of interlopers or mediators, as for an ordinary subject to petition the emperor or even to gaze upon his dragon countenance.  The change in the constitutional Japan of our day is seen in the fact that the term “Mikado” is now obsolete.  This description of the relation of sovereign and minister (inaccurately characterised by some writers on Confucianism as that of “King and subject,” a phrase which might almost fit the constitutional monarchy of to-day) shows the relation, as it did exist for nearly a thousand years of Japanese history.  We find the same imitation of procedure, even when imperialism became only a shadow in the government and the great Sh[=o]gun who called himself “Tycoon,” the ruler in Yedo, aping the majesty of Ki[=o]to, became so powerful as to be also a dragon.  Between the Yedo Sh[=o]gun and the people rose a great staircase of numberless subordinates, and should a subject attempt to offer a petition in person he must pay for it by crucifixion.[12]

As, under the emperor there were court ministers, heads of departments, governors and functionaries of all kinds before the people were reached, so, under the Sh[=o]gun in the feudal days, there were the Daimi[=o]s or great lords and the Shomi[=o]s or small lords with their retainers in graduated subordination, and below these were the servants and general humanity.  Even after the status of man was reached, there were gradations and degradations through fractions down to ciphers and indeed to minus quantities, for there existed in the Country of Brave Warriors some tens of thousands of human beings bearing the names of eta (pariah) and h[=i]-nin (non-human), who were far below the pale of humanity.

The Paramount Idea of Loyalty.

The one idea which dominated all of these classes,[13]—­in Old Japan there were no masses but only many classes—­was that of loyalty.  As the Japanese language shows, every faculty of man was subordinated to this idea.  Confucianism even conditioned the development of Japanese grammar, as it also did that of the Koreans, by multiplying honorary prefixes and suffixes and building up all sociable and polite speech on perpendicular lines.  Personality was next to nothing and individuality was in a certain sense unknown.  In European languages, the pronoun shows how clearly the ideas of personality and of individuality have been developed; but in the Japanese language there really are no pronouns, in the sense of the word as used by the Germanic nations, at least, although there are hundreds of impersonal and topographical substitutes for them.[14] The mirror, of the language itself, reflects more truth upon this point of inquiry than do patriotic assertions, or the protests of those who in the days of this Meiji era so handsomely employ the Japanese language as the medium of thought.  Strictly speaking, the ego disappears in ordinary conversation and action, and instead, it is the servant speaking reverently to his master; or it is the master condescending to the object which is “before his hand” or “to the side” or “below” where his inferior kneels; or it is the “honorable right” addressing the “esteemed left.”