Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/133

 tine intercourse between patrician and plebeian lovers was also not infrequent, but the law took care that the offspring of such unions should seldom obtain admission to the higher rank. It is a curious fact that the legislators of the time never conceived the possibility of a patrician lady's forming a liaison with a plebeian: they provided for the contingency of a man's succumbing to the charms of a plebeian beauty, but they made no allowance for any such weakness on the part of a nobly born woman.

Concerning the terms "noble" and "ignoble," it is not to be supposed that the former originally included only such persons as would be called "gentlemen" and "ladies" in Europe or America. In addition to the whole of the official and military elements, the ryō-min comprised many bread-winners who, under the more exclusive system of subsequent eras, were relegated to a lower social status. The most comprehensive definition is that only those pledged to some form of servitude stood in the ranks of the sem-min, all others being ryō-min. There were five classes of sem-min, the lowest being private servants, and the highest, public employés. The distinction of "military man" (samurai or shizoku) and "commoner" or "civilian" (hei-min) did not exist at the time now under consideration. Indeed, at this point another resemblance is found between the "Restoration" in the seventh century and that in the nineteenth cen