so admired by lovers of artificiality and unconscious caricature.  Philosophy was selected as a chief tool among the engines of oppression, and as the main influence in stunting the intellect.  All thought must be orthodox according to the standards of Confucianism, as expounded by Chu Hi.  Anything like originality in poetry, learning or philosophy must be hooted down.  Art must follow Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese traditions.  Any violation of this order would mean ostracism.  All learning must be in the Chinese and Japanese languages—­the former mis-pronounced and in sound bearing as much resemblance to Pekingise speech as “Pennsylvania Dutch” does to the language of Berlin.  Everything like thinking and study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established order of things.  The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup.  If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance, of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo authorities.

Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in order to test vital potency.  It recalls the pretty little story of Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of the bricks in a prison yard.  Besides the potent bonds of the only orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally recognized religions, there was gradually formed a marvellous system of legislation, that turned the whole nation into a secret society in which spies and hypocrites flourished like fungus on a dead log.  Besides the unwritten code of private law,[4] that is, the local and general customs founded on immemorial usage, there was that peculiar legal system framed by Iyeyas[)u], bequeathed as a legacy and for over two hundred years practically the supreme law of the land.

What this law was, it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, for the aliens dwelling in the country at Nagasaki ever to find out.  Keenly intellectual, as many of the physicians, superintendents and elect members of the Dutch trading company were, they seem never to have been able to get hold of what has been called “The Testament of Iyeyas[)u]."[5] This consisted of one hundred laws or regulations, based on a home-spun sort of Confucianism, intended to be orthodoxy “unbroken for ages eternal.”

To a man of western mode of thinking, the most astonishing thing is that this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand.  Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood, and this routine became second nature.  Only a few copies of the original instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue of awe.