Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/42



Tokugawa tyrants, who initiated the policy of strict seclusion, were the successors of various lines of shoguns who, as military regents of the Mikado, had, since the twelfth century, usurped the government of Japan. Before that period, Japan was under the personal rule of the Mikado, who, with the assistance of court functionaries, reigned over the country from Kioto. The over-centralization of the imperial bureaucracy, however, was the cause of its own decay. Its neglect of provincial administration led to local disturbances and the creation of baronial