ABSTRACT
When the state policy of national isolation and the feudal rule of the Tokugawa Shogun were first brought to an end, there was forged a new spirit foreign to the value system according to which men were judged by their feudal status. Among those samurai who participated in the anti-Tokugawa movement, there developed the tacit agreement that once they had crossed the border of the fief to which they belonged they would treat one another as equals. These men, who cut themselves free of the bond of the fief, regarded one another as comrades. This comradeship spread from the independent samurai to those of their sympathizers still within the bounds of the fief.
