There are of course not a few modifications, which can be discerned when carefully scrutinised, and these modifications are generally to be found in those Chinese laws which were impossible of introduction into our country without change. Some of them, having been planned originally in the largest Empire of the world and in an age as highly civilised as that of the T'ang, were too grand in scale, so that they had to be minimised in order to suit the condition of the island realm. Others had too much of the racial traits of the Chinese to be put at once in operation in a country such as Japan, which on its part had also sundry peculiarities not to be easily displaced by legislation originated in an alien soil. This was especially the case with respect to religious matters. Though it is a question whether Shintoism may be called a religion in the modern scientific sense, it cannot be disputed that it has a strong religious element in it. On that account, it had proved a great obstacle to the propagation of Buddhism, which was the religion embraced at first not by the common people but by men belonging to the upper classes, so that the latter, while earnestly encouraging the inculcation of Buddhism, were obliged to show themselves not altogether indifferent to the old deities. In behalf of the Shinto cult, special dignitaries were appointed, the chief of whom played the same part as the Pontifex Maximus of ancient Rome. Such an institution is purely Japanese and was not to be found in the Chinese model. Apart from these exceptions, however, the reform of the Tai-kwa era was essentially a Japanese imitation of a Chinese original. What was the result, then, of the reform undertaken partly from national necessity, but partly also from love of imitation? Let me begin with the bright side first.