The ruling race in Japan, tradition says, came from the mainland on the West, and may therefore be supposed to be related to the Chinese, Koreans or Manchus.
When authentic history begins, the country was governed by an hereditary Mikado and by hereditary feudal Barons under him, usually at war with him,.and with one another. During the sixth and seventh centuries Anna Domini—at the time of the Chinese Sui and Tang dynasties—Japan fell under the spell of China, very prosperous and perhaps as civilized as any then existing nation. certainly much more so than Japan, who then took from China all she wanted as she has recently done from Europe. She took arts and literature; and tried to copy the centralized form of government then firmly established in China. But the new system did not take root; and in the anarchy that prevailed in Japan during the last two hundred years of the Hei-an period—the eleventh and twelfth centuries—all trace of it disappeared, and the country was again divided into feudal baronies under local chiefs—Daimios, From that date until the beginning of the seventeenth century the indepentence of these feudal barons greatly increased; and they were engaged in continual wars with one another.
Then came the Yedo period (1603- 1968) at the beginning of which the great statesman Iyeyasu brought the Daimios more under the control of the Shogun, the Mayor of the Palace, who had eclips: d the Mikado so far as administration was concerned. In 1868 the Daimios resigned, the Shogun disappeared, and the Mikado emerged at the head of an organized Central Gov ernment.
But the ideal of a soldier' inbred during two thousand feudal government has not lost its hold over the hearts of the people: one has only to observe their drama to recognize whence they draw ideal of heroic manhood: the fortitude of the Daimio and the loyal self-sacrifice of the retainer are still the most admired of human virtues.
When the statesmen of modern Japan wisely determined that uni versal military service was essential to the safety and welfare of the ion, it fell out by a miracle of ful' design or of good fortune. that the splendid tradition of the feudal class became the ideal of d of the nation's whole manhood-in-arms: the Samurai did not ink, but the lower classes rose to level of valour. A stu example of the continuity of sentiment from the old to the new ré- gime was noticed, and recorded in The Times," by Mrs. Hugh Fraser
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.