As the well-planned military regime of the Shogunate can be said to have been based on the assumption that war was a far-distant possibility, an imaginary danger, and as at the same time the Shogunate had watched jealously not to stir up _daimyo_ and _samurai_ to so warlike a pitch of self-confidence that they would believe themselves able to cope with the Shogun, there had lain the chief difficulty of sustaining the martial spirit of the nation in full strength, that is to say, of continuing the military regime as it had been at first. There were of course several gradations in the intensity of the fighting spirit of the people in different localities of the country. In both extremities of the Empire, in the south of Kyushu and in the north of Honto, where civilisation was rather at a low ebb, the martial spirit had continued not much abated since the time of the Ashikaga. On both sides of the boundary of two such adjoining territories, a difference of dialect was clearly perceivable, and an acute hostile feeling against each other prevailed. People were not allowed to marry their neighbors beyond the frontier, and this rule was strictly applied to all members of the warrior-class. In brief, they were always staring each other in the face, as if ready to fight at any time. As to the greater part of the Empire, however, including the territories situated between the two extremities, that is to say, in those regions of the country where the people were more enlightened, no such animosity between the peoples of neighboring _daimyo_ was to be noticed. There marriages had been contracted freely between the subjects of different lords, a relationship which could only arise from the assumption that most probably there would occur no war between the two _daimyo_, and there would be no fear of such marriages becoming an awkward connection. Adjoining territories maintaining such intimate relations, being connected by the personalities of the inhabitants, should be considered not as quasi-independent states ranged side by side and in dangerous rivalry, verging almost on belligerency, but as neighboring governmental departments in the same well-centralised state. It may be gathered from these data that the more enlightened and by far the greater part of the Japanese nation were so peace-loving, that they organised all their ways of living on the assumption of a permanent peace. And that absolute peace had verily continued for more than two centuries in a country said to have been dominated by an absolute military regime, more than testifies how averse is the Japanese nation from wanton warfare. Foreigners should ponder this irrefutable fact in the history of Japan, a fact which can not elsewhere be found in abundance even in the history of European and American states, before they calumniate our nation as the most bellicose and dangerous in the world.