Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/248

 nation. At a very early era the sovereign ceased to be autocratic, or to retain any prerogative which might be exercised without the concurrence of his principal subjects. The highest offices of the State became hereditary possessions of certain great families, and as generation succeeded generation each unit of this oligarchy of households attained the dimensions of a clan, so that administrative functions may be said to have been exercised by groups, not by individuals. Subsequently the exigencies of the time gave birth to a military aristocracy headed by a generalissimo (Shōgun), into whose hands administrative authority passed. But even in this military feudalism no traces of genuine autocracy were found. Just as the extensive power, nominally vested in the central figure, the Shōgun, were in reality wielded by a large body of ministers and councillors, so the local autonomy enjoyed by each fief was exercised, not by the chief him- self, but by his leading vassals. A united effort on the part of all the clans to overthrow this system and wrest the administrative power from the Shōgun could have only one logical outcome, the combined exercise of the recovered power by those that had been instrumental in recovering it. That was the meaning of the oath taken by the Emperor at the Restoration, when the youthful sovereign was made to say that "wide counsels should be sought, and all things determined by public discussion." But the framers of the oath