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State administration with the exception of the pontifical office. The Sovereign Ruler was a personality deemed too sacred and apart for connection with affairs of general administration, which were thus vested in the Shogun, the ruler always retaining the sovereignty in his own hands. The Shogun then allotted districts of country to such retainers as were deemed worthy to hold them, and clansmen who had made allegiance were permitted to remain in possession of their property in a state of vassalage. Such vassals were, however, allowed by the Shogun to exercise practically unbounded powers of administration throughout their territory, but always under the strict supervision of the Bakufu.

Amongst many dynasties of Shoguns, that of the Tokugawa—lasting from A.D. 600 to some thirty-five years ago—was the one which most efficiently established the feudal system. No other Shogunate ever approached this either in duration or in excellence of organization.

The legal system of the Bakufu relied mainly on custom and usage, but its few written laws were of a thoroughly practical nature. Although many of these regulations had their source in Chinese practices, much of the formal written code of the Chinese legal system, predominant in the first half of this period, ceased to exist in the second. Its influence in Japan, however, has until recent days permeated the national legal theories. The fundamental principle underlying the written laws of the Tokugawa Dynasty was that ‘The people should obey the law, but should not know the law.’ Most of the written code was consequently kept secret, and few were acquainted with it beyond those directly concerned in its administration. The most important part of this written code was that which treated of relations between the Imperial Court and the Bakufu or Shogunal Government, and the relations of the Bakufu with the local vassals or daimyo. Another important division of it became celebrated as ‘The Tokugawa Dynasty’s One Hundred Articles,’ of which the penal code of the present day is an almost identical reproduction, and it was on these hundred articles that the feudal lords modelled their own penal codes for use within the boundaries of their respective domains.

As regards its political constitution, the Bakufu, although it held in its hands the real power of administration, was obliged to make representations to the Crown either before or after the act in any urgent case of national importance. It remained the privilege of the Emperor to appoint the Shogun or Generalissimo, to grant degrees of honour, to determine the names of the years (bestowing titles such as ‘Meiji,’ which signifies ‘brilliant tranquillity’), to approve the inauguration