In this question of government there is still something further to be explained. It should be understood that the Shōgun did not personally rule any more than the Mikado. What for want of a better name may be termed the figure-head system of government is noticeable throughout the whole course of Japanese history. Real and nominal power are rarely seen combined either socially or politically. The family, which is the unit of society, is nominally controlled by the individual who is its head. But practically the latter is in most cases a figure-head, the real power being vested in the group of relatives who form the family council. The same principle applied to the administration of feudal territories. These were not administered by the feudal proprietors themselves. The control was entrusted to a special class of hereditary retainers. Here again, however, the authority was more nominal than real, the direction of affairs being left, as a rule, to the more active intelligence of retainers of inferior rank. Similarly the Shōgun was usually a mere puppet in the hands of his Council, the members of which were in turn controlled by subordinate office-holders. This predilection for rule by proxy was encouraged by the customs of adoption and abdication, the effects of which, as regards Mikado and Shōgun alike, were seen in shortness of reign, or administration, and the frequency of the rule of minors. The highly artificial and, indeed, contradictory character which distinguished all Japanese administration had certain advantages. Abdication was found to be not incompatible in practice with an active, though unacknowledged, supervision of affairs. It also provided a convenient method of getting rid of persons whose presence in office was for any reason inconvenient. In a society, too, where adoption was the rule rather than the exception the failure of a direct heir to the Throne, or Shōgunate, presented little difficulty. It was a thing to be arranged by the Council of State, just as in less exalted spheres such matters were referred to the family council. Questions of succession were thus greatly simplified. In this contradiction, moreover, between appearance and reality, in the retention of the shadow without the substance of power, lay the strength of both monarchy and Shōgunate. It was, in fact, the secret of their stability, and explains the unbroken continuity of the dynasty on which the nation prides itself. Under such a system the weakness or incompetence of nominal rulers produced no violent convulsions in the body politic. The machinery of government worked smoothly on, unaffected by the personality of those theoretically responsible for its control; and as time went by the tendency of office to divorce itself from the discharge of the duties nominally associated with it increased everywhere, with the result that in the last days of the Shōgunate administrative policy was largely inspired at the seat of