Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/169

 latter rule among the products of militarism, for it embodies a doctrine of civilised forbearance that has not yet received full practical recognition even in Anglo-Saxon communities. Nevertheless, it was one of the enactments of feudal days, and if modern Japanese laws, borrowed from Europe, have ignored the old theory, the laws are the losers. Another evidence that a military mood survived the long succession of peaceful years secured by Tokugawa rule is that the obligation of revenge impressed itself on the people more forcibly than ever throughout the seventeenth century. Official permission could always be obtained to prosecute a vendetta, and a man armed with such permission might kill his enemy wherever he found him. Years being often devoted to the consummation of these acts, and many of them being achieved amid circumstances of extraordinary hardship and after an exercise of splendidly patient endurance, the memory of the avenger was held in perpetual honour, and his tomb received the worshipful tendance of subsequent generations. Even after decadence had overtaken the military spirit, forty-seven retainers of Ako sacrificed their lives to avenge their chief (1704), and a few years later a farmer's daughter and a prostitute slew their fathers' murderers. It may be noted, however, that although these manifestations of loyalty and filial piety evoked enthusiastic admiration, no difficulty was found in enforcing a rule that one act of vengeance must end a vendetta. Men un-