The Japanese Imperial family, at the dawn of the twentieth century, had severed its connection with all the impracticable and æsthetic traditions of 2,600 years; and its members permitted the people now to look upon their faces, meeting Japanese subjects face to face, without fear on either side. Even the Emperor, Mutsuhito, the one hundred and twenty-second Mikado in direct descent of the dynasty founded B.C. 660, is to-day a personage far different from the Mikado of 1804. Instead of the secluded monarch, whose face was never seen by his subjects, the Mikado of 1904 appears in public quite as freely as the King of England or the President of France. Three times a year he reviews his troops; he permits foreign visitors to be shown through his palace; he receives distinguished foreigners in person; he drives through the streets and parks daily. This monarch, not by force or by revolution, but voluntarily, surrendered to the people many of his prerogatives. By the Mikado, in fact, more than by any statesman or party, Japan was recreated. As for the Empress, Her Majesty, more than any Japanese man, is responsible for the changed conditions surrounding Japanese womanhood. Toward the close of the nineteenth century she adapted modern ideas to Japanese customs, in so far as they affected those of her sex. Instead of being a recluse, a prisoner, virtually a slave, with blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows, like her predecessor of 1804, the Empress of 1904 appears frequently in public with her beauty unimpaired. She encourages, in every practical way, feminine education. She is a patron of many artistic and philanthropic enterprises and a member of the International Red Cross Society. She is beloved by the people for her many good and charitable deeds. Mainly through the influence of the Empress, then, the conditions surrounding Japanese women, with the dawn of the twentieth century, had changed for the better. Formerly, the Japanese women had no rights whatsoever. A wife was merely an Oriental chattel--she could be sold or divorced as her husband willed. In 1899, however, rights which her husband was bound to respect, together with her legal social status, were defined as follows: “A woman can now become the head of a family and exercise authority as such; she can inherit and own property and manage it herself; she can exercise parental authority; she can act as guardian or executor and has a voice in family councils.”