Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/180

 of these demonstrations were severely punished, death being commonly meted out to them and their families; but they did not perish fruitlessly, for the grievances of their followers generally found redress, and the authority of the feudal chiefs as well as of the Shōgun's government grew steadily more apocryphal whenever the "mat-banner and bamboo spear" of the farmer extorted consideration from the two-sworded samurai.

To these factors working for the fall of feudalism must be added increasing disaffection among the samurai themselves, owing to their virtual loss of caste in the presence of tradesmen who had acquired a new knowledge of the value of wealth, and of land-owners who lived sumptuous lives without any derogatory labour, and owing, above all, to their own penury, which compelled them to seek means of subsistence in manual toil. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, these men were ready to throw themselves into any intrigue. It cannot be supposed that they cared much about theories of government. Yet they took trouble to rouse the Court nobles in Kyōtō to a sense of the evils of divided power, as between the Emperor and the Shōgun, and to expose the national defects of feudalism. They failed to produce any immediately visible effect upon the current of events, but their action unquestionably contributed to the general feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction that was then growing up throughout the country.