While armies in the field brought into subjection the outlying tribes and certain noble families rose to prominence at the court, there was being formed that remarkable class of men called the Samurai, or servants of the Mikado, which for more than ten centuries has exercised a profound influence upon the development of Japan.

In China, the pen and the sword have been kept apart; the civilian and the soldier, the man of letters and the man of arms, have been distinct and separate.  This was also true in old Loo Choo (now Riu Kiu), that part of Japan most like China.  In Japan, however, the pen and the sword, letters and arms, the civilian and the soldier, have intermingled.  The unique product of this union is seen in the Samurai, or servant of the Mikado.  Military-literati, are unknown in China, but in Japan they carried the sword and the pen in the same girdle.

3.  This class of men had become fully formed by the end of the twelfth century, and then began the new feudal system, which lasted until the epochal year 1868 A.D.—­a year of several revolutions, rather than of restoration pure and simple.  After nearly seven hundred years of feudalism, supreme magistracy, with power vastly increased beyond that possessed in ancient times, was restored to the emperor.  Then also was abolished the duarchy of Throne and Camp, of Mikado and Sh[=o]gun, and of the two capitals Ki[=o]to and Yedo, with the fountain of honor and authority in one and the fountain of power and execution in the other.  Thereupon, Japan once more presented to the world, unity.

Practically, therefore, the period of the prevalence of the Confucian ethics and their universal acceptance by the people of Japan nearly coincides with the period of Japanese feudalism or the dominance of the military classes.

Although the same ideograph, or rather logogram, was used to designate the Chinese scholar and the Japanese warrior as well, yet the former was man of the pen only, while the latter was man of the pen and of two swords.  This historical fact, more than any other, accounts for the striking differences between Chinese and Japanese Confucianism.  Under this state of things the ethical system of the sage of China suffered a change, as does almost everything that is imported into Japan and borrowed by the islanders, but whether for the better or for the worse we shall not inquire too carefully.  The point upon which we now lay emphasis is this:  that, although the Chinese teacher had made filial piety the basis of his system, the Japanese gradually but surely made loyalty (Kun-Shin), that is, the allied relations of sovereign and minister, of lord and retainer, and of master and servant, not only first in order but the chief of all.  They also infused into this term ideas and associations which are foreign to the Chinese mind.  In the place of filial piety was Kun-shin, that new growth in the garden of Japanese ethics, out of which arose the white flower of loyalty that blooms perennial in history.