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280 ries, in each of which the people have more or less a voice in the administration.

The Empress Dowager, too, although brought up and educated in the old-fashioned way, had yet adopted modern ideas with great ease. She did not have shaven eyebrows and blackened teeth, like her predecessor of 1801. She often appears in public, and continues a generous patron of female education, the Red Cross Society, and artistic and philanthropic enterprises.

The Shōgun of 1801 was Iyenari, who exercised that authority for about half a century. He lived in glory and splendor in Yedo (now Tōkyō) with his vassals around him. Theoretically he was only Generalissimo under the Emperor, and, as a matter of policy, kept up the practice of occasional visits to Kyōto, where he humbled himself before his nominal superior; but, as the highest administrative officer, he was ruler in act and fact. Very appropriately has he been called "the Emperor's vassal jailer." During his Shōgunate "the military class remained perfectly tranquil, and the feudal system attained its highest stage of efficiency."

In 1901 there was no Shōgun; the last of the Tokugawa dynasty abdicated in 1867, and has spent most of his life since then in retirement in Mito and Shizuoka. He is now living quietly in Tōkyō, without much regard, apparently, to the new-fangled ways of these times, except that he is reported to ride a bicycle!