Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/113

 a mood the agitation and turmoil of party politics came like rain in time of drought. The Government had wronged them, had denied their deserts, had withheld from them all the prizes of office. So, when the banner of the Liberals was raised in 1878, these youths flocked to it. They had a vague notion that the injustice from which they believed themselves to be suffering would be remedied under constitutional institutions, and that duty claimed their allegiance to the Liberal side. But there was no legitimate place for such half-educated, light-headed youths. They could not figure either on the platform or in the press; they had no influence in society, and whatever cause they espoused had to receive some equivalent for supplying them with the necessaries of life. Thus they fell back upon the rudimentary resource of thew and sinew, and people dubbed them sōshi (stalwarts). It was neither a term of reproach, nor yet of modern invention. In China, that universal repository of origins, there had been sōshi two hundred years previously whom their countrymen regarded merely as "intrepids." But the sōshi of modern Japan soon sank to the level of a rough. Party politicians used him for purposes now of intimidation, now of protection. At one moment he was found assaulting some publicist, at another guarding a patron, and at another raiding the platform at a political meeting. It was a strange spectacle to see the Liberals