Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/85

had the most leisure for study. The other three classes together constituted the common people, who were kept in rigid subjection and bled profusely by taxes.

Under the present régime there are three general classes of the entire population of Japan: the nobility, the gentry, and the common people. The nobility, created in 1884, comprises five orders: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron; the gentry are the descendants of the knights (samurai) of the old first class; the common people include all the rest of the population. By the census of 1903 the nobility numbered 5,055; the gentry, 2,168,058; and the common people, 44,559,015. (These figures are exclusive of Formosa.) Even now the burden of taxation falls upon the mass of the common people, especially upon the farming class, for the land tax is the most important source of revenue in Japan.

The fundamental principle of Japanese society was, and still is, reverent obedience to superiors. This polite and humble deference is exhibited in their language and in their manners and customs, and has become so thoroughly incorporated into their natures that it even yet resists the levelling tendency of the present age. The language is full of honorifics to be applied to or concerning another, and of humilifics to be applied concerning self. I and mine are thus always ignorant, stupid, dirty, homely, insignificant, etc., while you and yours are ever intelligent, wise, clean, beautiful, noble etc. Perhaps there is noth-