After a time, it became so generally recognised that the monarch in name must not be monarch in fact, and vice versâ, that abdication, or rather deposition (for that is what it practically amounted to), was almost a sine quâ non of the inheritance of such scanty shreds of authority as imperious ministers still deigned to leave to their nominal lords and masters. When a Mikado abdicated, he was said to ascend to the rank of abdicated Mikado. It was no longer necessary, as at an earlier period, to sham asceticism. The abdicated Mikado surrounded himself with wives and a whole Court, and sometimes really helped to direct public affairs. Nor was abdication confined to sovereigns. Heads of noble houses abdicated too. In later times the middle and lower classes began to imitate their betters. Until the period of the late revolution, it was an almost universal custom for a man to become what is termed an inkyo after passing middle age. Inkyo means literally "dwelling in retirement." He who enters on this state gives over his property to his heirs, generally resigns all office, and lives on the bounty of his children, free to devote himself henceforth to pleasure or to study. Old age being so extraordinarily honoured in Japan, the inkyo has no reason to dread Lear's fate. He knows that he will always be dutifully tended by sons who are not waiting to find out "how the old man will cut up." The new government of Japan is endeavouring to put a stop to the practice of inkyo, as being barbarous because not European. But to the people at large it appears, on the contrary, barbarous that a man should go on toiling and striving, when past the time of life at which he is fitted to do good work.
Book recommended. The Gakushikaiin, by Walter Dening, printed in Vol. XV. Part I. of the "Asiatic Transactions," p. 72 et seq.
Acupuncture. Acupuncture, one of the three great nostrums of the practitioners of the Far East (the other two being massage and the moxa), was brought over from China to Japan before the dawn of history. Dr. W. N. Whitney describes it as follows in his Notes on the History of Medical Progress in Japan, published in Vol. XII. Part IV. of the "Asiatic Transactions," p. 354:—
