Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/138

 eclipsed by Iyeyasu in statesmanship, for the latter founded a constitution and established a dynasty, which lasted two hundred years, and might have lasted longer but for foreign intervention; yet Hideyoshi's is the more picturesque, the more striking personality. Perhaps it would not be straining an historical parallel to allege that the great soldier of Kyōto prepared the way for the great legislator of Yedo as effectively as Julius Cæsar prepared the way for Augustus. Be this so or not, it is plain that the beginning of the seventeenth century after Christ in Japan and the end of the last century before Christ in Italy coincided with similar transitions from militant anarchy to peaceful despotism. The golden age of the Tokugawa may be cited as an argument for imperial rule with the pax Romana of the Cæsars. It might be supposed that the names of Iyeyasu and Hideyoshi have no more virtue as a rallying-cry for their descendants than the watchwords of Roundhead and Cavalier have for us. But such is not the case. Subtly reincarnate in the cities which they glorified in life, their spirits still give battle after death in the bloodless field of civic rivalry. Tōkyō is still Yedo, the Petersburg of the empire, created by a despot's will and the centre of law, of authority, of administration; but it is to Kyōto, as to Moscow, the holy city, that lovers of art and of religion are inevitably attracted. Hers are still the finer temples, the lovelier fabrics, the nobler legacies of Old Japan. One thing, however, she has not, which the capital has—a fitting monument of her greatest citizen. Whereas the mausoleum of lyeyasu at Nikkō is such a masterpiece of commemorative gratitude, expressed in the language of plastic and decorative art, that "whoever has not seen Nikkō