With the Imperial Restoration in Japan--an event, in time, just thirty-five years before the date mentioned at the beginning of this story--many of the nobles of Japan met with ruin. This was especially the case with the "hatamoto," a class directly dependent for revenue and patronage upon the favor of the usurping "Shogun." The real Emperor, then a boy of sixteen, living in seclusion at Kioto, was still nominal ruler and spiritual head of the government, forming a sort of "Holy Roman Empire," translated into terms of Buddhism. When, as a result of revolution and many sharp, fierce battles, this boy was brought in triumph to take his rightful place as temporal ruler also, with a new court in the great capital of Tokio, the Shogun, direct descendant of the mighty Iyeyasu, went into dignified retirement. Over-rich monasteries and temples, arrogant after centuries of Tokugawa benefice, were forced to part with broad lands, and even, in certain instances, with personal treasure. The simpler "Shinto" faith, an indigenous nature-spirit and ancestor-worshipping creed, opposed its principles to gorgeous Buddhist forms. The pure spirit of the younger faith and the profundities of its philosophy did not suffer. The blow was aimed at externals. The child-like Japanese soul to-day kneels with equal sincerity at a wayside Shinto shrine or before the gold-hung altars of Sakyamuni. This revolution, then, was threefold and complete. Politics, religion, society, shifted within their national circle and assumed new aspects. The centre of all was the young ruler, Mutsuhito. Now the "kugé," or court nobles of Kioto, who had willingly shared retirement and comparative poverty with this true descendant of the gods, came again into power. But besides these two classes, the hatamoto and other dependent samurai, and the kugé, was still a third,--the most important,--the daimyo or feudal lords of the empire. Some among these had never yet given satisfactory hostages to the Shoguns, and lived always in a state of insolent pride and suppressed insurrection. At need of their Emperor, the true mettle of their loyalty rang out. Men, money, lives, property, were poured out like water for this beloved cause. Those who had been haughtiest to the Shoguns bowed now in deepest reverence to the boy Mutsuhito, in whose veins ran the blood of their ancient dynasty. He was to them truly divine; not in the impossible, superstitious sense, but as a sort of human channel flowing between the old gods and modern men. Through him were reconstruction and new national glory to be gained. A life laid down in his cause were but newly come alive.