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Rh Europeanism, this has been a matter of sentiment only, a return from cosmopolitanism to nationalism in matters of minor importance, and has affected nothing practical by so much as a hair's breadth. Inquisitive persons from home, who remember the Stuarts and the Legitimists and Don Carlos, sometimes ask whether there may not be a Japanese reaction in favour of feudalism. No! never,—not till the sun stops shining and water begins to flow uphill. (Compare Things Japanese/Clans.)

 Harakiri. Need we say that harakiri was for centuries the favourite Japanese method of committing suicide? There were two kinds of harakiri— obligatory and voluntary. The former was a boon granted by government, who graciously permitted criminals of the Samurai class thus to destroy themselves instead of being handed over to the common executioner. Time and place were officially notified to the condemned, and officials were sent to witness the ceremony. This custom is extinct. Voluntary harakiri was practised by men in hopeless trouble, also out of loyalty to a dead superior, and in order to protest when other protests might be unavailing—against the erroneous conduct of a living superior. Examples of this class still take place. That of a young man called Ōhara Takeyoshi, which occurred in 1891, is typical. He was a lieutenant in the Yezo militia, and ripped himself up in front of the graves of his ancestors