--'That is very likely,' said the duchess, 'but Japan as she is cannot be an ideal object of admiration to them; their sympathy appears only to be based on comparison. Why, there was even an assertion by some Socialists that Japan was liked only because the autocracy of the other side was disliked. By the bye, you said the other day, that you did not like to apply the term "revolution" to your great change of 1867.' --'Yes, I said so.' --'And I agree with you,' continued the duchess. '"Revolution" means upsetting and destroying everything, but you never had anything of that kind. Your emperor assumed a new authority, but it was only a restoration, or, in other words, unification of power; then, too, the sovereignty of his majesty's family is so antique that there is again a great continuity of power: those are the points which make Japan so fine a nation. --'Well,' I continued, 'we do not like to apply the term "revolution" to our great change, because that term is usually applied to a big, popular movement against established governments, which, while destroying one, sets up another. That is to say, the term is generally used in a political sense. The history of our great change differs from that, because, although the Shogunate Government was upset, the other Government, namely, the Imperial, which was reinvigorated and had come to exercise again its full authority, had always existed, and the sovereignty had continued to rest with the heads of that Government, namely, the emperors; that you know very well. Nevertheless, with regard to the social aspects of the change, one cannot say there has been no upsetting of things. As a matter of fact, almost everything has been upset; restoration and innovation were the two currents of thought then prevailing. The main work was restoration, but almost everything else was innovation, or at least renovation. Hence, almost every institution and material object which was old was destroyed, or nearly destroyed, beyond all necessary limit, almost in the same way as was experienced by England under the Long Parliament, and France in 1789. I don't mean there was in Japan any such sanguinary deeds perpetrated as those by the Jacobins, but the general social currents of events were something like those of French and English experience. There was even a suggestion made by serious people of cutting down the big trees of a fine park in the middle of Tokio and turning it into mulberry fields, on the argument that the latter would be beneficial to the nation, whilst the former was a useless luxury. At one time, indeed, even the word civilisation was much abused: of course, not in such a way as Madame Roland lamented the abuse of the term "liberty," because our abuse of the word "civilisation" was neither political nor serious. It was chiefly so with small social matters. For instance, when one wished to dispense with some of the old customs and manners, which he deemed too rigid and