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were liable to be called upon for service in the army, with the Emperor as Commander-in-Chief. Early in the Middle Ages, however, we begin to find traces of a line of demarcation between civil and military affairs, and soon this line becomes distinct, the army having regular generals and captains serving under the direction of a central office. This office next established the ‘Left and Right Horse’ Departments, which had the custody of horses contributed as tribute from the various provinces. For each province was organized a military corps, in which was enrolled every third male adult of the district, all of whom were liable to be called upon for service.

Still later, when the military power passed into the hands of the Genji and the Heike clans, a class of professional soldiers made its appearance. The leaders and their retainers both trained their sons in their own profession, which thereby became hereditary, thus evolving the feudal system, which retained its strength until modern times.

Powerful barons, entrenched in strongholds throughout the various districts of the country, gradually encroached upon the territory round about them, until at last they had brought these districts under their arbitrary sway, detaching them from direct control of the Imperial Court. The professional soldiers enjoyed hereditary pensions, were bound to their masters by the relationship of liege lords and retainers, and were largely instrumental in bringing the system of feudalism to the high state of organization which it attained during the Tokugawa Regency.

With the Restoration and the reinstatement of the Imperial régime the system ceased to exist, being superseded by modern local administrative institutions, which swept away the evils engendered by the old and arbitrary rule of feudalism. The hereditary pensions of the professional warrior class were commuted by recourse to public loans, and the warriors were left to find other occupations. The ranks of the army thus left vacant were filled by male adults of every class, drawn by conscription.

The most noticeable feature of this splendid revolutionary achievement lay in the fact that it was accomplished without heavy cost in bloodshed, or in the other national disasters usually incidental to such sweeping changes, and reflects great credit upon the patriotism of the whole people as well as upon the tremendous influence and statesmanlike qualities of the Imperial Court.

At the beginning of the new era administrative affairs were divided into seven departments, one of which took entire charge of military and naval affairs. This division was later designated the National Defence Office, to be superseded in