ABSTRACT
War with China broke out in the summer of 1894. In Japan there was widespread enthusiasm for the conflict and for six months most minds were preoccupied with news of the fighting.
Though out of the public eye, Shozo carried on with his parliamentary duties. But he differed greatly from the typical provincial Dietman of the nineties, who was inordinately proud of his status, fawned on the leader of whatever faction within his party he had attached himself to and complacently patronized his simpleminded constituents. His appearance was already eccentric enough. It was dictated, not by any desire to draw attention to himself, though indeed he was accused of this, as of many other things, but by a slowly deepening sense of the relative triviality of all such outward things. Sometimes it got him into trouble.
