According to 'Transocean Kuomin the "Asahi Shimbun" announces the establishment in the ear future of an' imperial headquarters. in Tokyo for the purpose of uniting the executive Power of the government and the. military department under one head, ud that to that end negotiations have been going on for some time between representatives of the Cabinet and the government, and that complete agree= ment has been achieved, In view of. the briefness of the reference it is not possible to perceive its full implications though it Is sufested that what in effect is happening is that 2 proposal to re-establish the Shogunate is being considered. A Shogun was a general. in command in the field, the title coming into existence about the beginning of the eighth century, the Mikado having previously been regarded as the sole authority. The rise of the military class and of Shoguns (general simes) was attendant upon the division of supremacy between the Taira and Minamoto clans. Towards the end of the twelfth century the Emperor Tokahira made Yorimoto, leader of the Minamoto lan, a selci-tai-shogun or commander-in-chief for the subjugation of the barbarians, and in the course of time the office was occupied by several great military leaders Unfit the position became stereotyped, Lyéyastt Tokugawa, becoming Shogun in. the beginning of the seventeenth century, established the Tokugawa dynasty In power and from that time onwards the Shogunate exercised the de facto sovereignty in Japan, though in theory It wax Subordinate to the imperial authority' of the Mikado, In 1867 the revolution swept away the Shogunate and re-established the Emperor as the supreme power in the land, and it would seem that, if the "Asahi Shimbun's" report is correct, reversion to the former constitutional system contemplated with the abolition of democratic representation in the government of the state,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.