Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/46

 delighted our souls by appeals to that love and worship for the past that is one of our national instincts. Our bonds were, in fact, largely of our own weaving, and Iyeyasu but lulled us to sleep, unmindful of the future, within the chrysalis of tradition. Perhaps it is for this, that he knew us only too well, we execrate his memory to-day.

The mechanism of the Tokugawa rule cannot be adequately described in brief; not only is it exceedingly complicated, but it is without striking parallel in the history of any country. It affords the peculiar spectacle of a society perfectly isolated and self-complete, which, acting and reacting upon itself, produced worlds within worlds, each with its separate life and ideals, and its own distinct expressions in art