We should first note that the absolutism of the Tokugawa Shogunate served to arouse ever-growing opposition because of its stern repression of individual opinion.  It not only forbade the Christian religion, but also all independent thought in religious philosophy and in politics.  The particular form of Confucian moral philosophy which it held was forced on all public teachers of Confucianism.  Dissent was not only heretical, but treasonable.  Although, by its military absolutism, the Tokugawa rule secured the great blessing of peace, lasting over two hundred years, and although the curse of Japan for well-nigh a thousand preceding years had been fierce inter-tribal and inter-family wars and feuds, yet it secured that peace at the expense of individual liberty of thought and act.  It thus gradually aroused against itself the opposition of many able minds.  The enforced peace rendered it possible for these men to devote themselves to problems of thought and of history.  Indeed, they had no other outlet for their energies.  As they studied the history of the past and compared their results with the facts of the present, it gradually dawned on the minds of the scholars of the eighteenth century, that the Tokugawa family were exercising functions of government which had never been delegated to them; and that the Emperor was a poverty-stricken puppet in the hands of a family that had seized the military power and had gradually absorbed all the active functions of government, together with its revenues.

It is possible for us to see now that these early Japanese scholars idealized their ancient history, and assigned to the Emperor a place in ancient times which in all probability he has seldom held.  But, however that may be, they thought their view correct, and held that the Emperor was being deprived of his rightful rule by the Tokugawa family.

These ideas, first formulated in secret by scholars, gradually filtered down, still in secrecy, and were accepted by a large number of the samurai, the military literati of the land.  Their opposition to the actual rulers of the land, aroused by the individual-crushing absolutism of the Tokugawa rule, naturally allied itself to the religious sentiment of loyalty to the Emperor.  Few Westerners can appreciate the full significance of this fact.  Throughout the centuries loyalty to the Emperor has been considered a cardinal virtue.  With one exception, according to the popular histories, no one ever acknowledged himself opposed to the Emperor.  Every rebellion against the powers in actual possession made it the first aim to gain possession of the Emperor, and proclaim itself as fighting for him.  When, therefore, the scholars announced that the existing government was in reality a usurpation and that the Emperor was robbed of his rightful powers, the latent antagonism to the Tokugawa rule began to find both intellectual and moral justification.  It could and did appeal to the religious patriotism of the