n the treasure therein, boasting
to the soldiers by whom they were surrounded that they had done this
regardless of their lives. Those who enter storehouses are known by
all men to be thieves, but those who rob lands and steal men are not
looked upon with suspicion. How are loyalty and faith confused and
destroyed!

"The place where we live is the Emperor's land and the food which we
eat is grown by the Emperor's men. How can we make it our own? We
now reverently offer up the list of our possessions and men, with the
prayer that the Emperor will take good measures for rewarding those
to whom reward is due and for taking from those to whom punishment is
due. Let the imperial orders be issued for altering and remodelling
the territories of the various clans. Let the civil and penal codes,
the military laws down to the rules for uniform and the construction
of engines of war, all proceed from the Emperor; let all the affairs
of the empire, great and small, be referred to him."

This memorial was signed by the Daimios of Kago, Hizen, Satsuma,
Choshiu, Tosa, and some other Daimios of the west. But the real
author of the memorial is believed to have been Kido, the brain of the
Restoration.

Thus were the fiefs of the most powerful and most wealthy Daimios
voluntarily offered to the Emperor. The other Daimios soon followed
the example of their colleagues. And the feudalism which had existed
in Japan for over eight centuries was abolished by the following
laconic imperial decree of August, 1871:

"The clans are abolished, and prefectures are established in their
places."

This rather off-hand way of destroying an institution, whose overthrow
in Europe required the combined efforts of ambitious kings and
emperors, of free cities, of zealous religious sects, and cost
centuries of bloodshed, has been made a matter of much comment in the
West. One writer exclaims, "History does not record another instance
where changes of such magnitude ever occurred within so short a time,
and it is astonishing that it only required eleven words to destroy
the ambition and power of a proud nobility that had with imperious
will directed the destiny of Japan for more than five hundred
years."[2]

But when we examine closely the circumstances which led to the
overthrow of feudalism and the influences which acted upon it, we
cannot but regard it as the natural terminus of the political flood
which was sweeping over the country. When such a re