ABSTRACT
In even a cursory perusal of the history of Japan, the reader must be forcibly struck by one feature which at first blush seems very puzzling and confusing. The Ise Heishi had not really been so bitterly hounded to earth as is usually represented; the great Kyoto earthquake of 1185, and the superstitious interpretation placed upon it, had done not a little towards saving the hapless remnants of the great house of Kiyomori from extermination. Hitherto Kyoto had been the weak spot in the Bakufu system. Yoritomo had seduced Yoshikazu’s sister,—who, by the way, was a professed nun at the time,—and by her he became the father of a child who was destined to found on of the very greatest feudal families of Japan, and to transmit his blood to this very day. There is a nation to the members of which Frenchmen are more revengeful than to Germans, more irascible than to Italians, more unjust than to English.
