms, whom "she said she 
 would lead, in the guise of a man. If her scheme 
 should fail she would take all the blame ; but if it 
 did not, the praise should be theirs. The men swore 
 that they would stand by her and go where she led, 
 to the end. They set to work ; troops were brought 
 in from all parts of the realm, and at last, when 
 Jin-gu had gone through her last rites to the gods, 
 and had made her last charge to her men as to how 
 they should act in the new land, and to the new 
 folks they were to meet, they set out with this word 
 from the god, who had led her to take this bold step: 
 "The Spir-it of Peace will at all times guide you 
 and take care of your life. The Spir-it of War will 
 go on in front of you and lead your ships." The 
 brave em-press, as well as her sea-men, did not know 
 just where Co-re-a lies ; they had no chart and no 
 com-pass, but with the sun, stars and the flights of 
 birds as the guides meant by the gods, and with 
 winds, waves and tides right to aid them, they made 
 a quick and safe trip, and brought their ships to beach 
 in the south part of Co-re-a. It was a fine, bright 
 
Japans First Foreign Conquest. 
 
 53 
 
 day, and the sun shone on the arms of the host, as 
 rank on rank they set foot on the shore, till they 
 made such a grand show that the Co-re-ans were 
 struck with fear and awe. The king of this part of 
 the realm, who had been told that a strange fleet 
 from the East was in sio^ht, felt the same as his folks, 
 
 A WREST-LING CIR-CUS. 
 
 and cried out : ''We did not know that there was a 
 land out-side of ours. Have our gods left us ? " It 
 seems as if he did not think he could drive the Jap- 
 a-nese out, but at once sent his men to meet them 
 with a white flag borne on high, to show that they 
 meant peace. The two bands met on good terms, 
 
54 History of Japan. 
 
 and Jin-gu had been but a short time in this strange 
 land when its folks gave them-selves and their wealth 
 up to her, and made an oath that they would own 
 the head of Ja-pan as their great chief, that they 
 would send some of their wealth to this chief from 
 time to time, and some of their best men, too, that 
 the Jap-a-nese might be sure that they still held to 
 their oath and have no cause to come with their 
 troops on an-y more such trips as this one. Streams 
 might flow back-ward, they said, or the small stones 
 in their beds leap up to the stars, yet they would not 
 break their oath. So Jin-gu said she would not make 
 war, and the king had four-score of the ships well 
 stored with gold and silks, and wealth of all kinds ; 
 and four-score men of high rank were put on board 
 as his pledge of good faith. With these Jin-gu and 
 her vast host went back to Ja-pan. They had been 
 gone but two months, and in that time had done the 
 most grand thing in all their his-to-r}^ — a feat more 
 great than the war of Jim-mu, for with all that she 
 had done no blood had been shed and no life lost. 
 It was the first time the Jap-a-nese had gone to a 
 strange land to fight, and to this day they take great 
 pride in it, and tell how they first made ''the arms 
 of Ja-pan shine be-yond the seas." 
 
 When Jin-gu got home she had a son whom the 
 Jap-a-nese look on as the god of war. Then the 
 
56 Histoiy of Japan. , 
 
 death of Chi-u-ai was made known, and in due form 
 the em-press went through the rites of the dead ere 
 she made her way back to her court. This was in 
 the eight hun-dred and six-ty- third year of the 
 Jap-a-nese em-pire, or as we count the years 203 a. d. 
 Jin-gu kept the throne for near three score and ten 
 years more. It was a reign in which much new 
 thought and new ways of hfe came to the realm from 
 the Co-re-ans, who got their ways from the Chi-nese, 
 but of whom the Jap-a-nese had not heard ere this. 
 Then, too, Jin-gu made a great change in the plan 
 on which the em-pire was laid out. The Mi-ka-do 
 who held the throne ere Chi-u-ai's time, had cut it 
 up a-new from the old, rough plan of the fiefs that 
 were held by the sho-guns, which Su-jin laid out in 
 the year 25 a. d. ; but now Jin-gu made a new plan, 
 like that in Co-re-a, with five home states, in which 
 was the chief town and the seat of the court, and 
 sev-en more states, or do as the Jap-a-nese call them, 
 whose names show which way they lie from the seat 
 of the em-pire. This form, for the most part, has 
 been kept till now, though in those days the folks 
 knew much less of the size and shape of the isles 
 that make up their realm, than they do now. All 
 parts were known by these do names, and there were 
 not, as we might think, names tor each of the isles 
 by it-self. In fact, it was not till a long time that 
 
Japan s First Foreign Conquest. 
 
 57 
 
 they came to know that the main isle, Hou-do, was 
 an isle. If you should hear folks call this main isle 
 Nip-pon, you may be sure that they do not know 
 the Jap-a-nese well, for to them that name stands 
 for the whole land. 
 
 Jin-gu, and her son, O-jin, are now great gods in 
 
 the Shin-to. There are a host of shrines to them 
 in all parts of the realm, and men of arms and men 
 of the sea pray to O-jin as the god of war, like Mars 
 was to the Greeks in days of old; and boys are 
 taught to look to Jin-gu and to think of her life and 
 brave deeds, as if she were a man in whose steps 
 
^8 History of Japan. 
 
 they must try to tread. She is put with the great 
 men, not the wom-en, when on the 5th of May each 
 year the pic-tufes, dolls and fig-ures of the house 
 are brought out and the youths are told tales of those 
 sires who have done grand things for the ho-ly 
 realm of Dai (great) Nip-pon, and are taught that 
 they must try to be as great and good as their 
 sires. 
 
 It was a tide of new life that this great queen 
 brought to her realm w^hen she made Co-re-ans take 
 an oath to send her of their wealth and their men 
 as a pledge of their faith to her. For five cent-u- 
 ries— from the 3d to the 8th — this new stream of 
 life bore on its flood a great load from A-si-a to 
 Ja-pan of all those things which make folks more 
 fine and less rude, and give them a taste for what 
 things are good, and pure and high, in place of wild 
 ways, strife and war — that is, it gave the Jap-a-nese 
 a love for books and taught them how to write. It 
 gave them a new faith, which did much to change 
 and raise the Shin-to, but did not wipe it out. It 
 taught them how to think and gave them new views 
 of life. It told them of laws, of how to heal the 
 sick, of more of sci-ence, and gave them much 
 new lio^ht on art. Folks from the West came to 
 live in the land, who could teach the Jap-a-nese how 
 to use their hands as well as their minds in ways 
 
Japans First Foreign Conquest. 59 
 
 they knew naught of ere this. Though this great 
 change took its start in Jin-gu's time, there are few 
 tales told of who came to Ja-pan from Co-re-a in her 
 reign. In her son's day we read of some three hun- 
 dred tail-ors who came, and most three hun-dred 
 fine steeds that were sent as a gift from the king; 
 and it was then, too, that a man who had read 
 books a great deal, and was well learnt, came to 
 dwell at the Court for a while and taught the Mi-ka- 
 do's son how to write. Quite a long time went by, 
 though, ere much use was made of this new art by 
 the Jap-a-nese, and it was not till 403 a. d., that 
 there was an-y one kept at court to make note of 
 what took place in the realm. Near this time some 
 mul-ber-ry trees were brought from the West and 
 set out, and the care of silk-worms came to be 
 known here as in Chi-na and Co-re-a. The two 
 realms seem to have been on the best of terms, for 
 some of the Co-re-ans who went there must have 
 gone of their own will. There were great bands of 
 work-men, trades-men and plain folks of all crafts 
 who went from Co-re-a to make them-selves at home 
 in the strange isles of the East. Ja-pan must have 
 thought a great deal of her new realm, too, for she 
 used it well, and once when the food gave out there 
 the Mi-ka-do sent vast loads of grain to the poor 
 folks. In the year 552 there came to the sea-girt em- 
 
6o History of Japan. 
 
 pire as friends some men from the Court of Chi-na, 
 as well as quite a band of Co-re-ans, some of whom 
 had great gifts in sci-ence and art, and some who 
 were priests of Bud-dha. This was the great faith 
 of the lands west of Ja-pan, and was not at all like 
 the rude Shin-to. It soon spread till it got a strong 
 hold on the folks, rich as well as poor, and for 
 years it has been the chief faith of most of the Jap- 
 a-nese, as it is of near one-third of all the folks on 
 the globe. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HOW JAPAN FELL UNDER MILITARY RULE. 
 
 For near six hun-dred years from the time of 
 Jin-gu not much is known of what took place in this 
 realm of the far East. There is a long list of the 
 Mi-ka-dos who held the throne, with now and then 
 a few notes of what they did with Co-re-a and 
 Chi-na. But in the course of that long time we 
 know that the faith of Bud-dha and some of the 
 Chi-nese modes of rule got firm root in the land. 
 Some one has said that these brought to an end the 
 Gold-en Age of the Mi-ka-dos' sway. Ere long the 
 
How Japan Fell Under Militai^y Rule. 
 
 6r 
 
 Em-per-or and his chief man of state took the new 
 faith and a vast change was wrought in the realm. 
 For one thing, it broke up the long reigns that had 
 been one great cause of the strength of the throne, 
 and in more ways than one it made the Mi-ka-do 
 
 A NOBLE SEN-TENCED TO THE HA-RI KA-RI. 
 
 lose part of his hold on the folks, and led to a new 
 sort of rule. In the eighth cent-u-ry the court did 
 a great deal to spread this faith. The men whose 
 place it was to wait on the Mi-ka-do were full of 
 
62 History of Japan. 
 
 zeal to do all that the creed calls for and to be well 
 learnt in the ho-ly books of In-di-a. Word was sent 
 out that two great shrines and a tall church — which 
 is known as a pa-go-da — sev-en sto-ries high, should 
 be built in each fief of the realm. The ranks of the 
 priests grew to great size, and there were scores of 
 homes built for those men who had a wish to be 
 monks and for the rest of their lives to read the 
 Bud-dhist books and live for naught but their faith. 
 The em-per-ors, and the em-press-es, too, thought 
 much of how they might spread this new faith 
 through their whole realm, and it soon came 
 to be the way with the Mi-ka-dos to leave the 
 throne when they had held it for a few years 
 and turn monks. They would shave their 
 heads, as a sign that they were to have no more to 
 do with the world, and would take the name of 
 Ho-o, which means the Em-per-or-Monk of Bud-dha. 
 The Mi-ka-do who took the place of O-jin had a 
 long reign, but that of the next one was short ; and 
 so it went on for a long time. When a mi-ka-do 
 had held the throne for a year or so, he would leave 
 it to his son, who might be but a year or two old, 
 and this boy would do the same, so that the 
 realm was in the hands of the chief monks, 
 the men of state, of the court, and not in the 
 sway of the throne at all. Of course this was 
 
How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 63 
 
 bad for the rule and for the folks who could not 
 look up to their Mi-ka-do as those of old had done 
 to the brave men-at-arms and the kings of firm will 
 and wise minds, strong frames and good health, 
 who had led their troops in great wars, and had had 
 the good and the growth of all parts of their realm 
 at heart. But while the race on the throne grew 
 weak, the class that bore arjns (which, as we know, 
 was made to have a good deal of sway in the days 
 of the first mi-ka-dos) grew more strong, and at last 
 they made a great change in the form of rule in the 
 Jap-a-nese Em-pire. 
 
 From the time that Jin-gu's war had let the flood 
 of life come in from the West, more than one change 
 had crept in, which in a still way brought forth a 
 new state of things in the whole land, in the course 
 of time. But the two things that did more than 
 aught else to mold the life of the Jap-a-nese in-to 
 what the rest of the world found it less than a score 
 of years a-go were Bud-dhism and Feu-dal-ism. The 
 new faith, which came first, led a large part of the 
 folks to give up their old gods, or look at them in a 
 new light ; to change in part their aims in life, their 
 ways, and e-ven their food ; and more than this, its 
 priests brought to the realm the germs of new arts 
 and taught the folks to read, write and speak th-e 
 tonorue of Chi-na, and made known to them not a 
 
64 History of Japan. 
 
 few new kinds of work, which the quick minds of 
 the Jap-a-nese soon made their own, and wrought 
 out with such skill as is seen in no place else. The 
 work of Bud-dhism was to mold the minds and 
 ways of the folks ; that of Feu-dal-ism was to put 
 the realm in the rule of the Sho-guns and to cu.t it 
 up in-to fiefs, in each of which a Dai-mi-o or chief 
 held sway like a king. His life was spent to gain 
 lands and win in wars, his home was a vast fort, 
 in the chief town of the fief, with stout walls, through 
 which no strange man could go till he had shown 
 he had a right to, and his house-hold was like a 
 small town of men-at-arms, who kept guard for their 
 lord in peace and fought for him in war. 
 
 In this the Mid-die A-ges of Ja-pan were like 
 those of Eu-rope, in both of which Feu-dal-ism rose 
 at the same time, though when it came to an end in 
 the fif-teenth cent-u-ry in Eu-rope, it was just on 
 the rise to its height in Ja-pan, where it was brought 
 to a more high state than in an-y land of the 
 East. 
 
 For a long time ere this class rose to an-y great 
 strength, the realm was for the most part in the 
 hands of some lords of high rank, who did not bear 
 arms. From them the knights of the field made up 
 their minds to get the reins of rule. These were 
 the Ku-ge or court lords of the proud Fu-ji-wa-ra 
 
66 History of Japan. 
 
 stock, the first great race in Ja-pan, which was not oi 
 the Mi-ka-do's house. They said they came from 
 Am-e, who served the grand-sire of J im-mu. The first 
 great lord of this house, by some means, rose with 
 the folks at Court till he came to be Ku-am-ba-ku, 
 or Re-gent, for one of the young mi-ka-dos ; and to 
 take this post, which was the most high that an-y 
 sub-ject could hold, came to be the right of his race.. 
 From this house sprung the chief lords of the realm. 
 At first they held chief rank in arms as well as at 
 Court, but ere long they grew so fond of ease that 
 they left the fame and spoils of war to be won by 
 those who would fight for them, while they gave 
 them-selves up to life at Court, where they had full 
 sway and rank next to the Mi-ka-do's own house. 
 They made them-selves a bar to cut the Mi-ka-do 
 off from the mass of his folks. As time went on the 
 gulf grew to be still more wide, till at last he was 
 like a man that did not dwell in the same realm 
 with them at all. He was not seen by an-y one but 
 his wife, the folks of his own house, and a few of 
 his most high men of state. He sat on a throne of 
 mats, with a screen in front of him, and his feet did 
 not touch the earth at an-y time, and when he rode 
 out he was shut in from the view of the folks of the 
 street. Thus, while his sway with the folks grew 
 weak, that of the Fu-ji-wa-ra grew strong, till at last 
 
How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 67 
 
 these lords got a great deal of the rule of the realm 
 in their own hands. They put them-selves in the chief 
 posts of trust and strength, and ere long did with 
 the Em-pire as they chose, and made use of the 
 young mi-ka-dos, who were mere boys, as tools to 
 do their will. 
 
 The throne lost its rights so far that when a mi- 
 ka-do had a wish to have an-y real sway in his realm, 
 he would find he could gain it more as a monk 
 than as the em-per-or on the throne. But for the 
 most part the rule was in the hands of this proud 
 race, till the Tai-ra took it from them by might at 
 arms. For a thou-sand years, from the time of the 
 brave Queen Jin-ju, till the great home war of the 
 twelfth cent-u-ry — the worst in all her his-to-ry — the 
 tale of Ja-pan is made up less of the deeds ol the mi- 
 ka-dos or of the realm in his hands, than of the 
 feuds and fights of these lords and their kins-men, 
 who were high born, rich, and some of them of grand 
 and brave deeds ; for the class that bore the arms of 
 the Em-pire and fought her wars did not long let the 
 Ku-ori class have the best of thino^s at home. So 
 much the more could they fight their own wars. 
 
 The em-per-ors them-selves were not all good 
 men. One whose name was Bu-ret-su, and who 
 had quite a long reign for those times in the last of 
 the fifth cent-u-ry, and the first of the next, is said 
 
68 History of Japan. 
 
 to have been hard and fond of coarse sports, hke 
 the Ro-man em-per-or Ne-ro. He would make his 
 folks go up trees that he might fire on them and'kill 
 them, and he thought it great sport to catch folks 
 and kill them when they did not know he was near. 
 In the time of Bi-dat-su, who took the throne near 
 four-score years af-ter the time of the Jap-a-nese 
 Ne-ro, quite a bad war was led on the Bud-dhists 
 by a man whose name was Mo-ri-a. He tore down 
 the ho-ly things from their shrines, and burnt not a 
 few of the. shrines ; but the strife was put down in 
 the reign of the next mi-ka-do, and Mo-ri-a was 
 slain. But peace was still far off, for the ranks of 
 the men-at-arms were large and strong in these days, 
 and war was their joy as well as their work in life. 
 If they did not have it at home they made it some- 
 where else. In the reign of Ten-shi, near a hun- 
 dred years from Mo-ri-a's war, a great host in a large 
 fleet went to Co-re-a, where they made the king 
 leave his throne and the folks own the Mi-ka-do of 
 Ja-pan as their chief. But they did not meet with 
 as good luck as this, when — in the same reign — they 
 went to Chi-na. Thus the tale of the Realm of the 
 Isles goes on till the great war of the twelfth cent- 
 ur-y, when the Bu-ke (or knights at arms) of the house 
 of He or Tai-ra, and the house of Gen or Min- 
 a-mo-to, fell out in a great strife and brought on the 
 
How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 
 
 69 
 
 worst home-war Ja-pan has known. It was the 
 
 Ta-i-ra clan, led by Ki-o-mo-ri, who won in this war, 
 
 and he was the first sho-gun, or gen-er-al, as we 
 
 would say, who got 
 
 the might of the 
 
 throne out of the 
 
 hands of the Mi-ka- 
 
 do — or his Re-gent 
 
 of Fu-ji-wa-ra blood 
 
 — and made that 
 
 great change in the 
 
 form of rule by 
 
 which ere long the 
 
 em-per-or came to 
 
 stand at the head 
 
 of the realm in 
 
 naught but name, 
 
 and as the chief of 
 
 all priests and monks |-| 
 
 in the faith, while 
 
 some chief-at-arms, 
 
 in the post of Great 
 
 Sho-gun, was at the 
 
 head of the state as 
 
 well as of all the troops, and had charge of the realm 
 
 m peace as much as in war. 
 
 The ofreat strife and the chanoe of rule that marks 
 
 RE-CEP-TION DRESS. 
 
JO History of Japan. 
 
 this time as one of much note in the past of Ja-pan, 
 came to pass in this way. As the Mi-ka-do's sway 
 had grown weak and the Hu-ge and the Bu-ke had 
 grown more strong, each came to have a great deal 
 of ill-will for the oth-er, for each had a wish to be 
 first in the realm and to get the Mi-ka-do in its own 
 hands. And this ill-will grew and grew till at last 
 it broke out in a great feud and threw all the realm 
 in-to dread and strife. As long as the Gen and 
 Ta-i-ra kept to war, the Fu-ji-wa-ra had naught to 
 dread from them, and saw them grow great in their 
 fame with no fear ; but there were times of peace 
 now and then when the bold, brave gen-er-als had 
 time to see how the men who ruled the realm they 
 fought for, took their ease and dwelt in wealth and 
 peace. They had no such good things, but it was 
 not long ere they made up their minds that they 
 would like them as much as the Fu-ji-wa-ra. So they 
 went to live at Ki-o-to, the chief town of the realm 
 and the place where the court was held, and where 
 all the great and rich lords dwelt. At the same time 
 the Ku-ge saw that if they did not take care, the 
 fame these chiefs won in the wars would raise 
 them too high in the state. Now the court (which 
 had no might at arms it-self) was most glad to 
 have the chiefs put an end to these brawls when 
 they rose. But the court lords did not like it at 
 
How Japan Fell Under Military Rule. 71 
 
 all when there came to be signs that the Bu-ke 
 would be as great as they. Their first step to 
 check this, was to make a rule that the court 
 should not give high rank to an-y Ta-i-ra or Gen, let 
 his claims be what they might ; then they sent word 
 that the bands of self-made men-at-arms, which had 
 spread through a large part of the realm in the past 
 few3/ears, must not join the ranks of these sho-guns; 
 but this did not do much good, for the men did as 
 they chose, and they did not choose to leave chiefs 
 who paid them so well, and of whom they had 
 grown so fond. Then they tried to set one clan to 
 check the oth-er, and that, too, did not work well. 
 But if they could not make an-y one else serve mean 
 tricks on these great sho-guns, they did it them- 
 selves. When the Gen clan brought all the North 
 of Hon-du in-to the em-pire, and for most a score of 
 years kept the whole of the Ku-an-to in peace, and 
 went so far as to pay costs that the realm should have 
 borne from their own funds, they made the court take 
 no note of it at all ; and when the chiefs asked forsom.e 
 gifts or pay for the men in the ranks, who had fought 
 for all this, the Ku-ge sent no word back at all, and 
 would not so much as let the Mi-ka-do own what 
 they had done in his name, but spoke of the whole 
 thing as some feuds of their own. So the Gen and 
 the Ta-i-ra chiefs took it on them-selves to give grants 
 
72 History of Japan. 
 
 of land to their men, and thus most of the men-at- 
 arms grew to feel still more bound to their sho-guns 
 and to think still less of the Court. 
 
 Step by step the Gen clan, which was the more 
 strong of the two, got hold of some of the posts of 
 note in the rule of the state ; and all might have 
 still gone well if these two great clans could have 
 kept on good terms ; but the house of Gen could not 
 bear to see the men of Ta-i-ra rise in fame, and the 
 Ta-i-ra, just as bad, felt a pang each time they saw 
 a Gen gain a jot in name, or rank, or wealth. At 
 last a cause was found to bring them to strife — 
 which was the claims of two prin-ces to the throne. 
 It was clear then that the side which won and made 
 its prince the Mi-ka-do, would hold first rank in 
 his realm ; and they fought in a long hard strife for 
 the prize. The chief who led the side that won at 
 last, was Ki-o Mo-ri of the Ta-i-ra race. He was a 
 young man who had been full of fire and life, and 
 thirst for fame from the time he was a small boy. 
 He had been bred to arms, and ere he was a score 
 of years old he had made a cruise of much note to 
 get hold of some sea thieves that had done a great 
 deal to vex the Jap-a-nese. Part of his life was 
 spent at Ki-o-to and part in the field of war at the 
 South, so he knew the ways of town and court, as 
 well as of war, when the time came for him to take 
 
How Japan Fell Under Alilitary Rule. 
 
 73 
 
 the place of his sire as one of the chief men of state. 
 It was in the same year that the two prin-ces laid 
 claim to the throne, and the house of Ta-i-ra took 
 sides with Ki-o Mo-ri while his foe had the aid 
 of the Gen or Min- 
 a-mo-to clan. It was 
 in a way, like Eng- 
 land's war of the Ro- 
 ses ; the Ta-i-ra with 
 their red flags, and 
 the Gen with their 
 white, fought hard 
 each for its own 
 prince. The Ta-i-ra 
 won, for they got 
 the house of the em- 
 per-or out of the -^F'' 
 hands of all the rest, I| 
 and their prince was ^H 
 put on the throne; ^ 
 and from then till 
 now no one in the 
 realm has had so 
 much sway as the 
 head of the set on the side of the Mi-ka-do. Ki-o 
 Mo-ri now had the rule of all Ja-pan in his own 
 grasp ; for the Mi-ka-do knew it was through him 
 
 OF-FI-CER IN COURT DRESS. 
 
74 History of Japan. 
 
 that he had the throne, so he gave him his way in 
 all things — as he could not help but do. 
 
 Ki-o Mo-ri let no chance go by to raise him-self 
 and his house ; and at last he held a place in the 
 realm at the head of all the rest of the great men of 
 state, and the sons of his race were in most of the 
 best posts, both at court and in arms. And he, too, 
 kept his place in the guard at arms. This is how 
 the house of Ta-i-ra came to be the most strong- 
 in the realm — and more strong than the Fu-ji- 
 wa-ra had been. This is how, too, that the sho-guns 
 and the rest of the class that in times past had had 
 no place but on the field of war, now came to have 
 the whole of the realm in their hands. It was the 
 first of what is known as the mil-i-ta-ry rule — which 
 brought great change to Ja-pan, and was kept up for 
 sev-en hun-dred years; for it fell but a score of years 
 a-go. Ki-o Mo-ri was at the head of all the Jap- 
 a-nese troops, and ere long he was in all but name 
 the em-per-or of the realm ; he had rid him-self of 
 all his foes in court and out of it ; he and three- 
 score of his kins-men held most of the high posts in 
 the realm ; they had great wealth, for the tax of 
 more than thir-ty fiefs went to them ; they built 
 grand homes in Ki-o-to and else-where, and at last 
 he made two of his sons sho-guns of first rank, and 
 his girl-child the wife of the boy Mi-ka-do then on 
 
76 Histoiy of Japan. 
 
 the throne. The Fu-ji-wa-ra had no might at arms,, 
 and were, by the rise of the Ta-i-ra, put in the shade 
 for all time ; and Ki-o Mo-ri did not rest till he had, 
 as he thought, got all the Gen folks out of his way, 
 so that through a long line the race of the Ta-i-ra 
 might be the chiefs of the great Em-pire of the Ris- 
 ing Sun. But his wish did not come to pass. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE RULE OF THE HOUSE OF GEN. 
 
 Though Ki-o Mo-ri had put to death the chief 
 men of the house of Gen, lest they should rise up in 
 their strength and drive him from the high place he 
 had won, he had said he would spare the lives of 
 two of the old chief's sons. The first one, from 
 whom he had the most to fear, was dead, he 
 thouo^ht, and the vouno^ ones were sent to live with 
 some Bud-dhist monks and grow up to be priests. 
 But Ki-o Mo-ri should have known that these boys 
 had the hot blood of their brave sires in then' veins, 
 and since he had been so bad as to kill them, he 
 should have done the same to their sons if it was 
 
The Rule of the House of Ge?i. yj 
 
 his wish to keep all he had won for his own 
 race. 
 
 The first son, Yo-ri-to-mo, had got off with his 
 life, as well as the two young ones, though he was 
 in the last fight which his sire lost and had the ill 
 luck to fall m the hands of one of the Ta-i-ra men. 
 But through the aid of some folks who felt for the 
 boy, he was not put to death, but was sent to live 
 far off in the fief of Id-zu, in the care of two Ta-i-ra 
 men. He had the gilts of a great man ; his will 
 was strong, his heart brave ; he knew how to feel 
 joy, grief or wrath and not show them in his face ; 
 he could bear a great deal, as he had to both in the 
 fall of his race and in the ills of war. At the same 
 time he won the love and best will of those he was 
 with. So when the proud, hard ways of Ki-o 
 Mo-ri got to such a pitch that a prince of the blood 
 made up his mind to rid the realm of him if he had 
 to put him to death, this prince knew that Yo-ri-to- 
 mo and the Gen clan would be just the men to help 
 him. He wrote to Yo-ri-to-mo, and he in turn 
 wrote to his bold young broth-er, Yosh-it-su-ne, and 
 to his friends, to join him and take up arms to put 
 down the old foe of their race. 
 
 Now there was not in all the isles of the realm a 
 knight more great and good than this Yosh-it-su-ne. 
 He was not so old as his broth-er by twelve years, 
 
^2) History of Japan. 
 
 but he was, as we say, the " flow-er of his age." He 
 had been put with his small broth-er to live with 
 the monks when his sire was put to death, but he 
 had too much love for life and sports, and was too 
 true a son of the Sho-gUn, to want to spend his years 
 with books ; so one day he ran off from the monks' 
 house with some man of trade who had come from 
 the East to sell steel to the folks who dwelt near the 
 monks. The man did not want to take him, but 
 the boy would go, and they soon came to be warm 
 friends. On their way they made a stop at 
 Kad-zu-sa, which was then a prey to a band of 
 thieves, with whom Yosh-it-su-ne had some fights 
 and did such bold deeds to drive them out that his 
 friend had to beg him not to put forth his strength 
 too much or the Ta-i-ra would hear of it and know 
 at once from what race he came; and that would be 
 the end of him. So the young man kept as still as 
 he could and went on with his friend to Mut-su, 
 where he went to live with a prince of the old Fu-ji- 
 wa-ra house. He spent his time in the chase, in 
 the sports of which he was fond, and in drill at 
 arms; and in the mean-time he grew to be strong 
 and brave, and in all things the type of a Jap-a-nese 
 knight. When the call came to him from Yo-ri- 
 to-mo he went to the field at once, and the grand 
 fight that he made for the pride of his race did more 
 
The Rule of the House of Gen. 
 
 79 
 
 to place the house of Gen at the head of the state 
 
 and to drive out the Ta-i-ra than all the spread of 
 
 Yo-ri-to-mo, though he got the place of chief and 
 
 most of the spoils. In the first of this fight, when 
 
 the Ta-i-ra race and 
 
 the house of Gen 
 
 met in strife once 
 
 more, the Ta-i-ra 
 
 beat Yo-ri-to-mo 
 
 and he had to flee 
 
 for his life. But 
 
 he found a new 
 
 band that would let 
 
 him lead them, and 
 
 ere long^ he made 
 
 up a 1 arge force 
 
 from the folks who 
 
 had once been led 
 
 by his sires, but 
 
 who till now had 
 
 held back in fear of 
 
 the might of the 
 
 Ta-i-ra sway. Like 
 
 ,1 , T BAR-BERS. 
 
 the true J ap-a- 
 
 nese Sho-gun that he was, when he found the 
 folks glad to join with him, he lost no time ere he 
 had made up a large force and got them all in fine 
 
So History of Japa?i. 
 
 shape for war. He woke his clan up to new hfe, 
 and drew to his side not a few of the men who had 
 lost their love for the Ta-i-ra or had found their 
 schemes at Court to fail, and would now put forth 
 all the might they had to push on the plans of their 
 great arch-foe. In the mean-time Ki-o Mo-ri had 
 been at work and had got up a large force which was 
 sent to the East just in time to get to one side of 
 the Fu-ji Riv-er just as Yo-ri-to-mo came up to the 
 oth-er. But this is the most swift of all the streams 
 in Ja-pan, and though both troops had a great wish 
 to meet and fight, they could not cross the flood. 
 At last the Ta-i-ra took fright and fled in haste, sure 
 that the Gen were at their heels, while they, for their 
 part, soon went back to Ka-ma-ku-ra, where Yo-ri- 
 to-mo set out to build a great town that in time came to 
 be more grand in size and wealth and to have more 
 sway in Ja-pan than old and great Ki-o-to it -self. 
 He now made it his work to build up the might of 
 this town and fix the sway of the Gen house here, 
 and to wipe out the name of Ta-i-ra from the face of 
 the earth. In the mean-time his broth-er and 
 brave kins-folk led the hosts in the fierce war which 
 soon spread through the whole realm. Ere long 
 Ki-o Mo-ri fell sick and died at Ki-o-to, and his 
 son took his place at the head of the house of Ta-i-ra ; 
 but the star of that race was now on its down-ward 
 
The Rule of the House of Ge7z. 8i 
 
 course^ for the Gen troops won in the East, in the 
 North, and the West, and at last they got Ki-o-to 
 it-self, the chief town, the seat of the court and state, 
 in their hands. The Ta-i-ra, the young Mi-ka-do, 
 his folks and near friends, had to flee, while his 
 broth-er was put on the throne and the wealth of the 
 proud Ta-i-ra went to the chief who had sent them 
 iorth. Yosh-it-zu-ne, then the first man-at-arms of 
 
 PUN-ISH-MENTS. 
 
 the whole realm, went so far as to lay siege to the 
 forts where the Ta-i-ra had tried to set up their 
 strength and to plan means by which to get back 
 what they had lost ; and he drove them from place 
 to place till at last they were on the sea, where each 
 had a fleet of junks that met in a great fray that 
 was to bring the dread war to an end. Though the 
 Gen had all the odds in this fray, the Ta-i-ra fought 
 
82 History of Japan. 
 
 best, and would have won if one of their men had 
 not been false to them and lent aid to Yosh-it-zu-ne. 
 It was a fierce fight to the end, and the day was not 
 won till there was scarce a child of the Ta-i-ra left 
 in all the fleet. Then all that were on land 
 were sought out and put to death ere their foes felt 
 free to be gay o-ver the great things they had done 
 and the way they had paid off to the race of Ki-o 
 Mo-ri the score he had left them when he slew their 
 sire to make way for his own rise. 
 
 While this dread strife went on Yo-ri-to-mo's great 
 task was to build up his strength and sway at Ka- 
 ma-ku-ra, and to keep on in his plans till he had the 
 whole of the real rule of the land in his hands. So 
 it came round that Ja-pan at last was un-der two- 
 fold form of rule. The Mi-ka-do, at Ki-o-to, was 
 still the Em-per-or, and held his court as the great 
 head of the realm. Though no one else had such a 
 thought as to take the throne, his reign was not 
 his rule ; while the great Sho-gun, who still had 
 to own the Mi-ka-do as his chief, had the reins of 
 rule. He had a seat and sort of court of his own, 
 three hun-dred miles from that ot the Mi-ka-do's. 
 He made more than one change in the state, chief 
 of which was to form a coun-cil, which saw to the 
 ways and needs of the realm. He set up a court, 
 too, which tried all who did an-v crime, most of all 
 
The Rule of the House of Gen. 
 
 83 
 
 the thieves (of which there were then great bands in 
 Ja-pan). Scores of new ways to deal with the folks 
 were laid out and brought up to the Mi-ka-do, who let 
 them be put in force in his name, though some of 
 them were far from the old forms of his sires, and not 
 just what he would have done him-self. In this way 
 Yo-ri-to-mo got the roy-al word to wipe out the Ta-i-ra 
 house from all the posts of trust, and to put his own 
 
 ini|iiiilii'i,J !|ji"4 
 
 'Hll I f'TTii \\m\ 
 
 PUN-ISH-MENTS. 
 
 kin in their stead. He took arms and all tools of 
 war from the monks, too. They had come to have 
 o^reat stores of this sort, and could use them with 
 much skill, so that when they felt they had cause to 
 fight they could oft send out as fine a set of troops 
 as was kept by the state m an-y part of the realm. 
 They had wealth, too, and so far lost sight of the 
 aim they laid claims to in life, that they kept them- 
 
84 History of Japan. 
 
 selves like sets of real troops, in trim to break forth 
 an-y day and fight the cause of an-y side they chose 
 to take. This was not good for the realm, and Yo- 
 ri-to-mo soon broke it up. Thus, step by step, he 
 got more rights from the throne and brought things 
 round to suit him-self, till at last he had a sure place 
 as the head of the realm. 
 
 In five great fiefs sho-guns were put in charge, 
 where there had been gov-ern-ors of the civ-il class ; 
 in the small fiefs, the civ-il gov-ern-ors were made to 
 share their posts with (or to yield them in all but 
 name) to chiefs-at-arms of the Gen race ; and in all 
 parts of the realm a tax was laid on to keep them 
 in troops, so that a good force might be on hand at 
 all times, and there would be no need to call out the 
 troops of the East when small feuds broke out in 
 strife. Ere long he sent folks to live in the 
 lands of the North and the East which had 
 been made to own the sway of the Mi-ka-do and 
 pay tax to him. Soon those lands were made 
 a part of the realm, with the same form of rule 
 as the rest. Still more lands at the North did 
 he add, and from the year 1180 on he had more 
 might than an-y man in the em-pire, e-ven the 
 Mi-ka-do him-self, and all the lords of the court 
 paid to him the most high hon-orsthat were known to 
 them. In that year he made a vis-it to the Mi-ka-do 
 
The Ways of War in Feztdal Times. 
 
 85 
 
 and when he went back to Ka-ma-ku-ra, it was with 
 more sway in the state than the old Fu-ji-wa-ra had 
 held at an-y time, and more might at arms than the 
 
 PLOW-ING AND SOW ING A RICE FIELD. 
 
 great house of Ta-i-ra had known. In a few years 
 he was made Sei-i Ta-i Sho-gun, or Great Gen-er-al, 
 
 AT WORK IN A RICE FIELD. 
 
 which was a rank that had not been known in Ja- 
 pan ere this, but which was kept up till 1868. From 
 
86 History of Japan. 
 
 that time it meant much more to be a sho-gun than 
 it had in the past; it meant so much that folks 
 who went to Ja-pan from strange lands, thought 
 that there were two heads of the em-pire. But that 
 was not so. Great as was the Sho-gun's rule, it was 
 at all times in the name of his lord, the Mi-ka-do 
 at Ki-o-to. 
 
 With this last rise of Yo-ri-to-mo peace came to 
 Ja-pan, and the great Gen-er-al spent the prime of 
 his life in plans to make his rule sound and sure, 
 and to have his sons and all his race brave and 
 strong, so that they could hold the place he had 
 made for them through all the years to come. 
 
 But there is one blot of his fair name. So long 
 as he could use men for his own aims he was good 
 to them, but as soon as he thought they might come 
 to be great in them-selves, in fear that they might 
 rise to out-shine him, he got them out of the way ; 
 and most of all he did this with his good broth-er 
 Yosh-it-zu-ne, who, in truth, won more for Yo-ri- 
 to-mo than the great Sho-gun did for him-self, but 
 who won so much love from all folks as well as such 
 great fame by his deeds in war, that his broth-er 
 came to fear lest he should rise too high, and then 
 to hate him, and at last to o^ive word to have him 
 put to death. But though Yo-ri-to-mo got all that 
 he tried to, and more, and ranks as one of the first 
 
88 History of Japan. 
 
 of all Ja-pan's great men in the state and in arms, 
 it is not he, but Yosh-it-zu-ne, whose name is now- 
 held most high, whose place is thought to be with 
 the gods, and to whom the folks have built shrines 
 and pray. The young folks are told the tale of his 
 life and his great deeds ; his face is on their kites ; 
 and they all think of him as the type of what a true 
 Jap-a-nese knight should be. Yo-ri-to-mo spent his 
 life to serve him-self, and when he died his rule fell, 
 his town was burnt to the ground, and he was put 
 in his grave with few to think of him in time to 
 come. But his young broth-er's fame still lives, and 
 the boys of Ja-pan are still taught to be good and 
 brave, and to have high aims in their lives as this 
 knight of old had in his. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE WAYS OF WAR IN FEUDAL TIMES. 
 
 It WAS in Yo-ri-to-mo's day that feu-dal-ism 
 spread it-self through most all parts of the realm. 
 It got its start back near the close of the eighth 
 cent-u-ry, when the Court made the plan to have a 
 force of home ranks in each part of the realm, and 
 
The Ways of War in Feudal Times. 
 
 89 
 
 to raise such a host of new troops had said that all 
 those of the rich farm folks who were strong and 
 smart, and who knew how to use the bow and ride 
 a horse well should bear arms, and form a new 
 class, known as the Sam-u-rai, while the rest who 
 were weak of mind or limb should keep on and till 
 the soil. And, more than that, it was said that there 
 
 MAK-ING BRIDG-ES. 
 
 should be naught to keep an-y of these Sam-u-rai 
 who fought well and bore them-selves like true 
 knights, from the most high posts that a man-at- 
 arms could hold. Thus there was a prize in view 
 for each of these larm-born guards, and not a few 
 of them soon won a place and high rank in their 
 
«90 History of Japan. 
 
 troops. But ere a plain man like this could be put 
 in charge of the Mi-ka-do's troops, he must needs go 
 to Ki-o-to to serve as a court page, wait on some 
 great lord or fill some place where he could learn 
 how things were done in the name of the throne. 
 
 But they learnt more than that at Court ; they 
 learnt how court folks did for them-selves at Ki-o-to ; 
 they saw the strife for rank and fame that w^ent on 
 all the time with the lords great and small ; and 
 when they went back to their homes, their minds 
 were full of plans to do the same thing in a small 
 way. The folks where they dwelt were sure to 
 think more of them for their stay at Ki-o-to and all 
 they must have learnt of the ways at court, than of 
 those who had not been to tow^n ; and so they 
 oft came to rule quite large parts of the fiefs in which 
 they dwelt. When they were sent for at Ki-o-to 
 they would not go; nor did the Ku-ge Gov-ern-ors of 
 the fiefs dare to do aught to them, for they had 
 arms and steeds and men in their train to make up 
 a good strong band for fray. In this way a large 
 class grew up and spread through Ja-pan who 
 called them-selves men-at-arms (though they would 
 serve an-y great chief for pay) and who did a great 
 deal to help on small feuds and clan-fights which 
 were apt to spread till the whole fief was in a brawl ; 
 and the Court would have to send out a force in 
 
I'he Ways of War in Feudal Times. 91 
 
 charge of a Ta-i-ra or Gen chief to check the strife. 
 Now these chiefs, or sho-guns, would not make up 
 all their force from the ranks of the realm but would 
 get the aid of some such bands as those he was sent 
 to quell who were not yet in the brawl, but were at 
 all times glad to take part in a fray if they knew 
 they would be well paid for it. 
 
 Thus you see these men who took up arms in 
 their own right grew more strong and not less so, as 
 would have been best for the Court rule ; and, as 
 time went on, there grew to be ties that bound the 
 men in clans to this or that chief for whom they 
 fought, so that they would not leave him for an-y 
 thing. 
 
 In the mean-time the folks came to feel more and 
 more that the Court had lost its hold on them ; and 
 while they still thought of the Mi-ka-do as their 
 great king, the Son of Heav-en, whose word was 
 law and who owned them as his slaves, they did not 
 serve him, but some ''great name" or Dai-mi-o, as 
 the Jap-a-nese say, in his stead. To the clan of 
 some strong prince they would be bound for peace 
 and war. They would fight his cause with glad 
 hearts, and if he were slain, they would die, too. 
 By their strength and zeal, he could soon claim the 
 whole fief, and rule all folks as much as those who 
 bore his arms. Those who worked the farms, kept 
 
92 History of Japan. 
 
 shops or plied a trade, all came at last to be in the 
 care of some chief to whose fort-like house they 
 could flee in time of harm and whose band of brave 
 men-at-arms was on hand at all times to do his 
 will. And the tax — ^ which was of so much rice 
 — these folks did not pay to the realm, as had been 
 their wont, but to their chiefs, who spent their 
 wealth on their clans, on them-selves and their 
 homes. The home of a Dai-mi-o, with its walls and 
 moats, its vast courts and high tow-ers, was like a 
 great fort, with-in which was a small town. At its 
 gates there was a lodge, where a guard of armed 
 men was kept at all times ; and though a man from 
 some oth-er clan might be made at home in all parts 
 else of the great chief's house, he was not at an-y 
 time let to go in-to the fort in-side where the 
 Dai-mi-o's arms and wealth were kept. This 
 was the rule with all clans. The Jap-a-nese 
 knights, like those of the West, had a high sense of 
 what was due their chief and right for them-selves, 
 and a long code of rules, as to what was due them 
 from both friend and foe and what they should do 
 to both. 
 
 No man held so low a rank that by brave deeds 
 and good faith to his chief he might not rise to a 
 high place in charge of a large force, with a great 
 name and much wealth ; and when such a rise was 
 
The Ways of War in Fezidal Times. 
 
 93 
 
 made it was a grand time in the fort and through 
 the whole fief. The Sam-u-rai, of which these knights 
 were one class, have long been the most bright 
 type of all the Jap-a-nese folks. They have done 
 more than hold the fiefs and fight the wars of their 
 clans ; they were her first trav-el-ers and men of 
 books and of arts. They — we are told — are the men 
 
 STREET IN YO-KO-HA-MA. 
 
 whose minds have been the best and the most quick 
 to learn, and the most wise to act. It was of this 
 class that the plan of feu-dal-ism was born ; and it 
 Avas they who broke it up, swept down the sho-gun 
 rule in 1868, put the reins once more in the Mi- 
 ka-do's hands and said, we will send our young men 
 to the great West and will wake Ja-pan out of her 
 
94 History of Japan. 
 
 past, and make her a realm of the new world. They 
 were in the Mid-die A-ges, as now, the soul of the ;. 
 realm. As they are now the best men in this new [ 
 age of peace, they were the best chiefs, the best rank 
 and file in the old days. J 
 
 A Sam-u-rai, then, was not seen out of doors that 
 he did not have his two swords — a long and a short ' 
 one — at his belt. A guard was at the gate of his i 
 house — or his fort, if he was a great man — all the 
 time ; and on the porch, in front of his house, there | 
 were spears, both great and small ; bows and darts, ( 
 and more than one war-ax would be set on their | 
 butts to be at hand in case of need. In the halls I 
 were coats of mail and all the dress for war, as well , 
 as long spears, which the wom-en of the house knew 
 how to use m case foes should come on the place 
 when the men were not there. 
 
 The men-at-arms of those days bore shields and i 
 wore casques, and suits of mail, made of chain or < 
 of scales, some of iron, brass or steel, and some (^ 
 of shark-skin or the hide of beasts made hard. More 1 
 stuffs than these were made use of some-times ; for j 
 in their war-tools, as in all their home things, the (j 
 Jap-a-nese made great use of lac-quer, a sort of |. 
 fine, hard var-nish that they made from the gum 
 of a tree and spread on met-als, on wood, on pa-per 
 and a great ma-ny things to give them a hard sur- 
 
96 History of Japan. 
 
 face, as well as to make them smooth and brignt to 
 look at. 
 
 The Jap-a-nese ranks were a fine sight to see 
 when they set out for the field of war. Since the 
 land was so much made up of hills and vales, or the 
 wet plains where rice grew, they had small use for 
 horse-men, and most of the troops were on foot. 
 The race, you know, as a rule, is not so large as 
 ours ; but the men were straight and of good shape, 
 bore their arms well and made a bright show with 
 their suits ol black, white, blue, green, gold and 
 sil-ver mail, the gay cords that bound their sword 
 hilts, and their grand crests, and the silk of their 
 dress that could be seen here and there when there 
 was a gap in the mail. They bore tall spears in 
 their t -inds that caught the sun, and the casques 
 of thcir chiefs were some-times as much as three feet 
 tall. Drums, sticks of hard wood, with which to 
 clap, and conch-shells, made up their band, and 
 gave them the calls of the march, the camp, and the 
 field. 
 
 The Jap-a-nese learnt ma-ny arts of war from the 
 Chi-nese, through Co-re-a, but, as with all that they 
 learnt from that land, they made much change in 
 them to suit their own needs. For a time they 
 would try one mode, then some new one, but at last, 
 in the rule of the Ash-i-ka-ga, two men brouo^ht forth 
 
'^he Ways of War in Feudal Times. 
 
 97 
 
 the best that had yet been tried ; and that was kept 
 in use till the great - ,- - . ;/- yy. ^ 
 
 change of late years, ' ' ^ ^'"^'^^ 
 
 whenthe Jap-a-nese - f.^ 
 
 gave up then' own 
 modes of war-fare 
 forthoseof Eu-rope. 
 In the field, a rain 
 of darts from each 
 side was most of 
 the time the way a 
 fray be-gan. Then 
 there would be a 
 fight the length of 
 the whole line for a 
 time till the strife 
 grew so fierce that 
 the ranks got in one 
 great mob, where 
 each man's sole 
 thought was to cut 
 off all the heads he 
 could with his 
 sword. It was not 
 a rare thing for the p 
 chief of each side ^B 
 to come out in front 
 
 WIN-TER DRESS OF THE FISH-ER-MEN AND PEAS-ANTS. 
 
98 History of Japan. 
 
 of the ranks, and to spare their troops, end the 
 strife by one hand-to-hand fight. When they 
 met by chance in the great fray, it would 
 be the same. Their men would slack their strife : 
 they could give no aid to their chiefs, but had to 
 stand to one side to watch the fight, and each 
 band would call the name of their own man to cheer 
 him on. The fight would rage till one of them had 
 cut off the head of his foe. Then with the poor 
 wretch's head held high in his hand, he would shout 
 his name and yell it out that he had won the day. 
 This would bring the strife to the same end as it 
 the whole force of the foe had been cut down, and 
 the clan of the chief who had won would shout their 
 praise of his feat. Then those who had slain an-y 
 foes of note had to pass in front of him and show 
 him the heads they had cut off, at which he would 
 give them such gifts as were thought meet 
 for such brave deeds. If an-y had saved the life 
 of the chief on the field, he was raised to a post 
 of most high rank in the clan. 
 
 On the side that lost, those men who had been 
 hurt would fall on their swords or kill them-selves 
 in some wa3% so as not to fall in-to the hands of 
 their foes ; and an-y chief or man of note in the 
 ranks would cut or flay his face so that it would 
 not be known b}^ the foes ; for if they found it they 
 
The Ways of War in Feudal Times. 99 
 
 would take great pride in it and put it in some place 
 where scores of folks would see it and say how great 
 was the man who could kill him. This was the right 
 thing for all true knights to do in those days ; and, 
 more than that, there would be not a few of a chiefs 
 men who, though not hurt at all, would take their 
 own lives ; for it was not right, they thought, that 
 they should live if their chief was slain. 
 
 When a force laid siege to a fort or a town, or the 
 great house of some dai-mi-o, they built up in front 
 of their camp a sort of screen of planks, with a steep 
 slant. At the gates of these stood guards. A 
 watch was kept on the hills, in high trees, or tow-ers 
 built up for that use ; and some-times huge kites that 
 would hold a man were flown, and a bird's eye view 
 was got of what lay with-in the walls of the foe. 
 The facts thus learnt had much to do with the way 
 the siege went on. Some-times the plan would be to 
 starve them out ; some-times to set fire to them, or 
 shoot at them at long range ; some-times feints of 
 good-will would be made, or a ruse would be tried ; 
 and then, if all else were in vain, a charge would be 
 made and the hosts would fall on the fort, smash in 
 the gates, scale the walls, and take the place by 
 storm and at the point of the sword, if the folks 
 could not cut them down and drive them back ere 
 they got so far. 
 
lOO History of Japan. 
 
 The work of those who held the civ-il posts in the 
 realm was not great in these days. They had to 
 see that the lolks were dealt with in just terms ; that 
 those who did wrong paid for their crimes ; that no 
 man took or had to give up more than his due. 
 They had to hear both sides of no end of small 
 feuds and set them at rest, and to take the tax from 
 the folks at set times. This was quite a gay time 
 with the farm folk. When the rice crops were well 
 in, each man would put the share that he was to pay 
 to the realm in straw bags and fix it in nice shape to 
 go to the town where he must pay it. Then in fet6 
 dress him-self, and with his horse made gay with 
 flaps and straps of red, a small bunch of bells here 
 and there, he would put the rice bags on the beast 
 and set off to pay his tax and have a good time with 
 the friends he would be sure to meet on the road and 
 at the end of the route. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE WAYS OF PEACE IN FEU-DAL TIMES. 
 
 A REAL peace that spread through the whole realm 
 and that they felt would last was not known to the 
 Jap-a-nese till the time of I-ye-ya-su in the six-teenth 
 
The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 
 
 lOI 
 
 cent-u-ry ; yet all through the long age of war there 
 were times now and then, when no great strife shook 
 the land and when the folks could think of the arts 
 of peace, could work at crafts and give their minds 
 to books and things that have naught to do with 
 
 RE-CEP-TION OF A HIGH FUNC-TION-A-RY . 
 
 war ; and they came to do a great deal in these arts 
 that the rest of the world looks at with awe for the 
 skill and the taste that they see. As feu-dal-ism 
 grew, so did Bud-dhism ; and with it there came 
 from Chi-na a long list of arts and thoughts, crafts 
 and trades, that were new to the Jap-a-nese, but 
 
I02 History of Japan. 
 
 which they soon took up and brought to a state that 
 has not been known an-y-where else. And it was 
 in Ki-o-to that this work, hke all else in the life 
 of the Jap-a-nese, got to its height. In the first 
 part of 'feu-dal times this was the head of the 
 Em-pire in all things ; it was the seat of the Mi-ka-do 
 and his Court and the chief sho-guns. There was 
 the Guard of the Em-pire ; there dwelt the high lords 
 of the Ku-ge, and the chief priests of all sects of the 
 Bud-dhist faith. It was the source from which went 
 the streams that gave to the realm its faith, its 
 thoughts and much of its work. There the chief 
 tem-ples and homes for the monks were first built 
 and may still be seen. It was the Ho-ly Cit-y for all 
 the sects ; and to it went priests and monks from 
 far-off towns or way-side shrines, that they might, as 
 they felt, drink from the stream of their faith, where 
 it was near the source and pure. They would see 
 the chief priests of their sect, pray at the great 
 shrines, read the good books and be taught of the sage 
 monks whom they felt to be close to the soul of Bud- 
 dha — for you know it is taught in this faith that one 
 goes through life ma-ny times, and each time in 
 some new state, till at last he gets so pure that 
 Bud-dha takes him to be a part of him-self, which is 
 the height of bliss and the last stage of his life. 
 When a priest who had been in Ki-o-to went 
 
The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 103 
 
 back to his home, It was a great time for the whole 
 place. The folks felt that he had drunk at the fount 
 of life and would go in throngs to see him ; while 
 the priests of his own shrine heard him with awe, 
 and gave place to him as to one more wise, more 
 blest than them-selves. 
 
 To this great town the young men of high rank 
 Avere sent from the most far-off parts of the realm, 
 to be taught to read and write by the priests, to 
 learn the arts of war in the drill of the Ki-o-to ranks, 
 which were known to be the best in the land. 
 There, too, a young man would learn the fine ways 
 of high life, as a page or a guest of some great lord 
 of the court ; for in ways of life, in forms, in speech 
 and in all things else the folks of Ki-o-to set the rule 
 for the rest of Ja-pan, and he who had learnt there 
 could not fail to know. It is said to this day 
 that there are no folks in the world who have more 
 grace in their ways or who are in all things what we 
 call well-bred more than those one finds in the fair 
 Ki-o-to. There dwelt the best learnt folks of the 
 time : men and wo-men who wrote verse and prose ; 
 it was a court dame who wrote the first tale or nov-el 
 m Ja-pan. There dwelt the men who first wrote 
 down the past e-vents of the realm, who laid down 
 its laws, and who taught both small and great by 
 w^hat rules they should live to be good. And from 
 
I04 History of Japan. 
 
 the time that they came to know how to read and 
 write, a great deal was made of those things. In 
 most of the fine homes of the great lords there were 
 rooms for the use of an-y one who had the gifts to 
 write, where one could look out on a fine view which 
 should fill the mind with grand thoughts, and write 
 them as they came : the small stand, ink-stone and 
 brush would be sure to be near at hand. 
 
 The Jap-a-nese wo-men have done a great deal 
 of such fine work. It was they, not men, as in the 
 rest of the world, who wrote tales and verse, and so 
 gave their speech a form in which it should last. 
 (For a tongue that is used but in speech, you 
 know, will change all the time, and much of the 
 words used by the folks of one time will be lost to 
 their grand-sons.) To write and make-up lines of 
 verse and tales, was one of the ways for the maids 
 and dames at Court to pass the time. It was not a 
 rare thing to find great gifts in these fair ones who 
 were bright and quick of mind, as well as fine to see, 
 with their soft skin and dark eyes, the two black 
 bars on their fore-heads, in the stead of their eye- 
 brows ; with their long hair, black teeth, and 
 long, loose robes of rich, bright stuffs. As the 
 court dames of the West, they too could sew and 
 do fine work with silks and threads ; could play 
 chess, pet their small dogs, or chin, paint shells, as 
 
,i^:?pii 
 
lo6 History of Japan. 
 
 well as read a great deal and write some of the best 
 things the Jap-a-nese have in their old books. 
 
 Not a few of the fine dames of those days, and 
 sweet young maids, too, chose the life of a nun ; for 
 the Bud-dhist faith soon made the ranks of nuns and 
 monks as large in Ja-pan as the faith of Rome did 
 in Eu-rope. Like those of the West, they gave up 
 the fine things of the world and spent their lives in 
 pray-er and work, and good deeds to the sad and 
 the poor. Some of these great homes took none but 
 folks of wealth and rank, while some bid rich and 
 poor, high and low, come drown their grief in Bud- 
 dha and be as much at peace as they could. Not 
 a few of these were in Ki-o-to, and there a good deal 
 of the fine work was done that still wms so much 
 praise. It was, though, a great deed in these 
 monks to to throug^h the land and raise funds to 
 build a shrine, cast a bell, carve or cast an im-age of 
 some god, or make some such ho-ly thing. The 
 great bells on the monks' shrines of Ki-o-to and 
 oth-er towns, had a fame through the whole land. 
 Some of them were as tall as a man, and cov-ered 
 with rare work, carved or cast. The folks are as 
 proud of this rich work as they are fond of the bells* 
 sweet, soft sounds. It was a great time In the whole 
 town when one was cast. When the chief priest sent 
 forth word that one was to be made, the folks brought 
 
The Ways of Peace in Feudal fimes. 
 
 107 
 
 to the shrine, coin and gifts of bronze, gold, tin and all 
 the met-als that could be used. These things were 
 put in pots, where |r 
 they were made to 
 melt with great 
 care, and at last, 
 when the day on 
 which it was to be 
 cast would, come, 
 a great fete would 
 be made. The 
 folks, in their most 
 gay dress, would 
 flock to some hill, 
 where, with the 
 priest, they would 
 watch the work- 
 men bring their 
 fires to the right 
 heat and pour their 
 hot flood in-to the 
 mold. Then the 
 crowd, whose joy 
 had grown with 
 each stage of the 
 work, would break out in song and dance and wild 
 shouts, and there would be a grand time for the rest 
 
 MEN AND DAMES OF HIGH RANK. 
 
io8 History of Japan. 
 
 of the day. But Ki-o-to grew and spread more than 
 skill at arms, fine court ways and the Bud-dhist faith 
 through her realm in the Feu-dal Age of Ja-pan. 
 The arts and trades took great strides at this time. 
 Most of us who live in the U-nit-ed States know 
 scarce aught else of what is done in Ja-pan than 
 what we have seen in the fans and a few bits of 
 china, wood and such work. 
 
 Now, the men who made things, whose work was 
 a craft, were next in grade to the farm-class, which 
 was next to the Sam-u-rai, who had name and rank. 
 They did not stand high in the scale of caste, it is 
 true, for there was but one class — the folks who 
 bought and sold goods — more low than they. There 
 were a few grades — such as those who play on the 
 stage, who live by alms, tan skins, etc., which the 
 Ja-pan-ese looked on as too low to be named at all. 
 But crafts-men were good, plain folks. They had 
 bright minds for their work, great skill, and much 
 taste, and made work that out-strips all the world 
 in its line. Men who went to Ki-o-to from far-off 
 fiefs would go back to their homes and tell the 
 folks there tales they could scarce think true, of 
 the pot-ter-y and vas-es, the swords they saw, and 
 the fine work in gold and sil-ver and lac-quer 
 and gems that were shown in the shops. No doubt 
 the tales were true, for books we can trust 
 
The Ways of Peace in Feudal Times. 109 
 
 tell us of the same things — some of which are 
 
 now of the past. Most 
 
 of these arts and crafts 
 
 were first taught by the 
 
 Bud-dhist monks who 
 
 learnt them in Chi-na. 
 
 But the Jap-a-nese soon 
 
 found out ways of their 
 
 own, and their things 
 
 soon lost all but a slight 
 
 trace of the Chi-nese. 
 
 Some of the best of 
 
 these crafts-men were 
 
 still monks — men of 
 
 Jap-a-nese birth, who 
 
 spent no end of care 
 
 and time and work at 
 
 their bench. They made 
 
 their things for their 
 
 shrines, but from them 
 
 oth-ers learnt to make 
 
 them for their shops. 
 
 Some of them would 
 
 carve a Bud-dha or some 
 
 god of Ja-pan from a 
 
 rough log, and put on 
 
 it months or years of most fine work so as to 
 
 OF-FI-CER IN STATE DRESS. 
 
no History of Japan. 
 
 bring out the hairs of the head, the warp of the rich 
 stuff of the robe, and all its fine folds. And such 
 care as one would give to carve his work out of a 
 piece of wood, some one else would spend with his 
 clay molds, or at his sheets of bronze, or the pots 
 of bronze which must reach just the right heat ere it 
 could be cast in a mold. Some made fine in-laid 
 work in met-als, which is a lost art now, and 
 some made lac-quer work. This art did not come 
 from Chi-na, but was found by the Jap-a-nese 
 them-selves some time near 900 a. d. Ech-iz-en 
 is a place that has fame for her great men and 
 scenes of war, as well as for her large stock of 
 fine lac-quer trees and the skill with which her 
 men get and use the milk-white sap, which turns 
 black when it has been in the air for a time, but 
 which can be made red, brown, green, and still more 
 tints. A fine gold lac-quer was made, too, which 
 was of rare worth. To use this paint with skill was 
 an art, to teach which not a few schools were set up 
 in the old days. One made views on land, one on 
 sea ; some drew folks, some birds, in-sects, or flow- 
 ers ; and some made it their aim to find the best use 
 they could of the gold and sil-ver pow-ders. The 
 art-ists of to-day still turn to those of the Ho-jo 
 times to see the best work that has yet been done in 
 that line. 
 
The Ways of Peace hi Fezidal Times. 1 1 1 
 
 All sci-ence and art in the realm owe much to 
 the Bud-dhists. They were not all monks who 
 spent their lives in ease. It was by their work that 
 more than one bridge was built, paths and roads 
 were made. It was their thought and toil that set 
 out scores of fruit and shade trees, dug pond and 
 ditch from the far-off streams through fields for 
 rice ; who laid drains where the ground was bad to 
 live on, and who were the first to find more than 
 one new pass through rough hills and up peaks that 
 led to some rare view or made a short cut from 
 place to place. Some of them taught schools, too, 
 or were the wise-heads to whom folks went to learn 
 all sorts of things. They knew the arts to heal scores 
 of ills, and more than one new herb or bulb for the 
 sick or for food has been found by them. Few 
 knew as much as they of the stars and of math-e- 
 mat-ics, to say naught of how well-learnt some of 
 them were in their own faith, and how they would 
 spend years of toil to add one more book to the 
 small store of their shrine or to those of the realm. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LONG SWAY OF THE HO-JO CLAN. 
 
 It was Yo-ri-to-mo's fath-er-in-law, and not the 
 sons of the Gen clan that took the Great Sho-gun's 
 place. When Yo-ri-to-mo died he left no son so 
 firm and strong that he could take up the work of 
 his great sire and fill the post he had so long held. 
 But there was a man to take his place ; one who 
 had no mean rank in the realm him-self. This was 
 the fath-er of Yo-ri-to-mo's wife. He was To-ki- 
 ma-sa, of the good old house of Ho-jo ; he was a 
 man of fine gifts, who knew how to use his might, 
 and to get a strong hold on the folks he had to deal 
 with. He soon took his son-in-law's place m all but 
 name, but he did not hold the sho-gun's rank. On 
 Yo-ri-to-mo's death, his son Yo-ri-i-ye, a young 
 man eigh-teen years old, was at once made head 
 chief of all the Jap-a-nese troops, and it was thought 
 that he would ere long take his fath-er's place in all 
 things ; but the Jap-a-nese have a phrase which 
 means "There is no seed to a great man ;" that is, 
 
The Long Sway of the Hojo Clan. 
 
 1 1 
 
 they have learnt to look for naught in a great man's 
 child. In this case they found their old saw true ; 
 for Yo-ri-i-ye had none of the good stuff of his race 
 in him, or, if he had, he let it go to waste while he 
 tried to have a good time. 
 But his grand-sire could 
 wield the rod of the Great 
 Sho-gun, if he could not, 
 and from the time of Yo- 
 ri-to-mo's death, the house 
 of Gen went down, and 
 that of Ho-jo rose. To-ki- 
 ma-sa, and his child, Yo- 
 ri-to-mo's wife, were both 
 folks of more than plain 
 gifts, and they had been of 
 great aid to the Sho-gun 
 from the time he set out to 
 put down the Ta-i-ra ; so 
 To-ki-ma-sa knew the ins 
 and outs of his son-in-law's 
 rule as well as most an-y . 
 one in the realm. He was 
 made chief of the Coun- 
 cil of State on Yo-ri-to-mo's death, and soon got 
 much of the rights of his grand-son's post in his 
 own hands. He let it seem that he did not know 
 
 WO-MAN AND CHILD. 
 
114 History of Japan. 
 
 that Yo-ri-i-ye had bad ways, and did not fill his 
 place as he should ; but all the time he took 
 good care to put his friends, and the sons of 
 his own house in all the posts in the realm that 
 he could get hold of. So time went on, and when 
 Yo-ri-i-ye was made Grand Sho-gun in his father's 
 place, To-ki-ma-sa still kept the real sway in his 
 hands, and ere long he made Yo-ri-i-ye yield his 
 place to his broth-er, a lad twelve years old, and 
 to shave his head and be a priest in some Bud- 
 dhist shrine— and there he was put to death by a 
 man in the hire of To-ki-ma-sa. So it came to be 
 with the Sho-guns as it was with the Mi-ka-dos, 
 that he who bore the name was but a tool in the 
 hands of some smart man, full of craft and wit, and 
 force, — one who would stoop to an-y thing to get the 
 rule of the realm in his grasp, and who wove his net 
 so well that both the Mi-ka-do and the Sho-gun were 
 bound in it. 
 
 The sway of the house of Ho-jo did not break 
 down as soon as those of Ta-i-ra and Gen had done. 
 It was kept up for near one hun-dred and two-score 
 years, and though none of its sons tried to seize the 
 rank of Sho-gun, twelve of them held all the might 
 of that place. Of these the third, the fourth and 
 the fifth were men of great force, who got a strong 
 hold on the realm, and who did much for the good 
 
The Long Sioay of the Hojo Clan. 1 1 5 
 
 of the state ; some of them made a long search 
 through the whole realm for the best men they 
 could find to put in the posts of trust. One of them 
 was one of the most grand and pure men that w^e can 
 learn of in the tale of an-v land ; he did a vast deal 
 to drive out bad ways and mean tricks, and all such 
 ills as, in all realms, are sure to brew with the men 
 who have a share in the rule. One of the Ho-jo set 
 up at Ka-na-za-wa a fine stock of Chi-nese books, 
 works of the great sage Con-fu-ci-us, of Bud-dhist 
 and of the Jap-a-nese, too; for these folks had learnt 
 monks to write, with all else that the Co-re-ans and 
 Chi-nese had taught them. These books brought 
 scores of men, young and old, to the great town, some 
 to teach and some to learn the laws and the lore of 
 the faith ; for there were few in those days but priests 
 who gave their thoughts to books. 
 
 In all these years the post of Sho-gun was held 
 for a few years at a time by mere boys, in the hands 
 of the Ho-jo, whose rank had the name of Skik-ken, 
 but whose sway was more than that of the Mi-ka-do. 
 At an-y that they saw fit they would force their Sho- 
 gun to leave his place, that they might put some 
 child, too young to have a will of its own, in his 
 stead. 
 
 It was In the Ho-jo rule that Ja-pan had her first 
 great war with folks of a strange land. This was 
 
Ii6 History of Japan. 
 
 the short fight with the Mbn-gol Tar-tars, who, 
 when they had put down the Sung rule in Chi-na 
 and set their yoke on the vast realm of Rus-sia to 
 the West, and held A-si-a in their grasp from the 
 Froz-en O-cean to the Straits of Mal-ac-ca, from Co- 
 re-a to A-si-a Mi-nor, sent word to Ja-pan through 
 Go-re-a, that they would have from the Realm of 
 Isles, gifts and such things as the Em-per-or, Kub- 
 lai Khan, thought meet. Ja-pan must show 
 that she felt him to be her great chief, too. 
 But the Jap-a-nese would do no such thing, and 
 though some men came from Chi-na six times, the 
 Ho-jo sent them back each time with no good news 
 for the Khan. At last the Mon-gol thought he would 
 take by force what he had tried in vain to get by 
 smooth words, and ere long a host of ten thou-sand 
 men were on the shore at Tsush-i-ma and I-ki. All 
 Ki-u-shi-u rose up in arms to meet them. They 
 made a brave set at these strange foes ; they slew 
 their chief, and what men they did not kill, they 
 sent back to the Khan with a sad tale of loss 
 to tell him. But he would not give up his plan 
 and at once sent nine men to wait on the head of 
 the realm, to say that they would stay in the Isles 
 till they could bear back some word from the Jap-a- 
 nese throne to their great lord. But they did not 
 go back at all, for all of them lost their heads ere 
 
The Long Sway of the Hojo Clan. 
 
 117 
 
 they got to Ka-ma-ku-ra. This of course was a sign 
 for war, and the Jap-a-nese set to work at once to be 
 in trim for the great fight. One more band came 
 from the Khan, and met with the same fate as the 
 last. Then the -^- - - - 
 
 great 
 
 Mon-gol 
 
 set 
 to work to make war 
 on the small chain of 
 isles that would not 
 send gifts to him 
 who had swept 
 A-si-a and felt that 
 he was lord of the 
 whole of the East. 
 The Jap-a-nese had 
 not seen such a sight 
 in all their lives as 
 the great fleet of 
 thir-ty-five hun-dred 
 Chi-nese junks, 
 whose sails made the 
 sea as white as 
 snow, and with-in 
 whose huge hulks there came one hun-dred and 
 sev-en thou-sand men — such an host as Ja-pan had 
 not dreamt of. They came, too, with some of 
 the arts of war that were used in the West — by 
 
 COR-MO-RANT FISH-ING. 
 
1 1 8 History of Japan. 
 
 the great troops of Eu-rope, which were far more 
 sure than the rude ways of the East. What 
 could the small, light boats of the Jap-a-nese do with 
 these great things ? Some of them were sunk at 
 once, and though the Jap-a-nese were quick and 
 full of craft so that now they burnt a great ship and 
 now they made their way on board some big, 
 proud junk and cut off the heads of its chief men, 
 the fight for a long time was so close that no one 
 could tell which side would win. Scores of the 
 brave men of the isles were cut down and yet the 
 great foe could not get on land. Each time a force 
 was sent out to the shore it was cut off or sent 
 far out to sea. This sort ol strife went on for some 
 time till at last the brave Jap-a-nese cap-tain, Mich- 
 i-a-ri, made a bold stroke that gave the day to his 
 side. He put out from shore with a small band of 
 men in two small boats, and the Chi-nese thought no 
 one would dare to do this in the face of their great 
 fleet if it were not for peace ; so they did not shoot 
 at him. But as soon as he was near the great Tar- 
 tar junk he flung out ropes with large hooks on 
 the end of them, that caught a firm hold on the side 
 of the craft and then he and his men leapt on board. 
 Bows and spears were no match for the sharp 
 swords this brave squad now brought forth, and in 
 a short time the close hand-to-hand fight came to an 
 
A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 1 1 9 
 
 end, and Ja-pan had won. The great junk soon 
 went up in flames and those who had not lost their 
 Hves in the fray were borne to the shore in the 
 bonds of their foes. The rest of the fleet, ere long, 
 was made a wreck by one of those fierce storms — 
 which we call ty-phoons — that sweep the west coasts 
 of the Pa-cif-ic in the last part of sum-mer and the 
 first of the fall. It was a scene of woe and of grief 
 and loss that can not be told ; and the Jap-a-nese 
 say that it was done by the gods who heard them 
 •pray to be rid of their foes. It was the last time 
 that the Mon-gols tried to set their yoke on the Mi- 
 ka-do's realm — and to this day the Jap-a-nese boast 
 that at no time has a strange host left the stains of 
 camp or war on their land. It was the first and last 
 time that an-y realm tried to land its ranks on their 
 shore. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 A BRIEF REIGN FOR THE MI-KA-DO. 
 
 In the long list of Mi-ka-dos who sat on the 
 throne while the Ho-jo clan held the reins of state, 
 there was more than one who felt his soul chafe at 
 
1 20 History of Japan. 
 
 the bonds laid on him by those who were his 
 slaves by rights ; and not a few of them laid plots 
 and made moves, and tried in all the ways they 
 could to thwart their Shik-ken. But it was not till 
 they were off the throne, with heads shaved and 
 priests' robes, that they felt that they could use the 
 strength e-ven of plain men in their realm, which in 
 name held not a man, a child, or an-y thing that had 
 not been theirs while they were on the throne. At 
 last Go-to-ba, who had been a Mi-ka-do till near the 
 year 1200, but was now a priest and a man of much 
 might in the realm, made a bold tri-al to break down 
 the Ho-jo strength ; but they beat him in the field 
 and then laid the same hold on the throne as on the 
 Sho-guns. With this they grew still more strong, 
 and so full of pride that their ways were more than 
 the rest of the folks could stand. This led to their 
 fall. There were now no more such great men as 
 had made this race shine in the eyes of all the Jap- 
 a-nese in times past. In these days they had 
 more love of wealth and thouo^ht more of ease and 
 their own joys than of the toil and care they should 
 give to their work so as to do their best for the 
 realm. To get means to have all the things they 
 were so fond of, they bore down on the folks for 
 more tax, and at last their proud ways and their 
 three-fold yoke on the Mi-ka-do, the Sho-gun and 
 
A Brief Rcigii for the Mikado. 
 
 121 
 
 mass of the folks came to be more than the realm 
 could bear. In the year 1327, or close to that time^ 
 the Em-per-or Go-Dai-go made up his mind, with 
 the aid of his son, Mo-ri-yo-shi, to risk life and all 
 
 PRAY-ING AT THE TOMBS 
 
 else that was dear to him to break down the two- 
 fold form of rule and to eet the reins of state once 
 more in the hands of the throne. He knew that 
 the mass of Jap-a-nese folks had so much love and 
 awe for the Mi-ka-do that he would win if he could 
 
12 2 Histoiy of Japan. 
 
 but get all the troops it would need to cope with the 
 Ho-jo. He got the aid of the Bud-dhist priests, 
 and in a few years made a fort of Ka-sa-gi in Ya- 
 ma-to, while at the same time a brave man, whose 
 name was Ku-sun-o-ki, rose in Ka-wa-chi, who made 
 it the aim of his life to bring back the Mi-ka-do's 
 rule. The scheme of the Em-per-or came to a sad end 
 for him at first. The Ho-jo burnt his fort, got hold 
 of him and sent him to live at O-ki, far off from court 
 and throne. But though they might keep the Mi-ka- 
 do where he could not lead an-y troops on them, they 
 could not clear the realm of its hate for their rule, 
 nor put out the torch which, now that Go-Dai- 
 go had lit it, would burn with a fierce flame till its 
 fire had put an end to the Ho-jo for all time. Twice 
 they laid siege to the strong-hold of Ku-sun-o-ki, 
 but they did not catch him, for he gave them the 
 slip one day and lived to make a grand fight for 
 his lord and a great name for him-self. 
 
 For some time the Mi-ka-do and his friends felt 
 that their fate was most dark, but Go-Dai-go kept a 
 stout heart, though far off from his home and in the 
 hands of the Ho-jo guards, and at last there came 
 forth a brave young man to cut the net of the proud 
 Shik-ken and loose the grasp of the Sho-gun rule. 
 This young man was Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da. He 
 could trace his line back to the grand old house of 
 
A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 123 
 
 Gen. At the time of Go-Dai-go's war he held a 
 good post in the ranks of the Ho-jo, who sent him 
 to fight Ku-sun-o-ki. But he would not draw 
 sword on the troops of his king, and left the Ho-jo 
 when thev bade him do so. The son of the 
 Mi-ka-do, who ruled in the name of his sire while 
 Go- Dai-go was kept from his throne, at once gave 
 him a place in the Mi-ka-do's troops, and then he 
 drew all his own men to him — for in those days 
 each great man had his own band or clan, as m 
 what are known as the Feu-dal Times of Eng-land. 
 So ere long Nit-ta was at the head of a good force 
 and with them led a war on the Ho-jo. It was a 
 hard, fierce strife, but the end of it came when 
 Nit-ta set the proud town of Ka-ma-ku-ra on fire 
 and burnt it to the ground, and so threw down the 
 sway of the great house which had so long held the 
 reins of the realm. At the same time Ki-o-to had 
 been made free by Ku-sun-o-ki and Ash-i-ka-ga, a 
 man whose name came to be great in a few years, 
 and the might of the Mi-ka-do was once more set 
 up in the West. This was not far from the year 
 
 Word was sent at once to Go-Dai-go to call him 
 back to his throne ; and now he was not to hold it 
 as a mere tool of some one else, as he had done in 
 time past, but to be in fact as in name the sole head 
 
124 ■ History of Japan. 
 
 and chief of this land. His first task was to do 
 some-thing for the brave men who had done so 
 much for him. They had won the realm for him, 
 and now it was but fair that he should give them 
 posts and lands such as they would care most to 
 have. The Sho-guns had long made it a rule with 
 the Jap-a-nese that those who fought best for the 
 realm should have the charge of their best fiefs, and 
 with them large clans of men-at-arms. This, then, 
 was to be what Go-Dai-go would do by those who had 
 gone forth to risk all they had for their king. But 
 he was far from wise or just in the way he did this. 
 While he should have made his first gifts to Ku- 
 sun-o-ki and to Nit-ta, he gave three best fiefs to 
 Ash-i-ka-ga Ta-kau-ji, who had fought well, it is 
 true, but not best. He had a great deal of craft and 
 knew how to serve his own ends and to get in the 
 good grace of the Mi-ka-do, so as to raise him-self 
 to a place of much might. He was not like Ku- 
 sun-o-ki and Nit-ta, whose most dear wish had been 
 to break down the might of the Sho-gun and put 
 the lull sway in the hands of the Mi-ka-do ; but 
 like most of the folks who had fought in their 
 lead, he wished to get rid of the Ho-jo, and when 
 the hard fight of the two most brave men in the 
 realm had torn down their throne, he at once set to 
 work in a still way to put him-self and his house in 
 
A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 125 
 
 their place. There was a girl of the Mi-ka-do's 
 house, whom he got to aid him by bribes to make 
 Go-Dai-go give ear to his talk and his plans, while 
 with the folks he made the most for his own ends 
 out of some small ill-will that was felt by those who 
 had held low posts in the ranks and had fought 
 well to put down the Ho-jo, but felt ill-used now at 
 the scant way in which the Mi-ka-do had paid out 
 his spoils. These men were more fond of war than 
 of peace. They did not care if there were two 
 heads to the realm or one, so long as the Sho-guns 
 were not in the hands of the proud ■ race of old 
 To-ki-ma-sa. Thus Ash-i-ka-ga soon found that he 
 could shape things to suit him-self, and that in 
 a short time he could start up more war and 
 strike for his own high prize. It was a blow 
 to him when Go-Dai-go made his own son Sho-gun, 
 which was still a post of great pride in the realm ; but 
 he did not show his wrath and laid plans to get his 
 own wav in the end. The Mi-ka-do had been a 
 man of grand force and will when he first held the 
 throne, but he had lost his best gifts while he was 
 in the bonds of the Ho-jo, far off from his throne 
 and all that was dear to him. No one had known 
 him to be so weak and vain in the old days, but 
 now the words of Ash-i-ka-ga and the young girl 
 whom he had paid bribes to talk for him had so 
 
126 • History of Japan. 
 
 sweet a sound in his ear that he did not stop to 
 think if they were true or false. He let them get 
 a strong hold on him and would not heed the wise 
 men round him who bade him take care and think 
 of the rest, who had done as much or more than 
 Ash-i-ka-ga to serve him. His thoughts all went 
 to this one man. He did not treat Nit-ta as he 
 should have done, and he did not place Ku-sun-o-ki 
 in such a post as he had the gifts to fill. No doubt 
 this man could have done more for the good of Ja- 
 pan just then than an-y one in the realm, to say 
 naught of what was due him for the great work he 
 had done in the field of war. 
 
 The prince had not been Sho-gun for long when 
 Ash-i-ka-ga made the Mi-ka-do think that his son 
 had laid plots to get the throne ; and when the 
 Prmce, stung to the quick by his hate for this base 
 foe, and wroth at the lie he had told his sire, gave 
 the word to his troops to march to Ash-i-ka-ga \nd 
 pay him up for his tales, Ash-i-ka-ga made'^it out 
 that the Prince's plan was to snare him first of all, 
 so that he could be more sure of his way to the 
 throne. ^ In this way he got the Mi-ka-do in so great 
 a rage with his son that he gave word to have'^him 
 dealt with as if he had in truth turned foe to his sire. 
 
 But the doom of bonds and death had scarce 
 been laid on his good son when the Mi-ka-do saw 
 
A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 
 
 127 
 
 he had been made a dupe of, and, though it was too 
 late to bring back his boy, he at once grew cold 
 to his real foe. Ash-i-ka-ga saw the change, fled 
 from Ki-o-to with great bands of the men-at-arms 
 who did not like the ways of things at court, and took 
 
 ai;-Z^/-A/^Jjs^^zi-:^@ 
 
 the place that the Ho-jo had held at Ka-ma-ku-ra, 
 which he had built up since the fire. Then the 
 Mi-ka-do went back to his first friends. Nit-ta was 
 freed from a charge that had been laid on him that 
 
128 Histo7'y of Japa7i. 
 
 he was false to the throne, and was put at the head 
 ot the Mi-ka-do's troops to whip the bold Ash-i- 
 ka-ga. But the odds were not on the Mi-ka-do's 
 side this time ; he had lost the love of the ranks 
 once glad to die for him, and so his force was small, 
 while that of his foe was large. His side lost in the 
 fight that came on, and he had to flee for his life 
 with a small band of his men who still held true. 
 
 Ash-i-ka-ga was lord of the field, but he had 
 fought the throne, had drawn arms on the Son of 
 Heav-en, and so to the Jap-a-nese he was worse than 
 an-y of the Ho-jo. Then he tried to make his wrong- 
 deeds seem right and give to the realm a new Mi- 
 ka-do. He sought out Ko-gen, a child of one of 
 the em-per-ors who had been on the throne ere the 
 time of Go-Dai-go. Some of the folks thought he 
 had no right there now since the real Mi-ka-do's 
 son Mo-ri-yo-shi was in all ways fit for his sire's 
 place. But Ko-gen took the seat, and this new Son 
 of Heav-en soon made Ash-i-ka-ga Great Sho-gun, 
 with all the old state of that post at Ka-ma-ku-ra. 
 So the two-fold form of rule was set up once more, 
 in less than three years from the time it was thrown 
 down. But the change, and still more the fact that 
 Ko-gen had been put on the throne, brought on a 
 war in which Ash-i-ka-ga and the North, fought the 
 South and the real Mi-ka-do. It was kept up for near 
 
A Brief Reign for the Mikado. 129 
 
 three-score years, and is known as the War of the 
 Chrys-an-the-mums. 
 
 This is a long tale of false deeds and true blue, 
 of fire and fight, of want on the part of the poor 
 folks, and waste on the part of the rich ; and though 
 at first it was a sharp strife to put down the claims 
 of one Mi-ka-do and fix his foe firm and sure on the 
 throne, the true aim was lost at last, and the whole 
 realm was a scene of strife, and the war was but the 
 brawls of small chiefs for the sake of land — or for 
 no good cause at all. Ere it came to an end all the 
 great chiefs who had led in it were dead ; the Mi- 
 ka-dos them-selves came to feel that it was of small 
 note to them how it came out, for most of the men- 
 at-arms seem to have lost sight of the fact that they 
 had come out to give the throne to their true Mi- 
 ka-do. At last, in 1392, Ash-i-ka-ga sent a band of 
 his men to the Em-per-or of the South, who held old 
 Go-Dai-go's place, to ask him to give the sword, 
 the glass, and the ball (which he had borne with him 
 when he fled from Ash-i-ka-ga's men) to his Mi- 
 ka-do, who held his court in the North. He, they 
 said, should be Em-per-or, and the Mi-ka-do of the 
 South should be ex-em-per-or, and from then on the 
 throne should be held by a son of first one house and 
 then the oth-er. The things were sent, and the 
 change made with great pomp ; but the Jap-a-nese say 
 
130 History of Japan. 
 
 to this day that the Hne of the South was that of 
 the true Sons of Heav-en, while the hne of the North 
 was false — and that, ere long, died out. All Jap-a- 
 nese books that are thought to be worth an-y thing 
 by the folks, speak of the Mi-ka-dos of Ko-gen's line 
 as the ''False" em-per-ors or North-ern em-per-ors, 
 which means the same thing. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NIT-TA AND KU-SUN-O-KI. 
 
 In all the long fight of the war of the Chrys-an- 
 the-mums, there were two men whose brave deeds 
 make them stand out from all the rest who took part 
 in the strife. These were Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da and 
 Ku-sun-o-ki Ma-sas-hi-ge. They now fought for 
 their king as if he had used them as his most dear 
 friends while he had his sway, as if they did not 
 know how he had let the base Ash-i-ka-ga take what 
 was their due, and had lent his ear to that man's 
 tales of Nit-ta's bad faith. None of this did they 
 let stand in their minds when once more the Mi- 
 ka-do had need of their strong arms and their great 
 minds on the field of war. Once Nit-ta sent word 
 
Nitta and Kusonoki. 131 
 
 to Ash-i-ka-ga, ''Come out and meet me and fight with 
 me. It is we who lead the two great bands ; come 
 forth and we will fight hand to hand ; the side of 
 him who lives shall win the war, and so we may 
 spare the blood-shed of our men." The Sho-gun's 
 men got him to say that he would not do this, but 
 ere long they found a chance to cut down the brave 
 chief of their foes with-out an-y risk to their own. 
 He had set out with some two or three score of men 
 to arm a fort one day, but he had not gone far when 
 near three thou-sand of the foes fell on them in a 
 small path through some rice fields near Fu-ku-i. 
 He had no shield, and their darts fell round him 
 like rain. His men said fly, but he would not leave 
 them, and put the whip to his horse to get near to 
 his foes, so as to fight them with the sword, but one 
 arrow struck the poor beast while he was at full 
 speed, and its mate gave a death blow to the chief 
 as soon as he rose. It struck him full in the fore- 
 head and gave him scant time to draw^ his sword 
 and cut off his head, so that his foes could not tell 
 his corpse from those of the rest of his band. And 
 the rest went, too, by the hands of the false ranks 
 or their own: for it was more grand and good 
 in a Jap-a-nese of those days to die with his chief 
 than to live on when he was eone. 
 
 Nit-ta's corpse was found, and his head was set 
 
132 History of Japa7i. 
 
 up at Ki-o-to for all to see ; but his grave was made 
 near the spot where he fell, and to this day it is a 
 spot that the Jap-a-nese love, and they keep fresh 
 flow-ers on it all the time. 
 
 Ku-sun-o-ki died not in the field, but by his own 
 hand. His plans were set at naught and he lost his 
 fights in the field, so that he felt that there was but 
 one thing for him to do ; he must die and leave his 
 name pure. This seems strange to us, but to the 
 Jap-a-nese, five hun-dred years a-go, it was the part 
 of a great man. 
 
 It was said that of all the men in Jap-a-nese his- 
 to-ry, Ku-sun-o-ki stands first, for the pure love he 
 bore his land, for his strong brave heart to risk his 
 life for her sake, and for the way he would give up 
 an-y wish of his own to serve his king. The boys 
 learn his life, and think of him as their best type of 
 a true Jap-a-nese knight, and look on him as the 
 great-est man their land has had — as we look on 
 George Wash-ing-ton. They could tell you how he 
 was taught in the lore ofChi-na by the priests; how 
 strong he was of limb, too (for when he was sev-en 
 years old he could throw a lad twice his age in a 
 wrest-ling match). While he was taught in books, 
 he was taught in the arts of war as well ; and was 
 so apt in this last that he cut off the head of a foe 
 when he was but twelve years old ; he was taught 
 
Nitta and Kusunoki. 
 
 the forms of drill that the Chi-nese used when he 
 was fif-teen, and made avow to him-self that the aim 
 in life should be to throw down the rule at Ka-ma- 
 ku-ra and give to the Mi-ka-do his rights — this sway 
 that had so long been kept out of the hands of the 
 
 JA-PAN-ESE BOATS. 
 
 throne. So he took up arms for Go^Dai-go, and 
 though the Ho-jo tried hard to get hold of him, his 
 side won at last, with the aid of Nit-ta and Ash-i- 
 ka-ga. Then came those years when he was so ill- 
 
134 History of Japan. 
 
 used, and Ash-i-ka-ga took the place he ought to 
 have had, but which could not turn his heart from 
 his king an-y more than it did Nit-ta's. Thrice they 
 drove the troops of the false Ash-i-ka-ga out of 
 Ki-o-to, and when he fled to the West it was Ku- 
 sun-o-ki who said, ''Go on, catch him, and break up 
 this strife he is at the head of." But the Mi-ka-do 
 did not see fit to make use of his plans, and so it 
 went on, as we know, from bad to worse, till, in 
 spite of all these two great chiefs and their brave 
 bands could do, their cause was lost. 
 
 When Ku-sun-o-ki made up his mind to die, he 
 said good-by to his wife and his babes, and went to 
 a farm house near the small town of Sa-ku-rai, where 
 he gave the sword (which was a gift from the MI- 
 ka-do) to his son and bade him think of his sire, 
 a-venge his death, and bear arms as a good brave 
 man should. With that he took his life, and near a 
 score of his band — men of his own race — died with 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 I-YE-YAS-U AND THE HOUSE OF TO-KU-JA-WA. 
 
 When the Tai-ko died he left his heir, his cares, 
 and all the plans that were so dear to him, in the 
 hands of I-ye-yas-u, whom he had learnt to trust 
 long ere he rose to his high post, and whom he had 
 made next to him-self in the State and the Dai-mi-o 
 of eight fiefs. His son had been wed to the child 
 of I-ye-yas-u, who made an oath that he would fill 
 the Tai-ko's place till the boy came to the age when 
 he could rule. 
 
 I-ye-yas-u was a man of great parts and of much 
 fame, and he made laws with most, if not quite as 
 much skill as he made wars, which is a great deal 
 to say. His first deeds of note were done while he 
 was in a low place in No-bun-a-ga's troops, from 
 which he rose till he was one of that great chief's 
 first men. He fought well, too, in charge of part 
 of Hi-de-yosh-i's ranks ; and in times of peace he 
 built him-self a great cas-tle. On the fall of 
 the Ho-jo he took the small fort near Yed-do bay 
 
136 History of Japan. 
 
 yu-ki, was a great man both at books and in arms. 
 None of the men who had charge of the Sho-gun's 
 work in the Ash-i-ka-ga Age were so great as he, 
 who tried to raise the folks from some of their poor 
 ways and took more than one step to drive out some 
 of the great wrongs in the forms of rule. He held 
 his post in the name of the Ash-i-ka-ga heir, Yosh- 
 i-mit-su, whom he was to teach and take care of till 
 he should reach the age when he might rule. He 
 did not do as old To-ki-ma-sa did with the son of 
 Yo-ri-to-mo, but gave much thought to have the 
 youth learn a great deal from the best men in the 
 realm, from books, and in all the arts of war. He 
 saw that his friends were well-taught young men of 
 first rank, with gifts and skill for all that a young 
 Jap-a-nese lord of those days should know. This 
 lad was the grand-son of the sire of the house, and 
 was the one man of his race who bore the name of 
 the '' Great Ash-i-ka-ga." He was made Sho-gun 
 and put at the head of the troops when he was but 
 ten years old, and ere long he won great fame by 
 his brave acts in the wars of the South and West. 
 But through one rash act, the cause of which must 
 have been his great love for war, be brought the 
 curse of his land on his race as well as on his own 
 head. This act was that he sent a band of Jap-a-nese 
 to Chi-na near the year 1400 with gifts and fine words. 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 137 
 
 by which they made it known to the proud Em-per-or 
 ol that vast realm that Yosh-i-mit-su fek that this great 
 Mon-gol had a sort of right to be the chief of Ja-pan 
 as well as the rest of the East, but that he would 
 beg him to own that Yosh-i-mit-su was Nip-pon — 
 or King of Ja-pan. It seems to have been done for 
 naught else than to get for the Sho-gun the grand 
 name of king. He did not dare to try to get the Mi-ka- 
 do's throne, though he had long dwelt in as much 
 style as his lord. There was no real cause why the 
 realm should have been made to thus bow her head 
 to Chi-na, and the man who did it brought hate on 
 his name for all time. If the whole land had not 
 been in a bad state he could not have done this base 
 thing, and as long as his house held the reins of the 
 realm, in name or in fact, things went from bad to 
 worse. 
 
 In these days there was a great deal of change 
 at the head of the state. Some-times the rule was 
 at Ki-o-to, where both the Mi-ka-do sat with the 
 court that ruled him, and the Great Sho-gun with his 
 Shik-ken, more than one of whom in this age held 
 the reins from both the Sho-gun and the Em-per-or.. 
 Some-times the seat of rule would shift to Ka-ma- 
 ku-ra, where a plain sho-gun had sway, or was the 
 tool of a man whose rank was not as great as his 
 own, though he had more strength of will. 
 
o 
 
 8 History of Japan. 
 
 Much of the time the heads of the two towns 
 were in feuds, as were the clans of most all the 
 realm, so that not much else took place in the land 
 but fights for clan-pride, for rights to lands, and no 
 end of such things. Each clan chief dwelt in a 
 great house that was like a fort, and in whose walls 
 dwelt scores of his men with their wives and small 
 folks. The homes of the monks of Bud-dha, too, 
 were like the store-rooms of a great guard-house. 
 More than once it was by their aid that a side won. 
 To be in trim for war was the plan of all who could 
 bear arms. This strife went on for years and years : 
 towns were burnt, fields laid waste, all were made poor 
 and the folks of high birth as well as the low fled 
 to the hills, where they might dwell in caves to be 
 out of the sound of strife : and young folks grew up 
 with no one to teach them. By-and-by dearth came, 
 as it does in all lands in the wake of war, and thou- 
 sands of folks, young and old, died for the want of 
 food. Men who had been born to live on farms 
 were made to join the ranks at arms, while some of 
 them grew to be thieves and spent their time in 
 raids on towns or on the roads, where they would 
 rob an-y one they could catch. And the Mi-ka-do 
 was as bad off as his folks. He had no wealth. 
 He dwelt at Ki-o-to, which was at all times in the 
 hands of a force-at-arms — if not those of the Great 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 
 
 139 
 
 Sho-gun, then it was those of Ka-ma-ku-ra, the 
 troops of the East. 
 
 To this day, if the Jap-a-nese want to tell a tale 
 of great woe and wrongs, or if they want to make a 
 play of folks who did no end of bad things, they 
 
 A BRONZE WARE-HOUSE AT TED-DO. 
 
 say it all came to pass in the time of the Ash-i- 
 ka-ga. 
 
 It was near the close of this age, in the year 1542, 
 that a great man by the name of No-bun-a-ga came 
 
140 History of Japan . 
 
 on the scene to throw down the sway of the proud 
 house that had brought so much ill-luck to the 
 reahn, to break up the bad ways of the Bud-dhist 
 priests, give a good word to a new faith, and bring 
 back in part at least the old and long-lost might of 
 the Mi-ka-do. 
 
 He came from a race of Shin-to priests, but far 
 back he could trace his blood to the great Ki-o 
 Mo-ri and the house of Ta-i-ra. His sire had borne 
 arms, and, as most of the men of an-y note in those 
 days, his aim in life was to get hold of all the lands 
 he could win. When he died, he left his arms, his 
 land and his feuds to his tall, brave son, who bore 
 his charge well. Six fiefs or states did he add to 
 those of his sire and much wealth did he gain, so 
 that in a few years, he rose to much note in the 
 realm. In Ki-o-to he built him a fine house— a 
 cas-tle. He was so great that he had the man of his 
 choice made Sho-gun in spite of all those who did 
 not want him could do. In one of the old books 
 of Ja-pan it is told that this prince was a man of 
 large frame, but of fine, pale skin, which the Jap-a- 
 nese do not think well of in a man. But the book 
 says that he had a heart and soul that made up for 
 all else he might lack ; he was brave and bold, 
 and held high thoughts on what was right and 
 wrong, and would see that folks had their just dues 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 141 
 
 in all things where he had a voice — and it was not 
 long ere he had a voice in all things. His wit was 
 keen, his will strong, and it was a rare thing for him 
 to be wrong in his plans, though his foes did call 
 him " Lord Fool " at first. He had been taught in 
 all the arts of war, and of all men of his time he 
 was known to be the best to take charge of a set of 
 troops, to mark out a camp, lay a siege, or hold out 
 when one was made on him. He made use of no 
 head but his own. Now and then he would ask for 
 the views of those who were with him, but it was 
 more to find out their hearts than to have the aid of 
 their brains. 
 
 He read the hearts and the minds of all the men 
 he met, but he let no man read him, and when he 
 made up his mind to do a thing he gave the word 
 and it was done. He had no small ways and held 
 no mean thoughts for an-y one ; he was just and 
 some-times more than just, and gave good words 
 and good gifts with a free hand. But one thing 
 did he hate. That was a false heart. An-y one 
 who did not hold true to the land of his birth, to 
 his em-per-or or his creed of right and wrong, was 
 so low and base in the eyes of this great prince that 
 he lost no chance to show him up in his true light. 
 
 It was this hate of what is false, that led him 
 to make a great war on the Bud-dhist priests ; 
 
142 History of Japan. 
 
 and it was his love of what is just and fair that 
 made him hate the Ash-i-ka-ga and spend his all to 
 give the Mi-ka-do his rights in the rule of his folks. 
 Though at first he was on good terms with Sho-gun 
 rule, he got in a feud with the man he put in that 
 post at Ki-o-to, and when he had held sway for six 
 years or so, No-bun-a-ga drove him off, and broke 
 up the might of the Ash-i-ka-ga house, though it 
 had held the realm in its grasp for near a hun-dred 
 and fif-ty years. Then for two-score years Ja-pan 
 had no Sho-gun, for this great son of Ki-o Mo-ri's 
 line, though the chief man of the realm^, could not 
 trace his birth to the Gen race,^and no one else 
 could be the Great Sho-gun. But he had charge 
 of the troops, and held the post in all but name. 
 
 With the aid of his right-hand men — four great 
 gen-er-als whose names rose to fame in more ways 
 than one — he brought large tracts of the realm, which 
 still held off from the Mi-ka-do's rule, to own his 
 sway. Like Yo-ri-to-mo he had great skill and 
 force of will on the field ; but he could not bring the 
 chief clans to bow to him nor could he hold in peace 
 those whom he had won in war as Yo-ri-to-mo did. 
 Still he was a great man, and his name wall live 
 with the Jap-a-nese through all time. 
 
 But he has more fame as a man who could rule 
 like a king, who could set up and pull down Sho- 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 143 
 
 guns, and drive out a race which had held sway 
 for hun-dreds of years, than as a great chief in 
 the clan-fights. He did one more work, more great 
 than all these and a work for which the Bud-dhists 
 in Ja-pan still look on him as their worst foe, as 
 one for whom they can not feel too much hate, — 
 though their faith ought to teach them not to hate 
 at all. 
 
 No-bun-a-ga saw that the whole band of the Bud- 
 dhist priests of that day was full of wrong and guilt 
 and that most if not all of the priests were false to 
 their creeds and their vows ; and he took it on him- 
 self to break down the worst sects and purge them 
 of their pride and vice, while at the same time he 
 took pains to treat well the priests of the faith of 
 Christ who came from the West in the same year 
 that the name of No-bun-a-ga was first heard through 
 the realm. He had been brought up with priests 
 when a child, so he did not feel for them the awe 
 that most folks had. He had been taught in the 
 Shin-to and did not like the Bud-dhists an-y way, 
 and so was more quick to see their sins than he 
 would have been if he had been taught to feel that 
 they could do no wrong. He saw that they were 
 not a great cult of pure, good men whose one 
 thought was for their faith ; but that they were like 
 the rest of men — and worse, some-times. They had 
 
144 History of Japan. 
 
 rooms full of arms which they could use as well as 
 the Sho-gun's troops, and with which they oft left 
 desk and shrine to fight in the clan wars. But in 
 those times of such great strife, they might have 
 done this and done well if their thoughts had been 
 for their books and their faith when they were at 
 home ; but in place of that they made their faith a 
 cloak for an-y thing they might want to do — and 
 they grew to want to do all that an-y men did, and 
 a great deal that some men would not do. Their 
 chief place was on Lake Bi-wa, and there this sort 
 of life was at its worst, and when the priests were 
 not at grand rites or in their rooms at feasts and 
 wines and all sorts of *' good times," they were deep 
 in schemes to make them-selves more great in the 
 eyes of the folks and to foil the plans of No-bun- 
 a-ga. In turn for this, he made up his mind to 
 wipe them out. Of course he did not make an-y 
 talk of this till he felt that the time had come to 
 act. Then with his vast ranks he camped near the 
 shore of the Lake and told his chiefs to set fire to 
 the great town-like cas-tle of the monks. The 
 chiefs heard this with awe. Since the year 800 
 this grand old place had stood, and it was thought 
 to be the home of some of the best men in the 
 world ; it was the strong-hold of the whole realm 
 a-gainst the Prince of Wrong. At first they did not 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 
 
 H5 
 
 think their chief could mean what he said, but he 
 
 told them of how he had rid the realm of thieves ; 
 
 had run an-y risk to his life lor the sake of his lord 
 
 on the throne at Ki-o-to, that he might at last bring 
 
 peace to the land; 
 
 he told them that 
 
 he had learnt that 
 
 there was no worse 
 
 ill in the land than 
 
 this great seat of 
 
 the Bud-dhists, 
 
 which for the same 
 
 cause that he had 
 
 fought the rest of 
 
 his fights, he now 
 
 bade them send 
 
 up in flames. Then 
 
 he told them what 
 
 he knew of the 
 
 aims and the lives 
 
 of the priests. So, 
 
 at his word, his 
 
 men went on to 
 
 burn shrines and homes, and to ply sword, 
 
 lance and dart to all who dwelt with-in those walls. 
 
 Old men and babes, dames, maids and priests all 
 
 met with the same fate. At last it was done. The 
 
 AC-RO-BATS. 
 
146 History of Japan. 
 
 great Mon-as-ter-y of Hi-ye-zan was no more. No- 
 bun-a-ra's first blow at Bud-dhism fell with a force 
 that crushed all in its way. This made the rest of 
 the priests dread and hate him more than they had 
 in times past. But for all that he kept his place at 
 the head of the realm and grew more great and 
 strong all the while. Nine years from the time the 
 Mon-as-ter-y on Lake Bi-wa was burnt, two of the 
 Bud-dhist sects whose views were not just the same, 
 got in a sort of feud, a-nd made so much talk that the 
 Mi-ka-do was told of it, and word was sent out that 
 No-bun-a-ga should hear the rest of their talk and 
 should be their judge. This was done and an end 
 was put to the feud and to one of the sects, whose 
 views it was thous^ht would do harm to the State. 
 For twelve years one of the chief seats of No- 
 bun-a-ga's Bud-dhist foes was the great Mon-as-ter-y 
 of O-za-ka. Their feud with him was that he let the 
 Cath-o-lics come in from the West and build up their 
 shrines and spread their faith. These Bud-dhists 
 made their home a place where the foes of the great 
 chief could hide from him, and there plots to thwart 
 him were laid. No-bun-a-ga knew all this, but he 
 was a man who could bide his time with his foes — 
 and at last his time came. One day, when his troops 
 were out near this great fort of the monks, some of his 
 best men were slain by a band of what the Jap-a-nese 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 147 
 
 call "grass-reb-els" (that is, men who watch for and 
 shoot at their foes while they hide them-selves by some 
 bush or tree). As soon as they had shot their darts 
 they fled to the fort of the monks. At this he set 
 out with a will to serve this strong-hold of the Bud- 
 dhists as he had done that on Lake Bi-wa. He laid 
 siege to it ; some tried to fly and wer.e slain ; post 
 on post had to give up to the troops of the great 
 chief; and scores of men, wom-en and babes were 
 put to death. At last the Mi-ka-do, in grief that so 
 much blood was shed, sent three of his men from 
 Court and a Bud-dhist priest of a sect at Ki-o-to, 
 to beg them to yield, which they did. No-bun- 
 a-ga's foes gave up their fort, with all their shrines, 
 their homes, and the things that were dear to them, 
 in-to his hands. From then till now it has been held 
 by the State. The chief said he would spare those 
 who still lived ; the priests were to live with oth-er 
 monks of their sect, but their might and pride was 
 gone; and at no time since has the faith been so 
 strong as it was ere this great siege. More than 
 once since then the Mi-ka-dos have had to take 
 steps to check them when they bore too high a hand ; 
 but it was not a hard task, for the faith nev-er got 
 o-ver the blows dealt to it by No-bun-a-ga. 
 
 Now the prince, in his zeal to rid Ja-pan of these 
 old sects that had grown to be a curse to her, gave 
 
148 History of Japan. 
 
 the aid of his good will to some priests of the Church 
 of Christ, who came from far-off Por-tu-gal, to bring, 
 as they said, a new faith to the Jap-a-nese, but who, 
 in truth, did naught but bring them a new bane. 
 
 They had come in the wake of some sea-men of 
 Por-tu-gal, who had a taste that led them to cruise 
 in strange seas, and were cast by storms on the shores 
 of some of the south isles of Ja-pan. This was in 
 the first days of No-bun-a-ga's fame, and near the 
 same time that the folks of Spain got their foot-hold 
 in our own land, which, like Ja-pan, was then new 
 to all Eu-rope. The Dai-mi-o on whose coast these 
 men were cast, sent word for them to go and see 
 him (which they did) and he used them well. He 
 gave them the means to go to Go-a, which was the 
 chief town of the Por-tu-guese states in In-di-a, and he 
 .got them to say that each year they would send him 
 a ship full of such goods as would sell in his towns. 
 This they did, and once, when one of these ships lay 
 in port, An-ji-ro, a Jap-a-nese of Sat-su-ma, who had 
 slain a man, fled to it to hide, and was borne off to 
 Go-a. There he met the gfreat saint of the Church 
 of Rome, Fran-cis Xav-i-er, whom the king of Por- 
 tu-gal had sent to his lands in In-di-a to spread the 
 faith there.. From him An-ji-ro heard of Christ. 
 Ere long he took the new faith in place of his own, 
 and came to be so well-learnt in all that was taught 
 
The Ashikaga Age. 14Q 
 
 in it, that the great priest would have him help to 
 spread it in his own land. So, with a few more men, 
 they went to Ja-pan and set to work in Sat-su-ma in 
 1549, — ^he year in which No-bun-a-ga fell heir 
 to the lands of his sire. From there they went on 
 and though in some fiefs they met with kind words 
 and crowds to give ear while An-ji-ro told them 
 what the great priest said, and in some they found 
 most of the . folks cold to them ; still they kept 
 on, and not a few of those who heard them were bap- 
 tized. At last Xav-i-er lost heart. When in Ki-o-to 
 he found that war and trade were the two o^reat 
 thoughts of the folks, and that he could find no 
 chance to see the Mi-ka-do or the Great Sho-oun. 
 He made up his mind to give up his work there, 
 but he left the seeds of the new faith in more than 
 one soul, who took up the task of the Saint. In 
 five years from the time Xav-i-er left Ki-o-to, there 
 were six of their church-es in or near Ki-o-to it-self, 
 and scores of them had sprung up in the South-west. 
 At the time of No-bun-a-ra's death more than a hun- 
 dred thou-sand Jap-a-nese, of all castes, had come to 
 be Cath-o-lics, and there were two hun-dred of their 
 church-es in the realm. The Por-tu-guese brought 
 some-thing more than a new faith to the Realm of 
 Isles. It was they (and on their first trip, too), who 
 brought the first guns and pow-der that the Jap-a- 
 
1 50 History of Japan. 
 
 nese had seen, and taught them how to make the 
 fire-arms which in a few years were used a great 
 deal through the whole realm. To this day there 
 are not a few folks in the realm who think that Chris- 
 ti-an-i-ty and guns mean much the same thing ; and 
 link with both the thoughts of a world of grief and 
 ills that they brought. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HI-DE-YOSH-I, OR THE AGE OF THE TAI-KO. 
 
 No-BUN-A-GA had four chiefs who were most as 
 great as him-self, and who, with him, rank as some 
 of the best men-at-arms Ja-pan has had. The first 
 of these was Hi-de-yosh-i. The folks of his day 
 gave him the nick-name of " Cot-ton," for he could 
 do so ma-ny things, and cot-ton, you know, can be 
 used in a long list of ways. Then there was 
 Go-ro-za, to whom the folks gave the name of 
 '' Rice," for the great chief of the realm could no 
 more do with-out this bold man than they could live 
 with-out rice. Shi-ba-ta was known as '' At-tack," 
 since he had great pluck and skill to drive down 
 
Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 1 5 1 
 
 hard on the foe. And as I-ke-da could draw his 
 force off the field so well that they scarce knew when 
 he was on the weak side of a fight, he had the name 
 of '' Re-treat." 
 
 In time there came to be a fifth chief in No-bun- 
 a-ga's ranks, who was more great than all but the 
 first. He was I-ye-yas-u, and that name, with those 
 of No-bun-a-ga and Hi-de-yosh-i, we are told, 
 stand first in all the list of Ja- pan's great 
 men. 
 
 Hi-de-yosh-i, the first to take the place of his great 
 chief in the realm, was born of farm-folk, but he 
 did not go out at morn with grass-hook in hand and 
 bas-ket on back to cut grass for the live-stock all day, 
 nor did he hoe the weeds in the wet rice-fields ; but 
 he made the streets his school, his work-shop, and 
 his play-ground. His wits were keen. He was quick 
 and had no fear of an-y thing or an-y one, and there 
 he learnt the ways of men and grew sharp and 
 shrewd. While yet quite a small lad, he went to 
 be a groom to the brave young chief, No-bun-a-ga, 
 who knew the men that took care of his steeds as 
 well as those who rode as his staff. He thought he 
 saw signs of great gifts in this small, mon-key-like 
 face, and bright eyes that could not keep still. So 
 one day he told him that he ought to bear arms and 
 learn to fight, and some day he might lead in great 
 
152 History of Japan. 
 
 wars. So the small street boy went in-to the ranks 
 of the realm, and rose from post to post till he was 
 a gen-er-al. He was still young, but he bore him- 
 self so well that when he was thir-ty years old he 
 was made a prem-ier or chief of first rank. Of course 
 there were not a few in the troops and in the State 
 who soon made them-selves his foes ; for in a land 
 like Ja-pan, where rank is of such great note, few 
 like to see a man sprung from plain farm-folk reach 
 such a height as this. But Hi-de-yosh-i's foes could 
 not do much to hurt him. To show their spleen 
 they, said he was a "Crowned Mon-key," but he 
 bore the crown of his might and fame with worth 
 and pride. His rise was a strange thing to more 
 than his foes, for none but lords of the Fu-ji-wa-ra 
 blood took this high place ; but he got the right to 
 it some way through brave deeds and work, craft 
 and wit, push and will ; and the Em-per-or gave him 
 the right to found a house of his own, which is 
 known as the Toy-o-to-mi. As was the way with 
 Jap-a-nese, he had had three or four names in the 
 course of his life ere this ; but now he took that of 
 Toy-o-to-mi Hi-de-yosh-i, by which he is best known 
 in his-to-ry. We are told that he was a man of war 
 from his youth up. His troops were fond of him, 
 for he bore him-self like a true knio^ht. Where 
 was seen his flae there men were sure was the 
 
Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 
 
 153. 
 
 thick of the fray, and the worst of it for his foes. 
 This flag had one gourd on it at first, but as a new 
 one was put for each fight won by the knight, it 
 soon had a large bunch of them. 
 
 A WED-DING. 
 
 On the death of his chief, No-bun-a-ga, Hi-de- 
 yosh-i went at once to the town where the man who 
 had put No-bun-a-ga to death had set him-self up 
 in his lord's place, and slew him. He was now 
 
154 Histoi'y of Japan. 
 
 more great than an-y man in Ja-pan. A hard fight 
 was made for one of No-bun-a-ga's sons to keep 
 him out of the first place in the realm. But it was 
 in vain, in the end ; and at last this '' mon-key 
 face " boy from the farms of O-wa-ri went back to 
 Ki-o-to the head man of the realm. 
 
 For years he gave him-self up to toil of all kinds 
 for the good of the land, — and much he did for it, 
 too, both in a way to make the soil bring forth more 
 than it had done in times past, and to put more 
 sway in the hands of the Em-per-or. 
 
 To keep his men-at-arms at work in times of 
 peace, he built most grand pal-a-ces at Ki-o-to, and 
 did a great deal in more ways than one to make 
 that fine old town more grand than it had been ere 
 he came. He paved the bed of the stream Ka-mo 
 Avith broad, flat stones, and tried to make the place 
 great as a port as well as in all ways else. Nor did 
 he do these things in no place but Ki-o-to. His 
 gifts for the arts of peace were more great than for 
 war, and the whole realm was made to feel them. 
 He chose the site of the old monks' fort at O-za-ka for 
 a fine new town, which he laid out on a large scale, 
 built walls round it, and made a vast fort there and 
 a pal-ace where the Mi-ka-do and not a few great 
 men dwelt in af-ter years. Then he had the bed of 
 the stream which flows by it made more broad and 
 
Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 155 
 
 more deep, and dug scores of can-als, and made the 
 way clear for the town to be a great place for trade 
 in years to come. You may some-times hear folks 
 call this town the Ven-ice of Ja-pan. 
 
 In those days the post of Na-ga-sa-ki was a place 
 of much note in trade, and for that cause Hi-de- 
 yosh-i took it from the Dai-mi-o and put it in the 
 hands of the crown. His whole life now was spent 
 to serve his great lord. For this cause he spared 
 him-self no toil to make the folks do their best in all 
 things they put their hands to. At no time, ere then 
 or since, has Ja-pan made such boats as were then 
 built ; at no time has she had such large trade in so 
 ma-ny things as she then had. Her men went far 
 and wide on the high seas, as you could not think 
 they had ev-er done if you knew them now. Their 
 ships were twice or thrice the size and of much more 
 fine build than the junks that now hug their shores 
 or ply their way to Chi-na or Co-re-a. The ships of 
 the great Co-lum-bus were not so large ; and they 
 could sail as well and as fast as the craft of the 
 Dutch and the Por-tu-guese, which won world-wide 
 lame in that same age. The Jap-a-nese knew how 
 to sail them, too ; and went in them to the lands 
 of the South and South-west, to the Ma-lay Ar-chi- 
 pel-a-go and the Ku-ril-es on the North. In 
 more than one of these lands you can still find folks 
 
156 History of Japan. 
 
 whose sires were Jap-a-nese sea-men. It was 
 in the time of peace, more than in his wars, that 
 Hi-de-yosh-i's best gifts came out. When he 
 had once won his high place in the realm, all his 
 work and thoughts were for the best good of the 
 State and its true head. For this he would not rest 
 in times of peace, as most men-at-arms, but toiled 
 as hard to build up towns, to push on trade, to 
 make new plans by which to bring a more large 
 and sure tax in to the Em-per-or. While he thus 
 held the reins of the realm with so strong a grasp, 
 he made the folks, both high and low, like him and 
 look up to him ; for he was a man whose aim was to 
 be fair and just to all, and in this rank, name, race or 
 deeds done to him-self, did not move him. He was 
 frank and free to be friends with those who had fought 
 him, and did not put his foes to death when he had 
 won in a fray with them, as had been the way of 
 No-bun-a-ga. The brave chief I-ye-yas-u at first 
 bore him ill-will for the high rank he had got ; for 
 he felt that he should have had the great No-bun- 
 a-ga's place ; but Hi-de-yosh-i got him to come to 
 Ki-o-to at last to pay his court to the Mi-ka-do, -and 
 ere long he had made him his friend once more ; and 
 I-ye-yas-u took Hi-de-yosh-i's sister for his wife. 
 
 In the year 1591 he gave up his high post of Ku- 
 am-ba-ku to put his son in his place, and from that 
 
Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 157 
 
 time on he was known as ''The Tai-ko." His son 
 was but a child, and he made this change to make 
 sure that the rule of the realm should be kept in his 
 own race ; but as long as he lived he kept his grasp 
 on the realm just the same, and the whole time from 
 No-bun-a-ga's death to his own, is known as the 
 'Age of the Tai-ko" — the pride of Jap-a-nese his- 
 to-ry. Like his old chief, Hi-de-yosh-i felt that the 
 streno^th of the Bud-dhists was a source of dread to 
 the state, so he went on in the work of No-bun-a-ga 
 to take it from them. He broke up the great Mon- 
 as-ter-y of Ku-ma-no, whose priests laid claim to a 
 large fief which brought them much wealth. But 
 the Tai-ko was no friend to the new faith brought 
 from the West by Xav-i-er and the priests of Rome. 
 He saw that these deep men, and some of the 
 Jap-a-nese whom they won to their creed, took care 
 to rain the o^ood-will of the o^reat folks of the realm 
 as much as to spread their faith. He saw, too, 
 that where they had. a hold in a town, or an-y part 
 of a fief, there might be seen a change in the way 
 the folks felt as to the rule of the realm ; and in more 
 than one case, he saw signs of priest-craft that bode 
 no good to the State of Ja-pan. He found that the 
 priests won their way a great deal by much show and 
 a free use of gold, which the kings of Spain and 
 Por-tu-gal gave them for "alms." He saw that some 
 
158 History of Japan. 
 
 of them took pains, by false means and fair, to make 
 the folks look down on the Bud-dhists so that they 
 would be the more quick to take the new faith. He 
 found that the priests were all ruled by their Pope, 
 a sort of church king, whose word was law, and who 
 was held up as a man who must be right in all 
 things. He wore a trip-le crown, the Tai-ko learnt, 
 and in the name of his God, set up or threw down 
 thrones, took the crown from the head of one prince 
 to put it on some one's else, cut the realms of Eu- 
 rope in parts to give them to his friends, and as far 
 off as in the New World seemed to have the might 
 to give lands to whom he chose. 
 
 ''This man's priests," said Hi-de-yosh-i to him- 
 self, "may want to give him Ja-pan to deal with in 
 the same way. They have sects of some size now 
 on our coast, and they have a church in our chief 
 town." No-bun-a-ga had been their friend, but he 
 felt sure that they were not the friends of the Jap- 
 a-nese State, and ere long he found that he was in 
 the midst of a dark plot they had laid round his 
 son — the heir to the Ku-am-ba-ku — in his own house. 
 He told this to his friend and chief-at-arms, I-ye- 
 yas-u, in whom he had put more than one great trust 
 ere this. I-ye-yas-u set to work at once to find out 
 if there were grounds for his lord's fears. He found 
 that three of the Dai-mi-os — each of whom was lord 
 
Hideyoshi, 07^ the Age of the Taiko. 
 
 159 
 
 of a large fief — had sent word to the Pope that they 
 threw them-selves at his feet, and felt that he must 
 be their great lord, as he was the one man in the 
 world who stood for the God of Earth. 
 
 The Tai-ko did not need to know more than this 
 
 TEA AF-TER THE BATH. 
 
 to prove that there was good cause lor his worst 
 fears, and he made up his mind at once to cut all the 
 strings that ran from Ja-pan to this far-off Pope for 
 good and all. But he took time to act, so that he 
 could make his stroke tell all the more when it fell. 
 
1 60 Histoiy of Japan. 
 
 He took near a year to lay his plans for the great 
 blow he thought to strike. At length in June, 1587, 
 his troops were at their posts in the fiefs of Ki-u- 
 shi-u, and the South coasts of the realm (in the lands 
 of the false prin-ces), and there were such hosts of 
 them that they could quell an-y who might try to beat 
 them back. At last the day came for him to give 
 the sign, and from end to end the realm rang with 
 the word of the great Tai-ko, that in the name of the 
 Mi-ka-do, Ghris-ti-an-i-ty must be put down in six 
 months, its priests from strange lands must leave 
 Ja-pan at once and for all time, on pain of death ; 
 its schools must be shut ; its church-es torn down ; 
 no cross or way-side shrine should be left to stand 
 in an-y part of the realm ; and all Jap-a-nese who 
 bore the faith of Christ must give it up. The 
 men of the West of course, had to leave, and at first the 
 Jap-a-nese priests fell back, and the Church of Rome 
 seemed to have had a great check in the land ; but 
 the work went on in a still way just the same, and 
 thou-sands of Jap-a-nese took the name of Christ 
 each year. Ere long the priests threw off this cloak 
 and came forth once more in their robes, and taught in 
 the streets as they had done at first. Then the Tai-ko 
 bade them leave, and not a few Chris-tians were put 
 to death ; but it was left till the time of the next 
 rul-er to drive them quite out of the realm. 
 
Hidcyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. i6i 
 
 Hi-de-yosh-i gave up his war on the Chris-tians 
 for the sake of a long-dreamt-of plan to bring the 
 lands to the West of Ja-pan in-to the Mi-ka-do's 
 em-pire. Once, when he had some words with the 
 Chi-nese Em-per-or, he made the boast that he was 
 the King of Nip-pon and king of him-self and he 
 should know how if he chose to do so, to make the 
 Em-per-or of Chi-na bow to his yoke. Five years 
 went by ere he set out to make his threat good. 
 Then he sent a call to his lords and their clans to 
 take up arms and form ranks for a vast host that 
 he would send to the coast of Co-re-a, which, though 
 then at peace with Ja-pan, did not pay her court to 
 the Son of Heav-en as she should. It had been 
 his chief aim from the time he was a boy, to make 
 Co-re-a — if not Chi-na, too — a part of the Jap-a-nese 
 Em-pire. He had tried to get No-bun-a-ga to let 
 him do this when he was a young man, and though 
 his chief had heard the plan with a laugh, Hi-de- 
 yosh-i still kept his mind on it. In their last weak 
 years the Ash-i-ka-ga had let Co-re-a cease to send 
 her gifts and pay her court to the Mi-ka-do, as she 
 was bound to do by the terms Yo-i-to-mo made 
 with her king ; and the sea-thieves that were so 
 thick on the coasts would scarce let an-y trade be 
 kept up. This was a state of things that the Tai-ko 
 could not brook in the land he thought should be 
 
1 62 History of Japan. 
 
 to the Mi-ka-do like a part of Ja-pan. Ere he made 
 up his mind for the war, he sent two bands of men 
 to Co-re-a to ask in the Mi-ka-do's name the gifts due 
 him. The first band did not get there, but the 
 next one did. Then, the Tai-ko heard from some 
 Chi-nese who came to dwell in Ja-pan, that their 
 own realm was in a state of much strife and bad 
 home-war, and he sent word to the Em-per-or of 
 the Ce-lest-ial Em-pire (as the Chi-nese call their 
 realm), to say that if he would not give ear to 
 Hi-de-yosh-i's plan to have Chi-na pay court to the 
 Mi-ka-do, that the Jap-a-nese hosts would march 
 on him. 
 
 What at last brought the great chief to the point 
 of war, shows how grand was the stuff he was made 
 of. He lost a child for whom he had great love, 
 and his grief was deep and strong. Though, as 
 as was the way in those times, he had eight or ten 
 wives, he had few chil-dren, and when this one died 
 he could do naught but mourn for months. One 
 day he went off to a shrine, where he sat for a long 
 time, lost in his sad thoughts, while his eyes were 
 bent on the sky of the West, in front of which rose 
 the far-off hills. All at once he cried out, " A 
 great man ought to use his troops in the lands of 
 the West, and not give way to grief;" and with that 
 he went back to his home, sent a call to his chiefs, 
 
Hideyoshi, or the Age of the Taiko. 16 
 
 o 
 
 told them that they must aid him to make Chi-na 
 bow to the Mi-ka-do's throne, and at the same time 
 win lands and wealth and fame for them-selves. 
 They all fell in with his plan and ere long a fleet of 
 junks set sail for the land of Co-re-a, which they 
 were to take first. Hi-de-yosh-i had laid out all his 
 plans, and told his chiefs and his rank and file just what 
 to do. It was a grief to him and to them that he was 
 now too old to lead them him-self. They had had signs 
 from the gods that bade them be of good cheer and 
 they should win their cause in the great, strange 
 lands of the West. They made a clean sweep in 
 the first part of their march through the land, and 
 the king had to flee and leave his town in their 
 hands. When calls were sent to Chi-na for help, a 
 great tide soon set in that drove them back at once ; 
 but the Tai-ko had thought of this and had a large 
 fresh force made up to send on in case of need, and 
 as soon as the news got to him, the new ranks went 
 out and the plan to push on in-to China was to be 
 put through with great force, when the Tai-ko fell 
 sick and died. So, a truce was made. More lives 
 than we could count were lost in Co-re-a for no just 
 cause, and so great a drain had been put on Ja-pan 
 that not a few of the poor folks at home lost heart for 
 work, and sold them-selves to the men who came 
 from Spain and Por-tu-gal, for slaves. 
 
164 History of Japan. 
 
 So this last act of the great Hi-de-yosh-i's Hfe was 
 a blot on his name. It was the cause of no 
 end of grief and pain and loss to the folks for the 
 eood of whose realm he had done so much to rain. 
 But the Jap-a-nese do not blame him much for this. 
 Not a few of them feel yet that Co-re-a is theirs by 
 right and that it was meet she should have been 
 shown her place and the might of her Em-per-or, the 
 xMi-ka-do. 
 
 Both of these great schemes, like his acts to the 
 Chris-tians, seem to have been laid out by long 
 years of thought, and with the view that they should 
 help him to gain the great aim of his life, which was 
 to crush the strength of the clan-chiefs and put the 
 realm in the sole sway of the Mi-ka-do — a state of 
 things which Ja-pan has but just got to in our own 
 age. But he did a great deal to bind the fiefs 
 to the throne, and his last wish was that the 
 clans would drop their feuds, blend their aims and 
 give their strength to the best good of the realm as 
 a whole. 
 
 The Jap-a-nese have much cause to think well of 
 the low-born Hi-de-yosh-i ; and it is with pride that 
 the men of to-day look back on the things that he 
 did which made the " Age of the Tai-ko," like that 
 of E-liz-a-beth of En-gland, the best their realm 
 has known. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE LONG PEACE. 
 
 From the time of I-ye-yas-u, Ja-pan kept her 
 doors closed to all the world for two cent-u-ries and 
 a half, till the tact of our own Com-mo-dore Per-ry 
 broke the seal in 1853, and got her to make terms 
 of trade and good-will with the U-nit-ed States. 
 
 A few Dutch-men were let to stay on the small 
 isle of De-si-ma, and to have a ship go to them 
 once a year from the Dutch East In-dies ; but no 
 one could come on it to stay, nor could an-y one 
 leave by it ; and the isle was quite shut off from the 
 main land, with which the Dutch could have naught 
 to do. No oth-er ships could touch at a Jap-a-nese 
 port for an-y cause ; and it was a hard task for a 
 Jap-a-nese sea-man cast on the shore of a strange 
 land to o;et back to his home. 
 
 In the mean-time the Sho-gun, in his fort-like 
 cas-tle at Yed-do, with its vast guards, was the real 
 head of the Em-pire, while the Mi-ka-do had no 
 guard to awe the realm, but dwelt in his plain home. 
 
1 66 History of Japan. 
 
 to found a great town — a site which Hi-de-yosh-i 
 had shown him as the best place for the seat of the 
 Ku-an-to. In the few odd times that he was not 
 in the field — for war is the one word that tells what 
 those davs were — he was at work in his town, in the 
 time of both his chiefs. He took but small part, if 
 an-y, in the plan to put the yoke of Ja-pan on the 
 Em-per-or of Chi-na ; and he was at Yed-do when 
 he heard that the Tai-ko was sick, and went to him 
 at once. He was by his bed when he died, and 
 swore to take care of his son and to do all he 
 could to have him take the place of his sire. But 
 few folks thought that this child was the Tai-ko's 
 son, and, more than that, there were not a few who 
 felt that Hi-de-yosh-i had had no right to rule them 
 ( '* The up-start," they said, '' who was naught but a 
 low-born clod and a groom " ). They had borne his 
 sway, since they could not help it, but they were up. 
 in arms at the plan that his son — if he were his 
 son — should take his place. Not a few thought 
 that I-ye-yas-u had his own eyes on the post ; and 
 then when the hosts came back from Co-re-a, it was 
 not strange that a home war should have come up, 
 since some of the chiefs had not been on good 
 terms while off in the West, and not a few had 
 cast their own eyes in the way of the Tai-ko's place. 
 War did not break out all at once, but the feuds 
 
lyeyasic and the House of Tokugawa, 167 
 
 and the small fights, and the want of trust in I-ye- 
 
 yas-u grew till at 
 
 last it was a plain 
 
 fact that his foes 
 
 were at work to 
 
 land a large force 
 
 and put him down; 
 
 while he, for his 
 
 own part, had his 
 
 troops, and his 
 
 friends had theirs 
 
 in fine trim to meet . 
 
 them an-y time they / 
 
 chose to come out. ,^. 
 
 They came , 
 
 long, and in 
 
 great fight on 
 
 plains of Se-ki-ea- ,^. 
 
 ha-ra, not tar from '^^^ 
 
 Lake Bi-wa, the 
 
 Gen prince won the "% 
 
 day. So great a 
 
 fight and one so 
 
 sure in its ends 
 
 Ja-pan has not seen 
 
 ere that or since. 
 
 It was long and hard, but I-ye-yas-u and his men 
 
 ere)j^ 
 th^ ^v 
 the f 
 
 A GOV-ERN-OR 
 
i68 History of Japan. 
 
 would take no rest when it was done till they had 
 got hold of all the chief points in the realm and the 
 whole of Ja-pan was in their hands. The two cent- 
 u-ries of war and strife in the realm were now at an 
 end, and a new age of peace was come which was 
 to last for two hun-dred and fif-ty years. 
 
 Now, both of the chiefs whom I-ye-yas-u had 
 served had been men who could not trace their 
 blood to the Gen race, and so they could not hold 
 the post of Great Sho-gun ; but he was sprung from 
 that grand old stock ; the blood of the Mi-ka-dos, 
 of Nit-ta, and more than one of the chiefs who had 
 brought East Ja-pan to bow to the throne was in 
 his veins, and he had the force and the chance to 
 make his name out-shine all his sires. The Em- 
 per-or, sick at heart of the strife that had held sway 
 in his realm so long, now had one great wish — that 
 was, peace. In I-ye-yas-u he saw one who had won 
 such a high place m the minds of all the Jap-a-nese 
 by the way he had fought on the field of Se-ki-ga- 
 ha-ra, by the fine state in which he could make up 
 and keep his troops, and by his skill found and build 
 a great town, that he felt him to be the one man in 
 the realm who could bring back peace, hold the feuds 
 in check and start the folks to work and trade once 
 more. So the realm had a new Great Sho-gun 
 and the house of To-ku-ga-wa be-gan a rule of more. 
 
lyeyaszc and the House of Tokugawa. ^ 169 
 
 than two hun-dred and fif-ty years ; for the race of 
 I-ye-yas-u held its post till a few years a-go, when 
 the great change of 1868 came to the realm, and an 
 end was put to the Sho-gun rule for the rest of time. 
 When I-ye-yas-u found him-self the lord of most 
 all Ja-pan (though in name, you know, he was a 
 sub-ject of the Mi-ka-do ; and in rank, though not in 
 strength, the Ku-ge, or lords of the court, were born 
 more high than he), his first thought was to fix 
 thino^s with the chiefs and the clans who held lands 
 and had large bands of men m their train, so that 
 there would be peace on all sides — a peace that 
 should be sound and sure, and have its root in his 
 own hold on them. It took great skill and much 
 thought to do this, for the whole realm, as we know, 
 was cut up in fiefs, which were in the hands of 
 Dai-mi-OS, each of whom had the sway of a king in 
 his own lands, and by tax drew from them large 
 funds. For the most part each fief had been held 
 by the same race of folks for a long time ; and so 
 each chief was the head of a large house, with a 
 great deal of pride and rights and small feuds 
 and all such thinors which are most hard to smooth 
 down. Then, too, the Sho-gun was a man who was 
 one of them-selves till he won the chief post in the 
 realm by his might at arms. Now he would put 
 on airs and turn them out, too ; for he had a large 
 
I 70 History of Japan. 
 
 house of his own to look out for and must make 
 more than one change in these fiefs so as to get each 
 of his own sons in a place oi wealth and note and 
 might, in case an-y one should try to raise a 
 force to break down his sway. But I-ye-yas-u had 
 a great deal of tact and, ere long, he had set all this 
 right, and was on good terms with the Dai-mi-os, 
 too. He first made it known that he would grant 
 to all who had been his foes in the past, terms of 
 good-will if they would have them. That is what 
 we call an am-nes-ty. He sent forth word that he 
 would like the past to be put out of mind, for it 
 was a grief to him that so much blood had been 
 shed ; and now he would like to see all the clans m 
 the realm on the best of terms. By such words as 
 these and by more than one good turn to his late 
 foes, it soon came round that most ot the clans were 
 soon on good terms with hmi. He did not try to 
 force those that still held off; for he thought they 
 would do like the rest in time if he let them be ; 
 but he took good care to fix them so that they could 
 do him no harm ; no two clans of foes were left 
 side by side ; and in more wa3^s than one he cut off 
 all chance for them to join in a large band to bring 
 more strife with him. 
 
 Then to cut off one more great source of war m 
 the past : he made up a guard for Ki-o-to, so that no 
 
lyeyasiL and tJic Hoitse of Tokugawa. 171 
 
 one could seize the Mi-ka-do. With both of these 
 things done he feh sure of his hold on the realm, 
 and could turn his thoughts to works that should 
 make that hold so strong that it would last for cent- 
 u-ries. One of the first of these to claim his time 
 was the new town of Yed-do, to which he brought a 
 vast host of work-men to make thecas-tle more large, 
 to dig moats and can-als, to grade streets, fill in the 
 marsh lands, and to build. Fleets of junks brought 
 stone from Hi-o-go for the walls of the fort, and for 
 the gate-ways of the town. These he set up, far out- 
 side of what most folks thought would be the bounds 
 of the town ; but I-ye-yas-u fore-saw how it would 
 o^row. He had a o^reat moat duQ^ that went round 
 both fort and town, and left much room to spare ; 
 and great gate tow-ers were set up, though no wall 
 was as yet built to make them of an-y use ; and the 
 folks had to take such a long walk out in the fields 
 to see them, that they would laugh at them. The 
 Sho-gun said the. time would come when walls 
 would be built, and that they would be too small for 
 the town. His word came true, and in two-score 
 years the lands on the East side of the stream were 
 built up. 
 
 And the great I-ye-yas-u had plans and works to 
 be done for more than this fair town of his. He 
 built up new and made sound the old torts of the 
 
172 History of Japan. 
 
 Ku-an-to land till it had from ten to a score of fine, 
 stout cas-tles. He seemed to know what would be 
 the growth and the needs of the Em-pire in the years 
 to come, and not a few of his plans were the means 
 that brought that growth. One thing he did was 
 to build fine roads through the realm, one of the 
 best of which is the To-kai-do, a broad way that still 
 skirts the East-ern Sea and runs from Ki-o-to to 
 Yed-do, or To-ki-o, as they now call it. He set up 
 near three-score posts on these roads, each with a 
 good house, where folks could stay at night, where 
 they could change or hire steeds to take their goods, 
 or slaves — known as cool-ies — -to bear their packs or 
 the '' pal-an-quins" — which are small cars that all 
 folks of note in Ja-pan used to ride in from place to 
 place. The old roads, too, had a great deal done to 
 them ; and there was scarce a pass through the hills, 
 a bridge, or a foot-path of much use, that he did not 
 have put in good shape, while all the points where 
 folks had to cross streams by boat — and this has to 
 be done a great deal in Ja-pan — he made to have a 
 broad place to land the boats at both ends of the 
 routes. Now all this was a vast deal of work, and 
 it was work of great note, and good, too ; for in those 
 days the lords of the court and the chiefs of the fiefs, 
 with great bands of their men, had to go from place 
 to place a great deal since they were made by law to 
 
Iyeyas7i and the Hotise of Tokujawa. 
 
 ^Ili 
 
 dwell in some of the chief towns for a part of each year. 
 The Sho-gun had quite a long code of rules laid down, 
 which these men had to go by when they took these 
 trips ; for Ja-pan is a great land for rules and laws on 
 how the folks shall act at all times — what we call et-i- 
 quette. I-ye-yas-u made ma-ny laws, from those on 
 
 NIGHT PO-LICE. 
 
 small things that have no place but in the house, to 
 the large ones of the clans ; and they were laws that 
 spread till they went in-tg force through the whole 
 realm. 
 
 But twice were there breaks in the sweet peace of 
 this great Sho-gun's rule. Wben the Tai-ko died the 
 
1 74 History of Japan. 
 
 Chris-tians had thought they would be free from the 
 ban that had been put on them, since they had a 
 good friend in his son ; but the fight at Se-ki-ga-ha-ra 
 put quite a new face on things, for I-ye-yas-u had 
 seen too deep in their ways in Hi-de-yosh-i's time 
 to want them to go on with their work in Ja-pan, 
 and now the Dai-mi-os of the fiefs gave them some 
 of the same sort of terms they, in times past, had 
 thought meet to use on the Bud-dhists they had 
 forced to take the faith of Christ. The Jap-a-nese 
 Chris-tians were told to give up their new creeds, 
 but they would not; and at last they took up arms 
 in their cause. Such a thing as the farm folks 
 armed to fight their own cause was so new in Ja- 
 pan that I-ye-yas-u felt sure that the priests were at 
 the root of it. He would not have been quite so 
 sure if he had not known that the priests paid their 
 court to the Tai-ko's son as if he held the place his 
 sire had left him. The Sho-gun's next step was to 
 send forth word that all Chris-tians should give up 
 their faith; but the priests and folks soon went on in 
 the old way, and kept up their work to bring more 
 to join the church all the time. This was the way 
 it had been in Hi-de-yosh-i's day, but I-ye-yas-u had 
 set out to make the work sure this time. But he 
 was not in too great haste. On the watch for all 
 the craft and plans of the priests, his men one day 
 
lyeyasti and the House of Toktigawa. 1 75 
 
 found a chest in a deep well, and in it a vast hoard 
 of gold, with a roll that gave sure proof of a plot he 
 had long known some-thing of. He found in this 
 that plans had been laid to make the prince of one 
 of the fiefs king of Ja-pan, and to yoke the realm to 
 one of the em-pires of Eu-rope. On this, the Sho- 
 o^un lost no time to make clean w^ork of his task. 
 He sent all folks not born in Ja-pan from its shores 
 at once, and said that all Jap-a-nese must give up 
 the faith of Christ or leave the land. This was in 
 the year 1611, and in a few years more he had a 
 short strife with the son of the Tai-ko, and then 
 Ja-pan was free from war for a long time. Hi-de- 
 yosh-i's son, though put down in fair fight, still had 
 some thoughts for the place of his sire, and with 
 some Jes-u-it priests, and others, who did not like 
 the Great Sho-gun, was at the head of a band bound 
 to do him ill. I-ye-yas-u found this out, and in a 
 short time he made some cause to march on the 
 youth, who was at the cas-tle of O-za-ka, which was 
 set on fire. Then a fierce fight took place, in which 
 I-ye-yas-u won, and the son of the Tai-ko lost. Then, 
 for years and years, the faith of Christ was shut 
 out of the realm, and so were all folks of strange lands 
 but a few Dutch on the isle of De-si-ma. This was 
 the end of blood-shed for more than two hun-dred 
 and fif-ty-three years. How sweet that long peace 
 
I 76 History of Japan. 
 
 was to the poor realm that had had to bear so much 
 woe and grief and loss for such a long time ! 
 
 I-ye-yas-u was not like most men who win in all 
 the wars they fight. Peace was more dear to him 
 than strife ; and the last years of his life were spent 
 in the fair cas-tle that he built when he was a young 
 man, on the first lands that had been giv-en to him. 
 There he gave his time and thoughts to the good of 
 the realm — how he could best wipe out the deep 
 scars of war that lay on her; how he could best 
 bring forth in her the arts of peace, and fix his plan 
 of rule so that it should stand for a long, long time. 
 When he died he bade his sons rule in ways that 
 are both kind and just. The great tales that are 
 told of the pomp and state with which this man was 
 laid in his tomb, and all the rites that were held at 
 his death, show us a good deal of the ways of the 
 folks at that time, and how much they thought of the 
 grand rites due the dead. 
 
 I-ye-yas-u's son took his place, and seems to have 
 kept up the work ot his sire in all his plans. He 
 did what the great To-ku-ga-wa would have done 
 if he had lived ; and in his time, the strength of 
 the Yed-do rule grew more sure with all the clans, 
 the forms of rule of the realm were made bet- 
 ter, and the fair town of Yed-do grew in size and 
 strength and fine looks all the time ; but it was the 
 
lyeyasu and the Hoiise of Tokugawa. 
 
 177 
 
 grand-son of I-ye-yas-u who next to him ranks as the 
 best man of all the new line of Great Sho-guns. 
 
 He it was who 
 
 brought the Sho- 
 
 gun rule and clan- 
 strength to their 
 
 height. He made 
 
 the Sho-gun more 
 
 than the chief of the 
 
 Dai-mi-OS, which 
 
 w^as his real place ; 
 
 he made the post in 
 
 its way most a s 
 
 great as that of the 
 
 Mi-ka-do, and ere 
 
 long the Dai-mi-OS 
 
 came to be bound 
 
 to pay court to him 
 
 and to do his will 
 
 as much as if he 
 
 were their Em-per- 
 
 or. He, too, did "'-_______ 
 
 much for Yed-do, Z^-s--J^^ .; ''■'' 
 
 and laid new plans japa-nese ar-mor. 
 for her, such as wa-ter-works, look-outs for fire with 
 bells to tell by a code of signs where the flames 
 had been seen and how far they had got. The gold 
 
 jap-a-nese ar-mor. 
 
I j'^ History of Japan. 
 
 that had been found in the Isle of Sa-do in I-de- 
 yas-u's time, was now made in-to coin at the mints 
 set up by his grand-son. A law was made to fix 
 weights and meas-ures. For the first time, the realm 
 was gone o-ver and maps made of the fiefs and the 
 strong-holds of the Dai-mi-os. The great shrines 
 which I-ye-yas-u had set out to build, he went on 
 with ; and in scores of ways did he start new works 
 and plan new ways that have been of vast worth to 
 the realm in times past, and are kept up to this day. 
 This Sho-gun was the first to use the name of Ty- 
 coon. It means some-thmg like, " I am a great man 
 and you must think much of what I say." The 
 Sho-gun had no right to it, but his pride was 
 strong, and one time when he had some Co-re-ans 
 come to him, he felt that he must make them feel 
 that he was of great note in the land. To the Jap- 
 a-nese it did not mean much, though some of them 
 came to use it them-selves in the time of the last 
 three Sho-guns, when they had a wish to treat their 
 lords with gre;at awe. But when the first of them 
 used it him-self to our Com-mo-dore Per-ry, it 
 made a great time ; it was a large part of the 
 cause of the war that soon came on and broke down 
 the sway of the Dai-mi-o chief and led to the new 
 state of things we now find in the realm. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE ASH-I-KA-GA AGE 
 
 The race of the Ash-i-ka-ga, whose plots so soon 
 broke up the Mi-ka-do's sway, kept hold of the reins 
 of the realm for two hun-dred and fif-ty years. Thir- 
 teen of its sons were Sho-guns, and in all their time 
 you can find but one bright page in the long, sad 
 tale of their age, when ill-will was in the air and 
 there were fights tor small clan feuds all the time, 
 and now and then for great ones, when the whole 
 land would be drawn in -to war. 
 
 In the time of the Ho-jo it had been the right of 
 the Court to say who should hold the post of Sho- 
 gun, and then you know it was the Shik-ken who 
 had the Sho-gun in their hands, so that they had no 
 might of their own ; but when the Ash-i-ka-ga then 
 got the post for their own race and had it go from 
 sire to son, the man with the rank was not 
 at all times the man who had the sway. Much of 
 the resil work of the state was done by smart men, 
 not of hio^h rank. One of these, Ho-so-ka-wa Yo-ri- 
 
1 8o History of -Japafi. 
 
 in the midst of. a park with a fence round it, at the 
 far - off Ki-o-to, where lords of the court, priests, 
 men of rank and blood, of books and art, let the 
 days slip by in home-work and ease. The folks used 
 to say, '' The Sho-gun all men fear; the Mi-ka-do 
 all men love." 
 
 The Em-per-or him-self was in awe of the To-ku- 
 ga-wa Sho-gun. He gave full sway to Bud-dhism, 
 for that did not teach folks to think ; but it was a 
 crime to take up an-y of the thoughts or plans of 
 Eu-rope or the New World. No one could so much 
 as build a boat: on the plan of those used in the 
 West ; or on an-y plan but that of a Jap-a-nese junk. 
 To go out of the realm to see what was done in the 
 rest of the world, to learn an-y tongue but those of 
 Chi-na and Ja-pan, to have an-y of the ways of the 
 Eu-ro-pe-ans, or to hold to the faith of Christ, were 
 crimes that naught but death could pay for. When 
 the Sho-gun and his train went out, the folks had to 
 bow their heads to the earth. He was the real head 
 of the Em-pire. Each fief of note was like a small 
 realm, whose dai-mi-o was a king with hun-dreds of 
 men in his train, but the Sho-gun was their king. 
 Such plans as they laid to watch all that was done in 
 the realm and keep the folks un-der their thumbs 
 have scarce been known an-y where else. The realm 
 was full of spies ; no one had trust in an-y one else, 
 
The Long Peace. 
 
 isl- 
 
 and so all the folks, high and low, came to be far 
 more quick to lie than to tell the truth. Most of the 
 dai-mi-os who had got their lands from the Sho-guns 
 felt that their court was due to him as to a king, and 
 
 STREET MU-SI-CIAN. 
 
 the folks' of the low castes, for the most part, did not 
 know that the Mi-ka-do had ev-er had an-y real 
 sway in the realm ; they thought him sent from 
 Heav-en to be their great high priest, and while they 
 
1 82 Histo7y of Japan. 
 
 felt all awe for him, they did not feel that they ought 
 to serve him as they did the Sho-gun. Most of them 
 thought the " great and good house of To-ku-ga-wa " 
 had had sole right to rule from the first. The Sho- 
 guns knew they had no real claims to all this, but 
 they were bound to keep their place; and so, lest the 
 folks should come to know the truth, they made it a 
 great point to keep them in the dark. They must 
 not be taught to read or to think much for fear they 
 should find out the past his-to-ry of the land ; and 
 as much as could be, the high castes, too, were kept 
 from such books. This may have been one cause 
 why such a fierce fight was made on the Chris-tians 
 and on all folks of strange lands ; they were bound 
 to teach the mass of the folks. 
 
 Thus shut in, years went by. They were years 
 of peace and of good crops, and not of want. The 
 farms brought forth all the food the folks could eat ; 
 there was no trade with the rest of the world ; no 
 one could mass great wealth ; there were no out-side 
 folks to spread new thoughts and plans, and a calm 
 lay on the land that was sweet, as peace must be 
 when a realm has been long at war. But it was a 
 kind of peace that was not for the real good of the 
 realm. The Sam-u-rai, who had the sole right to 
 wear the sword, were the on-Iy ones who could take 
 up more than the most plain stud-ies ; and no two of 
 
The Long Peace. 183 
 
 them could meet and talk long but that a spy was by 
 to hear all that they said. Now, you know, the Jap- 
 a-nese had come to be fond of books ; not a few of 
 the Sam-u-rai were men who had read and thought 
 a great deal ; and no Sho-guns could blind their 
 eyes to the truth, nor keep them from the work in 
 which they took so much joy. Some of them saw 
 through the plans of the To-ku-ga-wa, and chose to 
 take up a great task which would show them up at 
 last, and in spite of all their pains would tell the 
 folks the truth as to their realm. This great task, 
 to which some of the chief Sam-u-rai gave their 
 lives, was to write the first His-to-ry of Ja-pan. The 
 man who took the lead in this was the Prince of 
 Mi-to, who lived till the year 1700. He drew round 
 him a host of men who had read and thought a 
 great deal ; and with their aid made his great work, 
 which is near the size of our own Mr. Ban-croft's 
 His-to-ry of the U-nit-ed States, but makes two hun- 
 dred and for-ty-three of their books. The men 
 wrote it in pure Chi-nese, which is still thought to 
 be the right tongue in which to write a work of 
 great note, just as in times past Eng - lish folks 
 thought Lat-in the tongue in which they ought to 
 put their best works. 
 
 Now the Prince of Mi-to had great fame for his 
 gifts, for he wrote a good deal ; and as he had some 
 
184 History of Japan. 
 
 ties of blood with the house of To-ku-ga-wa, he was 
 more free to state his views than an-y one else in the 
 realm. But his views were not for the good of the 
 Sho-guns ; he thought they were wrong to do as 
 they did, and in his book he led folks to see that the 
 Mi-ka-do and no one else had a right to be head of 
 the realm, and the Sho-guns from the first had been 
 mere thieves who took the might from the throne. 
 From the first Mi-to's work was made much of by 
 well-learned men, but for more than a hun-dred years 
 there were but a few cop-ies of it, and all of them 
 were made by hand. Its views spread more and 
 more, though; and less than two-score years a-go 
 there was such a great want for it that it was put m 
 print. But ere this came to pass, some one else took 
 up the same line of work, and told the his-to-ry of 
 all the great clans. This too laid bare the facts of 
 the rise of the Great Sho-guns, and brought forth 
 the rights of the throne. It told its tales in such 
 plain terms that some of the books had to be gone 
 through and purged more than once ere the sage 
 and well-read men at Yed-do (who had to judge and 
 pass all works ere they could go out in print) would 
 let it be put forth. 
 
 Now, with these two great works on the past in 
 their hands, and with the time to think that the long 
 peace gave them, it is not strange that the Jap-a- 
 
A JAP-A-NESE WRI-TER. 
 
J 86 History of Japan. 
 
 nese grew to ieel that their realm was In quite the 
 wrong hands. Nor was this the sole wave that had 
 set in to hold up the Mi-ka-do's rights to his folks. 
 The priests, too, found more time for thought now, 
 and not a few set to work to bring back the old 
 Shin-to creeds as they had been held ere the Bud- 
 dhist faith came to change their tone; for Bud-dhism 
 made a vast chanoe in the Shm-to. This, of 
 •course, brought folks to think more ot the ho-ly 
 line of the Em-per-or, of the high rights of the 
 throne, of what some of the Mi-ka-dos had done 
 of old, and of the great men who had fought for 
 them, and spent life, wealth and all m their cause. 
 With this not a few of the well-learned men made up 
 their minds to go back to the stud-y of the old Jap-a- 
 nese books, and to make more of their own tongue, 
 which for a long time had been quite put down by 
 the use of the Chi-nese in books, in state pa-pers 
 at court, and with all the folks of high rank. Now 
 the Sho-guns tried to check this, but the Mi-da-do, 
 the court lords at Ki-o-to, and some of the chief Sam- 
 u-rai did all they could to help it on. They wrote 
 a good deal, and in not a few of the chief fiefs of 
 the realm their works drew the folks of mind and 
 might to see the Mi-ka-do and the Sho-gun in a new 
 light, and to think of plans to put down the rule of 
 Yed-do and set up that of Ki-o-to. This rise of the 
 
TJie Lous' Peace. 
 
 i3 
 
 Shin-to schol-ars and the works that they wrote, with 
 those of the Prince of Mi-to and his friends, led to 
 a great change in the views of the Jap-a-nese, 
 which at last threw down the whole scheme of Jap- 
 a-nese Feu-dal-ism. In the course of years, with 
 the calm that seemed to lie like a pall on their life, 
 they grew to feel that they had gone back in their 
 growth, while the rest of the world went on. The 
 sea, which had once been like a wall to shut them in, 
 had come to be the road that led strange ships to 
 their shores; for not a few ship-wrecked Jap-a-nese 
 got back to their homes on board A-mer-i-can boats, 
 scores of which went by in sight of her coasts 
 each year. The Rus-sians came down from the 
 north and set up their claims to part of one of the 
 north isles, and Eng-land, France, Hol-land and 
 A-mer-i-ca all had a wish to trade with her. All 
 these signs told the wise that some day ere long 
 there would be a stir in Ja-pan, which if it came 
 would end in the fall of the Sho-o^un. Now there 
 were a few who felt that a war might be made on 
 them some day by the " wild men " of the West and 
 the New World. (Most of the Jap-a-nese thought 
 all A-mer-i-cans and Eu-ro-pe-ans were a half-brute 
 race, or '' wild men," as they said ; for they had been 
 the curse of Ja-pan in the past; they had taught 
 them of pow-der and fire-arms, and had been the 
 
1 88 History of -Japan. 
 
 cause of a great deal of woe and blood-shed.) No 
 plans were made at Yed-do to meet these ''wild men " 
 if they should come, but not a few of the great dai- 
 mi-os of the South thought it best not to wait for the 
 Sho-gun's lead, and set to work to have their vast 
 clans in trim in case of need. They had two needs 
 in mind; one was to meet the "wild men" that they 
 did not fear to speak of; but one that they had kept 
 to them-selves was that the time might come ere long 
 when the Mi-ka-do's own cause would want their 
 arms. And if it were the home foes or the "brutes," 
 one or both, they had made up their minds that 
 their troops should be a match for an-y they might 
 meet. These were men whose sires had been bred 
 to arms for a-ges, and they were not so bound up in 
 Ja-pan that they had not seen that the arts of warm 
 the West were far a-head of their own ; and so, while 
 the realm lay in a calm of peace the great chiefs of 
 the South got the men who had learnt Dutch, and 
 French, and Por-tu-guese, to put the books on the 
 arts of war (which they had got hold of in some 
 way) in-to the Chi-nese or Jap-a-nese tongue, so that 
 they could learn from them how to dress and drill 
 and fit out their troops as was done in the West. 
 
 One of the chief of these dai-mi-os was the Prince 
 of Mi-to — for that great house had in 1840 a prince 
 who could well bear the name of him who wrote the 
 
The Long Peace. 
 
 189 
 
 His-to-ry of Ja-pan a hun-dred and fif-ty years be- 
 fore. But he who took the real lead in plans to teach 
 the Jap-a-nese the arts of the West was the Prince 
 of Sat-su-ma. He was a man of brains, will and 
 wealth. As a wise prince as well as a great and good 
 one, whose peer could scarce be found in the realm, 
 
 THE WAY THAT PLAIN FOLKS TRAV-EL. 
 
 it was his aim to spread the stud-y of his-to-ry, as 
 well as all the best Jap-a-nese works of an-y kind, 
 through the realm. He spent time, wealth and 
 thought on his fief to make it bring forth all it could, 
 and got his troops in-to the best shape then known 
 to Jap-a-nese men-at-arms; for he saw that the time 
 
190 History of Japan. 
 
 would soon come to march on Yed-do. And he saw, 
 too, more than most of the chiefs what would be the 
 needs of the realm when that had been done, and so 
 he did what he could to get young men to learn the 
 Dutch and Eng-lish speech, and to find out through 
 them what the rest of the world knew of the arts of 
 war as well as of peace. He was king in his own 
 fief, and did as he chose there, and of course no one 
 thought to check his plans. He set up some mills 
 and shops where great guns were cast as the Dutch 
 made them. He saw that the young men of Ja-pan 
 ought to go out and see the rest of the world and 
 learn how things were done there; and by and by a 
 score of the most bright youths of the land got 
 off in one ship to Eu-rope, in spite of the Sho- 
 gun's care and watch. Then some more slipped off 
 to Eng-land and the U-nit-ed States. This prince was 
 well known through all the realm, and young men 
 went to him from all parts of the land, to be with 
 him in his schools or to learn the arts or plain work- 
 a-day trades which were not seen else-where in 
 Ja-pan. His chief town was full of life, and in it 
 were some of the most bright and well-learned folks 
 and most skilled work-men in the whole realm. By 
 this time it was plain to a large part of the Jap-a- 
 nese that the time of the Yed-do rule was short, and 
 the Prince of Sat-su-ma was to be the man to lead 
 
The Lons" Peace. 
 
 191 
 
 the out-break; but in 1858 he died, and his great 
 work lell to the hands of those he had trained and 
 taught — nor were they weak when their time came. 
 All these great chiefs of the South were of stock 
 
 <V « 5i? jSs^'^ 
 
 ^^*^J^^T?Q 
 
 as old and as good as that of 
 
 I-ye-ya-su, and though he had 
 
 made his way to the head of 
 
 the realm and the rest had had 
 
 to bow to him, they did not 
 
 love him nor his house an-y 
 
 the more; and it was gall to 
 
 their sons to be the slaves of 
 
 his race. Some-times one or 
 
 two of them would not do the 
 
 Sho-gun's will, but step by 
 
 step, from the first stage when 
 
 they were his "friends," and 
 
 went toYed-do ashis "guests," 
 
 till now when they were as his 
 
 slaves whom he bade come and 
 
 pay court to him, the To-ku- 
 
 ga-wa had borne down on the 
 
 Dai-mi-OS a bit more hard each 
 
 tmie till now there was but one way to free the realm 
 
 from their grasp, and that was to break out on 
 
 them in a vast host, raze Yed-do to the ground, 
 
 tear down the Sho-gun's throne, and drive the race 
 
 A MAN OF THE CIT-Y IN WIN-TER DRESS, 
 
192 History of Japan. 
 
 of I-ye-ya-su forth to find lodge where they might 
 — or death if they should face round. 
 
 This they had grown to feel that they would do if 
 the worst came to pass. But for a long time they 
 kept it all in their own breasts, like a fire in a mound, 
 while in a still way things went on in-side to make 
 the heat more fierce, and e-vents took shape with the 
 Sho-eun and the rest of the realm that were to 
 wake the flame at last to do the most that a-ny of 
 them dreamt of. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE LAST WAR AND THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE. 
 
 Most folks think that our Com-mo-dore Per-ry 
 was the sole cause of the late war in Ja-pan ; but 
 that was not the case. We know that the clans had 
 long been in wait for a chance to break out on the 
 Sho-gun, and they found it when he let him-self pass 
 for the Em-per-or with Com-mo-dore Per-ry. To be 
 sure it was our brave sea-man who ofot the realm to 
 un-lock her ports to the world, and the long peace 
 came to an end in a great fight on the folks who 
 went there from A-mer-i-ca and the West ; but not 
 
The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 193 
 
 a few of the Sam-u-ral and the dai-mi-os who led in 
 the war were glad to have the "wild men" come, 
 and what they fought for was to break down the Sho- 
 gun rule and set up that of the Mi-ka-do. It was 
 they and no one else who brought on this last dread 
 war of the realm of isles. But the A-mer-i-cans lit 
 their fuse; and this is how they did it and how the 
 shell burst. 
 
 In the sum-mer of 1853 the still air of Yed-do Bay 
 woke one July day to shrill sound that came from the 
 pipes of a fleet of A-mer-i-can steam-ships. Their 
 chief would not go round to the port of Na-ga-sa-ki, 
 off which lay the isle of the Dutch, when he was 
 told to, but he in terms that no one could call rude, 
 said he would stay where he was. He sent some 
 gifts to the Em-per-or of Ja-pan, with let-ters in 
 which he asked in the name of the Pres-i-dent that 
 the Em-per-or would be friends with the U-nit-ed 
 States, and come to some terms of trade with her. 
 Now these did not get to the Em-per-or at all, but 
 to the Sho-gun, who took them and read them and 
 went so far as to act on them all by him-self, for he 
 said, " I am in the place of the Em-per-or, and 
 things may not go well for me if these new folks 
 think I am not he." So, when he had made up his 
 mind what to say to our brave Com-mo-dore, he sent 
 a man of much note who taught in one of the great 
 
1 94 History of Japan. 
 
 schools of Yed-do to treat with him ; and this man, 
 to give his lord a big name in the eyes of the strange 
 folks, let his men speak of him as the " Tai-kun," a 
 Chi-nese word which means '' great prince " or 
 *' high lord," and if used at all was not due an-y 
 one but the Mi-ka-do. But it was a term that meant 
 no real rank to the Jap-a-nese, and so the Sho-gun 
 told them, but to Per-ry he let it stand for the 
 same as Em-per-or. Now our Com-mo-dore knew 
 that there was a Mi-ka-do at the head of the realm, 
 but he thought him a sort of pope, or chief priest, 
 while the ''Ty-coon" was the Em-per-or of the 
 state. So when he came back home he felt that 
 he had made the right terms, and that all had been 
 well done to make Ja-pan and A-mer-i-ca good 
 friends. But this was far from the case ; for while 
 the Sho-gun held the reins of rule there was no 
 name but the Mi-ka-do's that stood for the Jap-a- 
 nese Em-pire. It was not at all the voice of the realm 
 that said yes to the great change. They are not head- 
 long folks, and it was a vast thing to them to break 
 the seal that had so long shut out the rest of the world 
 for the fact that those whom they had once let in had 
 done them harm and had laid plots to make them 
 slaves to some strange king whom they had not seen 
 and scarce heard of. And more than that, the Mi-ka- 
 do and his court were full of wrath at the lie the Sho- 
 
The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 195 
 
 gun had told when he let him-self pass for the Em- 
 per-or. The To-ku-ga-wa gave a great poke them- 
 selves to stir up the fires that lay in the depths of 
 the great clans of the South ; but still they were 
 kept hid and peace lay on the realm for some years. 
 The realms of Eu-rope sent their ships in the wake 
 of Per-ry's Sus-que-han-na, and it was not long ere 
 some of the best ports of Ja-pan were bound to let 
 the ''beasts" and "wild men" of the world come 
 and go as they might choose. But, in 1859, when 
 the ships came and a real flood of trade set in, the 
 realm woke from its long sleep with such a shock as 
 it had not known in all its life. In the first place 
 the folks had not thought that all these* ships would 
 want to bear off so much goods as they did to their 
 own ports. So when they had bought up their loads 
 there was not much left and the cost of plain things rose 
 so high that the poor could not have them, and that 
 brought want and woe at once. At the same time 
 the land was swept by earth-quakes, storms, floods, 
 and fires, all of which the mass of folks felt to be due 
 in some way to the '' wild men " whom the Sho-gun 
 had let come to their ports. In the midst of all this 
 woe and want and fright the Sho-gun died, and left 
 the choice of a new one to his Re-gent. Now of 
 the two young men of the To-ku-ga-wa whom the 
 lords thought of to take the post, the Re-gent chose 
 
196 History of Japan. 
 
 the one whom some of the chief dai-mi-os did not 
 want ; and when they made some fuss a-bout it he 
 put them in jail ; and with them not a fe\/ of the 
 best Sam-u-rai in the realm — men of state, chiefs at 
 arms, and some who were most sage and well-learned 
 — were put in bonds, sent to far-off parts of the 
 realm, or had their heads cut off. The Re-gent was 
 in great straits, for he knew that the terms with the 
 out-side world could not hold good with-out the Mi- 
 ka-do's own name to them ; and while the ''brutes" 
 made loud calls to have their treat-ies made good, the 
 Mi-ka-do and Court would have naught to do with 
 them. At last, in fear that the "wild men" might force 
 their way in ^nd make no end of bad work, he set 
 his own seal to the terms he had made and sent 
 word to Ki-o-to that he had done so. At this the 
 wrath of the Court broke forth and a cry of hail to 
 the Mi-ka-do and out with the '' wild men " went 
 from end to end of the realm. The Re-gent had 
 been false to his chief, it was felt ; and all through 
 the land thou-sands left their homes and said they 
 would not go back to them till the Mi-ka-do, with the 
 rule in his own hands, should drive out the strange 
 folks who had come in on them. Then there was a 
 time of strife and blood-shed, when the land swarmed 
 with bands of low-caste men, armed and in for fight, 
 with no heed for the laws of the land or of man to 
 
The Last War and the Daw7i of a New Age. 
 
 197 
 
 man. The Re-gent was slain, and so were scores of 
 folks from the out-side world. The Sho-gun's sway 
 was on the wane ; few of the clans held to the Sho- 
 gun, while the eyes of most of the realm were bent 
 on the throne, and the will of the Mi-ka-do was that 
 for which the folks gave ear. The dai-mi-os of the 
 South came out strong 
 and left Yed-do to make 
 Ki-o-to their seat, as it 
 was that of the Court. 
 They put funds in the 
 chest of the throne; their 
 troops — the best in the 
 realm — were at the Mi- 
 ka-do's call. All at 
 once the Yed-do chiefs 
 said they would close 
 the ports and get the 
 folks of the West to 
 leave Ja-pan ; and they 
 sent some men to Eu- 
 rope to see to this ; but in the mean-time, at the 
 wish of the Ku-ge, the Mi-ka-do sent forth word that 
 all who were not Jap-a-nese should leave the realm. 
 Then arms were raised on their ships by the Cho- 
 shi-u clan ; the Sho-gun sent word that they should 
 not be fired on, but they were. The Sho-gun's 
 
 LA-DY IN THE RAIN. 
 
198 History of Japan. 
 
 might was gone; the Mi-ka-do was come. This was 
 in Ju-ly, and through the rest of that sum-mer the 
 two sides stood in arms face to face, and with each 
 the ill-will and dread of some-thing worse to come 
 grew and grew. In the fall new ills came. The 
 Sho-gun side said that the Cho-shi-u, with some of 
 the Ku-ge, had laid a plot to get hold of the Mi- 
 ka-do and set up their own rule be-hind the throne, 
 as had been done in the past. This drew on them the 
 wrath of all the Yed-do clans, and put them in a bad 
 light, for they could not get clear ol such a grave charge 
 at once, since thevhad tried to have the Mi-ka-do leave 
 Ki-o-to and take the lead of their troops. The clans 
 thus paired, the realm was in a bad state for some 
 time, and in mid-sum-mer of 1864 at the gates of 
 Ki-o-to they came to a fight which was kept up for 
 two days with great strife and loss of life. It was 
 lost to the Cho-shi-u and gave the Sho-gun's band 
 one more taste of their strength, though that strength 
 would have been much less if it had been used to 
 hold up their own throne in place of the Mi-ka-do's. 
 In the same month a fleet which bore the flags of 
 four na-tions of the out-side world sent out its fire 
 and shell on the fort of the Cho-shi-u till it beat 
 them down and paid them off for their fire of the 
 same month in the year past. But their ranks 
 were fine and well-drilled, their hearts were true, and 
 
THE FIN-ISH-ING TOUCH. 
 
200 History of Japan. 
 
 they were not to fail in the end. It was an all sum- 
 mer's fight with them and the Sho-gun side, which 
 came to an end with loss and rout and shame to the 
 To-ku-ga-wa, and the last fall of their sway. The 
 poor young Sho-gun whom the Re-gent had set up, 
 worn out with his cares, died in the fall, and left one 
 thing done — he had got the Mi-ka-do to say he 
 would make terms with Eu-rope and A-mer-i-ca^ 
 but they must be his own terms, not the Sho-gun's. 
 The young man who next took this post was the 
 one whom the Ku-re had made choice of m the first 
 place ; and when he had been in it some eight 
 months one of the chiefs most true to the Mi-ka-do, 
 got him to give it up. This was one great step 
 in the way of the full sway of the Mi-ka-do. But 
 there was much still to be done ; for the gates of 
 the Pal-ace were in the guard of a clan that was 
 the most staunch and true of all that still held to 
 the To-ku-ga-wa; and as they had the Mi-kado 
 they were yet at the head of the realm. The 
 chiefs of the great clans of the South would not rest 
 till the work that had gone so far should be well 
 done, and they made up their minds to work as one 
 band and by a bold stroke to wipe out the post of 
 Sho-gun and the might of Yed-do, and to give full 
 sway to the throne on which now sat the young Em- 
 per-or Mut-su-hi-to. It was on the third of Jan-u-a-ry, 
 
The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 201 
 
 1868, that they did it. The troops of these chiefs 
 by a quick move took up their posts at the gates of 
 the Pal-ace, sent out the Ku-ge who were in wait on 
 the boy Em-per-or and would let no one go through 
 the gates but those who held the same views as their 
 chiefs. The Court was swept clean of all who 
 would set up aught but the Mi-ka-do's rule ; and 
 from the throne there went forth the good news 
 that the Em-per-or and his Court would now have 
 sole rule of the realm, and that there was no such 
 thing' in Ja-pan as the Yed-do sway or the post of 
 Great Sho-gun. The Cho-shi-u clan was brought 
 back to its right place with the Ku-ge, cleared of the 
 charge that they had laid a plot to get hold of the 
 Mi-ka-do; and the brave chiefs, as well as the young 
 men who had run off to Eu-rope and our own land, 
 were put in posts of trust. 
 
 The Yed-do clans were full of rage; they got 
 their ex-Sho-gun to make war on Ki-o-to and get 
 back what they had lost ; but it was no use. A 
 fight of three days took place, but the Sho-gun side 
 lost and fled with their chief to O-za-ka, whose 
 cas-tle was burned by the troops of Mi-ka-do's clans. 
 He found a place on an A-mer-i-can ship and got at 
 last to his home at Yed-do. Then, in spite of all 
 that his clan-chiefs could do to urge him to keep up 
 the fio^ht, he held firm to this, that he would nev-er 
 
202 History of Japan. 
 
 more make war on his lord, the Mi-ka-do. He 
 gave up all thoughts of a pub-lie life from that 
 day, and said the rest of his years should be spent 
 as were those of the men of his caste. By this 
 he saved Yed-do from the torch, which was lit for it 
 when word was sent that the Sho-gun gave up all 
 his claims; and by this he saved Ja-pan from a long 
 home-war. A few clans still held out, but they were 
 soon put down, and by the ist of Ju-ly, 1869, the 
 realm once more was a land of peace. 
 
 Then came that task that comes in the wake of 
 all great home-wars when the side of a new cause 
 wins : the Mi-ka-do and his new Court had to fit 
 the old realm to the new state of things. All 
 grades had their cries. One said send out the 
 " brutes" ; the Shin-to priests would have the Chris- 
 tians dealt with, the Bud-dhists put down, and 
 the new rule set up by the pure Shin-to creeds. 
 
 It was the young men who, in spite of all the 
 Sho-gun's threats, had learnt the speech, the thoughts 
 and some of the ways of the Eu-ro-pe-ans, who took 
 it on them-selves to set the Ku-ore ri^ht as to the 
 "brutes," and to show the Mi-ka-do and Court, as 
 well as the rest of the realm, how much it would be 
 to the good of Ja-pan to make much of the folks 
 from the West, and to take up with some of their 
 thoughts and ways. They asked the am-bas-sa-dors, 
 
The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 
 
 203 
 
 or men who had been sent to Ja-pan to act for their 
 na-tions, to go and see the Mi-ka-do. Two of them 
 went, and the Ku-ge were won by the first sight of 
 them and "made friends with the men they once 
 thouo^ht were beasts." It was a hard task for the 
 3^oung men who set out to do this, for the folks were 
 all much down 
 
 on the strange 
 men ; and it was 
 no small task to 
 o^et them safe to 
 Ki-o-to. A band 
 of 1 o w - c 1 a s s 
 youths fell on 
 one train to slay 
 them, but he who 
 went first lost his 
 head by the 
 sweep of the 
 sword of one of 
 
 /L-'^ 
 
 A HAND CAR-RIAGE OR JIN-RIK-I-SHA. 
 
 the brave young lords, who had made up his mind 
 that come what might the Mi-ka-do and the Ku- 
 ge should see what the Eu-ro-pe-ans were like. 
 
 Then a let-ter was sent out by one of these same 
 brave young lords, that set forth to the Court, dai- 
 mi-os and all the folks some of the new views on 
 which it was their wish to base the new form of rule. 
 
20-I- History of Japan. 
 
 This is what the letter said: Since the Mid-die 
 A-ges our Em-per-or has dwelt with a screen in 
 front of him and has not trod the earth. Naught 
 of what went on in front of his screen got to his ear ; 
 his whole house was shut out from the world. Not 
 more than a few lords of the Court could go near 
 the throne. This is not like the laws of Heav-en; 
 and now while we hold him none the less in awe 
 and love, let us put off pomp and false forms and be 
 plain and right in what we do. Ki-o-to is an out-of- 
 the-way place and not fit to be the seat of rule. So 
 let our lord move and make his home in O-za-ka, 
 have his Court there and thus cure one of the hun- 
 dred wrongs that have come to us from the past. 
 
 To speak of such a plan gave a great shock at 
 first; but the Mi-ka-do did come out from be-hind 
 his screen, and with the lords of the Court and dai- 
 mi-os took an oath that things should be done by the 
 voice of the folks ; that the rough, rude forms of 
 rule they had held to so long should be done with ; 
 and that the new ones should be fair and just to all! 
 He said they would search the whole world for 
 breadth and depth of thought, for sound, wise views ; 
 and for such arts and learning as would best aid them' 
 to build up the new Em-pire. 
 
 There has not been long to test this new plan yet ; 
 but there is no doubt that the Em-per-or and' his 
 
The Last War and the Dawn of a New Age. 205 
 
 staunch- friends meant all they said and much more. 
 Books and the news press were not shut down. 
 The Jap-a-nese who wrote found they had naught to 
 dread if they said what they thought. They were 
 told to speak out that they might be a means to teach 
 the folks what this new state of things was for and 
 to help on in the good work. The Em-per-or 
 would treat all men, e-ven those who had held to his 
 old foes, on kind, just terms, and not a few of the 
 To-ku-ga-wa clan were asked to take posts of note in 
 the realm. To all the dai-mi-os of the lost cause 
 he gave back rank and funds. 
 
 But day by day it came to be more plain to be 
 seen that the realm could not rest in peace and 
 reach the growth in the way of the new life it had 
 learnt to hope for as long as feu-dal-ism should last. 
 Clan strength would break that of the throne. 
 This was what the press took up, and not a few of 
 the dai-mi-os who had felt the same thing for a 
 long while now saw that the time had come to act ; 
 and, led by the chief clans, they all sent word to 
 the Mi-ka-do that they would give up their fiefs 
 and their troops as the right of the throne, and be 
 plain men from that time on. They said that in 
 their new life one-tenth of the funds they had had 
 would be all they should need, and the rest 
 should be put in his own chests; for the realm 
 
2o6 History of Japan. 
 
 was none too rich, and it cost much to put through 
 all these new plans. This was set on foot by Prince 
 A-kid-zu-ki, and ere long the whole 264 dai-mi-os 
 gave up their fiefs and troops and vast wealth to be 
 plain Ka-zo-ku (no-ble-men). Thus the lands, the 
 great hosts of men-at-arms, and large tax went at 
 once to the throne to help on the work of its new life ; 
 to bind all parts of the realm in-to one whole, whose 
 sole head was the Mi-ka-do. Yed-do, or To-ki-o, the 
 East-ern cap-i-tal, came to be the seat of the Court; 
 plans for a rail-road were thought of; young men 
 were sent to Eu-rope and this land to be taught. 
 Col-leg-es and schools in all the crafts and arts and 
 lore known to the folks of the West were set up in 
 the towns of Ja-pan, and folks who could teach were 
 asked to go from Eu-rope and A-mer-i-ca to take 
 charge of them. Scores of new ways were put 
 in place of the old; and e-ven the Mi-ka-do came 
 out and was seen by crowds of folks of all grades 
 when the first trains were put on the Grand Trunk 
 Rail-way from To-ki-o to Yo-ko-ha-ma. 
 
GLOSSARY. 
 
 Spelled. Pronounced. 
 
 Ad-zu-ma . . . . . . Ad-zu-ma. 
 
 Ai-no ...... Ai-n6. 
 
 A-kid-zu-ki A-kid-zu-ki. 
 
 Am-e A-me. 
 
 Ash-i-ka-ga . - . . . Ash-i-ka-ga. 
 
 Au-ji-ro ..... Au-gi-ro. 
 
 Bi-wa Be-va. 
 
 Bi-dat-su . . . . . Be-dat-su. 
 
 Bu-ret-su . . . . . Bu-ret-su. 
 
 Chi-u-ai ..... Chi-u-di. 
 
 Chin ...... Shin. 
 
 Cho-shi-u ..... Cho-shi-u. 
 
 Dai-mi-o ..... Ddi-mi-6. 
 
 Dis-hi-ma Di-shi-ma. 
 
 Fu-ji-wa-ra ..... Fu-gi-wa-ra. 
 
 Fu-ku-i ..... Fu-ku-i". 
 
 Gen ...... Gen. 
 
 Go-Dai-go-Ten-no . . . Go-Dai-go-Ten-no. 
 
 Go-ro-za ...... Go-ro-sa. 
 
 Go-to-ba ...... Go-to-ba. 
 
 Ha-ko-ne ... He-kd-ne. 
 
 He-ro ... . . He-ro. 
 
 Hi-de-yosh-i ..... Hi-d6-yos-si. 
 
 Hi-u-go Hi-6-go. 
 
 Hi-ye-zan ..... Hi-ye-zan. 
 
 ^T^'A. 
 
2o8 
 
 Glossary. 
 
 Spelled. 
 
 Ho-jo . 
 Hon-do 
 Ho-o . 
 Ho-so-ka-wa 
 
 I-bu-ki Ka-ma 
 
 Id-zu 
 
 I-ke-da . 
 
 I-ki 
 
 I-se 
 
 I -ye-y as-u 
 
 Jim-mu Ten-no 
 Jiu-gu Ko-go 
 
 Ka-i . ■ . 
 
 Kadrzu-sa 
 
 Ka-ma-ku-ra 
 
 Ka-mi 
 
 Ka-mo 
 
 Kash-i-wa-ba-ra 
 
 Ka-wa-dri 
 
 Ke-i-ko 
 
 Ki-na-i 
 
 Ki-o-mo-ri 
 
 Ki-o-to 
 
 Kir-ish-i-ma 
 
 Ki-u-shi-u 
 
 Ku-am-ba-ku 
 
 Ku-an-to 
 
 Ku-ge 
 
 Ku-ma-so 
 
 Ku-man-o 
 
 Ku-sun-o-ki 
 
 Mas-as-hi-ge 
 Mich-i-a-ri 
 
 Pronounced. 
 
 ' H6-g6. 
 Hon-dii. 
 Hc-6. 
 IIo-o6-ka-wa. 
 
 E-b6-ki Ya-ma. 
 
 Ed-zii. 
 
 E-ke-da. 
 
 E-ke. 
 
 E-se. 
 
 E-ye-ya-shu. 
 
 Gem-mu Ten-no, 
 I-iu-gu Ka-ge. 
 
 Ka-i. 
 
 Kad-zu-sd. 
 
 Ka-ma-ku-rd. 
 
 Ka-me. 
 
 Ka-mo. 
 
 Kash-i-wa.-ba-ra. 
 
 Ka-wa-dri. 
 
 Ke-i-ko. 
 
 Ke-na-i. 
 
 Ke-6-mo-ri. 
 
 Ke-6-to. 
 
 Kir-ish-i-ma. 
 
 Ki-u-shi-u. 
 
 Ku-am-ba-ku. 
 
 Ku-an-to. 
 
 Ku-ge. 
 
 Ku-ma-so. 
 
 Ku-ma-no. 
 
 Ku-su-no-ki. 
 
 Ma-sa-shi-ge. 
 Mi-shi-a-ri. 
 
Cr 
 
 iossary. 
 
 ■Spelled. 
 
 Pronounced. 
 
 Mi-ka-do .... 
 
 . Mi-ka-do. 
 
 Min-a-mo-to 
 
 Min-a-mo-to. 
 
 Mi-no .... 
 
 . Mi-no. 
 
 JVIi-sa-za-ka Shi-ra-to-ri 
 
 Mi-sa-za-ka Shi-ra-to-ri 
 
 Mi-to .... 
 
 Mi-to. 
 
 Mo-ri-a ..... 
 
 M6-re-a. 
 
 Mo-ri-yo-shi 
 
 Mo-ri-yo-shi. 
 
 Mut-su . ■ . 
 
 Moot-shoo. 
 
 Mut-su-hi-to 
 
 Moot-shoo-hi-to. 
 
 Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da 
 
 Nit-ta Yosh-i-sa-da. 
 
 Ni-pon .... 
 
 Ni-hon. 
 
 No-bo-no .... 
 
 No-bo-no. 
 
 No-bun-a-ga 
 
 No-boo-na-ga. 
 
 O-jin . . ... 
 
 O-gin. 
 
 O-ki . . . . 
 
 . 0-ky. 
 
 Ot-su ..... 
 
 Ot-su. 
 
 O-ua-ri .... 
 
 O-wa-ri. 
 
 O-za-ka ..... 
 
 O-za-ka. 
 
 O-zu-mi . . - . 
 
 O-zu-mi. 
 
 Sa-ku-rai .... 
 
 Sha-ku-rai. 
 
 Sa-mau-rai 
 
 Sha-mu-rai. 
 
 Sat-sLi-ma .... 
 
 Sat-su-ma. 
 
 Se-i-mu .... 
 
 Se-"i-moo. 
 
 Se-ki-ga-ha-ra 
 
 Se-ki-ga-ha-ra. 
 
 Shi-ba-ta .... 
 
 . Shi-ba-ta. 
 
 Shi-mo-sa .... 
 
 Shi-mo-sa. 
 
 Shi-na-no 
 
 Shi-na-no. 
 
 Shin-to 
 
 Shin-to. 
 
 Shi-ra-ki . ■ . 
 
 Shi-ra-ki. 
 
 Sho-gun .... 
 
 Sho-gun. 
 
 Shik-ken . . . . ' 
 
 Shik-ken. 
 
 Su-jin { . . . . 
 
 Shu-gin. 
 
 Sung .... 
 
 Shung. 
 
 209 
 
 Ta-chi-ba-na Hi-me 
 
 Ta-chi-ba-na Hy-me. 
 
 ^^ 
 
2IO 
 
 Glossary. 
 
 Spelled. 
 
 Tai-ko 
 
 Ta-i-ro . 
 
 Tak-au-ji . 
 
 Ta-ta-ra . 
 
 Ten-shi 
 
 To-ki-ma-sa 
 
 To-ki-o 
 
 To-ku-ga-wa 
 
 Toy-o-to-mi 
 
 Tsush-i-ma 
 
 Pronounced. 
 
 Tai-ko. 
 
 Ta-i-ro. 
 
 Tak-a-u-gi. 
 
 Ta-ta-ra. 
 
 Ten-shi. 
 
 To-ki-ma-sa. 
 
 T6-ki-6. 
 
 To-ku-ga-wa. 
 
 Toy-o-to-mi. 
 
 Tsu-shi-ma. 
 
 U-ji _ . 
 Us-u-i To-S:e 
 
 U-gi. 
 
 U-sui T6-se. 
 
 Yosh-i-mit-su 
 Yosh-it-su-iie ' 
 Yo-ri-i-ye 
 Yo-ri-to-mo 
 Yu-ma-to-Da-ke 
 
 Yosh-i-mit-su. 
 
 Yosli-it-su-ne. 
 
 Yo-ri-i-ye. 
 
 Yo-ri-to-mo. 
 
 Yu-ma-to-Da-ke. 
 
pOUTLEDGE'S HISTORICAL COURSE 
 
 T 
 
 IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE. By Mrs. Helen W. Pierson. 
 EacH book containing about 325 pages. With Illustrations and Maps 
 Price per volume, $1.00. 
 
 HE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 In noticing the " History of the United States " the N'ew York School Journal %2iys : 
 
 "This book is well bound, printed on heavy paper, copiously illustrated, and most attract- 
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 most difficult task to write history so as to be interesting to young people and yet keep out all 
 but history. This work is here done, and for this we heartily commend the book." 
 
 H 
 
 ISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 What Educators say of the Books : 
 
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 success, and I regard it as a mo't valuable book, just filling a want I have long felt — an interest- 
 ing account of our o\^^n countr}' simple enough for beginners ; the ' History of England ' seems 
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 New York. 
 
 H 
 
 ISTORY OF FRANCE. 
 
 The New England Journal of Education., says : 
 
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 tory of Germany, The History of the United States, in Words of One Syllable, by Mrs. Pierson. 
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 mentary reading not only interesting, but instructive to the young. The broad pages, printed in 
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H 
 
 ISTORY OF GERMANY. 
 
 The New York Nation, in noticing these histories, says : 
 
 " The yb«;- volumes by Mrs. Helen W. Pierson, repectively a History of the United w.atesi 
 of England, of France, of Germany, in words of one syllable, are clever performances, and cal- 
 culated to interest the childish reader. . . . All these books are brought down to dat*^. 
 
 H 
 
 ISTORY OF IRELAND 
 
 IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE. By Agnes Sadlier. Fully 
 Illustrated, lithographed cover, boards, $i.oo. 
 
 Contains views of all the historically interesting towns and ruins, and portraits of the bettei 
 kno\^-n statesmen — from O'Connell to Parnell. 
 
 T 
 
 HE LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE 
 
 UNITED STATES, IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE. By Mrs: 
 Helen W. Pierson. With Portraits and many Illustrations, $i.oo. 
 
 Designed to acquaint young folks with the salient features in the lives of the Presidents, 
 from Washington to Cleveland ; and tells in a plain and succinct way of the course of the 
 government since its formation. It is embellished with portraits of all the Presidents; and also 
 gives portraits of the unsuccessful aspirants for the otfice ; as well as of some of the ablest of 
 the Secretaries. 
 
 H 
 
 OME LESSONS; OR, LEARNING MADE PLEAS- 
 
 ANT BY MEANS OF PICTURES AND STORIES. Lithographed 
 Cover, boards, li.oo. 
 
 Embraces nearly everything that a child desires to know from the alpha Det to the wonders 
 of science. It is, in fact, a veritable little folks' C3'clop3edia. 
 
 Specimen pages furnished on application. 
 
 George" Routledge & Sons, 
 
 9 Lafayette Place, New Yore. 
 
 6 8 6 "^ 
 

 
 
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