archery, polo, football--of a very refined nature--hawking, hunting and gambling absorbed the attention of the aristocracy. Nothing disturbed the serenity of the epoch except a revolt of the northern Yemishi, which was temporarily subdued by a Fujiwara general, for the Fujiwara had not yet laid aside the martial habits of their ancestors. In 794 the Imperial capital was transferred from Nara to Kioto by order of the emperor Kwammu, one of the greatest of Japanese sovereigns. Education, the organization of the civil service, riparian works, irrigation improvements, the separation of religion from politics, the abolition of sinecure offices, devices for encouraging and assisting agriculture, all received attention from him. But a twenty-two years' campaign against the northern Yemishi; the building of numerous temples; the indulgence of such a passionate love of the chase that he organized 140 hunting excursions during his reign of 25 years; profuse extravagance on the part of the aristocracy in Kioto and the exactions of provincial nobles, conspired to sink the working classes into greater depths of hardship than ever. Farmers had to borrow money and seed-rice from local officials or Buddhist temples, hypothecating their land as security; thus the temples and the nobles extended their already great estates, whilst the agricultural population gradually fell into a position of practical serfdom. Rise of the Fujiwara. Meanwhile the Fujiwara family were steadily developing their influence in Kioto. Their methods were simple but thoroughly effective. "By progressive exercises of arbitrariness they gradually contrived that the choice of a consort for the sovereign should be legally limited to a daughter of their family, five branches of which were specially designated to that honour through all ages. When a son was born to an emperor, the Fujiwara took the child into one of their palaces, and on his accession to the throne, the particular Fujiwara noble that happened to be his maternal grandfather became regent of the empire. This office of regent, created towards the close of the 9th century, was part of the scheme; for the Fujiwara did not allow the purple to be worn by a sovereign after he had attained his majority, or, if they suffered him to wield the sceptre during a few years of manhood, they compelled him to abdicate so soon as any independent aspirations began to impair his docility; and since for the purposes of administration in these constantly recurring minorities an office more powerful than that of prime minister (dajo daijin) was needed, they created that of regent (kwambaku), making it hereditary in their own family. In fact the history of Japan from the 9th to the 19th century may be described as the history of four families, the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto and the Tokugawa. The Fujiwara governed through the emperor; the Taira, the Minamoto and the Tokugawa governed in spite of the emperor. The Fujiwara