ars. The present Imperial Cabinet of ten
Ministers, with their departments and departmental staff of
officials, is a modified revival of the Eight Boards adapted from
China and established in the seventh century.... The present
administrative system is indeed of alien provenance; but it was
neither borrowed nor adapted a generation ago, nor borrowed nor
adapted from Europe. It was really a system of hoary antiquity
that was revived to cope with pressing modern exigencies.

The outcome was that the clans of Satsuma and Choshu acquired control of
the Mikado, made his exaltation the symbol of resistance to the
foreigner (with whom the Shogun had concluded unpopular treaties), and
secured the support of the country by being the champions of
nationalism. Under extraordinarily able leaders, a policy was adopted
which has been pursued consistently ever since, and has raised Japan
from being the helpless victim of Western greed to being one of the
greatest Powers in the world. Feudalisim was abolished, the Central
Government was made omnipotent, a powerful army and navy were created,
China and Russia were successively defeated, Korea was annexed and a
protectorate established over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, industry and
commerce were developed, universal compulsory education instituted; and
worship of the Mikado firmly established by teaching in the schools and
by professorial patronage of historical myths. The artificial creation
of Mikado-worship is one of the most interesting features of modern
Japan, and a model to all other States as regards the method of
preventing the growth of rationalism. There is a very instructive little
pamphlet by Professor B.H. Chamberlain, who was Professor of Japanese
and philosophy at Tokyo, and had a knowledge of Japanese which few
Europeans had equalled. His pamphlet is called _The Invention of a New
Religion_, and is published by the Rationalist Press Association. He
points out that, until recent times, the religion of Japan was Buddhism,
to the practical exclusion of every other. There had been, in very
ancient times, a native religion called Shinto, and it had lingered on
obscurely. But it is only during the last forty years or so that Shinto
has been erected into a State religion, and has been reconstructed so as
to suit modern requirements.[48] It is, of course, preferable to
Buddhism because it is native and national; it is a tribal religion, not
on