been distinguished by a high-minded chivalry called Bushido,
unknown in inferior lands.

Such is the fabric of ideas which the official class is
busy building up by every means in its power, including the
punishment of those who presume to stickle for historic truth.

* * *

The sober fact is that no nation probably has ever treated its
sovereigns more cavalierly than the Japanese have done, from
the beginning of authentic history down to within the memory
of living men. Emperors have been deposed, emperors have been
assassinated; for centuries every succession to the throne was
the signal for intrigues and sanguinary broils. Emperors have
been exiled; some have been murdered in exile. From the
remote island to which he had been relegated one managed to
escape, hidden under a load of dried fish. In the fourteenth
century, things came to such a pass that two rival Imperial
lines defied each other for the space of fifty-eight years--
the so-called Northern and Southern Courts; and it was the
Northern Court, branded by later historians as usurping and
illegitimate, that ultimately won the day, and handed on the
Imperial regalia to its successors. After that, as indeed
before that, for long centuries the government was in the
hands of Mayors of the Palace, who substituted one infant
Sovereign for another, generally forcing each to abdicate as
soon as he approached man's estate. At one period, these
Mayors of the Palace left the Descendant of the Sun in such
distress that His Imperial Majesty and the Imperial Princes