in the province of Hitachi. All these three being of the lateral branches of the Tokugawa, were held in specially high regard, and put at the topmost of all the other _daimyo_, so that their vassals considered themselves to be quasi-_hatamoto_ and therefore above the "common" or "garden" _samurai_. The _daimyo_ acted as virtual potentates in territories granted to them, and held a court and a government there, both modelled largely after the household and the government of the Shogun at Yedo. The better part of the _daimyo_ resided in castles built imposingly after the architectural style of the fortresses in Europe at that time, the technic having perhaps been introduced along with Christianity, and they led a life far more easy and elegant, though more regular, than the _shugo_ of the Ashikaga age. It has been ascribed, by the way, to the rare sagacity of Iyeyasu as a politician, that the territories of the two kinds of _daimyo_, _tozama_ and _fudai_, were so adroitly juxtaposed, that the latter were able to keep watch over the former's attitude toward the Shogunate. The _daimyo_ were ranked according to the officially estimated amount of rice to be produced in the territory of each. In the time of Kamakura, the renumeration of the _djito_ was counted by the area of ricefields in the manor entrusted to his care. By and by, the land which was the source of the renumeration for a _djito_ came to be partitioned among his numerous descendants, and some of the portions allotted became so small, that it was but ridiculous to think of exercising the jurisdiction of military police over them. Area of land began to cease thus to be the standard of valuation of the income of a _djito_, when the office of _djito_ meant only the emolument accompanying it, and no longer carried with it the responsibility incumbent on it at its first establishment. The ultimate result of such a change was that the quantity or the price of rice produced began to be adopted gradually as the standard of valuation of the income of territorial lords, and for a while the two standards were in use together till the end of the Ashikaga age. Moreover, infrequently part of the income of a _shugo_ was reckoned by the quantity of rice, while another part of the income of the same _shugo_ was assessed by the sale-price of the rice cultivated. This promiscuous way of valuation, however, caused great irregularity and confusion. For, added to the disagreement about the real quantity of rice produced and the amount registered to be produced, the price of the cereal itself had been so ceaselessly fluctuating according to the inconstant condition of crops, that there was no such thing as a regular standard price of rice invariably applicable to any year and to any locality. Nevertheless, in an age when no uniform system of currency was established and to accept any coin at its face value was an impossible matter, in other words, when it was difficult to represent the price of