occupied by the Mito family, and it still retains much of its ancient splendour, inasmuch as it has been converted into a public park, and its magnificent gardens are maintained at the expense of the State, while the buildings and site of the historic residence of the Mito princes have been made over to the military for the purposes of an arsenal. It was part of Iyeyasu’s plan to adequately provide for the preservation of the Tokugawa line in the office of Shogun, and to that end he conferred upon three of his sons dukedoms in Owari, Kishiu, and Mito respectively. These three provinces are somewhat widely separated, for Owari is the region of which the flourishing city of Nagoya is at the present day the centre,—Kishiu is the province that borders the Kî channel at the eastern entrance to the Inland Sea,—and the Mito territory was that which is situated north-east of Tokio, and to the north of the river Toné, where it enters the Pacific near Cape Inuboye. Kishiu is now known as Wakayama _Ken_ or Prefecture, Owari is Aichi _Ken_, and Mito is now Ibaraki _Ken_, though the boundaries do not exactly correspond with the ancient frontiers. The tripartite grant of territory to his seventh, eighth, and ninth sons respectively under this arrangement was accompanied by the proviso that in the event of the failure of the direct line the Shogun should be chosen from among the cadets of one or other of these families. In after years it frequently became needful to fall back on the wisely ordained succession thus laid down at the beginning of Iyeyasu’s reign at Yedo, wise in the sense that the extinction of the line was provided against, though it was not always possible to make a selection that met with the approval of all parties, since it sometimes happened that more than one branch of the Tokugawa house was ready with a candidate for the post of honour. It will presently be seen that a difficulty arose in this respect only a few years prior to the abolition of the Shogun’s office altogether, and which was not disposed of without many heart-burnings. Some idea may be formed of the scale of magnificence on which the feudal system inaugurated during Iyeyasu’s tenure of the Shogunal office was based from the subjoined table of the barons’ revenues. For convenience’ sake I have added the approximate value of the _koku_ of rice, in terms of which the incomes were formerly calculated, at the prices ruling in Japan for that commodity at the present day. ANNUAL INCOMES OF THE BARONS UNDER THE SHOGUNATE The _San-ke_, descended from the three youngest Sons of the Founder of the Tokugawa house Title Residence Income At present value koku £ Owari Nagoya 610,000 = 762,000 Kii Wakayama 559,000 = 700,000 Mito Mito 350,000 = 440,000 (All bore the family arms of the Tokugawa, three heart-shaped leaves in a circle.)