selfishness of hereditary rulers.  Indeed, this system of “yumei-mujitsu” government was one of the devices whereby the inherent evils of hereditary rulers were more or less obviated.  It may be questioned, however, whether the device did not in the long run cost more than it gained.  Did it not serve to maintain, if not actually to produce, a system of dissimulation and deception which could but injure the national character?  It certainly could not stimulate the straightforward frankness and outspoken directness and honesty so essential to the well-being of the human race.

Although “yumei-mujitsu” government is now practically extinct in Japan, yet in the social structure it still survives.

The Japanese family is a maze of “nominality.”  Full-grown young men and women are adopted as sons and daughters, in order to maintain the family line and name.

A son is not a legal son unless he is so registered, while an illegitimate child is recognized as a true son if so registered.  A man may be the legal son of his grandmother, or of his sister, if so registered.  Although a family may have no children, it does not die out unless there has been a failure to adopt a son or daughter, and an extinct family may be revived by the legal appointment of someone to take the family name and worship at the family shrine.  The family pedigree, therefore, does not describe the actual ancestry, but only the nominal, the fictitious.  There is no deception in this.  It is a well-recognized custom of Old Japan.  Its origin, moreover, is not difficult to explain.  Nor is this kind of family peculiar to Japan.  It is none the less a capital illustration of the “yumei-mujitsu” characteristic permeating the feudal civilization, and still exerting a powerful influence.  Even Christians are not free from “nominalism,” as we have frequently found in our missionary work.

A case in mind is of an evangelist employed by our mission station.  He was to receive a definite proportion of his salary from the church for which he worked and the rest from the station.  On inquiry I learned that he was receiving only that provided by the station, and on questioning him further he said that probably the sum promised by the church was being kept as his monthly contribution to the expenses of the church!  Instances of this kind are not infrequent.  While in Kyushu I more than once discovered that a body of Christians, whose evangelists we were helping to support proportionately, were actually raising not a cent of their proportion.  On inquiry, I would be told that the evangelists themselves contributed out of their salary the sums needed, and that, therefore, the Christians did not need to raise it.