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 Iyéyas[)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 Iyéyas[)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.


The Dutchmen at Déshima.


The Dutchmen who lived at Déshima for two centuries and a half, and the