The torch, however, which had succeeded in giving blissful light to illumine the whole nation, burned at last the torch-bearer himself with its blazing flame. Not to mention that the finances of the territorial lord had been miserably drained by this undertaking, which is said to have swallowed up about one-third of the whole revenue of the territory, and therefore proved too heavy a burden for the small income of the lord. Narrow-mindedness, which is the necessary consequence of rigorism, tended to nurture an implacable party spirit among the _samurai_ of the territory educated in this principle. Internal strife thus ensued which implicated not only the whole _samurai_ but people of all classes. In short, the territory was divided against itself. Both parties appealed to arms at last, and fought against each other, until both had to lie down quite exhausted. So the culture which the historians and the _samurai_ of Mito raised to a high pitch proved to be disastrous to their own welfare, yet the good which it did to the country at large should remain as a glory to those who sacrificed themselves for what they regarded as their ideal. We see now that several forces had cooperated in accomplishing the final unity and consolidation of the nation. In giving the finishing touch, however, to the task of many centuries, the enigmatic relations between the Emperor and the Shogun had necessarily to be cleared. Though the Shogunate had continued to transact the state affairs as if he had been the sole regent of the Emperor, the legal status of the former had never been created by any ordinance issued by the latter. No emperor had ever formally confided his political prerogative to the Shogun. The basis on which the jurisdictional power of the Shogun had rested was nothing but the _fait accompli_ connived at and acquiesced in by the Emperor. If the prestige of the Emperor, therefore, which had once fallen into decadence, should be revived, the position of the Shogun was sure to become untenable. The historians of the Mito school tried their best to make the Emperor the nucleus of the national consolidation. Their political theory had been strongly influenced by the legitimism entertained by the historians of the Sung dynasty, and this principle of legitimacy, when applied to the history of Japan, must have led only to the conclusion that the only legitimate and therefore actual sovereign of the country could be none other than the Emperor himself. Needless to say, such an argument was injurious to the political interests of the Shogunate, so that it seems very strange that the theory had been upheld and loudly heralded by these historians who were under the protection of the lord of Mito, the descendant of a scion of Iyeyasu. It was not, of course, the intention of the hereditary lords of Mito and their historians to undermine the structure of the Shogunate from its foundation. Having been, however, too sharp and fervent in their