Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/287

 proceeded to kill Hoshi because he regarded him as the worst political influence of the time. Japanese annals abound with Iba Sōtaros, though perhaps in no other case has a contrast so dramatically vivid been shown between the motives of a murderous act and the sacrifices it entailed. In justice to the memory of Hoshi Tōru it should be stated that, pernicious as his influence had certainly been, he did not die a rich man. He does not appear to have coveted money for himself, but rather for its uses in promoting political designs.

As to parliamentary procedure in Japan, it would of course have been extravagant to expect that neither tumult nor intemperance would disfigure the first debates of a Diet whose members were wholly without experience, but not without grievances to ventilate and wrongs, real or fancied, to redress, or that the language employed would always show the restraints which custom has gradually imposed in Western parliaments. Noisy scenes sometimes occurred, the authority of the chair often proved ineffective, and expressions were occasionally used such as are not tolerable in polite society. But on the whole there was remarkable absence of anything like disgraceful licence. The politeness, the good temper, and the sense of dignity which characterise the Japanese in general, saved the situation when it threatened to degenerate into a "scene." Foreigners entering the House of Representatives in Tōkyō for the first time might easily misinter-