But it is, nevertheless, true that “Japan is at length passing out of the epoch of persons and entering the era of principles,” when, of course, will speedily come the development of parties. It is not, perhaps, strange that the personality of the great statesmen who made New Japan possible has been felt for so long a time, nor that the able men of the rising generation have begun to chafe a little under the prolonged control of those older statesmen. But, as the “Japan Times” says, “the conflict between the old and the new elements of political power, the so-called clan statesmen and the party politicians, has been so far removed that the time is already in sight when the country will see them working harmoniously under the same banner and with the same platform.” Such was apparently the case in the Seiyukwai, Marquis Itō’s new party, organized in 1900, the closing year of the first decade of Japanese constitutionalism. And this problem of political parties is the great one to be solved in the second period of constitutional government in Japan. We may, therefore, conclude that the working of the new system of government has, on the whole, been satisfactory. We must acknowledge, with the “Japan Mail,” that “it would be altogether extravagant to expect that Japan’s new constitutional garments should fit her perfectly from the first. They are too large for her. She has to grow into them, and of course the process is destined to be more or less awkward.” We must agree with Prince Itō, the author of the Constitution, not only that there has been the experimental period, but also that “excellent results have thus far been obtained, when it is remembered how sudden has been the transition from feudalism to representative institutions.” We ought, indeed, to bear in mind, that, when the Constitution was promulgated, Japan was only eighteen years out of feudalism and twenty-one years out of military despotism; so that, by both the Oriental and the Occidental reckoning, New Japan had only just come “of age” politically. She seems, therefore, deserving of the greatest credit for the progress of the first decade of constitutionalism. BIBLIOGRAPHY. “The Story of Japan” (Murray), “Advance Japan” (Morris), and “The Yankees of the East” (Curtis), give some information here and there about the government of Japan. But especially helpful are Wigmore’s articles in the “Nation” and “Scribner’s Monthly,” Iyenaga’s “Constitutional Development of Japan,” Knapp’s “Feudal and Modern Japan,” Count (now Marquis) Itō’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan,” and Lay’s “History of Japanese Political Parties” (Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xxx. part iii.). See also “The Political Ideas of Modern Japan” (Kawakami), and “Dai Nippon” (Dyer), chaps. xiii. and xiv. Uycharu’s “Political Development of Japan (1867-1909)” is the latest and best. CHAPTER X LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT