d by Taiko Sama, and
to him Ieyasu gave the province of Echizen as his fief. The third son,
Hidetada, who shared with his father the command of the forces at the
battle Sekigahara, had married a daughter of Taiko Sama, and succeeded his
father as shogun. On his youngest three sons he bestowed the rich
provinces of Owari, Kii, and Mito, and constituted the families to which
they gave rise as the _Go-san-ke_, or the three honorable families. In
case of a failure in the direct line, the heir to the shogunate was to be
chosen from one of these families.

Without undertaking to give a detailed account of the feudal system as
modified and established by Ieyasu, it will be sufficient to give the
classes of daimyos as they continued to exist under the Tokugawa
shogunate.(231) It must be understood that feudalism existed in Japan
before the time of Ieyasu. It can be traced to the period when Yoritomo
obtained from the emperor permission to send into each province a _shiugo_
who should be a military man, and should act as protector of the _kokushu_
or governor, who was always a civilian appointed by the emperor. These
military protectors were provided with troops, for the pay of whom
Yoritomo got permission from the emperor to levy a tax. Being active men,
and having troops under their command, they gradually absorbed the entire
authority, and probably in most cases displaced the _kokushu_, who only
represented the powerless government at Kyoto. Under the disturbed times
which followed the fall of the house of Yoritomo these _shiugo_ became the
hereditary military governors of the provinces, and usurped not only the
functions but the name of _kokushu_. They became a class of feudal barons
who, during the interval when no central authority controlled them,
governed each one his own province on his own responsibility. Even after
the establishment of a central authority, and continuously down to the
abolition of feudalism, the government of the people was in the hands of
the daimyo of each province. The assessment of taxes, the construction of
roads and bridges, the maintenance of education, the punishment of crime,
the collection of debts, the enforcement of contracts, and indeed the
whole circle of what was denominated law were in the hands of the local
government. In truth, in Japan as in other feudal countries there was
scarcely such a thing as law in existence. The customs that prevailed, the
common-sense decisions of a magistra