or more than two
and a half centuries is a remarkable illustration of the fact that as in
China so in Japan the theocratic conception was unworkable save in
primitive times--civilization demanding organization rather than
precepts and refusing to bow its head to speechless kings. Although the
Restoration of 1868 nominally gave back to the Throne all it had been
forced to leave in other hands since 1603, that transfer of power was
imaginary rather than real, the new military organization which
succeeded the Shogun's government being the vital portion of the
Restoration. In other words, it was the leaders of Japan's conscript
armies who inherited the real power, a fact made amply evident by the
crushing of the Satsuma Rebellion by these new corps whose organization
allowed them to overthrow the proudest and most valorous of the Samurai
and incidentally to proclaim the triumph of modern firearms.

Now it is important to note that as early as 1874--that is six years
after the Restoration of the Emperor Meiji--these facts were attracting
the widest notice in Japanese society, the agitation for a Constitution
and a popular assembly being very vigorously pushed. Led by the
well-known and aristocratic Itagaki, Japanese Liberalism had joined
battle with out-and-out Imperialism more than a quarter of a century
ago; and although the question of recovering Tariff and Judicial
autonomy and revising the Foreign Treaties was more urgent in those
days, the foreign question was often pushed aside by the fierceness of
the constitutional agitation.

It was not, however, until 1889 that a Constitution was finally granted
to the Japanese--that instrument being a gift from the Crown, and
nothing more than a conditional warrant to a limited number of men to
become witnesses of the processes of government but in no sense its
controllers. The very first Diet summoned in 1890 was sufficient proof
of that. A collision at once occurred over questions of finance which
resulted in the resignation of the Ministry. And ever since those days,
that is for twenty-seven consecutive years, successive Diets in Japan
have been fighting a forlorn fight for the power which can never be
theirs save by revolution, it being only natural that Socialism should
come to be looked upon by the governing class as Nihilism, whilst the
mob-threat has been very acute ever since the Tokio peace riots of 1905.

Now it is characteristic of the ceremonial respect which all J