Although he has not held a portfolio, therefore, in any recent administration, the influence of Count Inouye is always felt and his wise and sure guidance sought for in times when the financial outlook in Japan is more than ordinarily complicated, as was the case shortly before the formation of the existing Government in 1901. There seems to be a consensus of opinion in the country that among the “Elder Statesmen” three in particular are most conversant with financial matters,—Counts Inouye, Okuma, and Matsukata,—and to one or other of them it always turns in the hope of being extricated from its difficulties and relieved of its anxieties in a monetary crisis. In business circles the prestige which Count Inouye enjoys has never waned, from the period of his earliest assumption of the duties appertaining to the office of Finance Minister, and his views on those matters with which he has been more particularly connected during his long and diversified career, as soldier financier, and diplomatist will never cease to command the highest respect and attention of the nation. X VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI One of the most trusted of his Majesty’s advisers, Okubo Toshimichi was the Minister who was mainly responsible for the vast administrative reform symbolised by the public appearance of the Emperor Mutsuhito and the removal of the imperial court from Kioto to Yedo, renamed Tokio. Okubo held firmly to the conviction that the distinction which had for three centuries been recognised, in pursuance of the Shogunal policy, between the feudal chieftains and the court nobility (kuge) must forthwith be abolished, as a first step towards the re-establishment of that direct personal rule which had existed prior to the usurpation of the imperial prerogative by the Ashikaga house, and by the Tokugawa family which followed it at Yedo. Okubo Toshimichi was a Satsuma samurai of good family, and though the Kagoshima clan has many a name inscribed on its roll of honour there is none that possesses for his countrymen a greater power to stir the emotions or awaken grateful memories than that of the subject of this memoir. Twenty-eight years ago, on a lovely summer morning, as he was on his way to attend a meeting at the imperial palace, in an unfrequented part of the highway at Kojimachi adjoining the castle moat, his carriage was stopped by some students, as they seemed to be, who a moment before had been sportively thrusting at one another with branches of the flowering cherry (sakura), the better, as the sequel showed, to lull the suspicions, if he entertained any, of the coachman on the box. The Minister, unarmed, finding his carriage stopped, descended and faced his assailants, who thereupon stabbed him to death, and at the same time slew the coachman who loyally sought to aid his master. [Illustration: VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI]