convenient date from which to reckon the substitution of Europe for China as the source whence the Japanese draw inspiration in all these matters.
The latter half of the Muromachi period, coinciding with the second half of the sixteenth century, was a very disturbed time in Japan. The local nobles or Daimios, defying all control by the central government, engaged in continual struggles with one another for lands and power, and a lamentable condition of anarchy was the result. The first to apply a remedy to this state of things was one of their own order, Nobunaga, a man of resolute character and great military capacity. Aided by his two famous lieutenants, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu, he succeeded in bringing most of the Daimios into subjection, and even deposed the Shōgun, although he was prevented by his descent from assuming that title himself. At his death in 1582, the reins of power passed into the hands of Hideyoshi, who completed the work which Nobunaga had begun. Under the titles of Kwambaku (Regent) or Taikō, he was practically monarch of Japan, until his death in 1598. Then Iyeyasu, after a sharp struggle, which ended in 1600 by the defeat of his opponents in the decisive battle of Sekigahara, succeeded to the supreme authority, and caused himself to be appointed Shōgun by the puppet Mikado of the day. He was the founder of the Tokugawa (his family name) dynasty of Shōguns, which lasted until our own time.
Iyeyasu was probably the greatest statesman that Japan has ever seen. By the organisation of that remarkable system of feudal government under which the nation enjoyed peace and prosperity for two and a half centuries, he solved for his day and country the problem, which will occupy politicians to the end of time, of the
