Feudalism is indeed a necessity, as a Chinese servant has said in a memorable essay. It is a necessity which any nation must undergo, if that nation is to become consolidated. Feudalism is often described as a backward movement with respect to the political organisation. Primitive races, however, cannot be described as having been either centralised or decentralised, socially and politically, and the first stage which they must pass is that of a vague centralisation. In this stage, superficially observed, it appears as if the race were centralised at one point, but the truth is that in so early a stage of civilisation, it is not probable that more than one prominent centre would at once be formed conspicuous enough to attract attention. And even that one centre itself is formed, not because it is strong enough to centralise, but because centripetalism actuates the environment, and no other force is yet so strong as to compete with it. In early times, however, the degree of prominency of a single centre over all others must have been very slight. As time passes, lesser centres begin to distinguish themselves, closely following the prominent first in strength of centralisation, and become at last so powerful as to be able to challenge the hegemony of the first centre. This state of affairs we generally denote as the age of dismemberment, as if a true centralisation had been accomplished in the age preceding. This view is utterly false. Without the power to centralise, no political centre can be said to exist really, and without any strong centre effective centralisation is not possible. The apparent centralised, that is to say, unified condition of the ancient empires, is nothing but a chaotic condition with one bright point only, and the state of being seemingly dismembered is in truth a step toward the real unification, centralisation in partibus paving the way for centralisation on a larger scale. This phase in the preparatory process for the unity and consolidation of a nation is feudalism itself. Feudalism is a test through which every nation must pass, if it aspires to become a well organised body at all. There are some tribes, indeed, which have never passed through the feudal period in their history, but that is due to the fact that these tribes had certain defective traits which hindered them from undergoing that experience, and on account of that they have been unable to achieve a sound, well-proportioned progress in their civilisation, which must necessarily be accompanied by a well-organised political centralisation, whether it be monarchical or democratic. Other nations have passed, it is true, the test of the feudal régime, but very imperfectly, and for that reason have had great difficulty in amending the defect afterwards.
By no means need we lament that we were under the feudal régime for a considerable time in our history. On the contrary, I am rejoiced that we were. Every political development must go side by side with the corresponding social progress. The latter, unless sheltered by the former, lacks stability, while the former, if unaccompanied by the latter, is not tenable, and will break down before long and be of no avail. Feudalism can be compared to a nut-shell, which protects the kernel till it quietly consummates its maturing process within. Social progress, of whatever sort it be, ought to be covered by a political régime of a certain kind, especially adapted to discharge the task of protection, and must be allowed thereby to prosecute its own development free from disturbing influences. Feudalism is one of the political régimes indispensable to perform such a function. Though it seems to be fortunate for a nation not to tarry too long in the stage of feudalism, yet it is not desirable for the nation to emerge out of this stage prematurely.
To sum up, in order that a nation may continue in its healthy progress, it should have feudalism once in its historical course, and must pass that test fairly. And as passing a test can be fruitful only on condition that that test itself be fair, it becomes necessary as a natural consequence that a fair test must be passed fairly. Then how is it with Japan? It cannot be safely said that we have passed the test exceedingly well, but at the same time we can presume that we have not passed it badly. If someone should say that the Japanese stayed unnecessarily long in that condition and have not even yet entirely emerged from it, he must have forgotten that even the most civilised countries of Europe could not shake off the shackles of the feudal system entirely until very recent times, the first half of the nineteenth century still retaining an easily perceptible tincture of it, as we see in the survival of the patrimonial jurisdiction in some continental states of Europe. On the other hand foreign observers generally fail to see that the régime of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which I shall expatiate upon in a later chapter, is of a sort quite different from that of the European feudalism in the middle ages, and are induced to believe that the Japanese nation has been quit of the miserable régime for only fifty years. These views are both totally mistaken. In our relation to feudalism, we went through almost the same experience as other civilised nations did, neither more nor less. Because, in so far as we speak of the history of any nation ranging from its beginning till our day, more than half of it can be held to have been occupied by feudalism, the history of Japan may also be said to have in common with other nations more than half of the essential elements which the so-called history of the world could teach.
After having seen that our history is not totally unlike that of the nations of Europe in its most essential trait, it is not strange that the history of Japan should contain many other things, besides feudalism, which can be reckoned as the typical items necessary to make up the history of any civilised nation, that is to say, as the chief ingredients not to be dispensed with in the world's history—viz., various religious movements keeping pace with the social development at large, economic evolution conditioning and conditioned by the changes of other factors constituting civilisation in general, etc. As the foreign influences can be traced comparatively distinctly, the history of Japan can, to a large extent, be subjected to a scientific analysis. So if we look for the history of a nation, which is fit to represent the gradual evolution of national progress in general, Japanese history must be a select one. It is in this respect that I said that the history of our country is a miniature of the world's history. After all the history of Japan is not so simple and naïve as to be either an easy topic for amateur historians, or a suitable theme for ordinary anthropologists, ethnographers, or philologists, who are not specially qualified to deal with histories of civilised times. Those whom I should heartily welcome as the investigators of the history of our country, are those historians in Europe and America, who, more than amply qualified to write the history of their own countries, have continued to disdain extending their field of investigation to the corners of the world, thought by them not civilised enough to be worthy of their labour. If they care to peep into the history of our country, perhaps the result will not be so barren as to disappoint them utterly. The greatest misfortune to our country at the present day is that her history has been written by very few first-rate