continue sensitive and acute, and will not easily subside. And in such a nervous and critical age as that, Japan's position will be an exceedingly difficult one. Hitherto every move she has made, every feat she has achieved, has been made an object of international suspicion, especially in recent times. Japan, however, cannot help making progress in the future, whether welcomed by other nations or not, for where there is no progress, there is stagnation. Hence arises the imperative necessity, at the juncture, of an attempt by the Japanese to explain themselves through telling their own history, and by so doing procure thorough understanding of themselves, their character and characteristics, not only as they now really are, but as they used to be in the past. That is the one object which I have pursued in this volume.

In preparing this work I acknowledge that I am greatly indebted to my colleagues in our University of Kyoto. Warmest thanks are due to Professor A. H. Sayce of Oxford, who, during his sojourn in our ancient metropolis, kindly revised that part of my manuscript dealing with the early history of Japan. It is also my greatest pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to Mr. Edward Clarke, B.A. (Cantab.), Professor of English Language and Literature in this College, who went to a great deal of trouble in revising my awkward English through the whole volume.

Katsuro Hara

College of Literature,
  Kyoto Imperial University,
    October, 1918.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 1

II. The Races and Climate of Japan 21

III. Japan before the Introduction of
Buddhism and Chinese Civilisation 50

IV. Growth of the Imperial Power.
Gradual Centralisation 73

V. Remodeling of the State 104

VI. Culmination of the New Régime;
Stagnation; Rise of the Military Régime 128

VII. The Military Régime; the Taira and
the Minamoto. The Shogunate of Kamakura 156

VIII. The Welding of the Nation. The
Political Disintegration of the Country 194

IX. End of Medieval Japan 221

X. The Transition from Medieval to
Modern Japan 252

XI. The Tokugawa Shogunate,—Its Political
Régime 282

XII. Tokugawa Shogunate,—Culture and
Society 315

XIII. The Restoration of the Meidji 355

XIV. Epilogue 382

Index 399

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF JAPAN

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
HISTORY OF JAPAN

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The history of Japan may be useful to foreigners in several different ways. If we do not take into account the serviceableness of detached historical data or groups of data, that is to say, when we exclude those cases where the historical data of Japan are studied not for the sake of understanding Japan herself, but in behalf of some other scientific purposes, then it can be said that Japanese history will serve foreigners in two principal and distinct ways. Firstly, it will interest them as the history of one special nation among many in the world. Secondly, it may be useful to historical study in general, seeing that it can be regarded as constituting in itself a microcosm of miniature of the history of the world manifested in that of a small nation. The former point is that which attracts most foreigners by the strength of novelty, while the latter will be none the less suggestive to comprehensive and reflective historians. Both points need some explanations. Let me begin with the first.

Japan is a country inhabited by a people differing remarkably in racial features from those who now occupy the greater part of Europe. She remained for a long time shut up against the foreigners knocking at her gate, and on that account her history, compared with that of other nations, presents striking and unique characteristics. Many ancient manners and customs, some of them having their origins in ages prehistoric and unintelligible even to the present Japanese themselves, are handed down almost unchanged to this day. On the other hand, the history of Japan is not so simple as the histories of many semi-civilised countries, which are generally nothing but incredible legends and records of chronic disturbances arising out of some inevitable natural causes. Full of charming oddities, which might provide sources of wild speculations, and