cult and patriarchal administration, remained essentially separate from every other. The national cult was a bond of tradition, not of cohesion: there was no religious unity. Buddhism, though widely accepted, brought no real change into this order of things; for, whatever Buddhist creed a commune might profess, the real social bond remained the bond of the Ujigami. So that, even as fully developed under the Tokugawa rule, Japanese society was still but a great aggregate of clans and subclans, kept together by military coercion. At the head of this vast aggregate was the Heavenly Sovereign, the Living God of the race,--Priest-Emperor and Pontiff Supreme, --representing the oldest dynasty in the world. [241] Next to him stood the Kuge, or ancient nobility,--descendants of emperors and of gods. There were, in the time of the Tokugawa, 155 families of this high nobility. One of these, the Nakatomi, held, and still holds, the highest hereditary priesthood: the Nakatomi were, under the Emperor, the chiefs of the ancestral cult. All the great clans of early Japanese history--such as the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto--were Kuge; and most of the great regents and shoguns of later history were either Kuge or descendants of Kuge. Next to the Kuge ranked the Buke, or military class,--also called Monofufu, Wasarau, or Samurahi (according to the ancient writing of these names),--with an extensive hierarchy of its own. But the difference, in most cases, between the lords and the warriors of the Buke was a difference of rank based upon income and title: all alike were samurai, and nearly all were of Kobetsu or Shinbetsu descent. In early times the head of the military class was appointed by the Emperor, only as a temporary commander-in-chief: afterwards, these commanders-in-chief, by usurpation of power, made their office hereditary, and became veritable imperatores, in the Roman sense. Their title of shogun is well known to Western readers. The shogun ruled over between two and three hundred lords of provinces or districts, whose powers and privileges varied according to income and grade. Under the Tokugawa [242] shogunate there were 292 of these lords, or daimyo. Before that time each lord exercised supreme rule over his own domain; and it is not surprising that the Jesuit missionaries, as well as the early Dutch and English traders should have called the daimyo "kings." The despotism of the daimyo was first checked by the founders of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyeyasu, who so restricted their powers that they became, with some exceptions, liable to lose their estates if proved guilty of oppression and cruelty. He ranked them all in four great classes: (1) Sanke, or Go-Sanke, the "Three Exalted Families" (those from whom a successor to the shogunate might be chosen, in case of need); (2) Kokushu, "Lords of Provinces"; (3) Tozama, "Outside-Lords"; (4) Fudai, "Successful Families": a name given to those families promoted to