I translated the first memorial announcing the laying at the foot of the throne the vast ancestral territories, signed by Mori Saisho Chinjo (Chōshiu), Shimadzu Shosho (Satsuma), Nabeshima Shosho (Hizen), Yamanouchi Shosho (Tosa). It was published in the _Kiōto Gazette_ of the 5th of March, 1869, and is worth giving in full, for it was a document which made history. “In the opinion of certain ministers (the writers) the Great Body must not lose a single day, the Great Strength must not delegate its power for one day. Since the heavenly ancestors established the foundations of the country the Imperial line has lasted without a break for ten thousand ages. The Heaven and the Earth belong to the Emperor; there is no man who is not his servant. This constitutes the Great Body. The Emperor governs his people, conferring rank and property. It is his to give and his to take away; of our own selves we cannot hold a foot of land, we cannot take a single man. This constitutes the Great Strength. “In the days of old the Emperor governed the sea-girt land, and trusting to the Great Body and to the Great Strength, the Imperial wisdom ruled over all; thus truth and righteousness being upheld, there was prosperity under Heaven. In the Middle Ages the ropes of the net were loosened, so that men playing with the Great Strength and striving for the power crowded upon the Emperor, and half the world tried to enslave the people and to steal the land. Beating and gnawing, theft and rapine, ruled in the land. When the Great Body that should have been preserved, and the Great Strength that should have been maintained, were gone, no means were left for repressing these evils. Traitors encouraged traitors and the strong preyed upon and devoured the weak. The greater traitors seized tens of provinces, the lesser traitors maintained retainers by the thousand. Then arose the Bakufu, which also parcelled out territories and men as might seem good to it, among private individuals, thus planting and stablishing its own power. So it came about that the Emperor wore a vain and empty rank, and, the order of things being reversed, looked up to the Bakufu as the dispenser of joy and sorrow. For six hundred years and more the waters turned from their course have flooded the land and reached to Heaven.