The government is considered as bound to do its best to provide cheap food for the people. Mourning for the Emperor, religious sects, foreigners, prostitution, suicide--all come in for recognition in the Bookay Hiak Kadjo. CHAPTER VIII THE POSITION AND COURT OF THE SHIOGOON In the above code Iyeyas laid down the order of rank in which the officers about him or under him should move. The offices were probably more or less settled and in existence during the rule of Taikosama and of Nobu nanga, and of the ministers who had filled a somewhat analogous office during many generations at Kamakura. The head of this Yedo system, as it may be called, is the Shiogoon, the commander-in-chief or head of the military department of the empire, under which is included the police and financial departments. From the account of the court of the Mikado, as given in a previous chapter, it is to be gathered that the Mikado is the chief ruler over the empire. To him the whole empire looks up with reverence; from him flows the stream of honors conferred upon subjects--all equally his servants. After the royal family (the Shinwo), the highest subject is the Kwanbakku, who is at the head of the five highest families of Koongays. After these follow the other Koongay families in order, down to the lowest and poorest enrolled in the peerage of the empire. Beneath all this court, and standing upon a lower platform, is the court of the Shiogoon, at the head of which is the Shiogoon, the commander-in-chief of the army, and around him the Kami or Daimio class, who receive and hold their territory from him as viceroy for the Emperor. The words Shio goon were derived in early times from the Chinese. Tsiang kiun is the title of the general commanding one of the divisions of the army in China.--In ancient times in Japan the title of the commander-in-chief was Mono nobe. The past history of the empire has shown that the Emperor himself was originally the leader or commander-in-chief of his own armies, but that in course of time the office was conferred upon one of the younger members of the imperial family. It was afterward transferred to the man who in a lawless revolutionary period showed himself capable of seizing and holding the command of the army. Thus Yoritomo held it, and so it afterward became hereditary in the Ashikanga family, until the last of these died out a few years before Iyeyas achieved the object of his ambition. In any consideration of the government of Japan and its relations, it is necessary to have clear ideas of the position in which the Emperor and the Shiogoon stand to one another. A reference to the history of the country, as given above, may in some measure explain these; but it may not be without use to state briefly what is the position of the Shiogoon.