, and thus it resulted that at no
time throughout the fifty-five years of the struggle were the
provinces free from strife. It resulted also that frequent changes of
allegiance took place, for a family had often to choose between total
ruin, on the one hand, and comparative prosperity at the sacrifice of
constancy, on the other. Some historians have adduced the incidents
of this era as illustrating the shallowness of Japanese loyalty. But
it can scarcely be said that loyalty was ever seriously at stake. In
point of legitimacy there was nothing to choose between the rival
branches of the Imperial family. A samurai might-pass from the
service of the one to that of the other without doing any violence to
his reverence for the Throne.

What was certainly born of the troubled era, however, was a sentiment
of contempt for central authority and a disposition to rely on one's
own right arm. It could not have been otherwise. In several provinces
official nominees of both Courts administered simultaneously, and men
were requisitioned for aid, to-day, to the Northern cause, to-morrow,
to the Southern. To be strong enough to resist one or the other was
the only way to avoid ruinous exactions. From that to asserting one's
strength at the expense of a neighbour who followed a different flag
was a short step, if not a duty, and thus purely selfish
considerations dictated a fierce quarrel and inspired many an act of
unscrupulous spoliation. A few cases are on record of families which
resorted to the device of dividing themselves into two branches, each
declaring for a different cause and each warring nominally with the
other. Thus the sept as a whole preserved its possessions, in part at
any rate, whichever Court triumphed. But such double-faced schemes
were very rare. A much commoner outcome of the situation was the
growth of powerful families which regulated their affairs by means of
a council of leading members without reference to Kamakura, Kyoto, or
Yoshino. At the same time, minor septs in the neighbourhood saw the
advantage of subscribing to the decisions of these councils and
deferring to their judgments.

"This was an important step in the development of the feudal system.
Another was the abolition of feudal fiefs, as well as of the
succession of women to real estate, and a curtailment of the
inheritance, not so much of younger sons, as of all sons except the
one selected as lord of the clan."* The shugo (high constables) al