ous blow was the loss of his privileged economic status. At first the government had assumed the responsibility of paying pensions to the samurai in place of the hereditary stipends they had received from their feudal lords. However, the government reduced these pensions to only half the original stipends, which had never been generous. Then suddenly in 1876, the authorities demanded that these pensions be commuted into relatively small lump sum payments. This order, together with one of the same year prohibiting the samurai from wearing their traditional two swords, meant the end of the samurai as a class with feudal privileges. They had been reduced to the level of ordinary subjects of the emperor and had been cast forth to fend for themselves as individual citizens of the state.
Many of the abler samurai were already rising fast in the new government. Some were making careers for themselves in the professions. Others used their lump sum payments to start successful business enterprises. A large proportion of the samurai were attracted to the officer corps of the new army and navy, or became policemen, entitled to wear swords, a fact which may account for the prestige and authority of the ordinary Japanese policeman today.
Many of the samurai, however, found themselves unable to learn new methods of livelihood, or incapable of adjusting themselves mentally to the new world in which they lived. Irreconcilable conservatives among them from time to time defied the authority of the new government. The most serious of these samurai revolts occurred in Satsuma itself, where discontented conservatives rallied around Saigo Takamori, one of the young