Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/210

 caste had grown, he regarded all bread-winning pursuits with contempt and despised money. It was the constant aim of his leaders to encourage this mood, and they succeeded thoroughly, though their methods were not apparently calculated to ensure success. For while, on the one hand, the allowances granted to a bushi of inferior rank were so meagre that it often became necessary for him to undertake some domestic industry in order to procure means of sustenance, on the other, rewards for distinguished services usually took the form of an increase of income, and in describing a great man's position, one of the first points mentioned was the number of measures of rice he received annually. Emoluments, therefore, should naturally have occupied a large share of attention. But they did not. An ample corrective seems to have been furnished by a system of ranks and grades, through which the samurai could gradually rise by distinguished conduct until he stood within a short distance of the Throne itself. For, although the sovereign towered above all human distinctions, and therefore did not nominally occupy any place in the classification, nevertheless the first grade of the first rank was not bestowed upon any subject. It corresponded to the hiatus left in a document before a mention of the Mikado. If any subject attained to the second grade of the first rank, as some few did under wholly exceptional circumstances, he could feel that he had ascended very