Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/45

 course of policy which enabled them to retain their rule through fourteen generations, until the recent restoration of the Mikado in 1868. He not merely curtailed the power of the barons until they were such only in name, but erected safeguards against every possible source of danger to his dynasty. He not only cut us off from all outside intercourse, but so separated the different classes of society, that the idea of national unity became completely lost. The subtleness of his machinations is manifest not less in his elaborate scheme for maintaining military ascendancy than in the way in which he took advantage of our own idiosyncrasies and secret vanities to disarm all opposition to his rule. In order that he might yoke us unresistingly to the car of routine, he soothed our feelings and