ABSTRACT
During the last three-quarters of the thirteenth century the Empire of Japan enjoyed the benefit of an administration more economical, more honest, and more efficient than was known anywhere in contemporary Europe. Just before the great tumult of 1221, the ex-Emperor, Toba II., was making a plaything of the Imperial Seat. A very moderate degree of prescience should have been ample to discern that an agreement could not fail to be productive of trouble and strife sooner or later. Upon the death of Sadatoki the decline of the Bakufu in moral no less than in material influence was portentously rapid. A compendium of fifty-one brief articles, whose contents may be mastered in an hour or so, can have no pretensions to be an exhaustive exposition of law. Bakufu vassals were strictly forbidden directly to solicit the Imperial Court for rank or office; they must be provided with a special recommendation from Kamakura.
