PLEASE READ THIS WHOLE POST. IT?S SO DANG TRUE*
This post really means something to me so you should feel it too!

1. At least 2 people in this world love you so much they would die for you.

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don?t like you.

5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

6. You mean the world to someone.

7. If not for you, someone may not be living.

8. You are special and unique.

9. Someone that you don?t even know exists loves you.

10. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

11. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look: you most likey turned your back on the world.

12. When you think you have no chance of getting what you want, you probably won?t get, but if you believe in yourself, probably, sooner or later, you will get it.

13. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

14. Always tell someone how you feel about them; you will feel much better when they know.

15. If you have a great friend, take the time to let them know that they are great.

Add this as a comment to ten of your friends tonight and at midnight your true love will love you. Something good will happen to you at 2:25 tomorrow. Get ready for the biggest shock of your life. Whoever breaks this chain letter will be cursed with 10 realationship problems for the next ten years tag ur it!! this is so scary!!! Send this to 15 ppl in the next 143 min. and then press F6 and your crushes name will appear in big letters!! it is so scary because it works?. but if you break the chain... you will be crused w/ realationship problems. NO SEND BACKS If you have less than 15 friends its okay.
I TOLD YOU!

just thought id send it and ppl should know how much i hates these things, and i dont usually send them out (forget the last paragrahp its a lie)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you all. Please be seated. General Hendrix, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thanks for the kind introduction. I'm honored to stand with the men and women of the Military Officers Association of America. I appreciate the Board of Directors who are here, and the leaders who have given me this platform from which to speak. I'm proud to be here with active members of the United States military. Thank you for your service. I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)

I am pleased also to stand with members of the diplomatic corps, including many representing nations that have been attacked by al Qaeda and its terrorist allies since September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.) Your presence here reminds us that we're engaged in a global war against an enemy that threatens all civilized nations. And today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom; we stand together to defeat the terrorists; and were working to secure the peace for generations to come.

I appreciate my Attorney General joining us today, Al Gonzales. Thank you for being here. (Applause.) The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, is with us. (Applause.) Three members of the United States Senate -- I might say, three important members of the United States Senate -- Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens of Alaska. Thank you for joining us, Senator. (Applause.) Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi. (Applause.) The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia. (Applause.)

I thank Norb Ryan, as well, for his leadership. I do appreciate all the folks that are at Walter Reed who have joined us today. I'm going to tell the parents of our troops, we provide great health care to those who wear the uniform. I'm proud of those folks at Bethesda and Walter Reed -- are providing you the best possible care to help you recover from your injuries. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for joining us here today. May God bless you in your recovery. (Applause.)

Next week, America will mark the fifth anniversary of September the 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. As this day approaches, it brings with it a flood of painful memories. We remember the horror of watching planes fly into the World Trade Center, and seeing the towers collapse before our eyes. We remember the sight of the Pentagon, broken and in flames. We remember the rescue workers who rushed into burning buildings to save lives, knowing they might never emerge again. We remember the brave passengers who charged the cockpit of their hijacked plane, and stopped the terrorists from reaching their target and killing more innocent civilians. We remember the cold brutality of the enemy who inflicted this harm on our country -- an enemy whose leader, Osama bin Laden, declared the massacre of nearly 3,000 people that day -- I quote -- "an unparalleled and magnificent feat of valor, unmatched by any in humankind before them."

In five years since our nation was attacked, al Qaeda and terrorists it has inspired have continued to attack across the world. They've killed the innocent in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, in Central Asia and the Far East, and beyond. Most recently, they attempted to strike again in the most ambitious plot since the attacks of September the 11th -- a plan to blow up passenger planes headed for America over the Atlantic Ocean.

Five years after our nation was attacked, the terrorist danger remains. We're a nation at war -- and America and her allies are fighting this war with relentless determination across the world. Together with our coalition partners, we've removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they're carried out. We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront -- and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory. (Applause.)

In the five years since our nation was attacked, we've also learned a great deal about the enemy we face in this war. We've learned about them through videos and audio recordings, and letters and statements they've posted on websites. We've learned about them from captured enemy documents that the terrorists have never meant for us to see. Together, these documents and statements have given us clear insight into the mind of our enemies -- their ideology, their ambitions, and their strategy to defeat us.

We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us -- and we need to take their words seriously. So today I'm going to describe -- in the terrorists' own words, what they believe… what they hope to accomplish, and how they intend to accomplish it. I'll discuss how the enemy has adapted in the wake of our sustained offensive against them, and the threat posed by different strains of violent Islamic radicalism. I'll explain the strategy we're pursuing to protect America, by defeating the terrorists on the battlefield, and defeating their hateful ideology in the battle of ideas.

The terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men without conscience -- but they're not madmen. They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but not insane. These al Qaeda terrorists and those who share their ideology are violent Sunni extremists. They're driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power. They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a "Caliphate" -- where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology. Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks -- in his words -- "a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous… [Caliphate]."

This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We know this because al Qaeda has told us. About two months ago, the terrorist Zawahiri -- he's al Qaeda's second in command -- declared that al Qaeda intends to impose its rule in "every land that was a home for Islam, from [Spain] to Iraq. He went on to say, "The whole world is an open field for us."

We know what this radical empire would look like in practice, because we saw how the radicals imposed their ideology on the people of Afghanistan. Under the rule of the Taliban and al Qaeda, Afghanistan was a totalitarian nightmare -- a land where women were imprisoned in their homes, men were beaten for missing prayer meetings, girls could not go to school, and children were forbidden the smallest pleasures like flying kites. Religious police roamed the streets, beating and detaining civilians for perceived offenses. Women were publicly whipped. Summary executions were held in Kabul's soccer stadium in front of cheering mobs. And Afghanistan was turned into a launching pad for horrific attacks against America and other parts of the civilized world -- including many Muslim nations.

The goal of these Sunni extremists is to remake the entire Muslim world in their radical image. In pursuit of their imperial aims, these extremists say there can be no compromise or dialogue with those they call "infidels" -- a category that includes America, the world's free nations, Jews, and all Muslims who reject their extreme vision of Islam. They reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the free world. Again, hear the words of Osama bin Laden earlier this year: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

These radicals have declared their uncompromising hostility to freedom. It is foolish to think that you can negotiate with them. (Applause.) We see the uncompromising nature of the enemy in many captured terrorist documents. Here are just two examples: After the liberation of Afghanistan, coalition forces searching through a terrorist safe house in that country found a copy of the al Qaeda charter. This charter states that "there will be continuing enmity until everyone believes in Allah. We will not meet [the enemy] halfway. There will be no room for dialogue with them." Another document was found in 2000 by British police during an anti-terrorist raid in London -- a grisly al Qaeda manual that includes chapters with titles such as "Guidelines for Beating and Killing Hostages." This manual declares that their vision of Islam "does not… make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it." The confrontation… calls for… the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun."

Still other captured documents show al Qaeda's strategy for infiltrating Muslim nations, establishing terrorist enclaves, overthrowing governments, and building their totalitarian empire. We see this strategy laid out in a captured al Qaeda document found during a recent raid in Iraq, which describes their plans to infiltrate and take over Iraq's western Anbar Province. The document lays out an elaborate al Qaeda governing structure for the region that includes an Education Department, a Social Services Department, a Justice Department, and an "Execution Unit" responsible for "Sorting out, Arrest, Murder, and Destruction."

According to their public statements, countries that have -- they have targeted stretch from the Middle East to Africa, to Southeast Asia. Through this strategy, al Qaeda and its allies intend to create numerous, decentralized operating bases across the world, from which they can plan new attacks, and advance their vision of a unified, totalitarian Islamic state that can confront and eventually destroy the free world.

These violent extremists know that to realize this vision, they must first drive out the main obstacle that stands in their way -- the United States of America. According to al Qaeda, their strategy to defeat America has two parts: First, they're waging a campaign of terror across the world. They're targeting our forces abroad, hoping that the American people will grow tired of casualties and give up the fight. And they're targeting America's financial centers and economic infrastructure at home, hoping to terrorize us and cause our economy to collapse.

Bin Laden calls this his "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan." And he cited the attacks of 9/11 as evidence that such a plan can succeed. With the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden says, "al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America… lost -- according to the lowest estimate -- $500 billion… Meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars” of America. Bin Laden concludes from this experience that "America is definitely a great power, with… unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation." He went on to say, "Therefore, it is very easy to target the flimsy base and concentrate on their weak points, and even if we're able to target one-tenth of these weak points, we will be able [to] crush and destroy them."

Secondly, along with this campaign of terror, the enemy has a propaganda strategy. Osama bin Laden laid out this strategy in a letter to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, that coalition forces uncovered in Afghanistan in 2002. In it, bin Laden says that al Qaeda intends to "[launch]," in his words, "a media campaign… to create a wedge between the American people and their government." This media campaign, bin Laden says, will send the American people a number of messages, including "that their government [will] bring them more losses, in finances and casualties." And he goes on to say that "they are being sacrificed… to serve… the big investors, especially the Jews." Bin Laden says that by delivering these messages, al Qaeda "aims at creating pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan."

Bin Laden and his allies are absolutely convinced they can succeed in forcing America to retreat and causing our economic collapse. They believe our nation is weak and decadent, and lacking in patience and resolve. And they're wrong. (Applause.) Osama bin Laden has written that the "defeat of... American forces in Beirut" in 1983 is proof America does not have the stomach to stay in the fight. He's declared that "in Somalia… the United States [pulled] out, trailing disappointment, defeat, and failure behind it." And last year, the terrorist Zawahiri declared that Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet."

These terrorists hope to drive America and our coalition out of Afghanistan, so they can restore the safe haven they lost when coalition forces drove them out five years ago. But they've made clear that the most important front in their struggle against America is Iraq -- the nation bin Laden has declared the "capital of the Caliphate." Hear the words of bin Laden: "I now address… the whole… Islamic nation: Listen and understand… The most… serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War… [that] is raging in [Iraq]." He calls it "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam." He says, "The whole world is watching this war," and that it will end in "victory and glory or misery and humiliation." For al Qaeda, Iraq is not a distraction from their war on America -- it is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided.

Here is what al Qaeda says they will do if they succeed in driving us out of Iraq: The terrorist Zawahiri has said that al Qaeda will proceed with "several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of Caliphate… The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. And the fourth stage: …the clash with Israel."

These evil men know that a fundamental threat to their aspirations is a democratic Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. They know that given a choice, the Iraqi people will never choose to live in the totalitarian state the extremists hope to establish. And that is why we must not, and we will not, give the enemy victory in Iraq by deserting the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

Last year, the terrorist Zarqawi declared in a message posted on the Internet that democracy "is the essence of infidelity and deviation from the right path." The Iraqi people disagree. Last December, nearly 12 million Iraqis from every ethnic and religious community turned out to vote in their country's third free election in less than a year. Iraq now has a unity government that represents Iraq's diverse population -- and al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq breathed his last breath. (Applause.)

Despite these strategic setbacks, the enemy will continue to fight freedom's advance in Iraq, because they understand the stakes in this war. Again, hear the words of bin Laden, in a message to the American people earlier this year. He says: "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

Now, I know some of our country hear the terrorists' words, and hope that they will not, or cannot, do what they say. History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called "What Is To Be Done?" -- in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin's words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews. The world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously. We're on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, and we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed. (Applause.)

Five years into this struggle, it's important to take stock of what's been accomplished -- and the difficult work that remains. Al Qaeda has been weakened by our sustained offensive against them, and today it is harder for al Qaeda's leaders to operate freely, to move money, or to communicate with their operatives and facilitators. Yet al Qaeda remains dangerous and determined. Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in hiding in remote regions of this world. Al Qaeda continues to adapt in the face of our global campaign against them. Increasingly, al Qaeda is taking advantage of the Internet to disseminate propaganda, and to conduct "virtual recruitment" and "virtual training" of new terrorists. Al Qaeda's leaders no longer need to meet face-to-face with their operatives. They can find new suicide bombers, and facilitate new terrorist attacks, without ever laying eyes on those they're training, financing, or sending to strike us.

As al Qaeda changes, the broader terrorist movement is also changing, becoming more dispersed and self-directed. More and more, we're facing threats from locally established terrorist cells that are inspired by al Qaeda's ideology and goals, but do not necessarily have direct links to al Qaeda, such as training and funding. Some of these groups are made up of "homegrown" terrorists, militant extremists who were born and educated in Western nations, were indoctrinated by radical Islamists or attracted to their ideology, and joined the violent extremist cause. These locally established cells appear to be responsible for a number of attacks and plots, including those in Madrid, and Canada, and other countries across the world.

As we continue to fight al Qaeda and these Sunni extremists inspired by their radical ideology, we also face the threat posed by Shia extremists, who are learning from al Qaeda, increasing their assertiveness, and stepping up their threats. Like the vast majority of Sunnis, the vast majority of Shia across the world reject the vision of extremists -- and in Iraq, millions of Shia have defied terrorist threats to vote in free elections, and have shown their desire to live in freedom. The Shia extremists want to deny them this right. This Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous, and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. And the Shia extremists have achieved something that al Qaeda has so far failed to do: In 1979, they took control of a major power, the nation of Iran, subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny, and using that nation's resources to fund the spread of terror and pursue their radical agenda.

Like al Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims: They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East. To achieve these aims, they are funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which allow them to attack Israel and America by proxy. Hezbollah, the source of the current instability in Lebanon, has killed more Americans than any terrorist organization except al Qaeda. Unlike al Qaeda, they've not yet attacked the American homeland. Yet they're directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans abroad. It was Hezbollah that was behind the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. And Saudi Hezbollah was behind the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans, an attack conducted by terrorists who we believe were working with Iranian officials.

Just as we must take the words of the Sunni extremists seriously, we must take the words of the Shia extremists seriously. Listen to the words of Hezbollah's leader, the terrorist Nasrallah, who has declared his hatred of America. He says, "Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute… Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America."

Iran's leaders, who back Hezbollah, have also declared their absolute hostility to America. Last October, Iran's President declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- "whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved… I say that this… goal is achievable." Less than three months ago, Iran's President declared to America and other Western powers: "open your eyes and see the fate of pharaoh… if you do not abandon the path of falsehood… your doomed destiny will be annihilation." Less than two months ago, he warned: "The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes… [America and the West] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region." He also delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

America will not bow down to tyrants. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Americans -- and now the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons. The world is working together to prevent Iran's regime from acquiring the tools of mass murder. The international community has made a reasonable proposal to Iran's leaders, and given them the opportunity to set their nation on a better course. So far, Iran's leaders have rejected this offer. Their choice is increasingly isolating the great Iranian nation from the international community, and denying the Iranian people an opportunity for greater economic prosperity. It's time for Iran's leader to make a different choice. And we've made our choice. We'll continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution. The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

The Shia and Sunni extremists represent different faces of the same threat. They draw inspiration from different sources, but both seek to impose a dark vision of violent Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. They oppose the advance of freedom, and they want to gain control of weapons of mass destruction. If they succeed in undermining fragile democracies, like Iraq, and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their dangerous goals. Each strain of violent Islamic radicalism would be emboldened in their efforts to topple moderate governments and establish terrorist safe havens.

Imagine a world in which they were able to control governments, a world awash with oil and they would use oil resources to punish industrialized nations. And they would use those resources to fuel their radical agenda, and pursue and purchase weapons of mass murder. And armed with nuclear weapons, they would blackmail the free world, and spread their ideologies of hate, and raise a mortal threat to the American people. If we allow them to do this, if we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity, and demand to know why we did not act.

I'm not going to allow this to happen -- and no future American President can allow it either. America did not seek this global struggle, but we're answering history's call with confidence and a clear strategy. Today we're releasing a document called the "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism." This is an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001. This strategy was first released in February 2003; it's been updated to take into account the changing nature of this enemy. This strategy document is posted on the White House website -- whitehouse.gov. And I urge all Americans to read it.

Our strategy for combating terrorism has five basic elements:

First, we're determined to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur. So we're taking the fight to the enemy. The best way to protect America is to stay on the offense. Since 9/11, our coalition has captured or killed al Qaeda managers and operatives, and scores of other terrorists across the world. The enemy is living under constant pressure, and we intend to keep it that way -- and this adds to our security. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it's harder for them to plan and execute new attacks.

We're also fighting the enemy here at home. We've given our law enforcement and intelligence professionals the tools they need to stop the terrorists in our midst. We passed the Patriot Act to break down the wall that prevented law enforcement and intelligence from sharing vital information. We created the Terrorist Surveillance Program to monitor the communications between al Qaeda commanders abroad and terrorist operatives within our borders. If al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why, in order to stop attacks. (Applause.)

I want to thank these three Senators for working with us to give our law enforcement and intelligence officers the tools necessary to do their jobs. (Applause.) And over the last five years, federal, state, and local law enforcement have used those tools to break up terrorist cells, and to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters in New York, and Oregon, and Virginia, and Texas, and New Jersey, and Illinois, Ohio, and other states. By taking the battle to the terrorists and their supporters on our own soil and across the world, we've stopped a number of al Qaeda plots.

Second, we're determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and terrorists who would use them without hesitation. Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the AQ Khan network. This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclea

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--- highly wharepaku ---

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you all. Please be seated. General Hendrix, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thanks for the kind introduction. I'm honored to stand with the men and women of the Military Officers Association of America. I appreciate the Board of Directors who are here, and the leaders who have given me this platform from which to speak. I'm proud to be here with active members of the United States military. Thank you for your service. I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)

I am pleased also to stand with members of the diplomatic corps, including many representing nations that have been attacked by al Qaeda and its terrorist allies since September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.) Your presence here reminds us that we're engaged in a global war against an enemy that threatens all civilized nations. And today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom; we stand together to defeat the terrorists; and were working to secure the peace for generations to come.

I appreciate my Attorney General joining us today, Al Gonzales. Thank you for being here. (Applause.) The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, is with us. (Applause.) Three members of the United States Senate -- I might say, three important members of the United States Senate -- Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens of Alaska. Thank you for joining us, Senator. (Applause.) Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi. (Applause.) The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia. (Applause.)

I thank Norb Ryan, as well, for his leadership. I do appreciate all the folks that are at Walter Reed who have joined us today. I'm going to tell the parents of our troops, we provide great health care to those who wear the uniform. I'm proud of those folks at Bethesda and Walter Reed -- are providing you the best possible care to help you recover from your injuries. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for joining us here today. May God bless you in your recovery. (Applause.)

Next week, America will mark the fifth anniversary of September the 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. As this day approaches, it brings with it a flood of painful memories. We remember the horror of watching planes fly into the World Trade Center, and seeing the towers collapse before our eyes. We remember the sight of the Pentagon, broken and in flames. We remember the rescue workers who rushed into burning buildings to save lives, knowing they might never emerge again. We remember the brave passengers who charged the cockpit of their hijacked plane, and stopped the terrorists from reaching their target and killing more innocent civilians. We remember the cold brutality of the enemy who inflicted this harm on our country -- an enemy whose leader, Osama bin Laden, declared the massacre of nearly 3,000 people that day -- I quote -- "an unparalleled and magnificent feat of valor, unmatched by any in humankind before them."

In five years since our nation was attacked, al Qaeda and terrorists it has inspired have continued to attack across the world. They've killed the innocent in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, in Central Asia and the Far East, and beyond. Most recently, they attempted to strike again in the most ambitious plot since the attacks of September the 11th -- a plan to blow up passenger planes headed for America over the Atlantic Ocean.

Five years after our nation was attacked, the terrorist danger remains. We're a nation at war -- and America and her allies are fighting this war with relentless determination across the world. Together with our coalition partners, we've removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they're carried out. We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront -- and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory. (Applause.)

In the five years since our nation was attacked, we've also learned a great deal about the enemy we face in this war. We've learned about them through videos and audio recordings, and letters and statements they've posted on websites. We've learned about them from captured enemy documents that the terrorists have never meant for us to see. Together, these documents and statements have given us clear insight into the mind of our enemies -- their ideology, their ambitions, and their strategy to defeat us.

We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us -- and we need to take their words seriously. So today I'm going to describe -- in the terrorists' own words, what they believe… what they hope to accomplish, and how they intend to accomplish it. I'll discuss how the enemy has adapted in the wake of our sustained offensive against them, and the threat posed by different strains of violent Islamic radicalism. I'll explain the strategy we're pursuing to protect America, by defeating the terrorists on the battlefield, and defeating their hateful ideology in the battle of ideas.

The terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men without conscience -- but they're not madmen. They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but not insane. These al Qaeda terrorists and those who share their ideology are violent Sunni extremists. They're driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power. They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a "Caliphate" -- where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology. Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks -- in his words -- "a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous… [Caliphate]."

This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We know this because al Qaeda has told us. About two months ago, the terrorist Zawahiri -- he's al Qaeda's second in command -- declared that al Qaeda intends to impose its rule in "every land that was a home for Islam, from [Spain] to Iraq. He went on to say, "The whole world is an open field for us."

We know what this radical empire would look like in practice, because we saw how the radicals imposed their ideology on the people of Afghanistan. Under the rule of the Taliban and al Qaeda, Afghanistan was a totalitarian nightmare -- a land where women were imprisoned in their homes, men were beaten for missing prayer meetings, girls could not go to school, and children were forbidden the smallest pleasures like flying kites. Religious police roamed the streets, beating and detaining civilians for perceived offenses. Women were publicly whipped. Summary executions were held in Kabul's soccer stadium in front of cheering mobs. And Afghanistan was turned into a launching pad for horrific attacks against America and other parts of the civilized world -- including many Muslim nations.

The goal of these Sunni extremists is to remake the entire Muslim world in their radical image. In pursuit of their imperial aims, these extremists say there can be no compromise or dialogue with those they call "infidels" -- a category that includes America, the world's free nations, Jews, and all Muslims who reject their extreme vision of Islam. They reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the free world. Again, hear the words of Osama bin Laden earlier this year: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

These radicals have declared their uncompromising hostility to freedom. It is foolish to think that you can negotiate with them. (Applause.) We see the uncompromising nature of the enemy in many captured terrorist documents. Here are just two examples: After the liberation of Afghanistan, coalition forces searching through a terrorist safe house in that country found a copy of the al Qaeda charter. This charter states that "there will be continuing enmity until everyone believes in Allah. We will not meet [the enemy] halfway. There will be no room for dialogue with them." Another document was found in 2000 by British police during an anti-terrorist raid in London -- a grisly al Qaeda manual that includes chapters with titles such as "Guidelines for Beating and Killing Hostages." This manual declares that their vision of Islam "does not… make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it." The confrontation… calls for… the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun."

Still other captured documents show al Qaeda's strategy for infiltrating Muslim nations, establishing terrorist enclaves, overthrowing governments, and building their totalitarian empire. We see this strategy laid out in a captured al Qaeda document found during a recent raid in Iraq, which describes their plans to infiltrate and take over Iraq's western Anbar Province. The document lays out an elaborate al Qaeda governing structure for the region that includes an Education Department, a Social Services Department, a Justice Department, and an "Execution Unit" responsible for "Sorting out, Arrest, Murder, and Destruction."

According to their public statements, countries that have -- they have targeted stretch from the Middle East to Africa, to Southeast Asia. Through this strategy, al Qaeda and its allies intend to create numerous, decentralized operating bases across the world, from which they can plan new attacks, and advance their vision of a unified, totalitarian Islamic state that can confront and eventually destroy the free world.

These violent extremists know that to realize this vision, they must first drive out the main obstacle that stands in their way -- the United States of America. According to al Qaeda, their strategy to defeat America has two parts: First, they're waging a campaign of terror across the world. They're targeting our forces abroad, hoping that the American people will grow tired of casualties and give up the fight. And they're targeting America's financial centers and economic infrastructure at home, hoping to terrorize us and cause our economy to collapse.

Bin Laden calls this his "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan." And he cited the attacks of 9/11 as evidence that such a plan can succeed. With the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden says, "al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America… lost -- according to the lowest estimate -- $500 billion… Meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars” of America. Bin Laden concludes from this experience that "America is definitely a great power, with… unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation." He went on to say, "Therefore, it is very easy to target the flimsy base and concentrate on their weak points, and even if we're able to target one-tenth of these weak points, we will be able [to] crush and destroy them."

Secondly, along with this campaign of terror, the enemy has a propaganda strategy. Osama bin Laden laid out this strategy in a letter to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, that coalition forces uncovered in Afghanistan in 2002. In it, bin Laden says that al Qaeda intends to "[launch]," in his words, "a media campaign… to create a wedge between the American people and their government." This media campaign, bin Laden says, will send the American people a number of messages, including "that their government [will] bring them more losses, in finances and casualties." And he goes on to say that "they are being sacrificed… to serve… the big investors, especially the Jews." Bin Laden says that by delivering these messages, al Qaeda "aims at creating pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan."

Bin Laden and his allies are absolutely convinced they can succeed in forcing America to retreat and causing our economic collapse. They believe our nation is weak and decadent, and lacking in patience and resolve. And they're wrong. (Applause.) Osama bin Laden has written that the "defeat of... American forces in Beirut" in 1983 is proof America does not have the stomach to stay in the fight. He's declared that "in Somalia… the United States [pulled] out, trailing disappointment, defeat, and failure behind it." And last year, the terrorist Zawahiri declared that Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet."

These terrorists hope to drive America and our coalition out of Afghanistan, so they can restore the safe haven they lost when coalition forces drove them out five years ago. But they've made clear that the most important front in their struggle against America is Iraq -- the nation bin Laden has declared the "capital of the Caliphate." Hear the words of bin Laden: "I now address… the whole… Islamic nation: Listen and understand… The most… serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War… [that] is raging in [Iraq]." He calls it "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam." He says, "The whole world is watching this war," and that it will end in "victory and glory or misery and humiliation." For al Qaeda, Iraq is not a distraction from their war on America -- it is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided.

Here is what al Qaeda says they will do if they succeed in driving us out of Iraq: The terrorist Zawahiri has said that al Qaeda will proceed with "several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of Caliphate… The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. And the fourth stage: …the clash with Israel."

These evil men know that a fundamental threat to their aspirations is a democratic Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. They know that given a choice, the Iraqi people will never choose to live in the totalitarian state the extremists hope to establish. And that is why we must not, and we will not, give the enemy victory in Iraq by deserting the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

Last year, the terrorist Zarqawi declared in a message posted on the Internet that democracy "is the essence of infidelity and deviation from the right path." The Iraqi people disagree. Last December, nearly 12 million Iraqis from every ethnic and religious community turned out to vote in their country's third free election in less than a year. Iraq now has a unity government that represents Iraq's diverse population -- and al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq breathed his last breath. (Applause.)

Despite these strategic setbacks, the enemy will continue to fight freedom's advance in Iraq, because they understand the stakes in this war. Again, hear the words of bin Laden, in a message to the American people earlier this year. He says: "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

Now, I know some of our country hear the terrorists' words, and hope that they will not, or cannot, do what they say. History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called "What Is To Be Done?" -- in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin's words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews. The world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously. We're on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, and we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed. (Applause.)

Five years into this struggle, it's important to take stock of what's been accomplished -- and the difficult work that remains. Al Qaeda has been weakened by our sustained offensive against them, and today it is harder for al Qaeda's leaders to operate freely, to move money, or to communicate with their operatives and facilitators. Yet al Qaeda remains dangerous and determined. Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in hiding in remote regions of this world. Al Qaeda continues to adapt in the face of our global campaign against them. Increasingly, al Qaeda is taking advantage of the Internet to disseminate propaganda, and to conduct "virtual recruitment" and "virtual training" of new terrorists. Al Qaeda's leaders no longer need to meet face-to-face with their operatives. They can find new suicide bombers, and facilitate new terrorist attacks, without ever laying eyes on those they're training, financing, or sending to strike us.

As al Qaeda changes, the broader terrorist movement is also changing, becoming more dispersed and self-directed. More and more, we're facing threats from locally established terrorist cells that are inspired by al Qaeda's ideology and goals, but do not necessarily have direct links to al Qaeda, such as training and funding. Some of these groups are made up of "homegrown" terrorists, militant extremists who were born and educated in Western nations, were indoctrinated by radical Islamists or attracted to their ideology, and joined the violent extremist cause. These locally established cells appear to be responsible for a number of attacks and plots, including those in Madrid, and Canada, and other countries across the world.

As we continue to fight al Qaeda and these Sunni extremists inspired by their radical ideology, we also face the threat posed by Shia extremists, who are learning from al Qaeda, increasing their assertiveness, and stepping up their threats. Like the vast majority of Sunnis, the vast majority of Shia across the world reject the vision of extremists -- and in Iraq, millions of Shia have defied terrorist threats to vote in free elections, and have shown their desire to live in freedom. The Shia extremists want to deny them this right. This Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous, and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. And the Shia extremists have achieved something that al Qaeda has so far failed to do: In 1979, they took control of a major power, the nation of Iran, subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny, and using that nation's resources to fund the spread of terror and pursue their radical agenda.

Like al Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims: They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East. To achieve these aims, they are funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which allow them to attack Israel and America by proxy. Hezbollah, the source of the current instability in Lebanon, has killed more Americans than any terrorist organization except al Qaeda. Unlike al Qaeda, they've not yet attacked the American homeland. Yet they're directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans abroad. It was Hezbollah that was behind the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. And Saudi Hezbollah was behind the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans, an attack conducted by terrorists who we believe were working with Iranian officials.

Just as we must take the words of the Sunni extremists seriously, we must take the words of the Shia extremists seriously. Listen to the words of Hezbollah's leader, the terrorist Nasrallah, who has declared his hatred of America. He says, "Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute… Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America."

Iran's leaders, who back Hezbollah, have also declared their absolute hostility to America. Last October, Iran's President declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- "whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved… I say that this… goal is achievable." Less than three months ago, Iran's President declared to America and other Western powers: "open your eyes and see the fate of pharaoh… if you do not abandon the path of falsehood… your doomed destiny will be annihilation." Less than two months ago, he warned: "The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes… [America and the West] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region." He also delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

America will not bow down to tyrants. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Americans -- and now the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons. The world is working together to prevent Iran's regime from acquiring the tools of mass murder. The international community has made a reasonable proposal to Iran's leaders, and given them the opportunity to set their nation on a better course. So far, Iran's leaders have rejected this offer. Their choice is increasingly isolating the great Iranian nation from the international community, and denying the Iranian people an opportunity for greater economic prosperity. It's time for Iran's leader to make a different choice. And we've made our choice. We'll continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution. The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

The Shia and Sunni extremists represent different faces of the same threat. They draw inspiration from different sources, but both seek to impose a dark vision of violent Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. They oppose the advance of freedom, and they want to gain control of weapons of mass destruction. If they succeed in undermining fragile democracies, like Iraq, and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their dangerous goals. Each strain of violent Islamic radicalism would be emboldened in their efforts to topple moderate governments and establish terrorist safe havens.

Imagine a world in which they were able to control governments, a world awash with oil and they would use oil resources to punish industrialized nations. And they would use those resources to fuel their radical agenda, and pursue and purchase weapons of mass murder. And armed with nuclear weapons, they would blackmail the free world, and spread their ideologies of hate, and raise a mortal threat to the American people. If we allow them to do this, if we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity, and demand to know why we did not act.

I'm not going to allow this to happen -- and no future American President can allow it either. America did not seek this global struggle, but we're answering history's call with confidence and a clear strategy. Today we're releasing a document called the "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism." This is an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001. This strategy was first released in February 2003; it's been updated to take into account the changing nature of this enemy. This strategy document is posted on the White House website -- whitehouse.gov. And I urge all Americans to read it.

Our strategy for combating terrorism has five basic elements:

First, we're determined to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur. So we're taking the fight to the enemy. The best way to protect America is to stay on the offense. Since 9/11, our coalition has captured or killed al Qaeda managers and operatives, and scores of other terrorists across the world. The enemy is living under constant pressure, and we intend to keep it that way -- and this adds to our security. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it's harder for them to plan and execute new attacks.

We're also fighting the enemy here at home. We've given our law enforcement and intelligence professionals the tools they need to stop the terrorists in our midst. We passed the Patriot Act to break down the wall that prevented law enforcement and intelligence from sharing vital information. We created the Terrorist Surveillance Program to monitor the communications between al Qaeda commanders abroad and terrorist operatives within our borders. If al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why, in order to stop attacks. (Applause.)

I want to thank these three Senators for working with us to give our law enforcement and intelligence officers the tools necessary to do their jobs. (Applause.) And over the last five years, federal, state, and local law enforcement have used those tools to break up terrorist cells, and to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters in New York, and Oregon, and Virginia, and Texas, and New Jersey, and Illinois, Ohio, and other states. By taking the battle to the terrorists and their supporters on our own soil and across the world, we've stopped a number of al Qaeda plots.

Second, we're determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and terrorists who would use them without hesitation. Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the AQ Khan network. This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. And we launched the Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition of more than 70 nations that is working together to stop shipments related to weapons of mass destruction on land, at sea, and in the air. The greatest threat this world faces is the danger of extremists and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction -- and this is a threat America cannot defeat on her own. We applaud the determined efforts of many nations around the world to stop the spread of these dangerous weapons. Together, we pledge we'll continue to work together to stop the world's most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons. (Applause.)

Third, we're determined to deny terrorists the support of outlaw regimes. After September the 11th, I laid out a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they're equally guilty of murder. Thanks to our efforts, there are now three fewer state sponsors of terror in the world than there were on September the 11th, 2001. Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror. And the nation of Libya has renounced terrorism, and given up its weapons of mass destruction programs, and its nuclear materials and equipment. Over the past five years, we've acted to disrupt the flow of weapons and support from terrorist states to terrorist networks. And we have made clear that any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. (Applause.)

Fourth, we're determined to deny terrorist networks control of any nation, or territory within a nation. So, along with our coalition and the Iraqi government, we'll stop the terrorists from taking control of Iraq, and establishing a new safe haven from which to attack America and the free world. And we're working with friends and allies to deny the terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world. By helping governments reclaim full sovereign control over their territory, we make ourselves more secure.

Fifth, we're working to deny terrorists new recruits, by defeating their hateful ideology and spreading the hope of freedom -- by spreading the hope of freedom across the Middle East. For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits. And we saw the consequences on September the 11th, when the terrorists brought death and destruction to our country. The policy wasn't working.

The experience of September the 11th made clear, in the long run, the only way to secure our nation is to change the course of the Middle East. So America has committed its influence in the world to advancing freedom and liberty and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. (Applause.) We're taking the side of democratic leaders and moderates and reformers across the Middle East. We strongly support the voices of tolerance and moderation in the Muslim world. We're standing with Afghanistan's elected government against al Qaeda and the Taliban remnants that are trying to restore tyranny in that country. We're standing with Lebanon's young democracy against the foreign forces that are seeking to undermine the country's sovereignty and independence. And we're standing with the leaders of Iraq's unity government as they work to defeat the enemies of freedom, and chart a more hopeful course for their people. This is why victory is so important in Iraq. By helping freedom succeed in Iraq, we will help America, and the Middle East, and the world become more secure.

During the last five years we've learned a lot about this enemy. We've learned that they're cunning and sophisticated. We've witnessed their ability to change their methods and their tactics with deadly speed -- even as their murderous obsessions remain unchanging. We've seen that it's the terrorists who have declared war on Muslims, slaughtering huge numbers of innocent Muslim men and women around the world.

We know what the terrorists believe, we know what they have done, and we know what they intend to do. And now the world's free nations must summon the will to meet this great challenge. The road ahead is going to be difficult, and it will require more sacrifice. Yet we can have confidence in the outcome, because we've seen freedom conquer tyranny and terror before. In the 20th century, free nations confronted and defeated Nazi Germany. During the Cold War, we confronted Soviet communism, and today Europe is whole, free and at peace.

And now, freedom is once again contending with the forces of darkness and tyranny. This time, the battle is unfolding in a new region -- the broader Middle East. This time, we're not waiting for our enemies to gather in strength. This time, we're confronting them before they gain the capacity to inflict unspeakable damage on the world, and we're confronting their hateful ideology before it fully takes root.

We see a day when people across the Middle East have governments that honor their dignity, and unleash their creativity, and count their votes. We see a day when across this region citizens are allowed to express themselves freely, women have full rights, and children are educated and given the tools necessary to succeed in life. And we see a day when all the nations of the Middle East are allies in the cause of peace.

We fight for this day, because the security of our own citizens depends on it. This is the great ideological struggle of the 21st century -- and it is the calling of our generation. All civilized nations are bound together in this struggle between moderation and extremism. By coming together, we will roll back this grave threat to our way of life. We will help the people of the Middle East claim their freedom, and we will leave a safer and more hopeful world for our children and grandchildren.

God bless. (Applause.)

--
--- highly wharepaku ---

[link]

The Social Organization
THE late Professor Fiske, in his Outline of Cosmic Philosophy, made a very interesting remark about societies like those of China, ancient Egypt, and ancient Assyria. "I am expressing," he said, "something more than an analogy, I am describing a real homology so far as concerns the process of development,--when I say that these communities simulated modern European nations, much in the same way that a tree-fern of the carboniferous period simulated the exogenous trees of the present time." So far as this is true of China, it is likewise true of Japan. The constitution of the old Japanese society was no more than an amplification of the constitution of the family,--the patriarchal family of primitive times. All modern Western societies have been developed out of a like patriarchal condition: the early civilizations of Greece and Rome were similarly constructed, upon a lesser scale. But the patriarchal family in Europe was disintegrated thousands of years ago; the gens and the curia dissolved and disappeared; the originally distinct classes became fused together; and a total reorganization of society was gradually
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effected, everywhere resulting in the substitution of voluntary for compulsory coöperation. Industrial types of society developed; and a state-religion overshadowed the ancient and exclusive local cults. But society in Japan never, till within the present era, became one coherent body, never developed beyond the clan-stage. It remained a loose agglomerate of clan-groups, or tribes, each religiously and administratively independent of the rest; and this huge agglomerate was kept together, not by voluntary coöperation, but by strong compulsion. Down to the period of Meiji, and even for some time afterward, it was liable to split and fall asunder at any moment that the central coercive power showed signs of weakness. We may call it a feudalism; but it resembled European feudalism only as a tree-fern resembles a tree.

Let us first briefly consider the nature of the ancient Japanese society. Its original unit was not the household, but the patriarchal family,--that is to say, the gens or clan, a body of hundreds or thousands of persons claiming descent from a common ancestor, and so religiously united by a common ancestor-worship,--the cult of the Ujigami. As I have said before, there were two classes of these patriarchal families: the Ô-uji, or Great Clans; and the Ko-uji, or Little Clans. The lesser were branches of the greater, and subordinate to
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them,--so that the group formed by an Ô-uji with its Ko-uji might be loosely compared with the Roman curia or Greek phratry. Large bodies of serfs or slaves appear to have been attached to the various great Uji; and the number of these, even at a very early period, seems to have exceeded that of the members of the clans proper. The different names given to these subject-classes indicate different grades and kinds of servitude. One name was tomobé, signifying bound to a place, or district; another was yakabé, signifying bound to a family; a third was kakibé, signifying bound to a close, or estate; yet another and more general term was tami, which anciently signified "dependants," but is now used in the meaning of the English word "folk." . . . There is little doubt that the bulk of the people were in a condition of servitude, and that there were many forms of servitude. Mr. Spencer has pointed out that a general distinction between slavery and serfdom, in the sense commonly attached to each of those terms, is by no means easy to establish; the real state of a subject-class, especially in early forms of society, depending much more upon the character of the master, and the actual conditions of social development, than upon matters of privilege and legislation. In speaking of early Japanese institutions, the distinction is particularly hard to draw: we are still but little informed as to the condition of the subject
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classes in ancient times. It is safe to assert, however, that there were then really but two great classes,--a ruling oligarchy, divided into many grades; and a subject population, also divided into many grades. Slaves were tattooed, either on the face or some part of the body, with a mark indicating their ownership. Until within recent years this system of tattooing appears to have been maintained in the province of Satsuma,--where the marks were put especially upon the hands; and in many other provinces the lower classes were generally marked by a tattoo on the face. Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,--a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records. Their unions were not recognized: a fact which reminds us of the distinction among the Romans between connubium and contubernium; and the children of a slave-mother by a free father remained slaves.[1] In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state-property, and great numbers were
[1. In the year 645, the Emperor Kôtoku issued the following edict on the subject:--
"The law of men and women shall be that the children born of a free man and a free woman shall belong to the father; if a free man takes to wife a slave-woman, her children shall belong to the mother; if a free woman marries a slave-man, the children shall belong to the father; if they are slaves of two houses, the children shall belong to the mother. The children of temple-serfs shall follow the rule for freemen. But in regard to others who become slaves, they shall be treated according to the rule for slaves.--Aston's translation of the Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 202.]
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then emancipated,--including nearly all--probably all--who were artizans or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence; but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom. The greater number certainly had no family names,--which is considered evidence of a former slave-condition. Slaves proper were registered in the names of their owners: they do not seem to have had a cult of their own,--in early times, at least. But, prior to Meiji, only the aristocracy, samurai, doctors, and teachers--with perhaps a few other exceptions--could use a family name. Another queer bit of evidence or, the subject, furnished by the late Dr. Simmons, relates to the mode of wearing the hair among the subject-classes. Up to the time of the Ashikaga shôgunate (1334 A.D.), all classes excepting the nobility, samurai, Shintô priests, and doctors, shaved the greater part of the head, and wore queues; and this fashion of wearing the hair was called yakko-atama or dorei-atama--terms signifying "slave-head," and indicating that the fashion originated in a period of servitude.
About the origin of Japanese slavery, much remains to be learned. There are evidences of successive immigrations; and it is possible that some, at least, of the earlier Japanese settlers were reduced by later invaders to the status of servitude. Again,
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there was a considerable immigration of Koreans and Chinese, some of whom might have voluntarily sought servitude as a refuge from worse evils. But the subject remains obscure. We know, however, that degradation to slavery was a common punishment in early times; also, that debtors unable to pay became the slaves of their creditors; also, that thieves were sentenced to become the slaves of those whom they had robbed.[1] Evidently there were great differences in the conditions of servitude. The more unfortunate class of slaves were scarcely better off than domestic animals; but there were serfs who could not be bought or sold, nor employed at other than special work; these were of kin to their lords, and may have entered voluntarily into servitude for the sake of sustenance and protection. Their relation to their masters reminds us of that of the Roman client to the Roman patron.
As yet it is difficult to establish any clear distinction between the freedmen and the freemen of ancient Japanese society; but we know that the free population, ranking below the ruling class,
[1. An edict issued by the Empress Jitô, in 690, enacted that a father could sell his son into real slavery; but that debtors could be sold only into a kind of serfdom. The edict ran thus: "If a younger brother of the common people is sold by his elder brother, he should be classed with freemen; if a child is sold by his parents, he should be classed with slaves; persons confiscated into slavery, by way of payment of interest on debts, are to be classed with freemen; and their children, though born of a union with a slave, are to be all classed with freemen."--Aston's Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 402.]
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consisted of two great divisions: the kunitsuko and the tomonotsuko. The first were farmers, descendants perhaps of the earliest Mongol invaders, and were permitted to hold their own lands independently of the central government: they were lords of their own soil, but not nobles. The tomonotsuko were artizans,--probably of Korean or Chinese descent, for the most part,--and numbered no less than 180 clans. They followed hereditary occupations; and their clans were attached to the imperial clans, for which they were required to furnish skilled labour.
Originally each of the Ô-uji and Ko-uji had its own territory, chiefs, dependants, serfs, and slaves. The chieftainships were hereditary,--descending from father to son in direct succession from the original patriarch. The chief of a great clan was lord over the chiefs of the subclans attached to it: his authority was both religious and military. It must not be forgotten that religion and government were considered identical.
All Japanese clan-families were classed under three heads,--Kôbétsu, Shinbétsu, and Bambétsu. The Kôbétsu ("Imperial Branch") represented the so-called imperial families, claiming descent from the Sun-goddess; the Shinbétsu ("Divine Branch") were clans claiming descent from other deities, terrestrial or celestial; the Bambétsu ("Foreign Branch") represented the mass of the people. {p. 236} Thus it would seem that, by the ruling classes, the common people were originally considered strangers,--Japanese only by adoption. Some scholars think that the term Bambétsu was at first given to serfs or freedmen of Chinese or Korean descent. But this has not been proved. It is only certain that all society was divided into three classes, according to ancestry; that two of these classes constituted a ruling oligarchy;[1] and that the third, or "foreign" class represented the bulk of the nation,--the plebs.
There was a division also into castes--kabané or sei. (I use the term "castes," following Dr. Florenz, a leading authority on ancient Japanese civilization, who gives the meaning of sei as equivalent to that of the Sanscrit varna, signifying "caste" or "colour.") Every family in the three great divisions of Japanese society belonged to some caste; and each caste represented at first some occupation or calling. Caste would not seem to have developed any very rigid structure in Japan; and there were early tendencies to a confusion of the kabané. In the seventh century the confusion became so great that the Emperor Temmu thought it necessary to reorganize the sei; and by him all the clan-families were regrouped into eight new castes.
[1. Dr. Florenz accounts for the distinction between Kôbétsu and Shinbétsu as due to the existence of two military ruling classes,--resulting from two successive waves of invasion or immigration. The Kôbétsu were the followers of Jimmu Tennô; the Shinbétsu were earlier conquerors who had settled in Yamato prior to the advent of Jimmu. These first conquerors, he thinks, were not dispossessed.]
{p. 237}
Such was the primal constitution of Japanese society; and that society was, therefore, in no true sense of the term, a fully formed nation. Nor can the title of Emperor be correctly applied to its early rulers. The German scholar, Dr. Florenz, was the first to establish these facts, contrary to the assumption of Japanese historians. He has shown that the "heavenly sovereign" of the early ages was the hereditary chief of one Uji only,--which Uji, being the most powerful of all, exercised influence over many of the others. The authority of the "heavenly sovereign" did not extend over the country. But though not even a king,--outside of his own large group of patriarchal families,--he enjoyed three immense prerogatives. The first was the right of representing the different Uji before the common ancestral deity,--which implies the privileges and powers of a high priest. The second was the right of representing the different Uji in foreign relations: that is to say, he could make peace or declare war in the name of all the clans, and therefore exercised the supreme military authority. His third prerogative included the right to settle disputes between clans; the right to nominate a clan-patriarch, in case that the line of direct succession to the chieftainship of any Uji came to an end; the right to establish new Uji; and the right to abolish an Uji guilty of so acting as to endanger the welfare of the rest. He was, therefore, Supreme Pontiff, Supreme Military Commander, {p. 238} Supreme Arbitrator, and Supreme Magistrate. But he was not yet supreme king: his powers were exercised only by consent of the clans. Later he was to become the Great Khan in very fact, and even much more,--the Priest-Ruler, the God-King, the Deity-Incarnate. But with the growth of his dominion, it became more and more difficult for him to exercise all the functions originally combined in his authority; and, as a consequence of deputing those functions, his temporal sway was doomed to decline, even while his religious power continued to augment.
The earliest Japanese society was not, therefore, even a feudalism in the meaning which we commonly attach to that word: it was a union of clans at first combined for defence and offence,--each clan having a religion of its own. Gradually one clan-group, by power of wealth and numbers, obtained such domination that it was able to impose its cult upon all the rest, and to make its hereditary chief Supreme High Pontiff. The worship of the Sun-goddess so became a race-cult; but this worship did not diminish the relative importance of the other clan-cults,--it only furnished them with a common tradition. Eventually a nation formed; but the clan remained the real unit of society; and not until the present era of Meiji was its disintegration effected--at least in so far as legislation could accomplish.
{p. 239}
We may call that period during which the clans became really united under one head, and the national cult was established, the First Period of Japanese Social Evolution. However, the social organism did not develop to the limit of its type until the era of the Tokugawa shôguns,--so that, in order to study it as a completed structure, we must turn to modern times. Yet it had taken on the vague outline of its destined form as early as the reign of the Emperor Temmu, whose accession is generally dated 673 A.D. During that reign Buddhism appears to have become a powerful influence at court; for the Emperor practically imposed a vegetarian diet upon the people-proof positive of supreme power in fact as well as in theory. Even before this time society had been arranged into ranks and grades,--each of the upper grades being distinguished by the form and quality of the official head-dresses worn; but the Emperor Temmu established many new grades, and reorganized the whole administration, after the Chinese manner, in one hundred and eight departments. Japanese society then assumed, as to its upper ranks, nearly--all the hierarchical forms which it presented down to the era of the Tokugawa shôguns, who consolidated the system without seriously changing its fundamental structure. We may say that from the close of the First Period of its social evolution, the nation remained practically separated into two classes: the
{p. 240}
governing class, including all orders of the nobility and military; and the producing class, comprising all the rest. The chief event of the Second Period of the social evolution was the rise of the military power, which left the imperial religious authority intact, but usurped all the administrative functions(this subject will be considered in a later chapter). The society eventually crystallized by this military power was a very complex structure--outwardly resembling a huge feudalism, as we understand the term, but intrinsically different from any European feudalism that ever existed. The difference lay especially in the religious organization of the Japanese communities, each of which, retaining its particular cult and patriarchal administration, remained essentially separate from every other. The national cult was a bond of tradition, not of cohesion: there was no religious unity. Buddhism, though widely accepted, brought no real change into this order of things; for, whatever Buddhist creed a commune might profess, the real social bond remained the bond of the Ujigami. So that, even as fully developed under the Tokugawa rule, Japanese society was still but a great aggregate of clans and subclans, kept together by military coercion.
At the head of this vast aggregate was the Heavenly Sovereign, the Living God of the race,--Priest-Emperor and Pontiff Supreme,--representing the oldest dynasty in the world.
{p. 241}
Next to him stood the Kugé, or ancient nobility,--descendants of emperors and of gods. There were, in the time of the Tokugawa, 155 families of this high nobility. One of these, the Nakatomi, held, and still holds, the highest hereditary priesthood: the Nakatomi were, under the Emperor, the chiefs of the ancestral cult. All the great clans of early Japanese history--such as the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto--were Kugé; and most of the great regents and shôguns of later history were either Kugé or descendants of Kugé.
Next to the Kugé ranked the Buké, or military class,--also called Monofufu, Wasaraü, or Samurahi (according to the ancient writing of these names),--with an extensive hierarchy of its own. But the difference, in most cases, between the lords and the warriors of the Buké was a difference of rank based upon income and title: all alike were samurai, and nearly all were of Kôbétsu or Shinbétsu descent. In early times the head of the military class was appointed by the Emperor, only as a temporary commander-in-chief: afterwards, these commanders-in-chief, by usurpation of power, made their office hereditary, and became veritable imperatores, in the Roman sense. Their title of shôgun is well known to Western readers. The shôgun ruled over between two and three hundred lords of provinces or districts, whose powers and privileges varied according to income and grade. Under the Tokugawa
{p. 242}
shôgunate there were 292 of these lords, or daimyô. Before that time each lord exercised supreme rule over his own domain; and it is not surprising that the Jesuit missionaries, as well as the early Dutch and English traders should have called the daimyô "kings." The despotism of the daimyô was first checked by the founders of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyéyasu, who so restricted their powers that they became, with some exceptions, liable to lose their estates if proved guilty of oppression and cruelty. He ranked them all in four great classes: (1) Sanké, or Go-Sanké, the "Three Exalted Families" (those from whom a successor to the shôgunate might be chosen, in case of need); (2) Kokushû, "Lords of Provinces"; (3) Tozama, "Outside-Lords"; (4) Fudai, "Successful Families": a name given to those families promoted to lordship or otherwise rewarded for fealty to Iyéyasu. Of the Sanké, there were three clans, or families: of the Kokushû, eighteen; of the Tozama, eighty-six; and of the Fudai, one hundred and seventy-six. The income of the least of these daimyô was 10,000 koku of rice (we may say about £10,000, though the value of the koku differed greatly at different periods); and the income of the greatest, the Lord of Kaga, was estimated at 1,027,000 koku.
The great daimyô had their greater and lesser vassals; and each of these, again, had his force of trained samurai, or fighting gentry. There was
{p. 243}
also a particular class of soldier-farmers, called gôshi, some of whom possessed privileges and powers exceeding those of the lesser daimyô. These gôshi, who were independent landowners, for the most part, formed a kind of yeomanry; but there were many points of difference between the social position of the gôshi and that of the English yeomen.
Besides reorganizing the military class, Iyéyasu created several new subclasses. The more important of these were the hatamoto and the gokénin. The hatamoto, whose appellation signifies "banner-supporters," numbered about 2000, and the gokénin about 5000. These two bodies of samurai formed the special military force of the shôgun; the hatamoto being greater vassals, with large incomes; and the gokénin lesser vassals, with small incomes, who ranked above other common samurai only because of being directly attached to the shôgun's service. . . . The total number of samurai of all grades was about 2,000,000. They were exempted from taxation, and privileged to wear two swords.

Such, in brief outline, was the general ordination of those noble and military classes by whom the nation was ruled with great severity. The bulk of the common people were divided into three classes (we might even say castes, but for Indian ideas long associated with the term): Farmers, Artizans, and Merchants.
{p. 244}
Of these three classes, the farmers (hyakushô) were the highest; ranking immediately after the samurai. Indeed, it is hard to draw a line between the samurai class and the farming-class,--because many samurai were farmers also, and because some farmers held a rank considerably above that of ordinary samurai. Perhaps we should limit the term hyakushô (farmers, or peasantry) to those tillers of the soil who lived only by agriculture, and were neither of Kôbétsu nor Shinbétsu descent. . . . At all events, the occupation of the peasant was considered honourable: a farmer's daughter might become a servant in the imperial household itself--though she could occupy only an humble position in the service. Certain farmers were privileged to wear swords. It appears that in the early ages of Japanese society there was no distinction between farmers and warriors: all able-bodied farmers were then trained fighting-men, ready for war at any moment,--a condition paralleled in old Scandinavian society. After a special military class had been evolved, the distinction between farmer and samurai still remained vague in certain parts of the country. In Satsuma and in Tosa, for example, the samurai continued to farm down to the present era: the best of the Kyûshû samurai were nearly all farmers; and their, superior stature and strength were commonly attributed to their rustic occupations. In other parts of the country, as in Izumo, farming was forbidden to samurai:
{p. 245}
they were not even allowed to hold rice-land, though they might own forest-land. But in various provinces they were permitted to farm, even while strictly forbidden to follow any other occupation,--any trade or craft. . . . At no time did any degradation attach to the pursuit of agriculture. Some of the early emperors took a personal interest in farming; and in the grounds of the Imperial Palace at Akasaka may even now be seen a little rice-field. By religious tradition, immemorially old, the first sheaf of rice grown within the imperial grounds should be reaped and offered by the imperial hand to the divine ancestors as a harvest offering, on the occasion of the Ninth Festival,--Shin-Shô-Sai.[1]

Below the peasantry ranked the artizan-class (Shôkunin), including smiths, carpenters, weavers, potters,--all crafts, in short. Highest among these were reckoned, as we might expect, the sword-smiths. Sword-smiths not infrequently rose to dignities far beyond their class: some had conferred upon them the high title of Kami, written with the same character used in the title of a daimyô, who was usually termed the Kami of his province or district. Naturally they enjoyed the patronage of the highest,--emperors and Kugé. The Emperor Go-Toba is known to have worked at sword-making in a smithy
[1. At this festival the first new silk of the year, as well as the first of the new rice-crop, is still offered to the Sun-goddess by the Emperor in person.]
{p. 246}
of his own. Religious rites were practised during the forging of a blade down to modern times. . . .
All the principal crafts had guilds; and, as a general rule, trades were hereditary. There are good historical grounds for supposing that the ancestors of the Shôkunin were mostly Koreans and Chinese.
The commercial class (Akindô), including bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, and traders of all kinds, was the lowest officially recognized. The business of money-making was held in contempt by the superior classes; and all methods of profiting by the purchase and re-sale of the produce of labour were regarded as dishonourable. A military aristocracy would naturally look down upon the trading-classes; and there is generally, in militant societies, small respect for the common forms of labour. But in Old Japan the occupations of the farmer and the artizan were not despised: trade alone appears to have been considered degrading,--and the discrimination may have been partly a moral one. The relegation of the mercantile class to the lowest place in the social scale must have produced some curious results. However rich, for example, a rice-dealer might be, he ranked below the carpenters or potters or boat-builders whom he might employ,--unless it happened that his family originally belonged to another class. In later times
{p. 247}
the Akindô included many persons of other than Akindô descent; and the class thus virtually retrieved itself.

Of the four great classes of the nation--Samurai, Farmers, Artizans, and Merchants (the Shi-No-Ko-Shô, as they were briefly called, after the initial characters of the Chinese terms used to designate them)--the last three were counted together under the general appellation of Heimin, "common folk." All heimin were subject to the samurai; any samurai being privileged to kill the heimin showing him disrespect. But the heimin were actually the nation: they alone created the wealth of the country, produced the revenues, paid the taxes, supported the nobility and military and clergy. As for the clergy, the Buddhist (like the Shintô) priests, though forming a class apart, ranked with the samurai, not with the heimin.
Outside of the three classes of commoners, and hopelessly below the lowest of them, large classes of persons existed who were not reckoned as Japanese, and scarcely accounted human beings. Officially they were mentioned generically as chôri, and were counted with the peculiar numerals used in counting animals: ippiki, nihiki, sambiki, etc. Even to-day they are commonly referred to, not as persons (hito), but as "things" (mono). To English readers (chiefly through Mr. Mitford's yet unrivalled Tales of Old
{p. 248}
Japan) they are known as Éta; but their appellations varied according to their callings. They were pariah-people: Japanese writers have denied, upon apparently good grounds, that the chôri belong to the Japanese race. Various tribes of these outcasts followed occupations in the monopoly of which they were legally confirmed: they were well-diggers, garden-sweepers, straw-workers, sandal-makers, according to local privileges. One class was employed officially in the capacity of torturers and executioners; another was employed as night-watchmen; a third as grave-makers. But most of the Éta followed the business of tanners and leather-dressers. They alone had the right to slaughter and flay animals, to prepare various kinds of leather, and to manufacture leather sandals, stirrup-straps, and drumheads,--the making of drumheads being a lucrative occupation in a country where drums were used in a hundred thousand temples. The Éta had their own laws, and their own chiefs, who exercised powers of life and death. They lived always in the suburbs or immediate neighbourhood of towns, but only in separate settlements of their own. They could enter the town to sell their wares, or to make purchases; but they could not enter any shop, except the shop of a dealer in footgear.[1] As professional singers they were tolerated; but they were forbidden to enter any house--so they could perform their music or sing
[1. This is still the rule in certain parts of the country.]
{p. 249}
their songs only in the street, or in a garden. Any occupations other than their hereditary callings were strictly forbidden to them. Between the lowest of the commercial classes and the Éta, the barrier was impassable as any created by caste-tradition in India; and never was Ghetto more separated from the rest of a European city by walls and gates, than an Éta settlement from the rest of a Japanese town by social prejudice. No Japanese would dream of entering an Éta settlement unless obliged to do so in some official capacity. . . . At the pretty little seaport of Mionoséki, I saw an Éta settlement, forming one termination of the crescent of streets extending round the bay. Mionoséki is certainly one of the most ancient towns in Japan; and the Éta village attached to it must be very old. Even to-day, no Japanese habitant of Mionoséki would think of walking through that settlement, though its streets are continuations of the other streets: children never pass the unmarked boundary; and the very dogs will not cross the prejudice-line. For all that the settlement is clean, well built,--with gardens, baths, and temples of its own. It looks like any well-kept Japanese village. But for perhaps a thousand years there has been no fellowship between the people of those contiguous communities. . . . Nobody can now tell the history of these outcast folk: the cause of their social excommunication has long been forgotten.
{p. 250}
Besides the Éta proper, there were pariahs called hinin,--a name signifying "not-human-beings." Under this appellation were included professional mendicants, wandering minstrels, actors, certain classes of prostitutes, and persons outlawed by society. The hinin had their own chiefs, and their own laws. Any person expelled from a Japanese community might join the hinin; but that signified good-by to the rest of humanity. The Government was too shrewd to persecute the hinin. Their gipsy-existence saved a world of trouble. It was unnecessary to keep petty offenders in jail, or to provide for people incapable of earning an honest living, so long as these could be driven into the hinin class. There the incorrigible, the vagrant, the beggar, would be kept under discipline of a sort, and would practically disappear from official cognizance. The killing of a hinin was not considered murder, and was punished only by a fine.

The reader should now be able to form an approximately correct idea of the character of the old Japanese society. But the ordination of that society was much more complex than I have been able to indicate,--so complex that volumes would be required to treat the subject in detail. Once fully evolved, what we may still call Feudal Japan, for want of a better name, presented most of the features of a doubly-compound society of the militant type, with
{p. 251}
certain marked approaches toward the trebly-compound type. A striking peculiarity, of course, is the absence of a true ecclesiastical hierarchy,--due to the fact that Government never became dissociated from religion. There was at one time a tendency on the part of Buddhism to establish a religious hierarchy independent of central authority; but there were two fatal obstacles in the way of such a development. The first was the condition of Buddhism itself,--divided into a number of sects, some bitterly opposed to others. The second obstacle was the implacable hostility of the military clans, jealous of any religious power capable of interfering, either directly or indirectly, with their policy. So soon as the foreign religion began to prove itself formidable in the world of act-ion, ruthless measures were decided; and the frightful massacres of priests by Nobunaga, in the sixteenth century, ended the political aspirations of Buddhism in Japan.
Otherwise the regimentation of society resembled that of all antique civilizations of the militant type,--all action being both positively and negatively regulated. The household ruled the person; the five-family group; the household; the community, the group; the lord of the soil, the community; the Shôgun, the lord. Over the whole body of the producing classes, two million samurai had power of life and death; over these samurai the daimyô held a like power; and the daimyô were subject to the Shôgun.
{p. 252}
Nominally the Shôgun was subject to the Emperor, but not in fact: military usurpation disturbed and shifted the natural order of the higher responsibility. However, from the nobility downwards, the regulative discipline was much reinforced by this change in government. Among the producing classes there were countless combinations--guilds of all sorts; but these were only despotisms within despotisms--despotisms of the communistic order; each member being governed by the will of the rest; and enterprise, whether commercial or industrial, being impossible outside of some corporation. . . . We have already seen that the individual was bound to the commune--could not leave it without a permit, could not marry out of it. We have seen also that the stranger was a stranger in the old Greek and Roman sense,--that is to say an enemy, a hostis,--and could enter another community only by being religiously. adopted into it. As regards exclusiveness, therefore, the social conditions were like those of the early European communities; but the militant conditions resembled rather those of the great Asiatic empires.

Of course such a society had nothing in common with any modern form of Occidental civilization. It was a huge mass of clan-groups, loosely united under a duarchy, in which the military head was omnipotent, and the religious head only an object of
{p. 253}
worship,--the living symbol of a cult. However this organization might outwardly resemble what we are accustomed to call feudalism, its structure was rather like that of ancient Egyptian or Peruvian society,--minus the priestly hierarchy. The supreme figure is not an Emperor in our meaning of the word,--not a king of kings and vicegerent of heaven,--but a God incarnate, a race-divinity, an Inca descended from the Sun. About his sacred person, we see the tribes ranged in obeisance,--each tribe, nevertheless, maintaining its own ancestral cult; and the clans forming these tribes, and the communities forming these clans, and the households forming these communities, have all their separate cults; and out of the mass of these cults have been derived the customs and the laws. Yet everywhere the customs and the laws differ more or less, because of the variety of their origins: they have this only in common,--that they exact the most humble and implicit obedience, and regulate every detail of private and public life. Personality is wholly suppressed by coercion; and the coercion is chiefly from within, not from without,--the life of every individual being so ordered by the will of the rest as to render free action, free speaking, or free thinking, out of the question. This means something incomparably harsher than the socialistic tyranny of early Greek society: it means religious communism doubled with a military despotism of
{p. 254}
the most terrible kind. The individual did not legally exist,--except for punishment; and from the whole of the producing-classes, whether serfs or freemen, the most servile submission was ruthlessly exacted.
It is difficult to believe that any intelligent man of modern times could endure such conditions and live (except under the protection of some powerful ruler, as in the case of the English pilot Will Adams, created a samurai by Iyéyasu): the incessant and multiform constraint upon mental and moral life would of itself be enough to kill. . . . Those who write to-day about the extraordinary capacity of the Japanese for organization, and about the "democratic spirit" of the people as natural proof of their fitness for representative government in the Western sense, mistake appearances for realities. The truth is that the extraordinary capacity of the Japanese for communal organization, is the strongest possible evidence of their unfitness for any modern democratic form of government. Superficially the difference between Japanese social organization, and local self-government in the modern American, or the English colonial meaning of the term, appears slight; and we may, justly admire the perfect self-discipline of a Japanese community. But the real difference between the two is fundamental, prodigious,--measurable only by thousands of years. It is the difference between compulsory and free
{p. 255}
coöperation,--the difference between the most despotic form of communism, founded upon the most ancient form of religion, and the most highly evolved form of industrial union, with unlimited individual right of competition.
There exists a popular error to the effect that what we call communism and socialism in Western civilization--are modern growths, representing aspiration toward some perfect form of democracy. As a matter of fact these movements represent reversion,--reversion toward the primitive conditions of human society. Under every form of ancient despotism we find exactly the same capacity of self-government among the people: it was manifested by the old Egyptians and Peruvians as well as by the early Greeks and Romans; it is exhibited to-day by Hindoo and Chinese communities; it may be studied in Siamese or Annamese villages quite as well as in Japan. It means a religious communistic despotism,--a supreme social tyranny suppressing personality, forbidding enterprise, and making competition a public offence. Such self-government also has its advantages: it was perfectly adapted to the requirements of Japanese life so long as the nation could remain isolated from the rest of the world. Yet it must be obvious that any society whose ethical traditions forbid the individual to profit at the cost of his fellow-men will be placed at an enormous disadvantage when forced into the
{p. 256}
industrial struggle for existence against communities whose self-government permits of the greatest possible personal freedom, and the widest range of competitive enterprise.

We might suppose that perpetual and universal coercion, moral and physical, would have brought about a state of universal sameness,--a dismal uniformity and monotony in all life's manifestations. But such monotony existed only as to the life of the commune, not as to that of the race. The most wonderful variety characterized this quaint civilization, as it also characterized the old Greek civilization, and for precisely the same reasons. In every patriarchal civilization ruled by ancestor-worship, all tendency to absolute sameness, to general uniformity, is prevented by the character of the aggregate itself, which never becomes homogeneous and plastic. Every unit of that aggregate, each one of the multitude of petty despotisms composing it, most jealously guards its own particular traditions and customs, and remains self-sufficing. Hence results, sooner or later, incomparable variety of detail, small detail, artistic, industrial, architectural, mechanical. In Japan such differentiation and specialization was thus maintained, that you will hardly find in the whole country even two villages where the customs, industries, and methods of production are exactly the same. . . . The customs
{p. 257}
of the fishing-villages will, perhaps, best illustrate what I mean. In every coast district the various fishing-settlements have their own traditional ways of constructing nets and boats, and their own particular methods of handling them. Now, in the time of the great tidal-wave of 1896, when thirty thousand people perished, and scores of coast-villages were wrecked, large sums of money were collected in Kobé and elsewhere for the benefit of the survivors; and well-meaning foreigners attempted to supply the want of boats and fishing implements by purchasing quantities of locally made nets and boats, and sending them to the afflicted districts. But it was found that these presents were of no use to the men of the northern provinces, who had been accustomed to boats and nets of a totally different kind; and lit was further discovered that every fishing-hamlet had special requirements of its own in this regard. . . . Now the differentiations of habit and custom, thus exhibited in the life of the fishing-communities, is paralleled in many crafts and callings. The way of building houses, and of roofing them, differs in almost every province, also the methods of agriculture and of horticulture, the manner of making wells, the methods of weaving and lacquering and pottery-making and tile-baking. Nearly every town and village of importance boasts of some special production, bearing the name of the p-lace, and unlike anything made elsewhere. . . . {p. 258} No doubt the ancestral cults helped to conserve and to develop such local specialization of industries: the craft-ancestors, the patron-gods of the guild, were supposed to desire that the work of their descendants and worshippers should maintain a particular character of its own. Though individual enterprise was checked by communal regulation, the specialization of local production was encouraged by difference of cults. Family-conservatism or guild-conservatism would tolerate small improvements or modifications suggested by local experience, but would be wary, perhaps superstitious likewise, about accepting the results of strange experience.
Still, for the Japanese themselves, not the least pleasure of travel in Japan is the pleasure of studying the carious variety in local production,--the pleasure of finding the novel, the unexpected, the unimagined. Even those arts or industries of Old Japan, primarily borrowed from Korea or from China, appear to have developed and conserved innumerable queer forms under the influence of the numberless local cults.

--
--- highly wharepaku ---

[link]

The Social Organization
THE late Professor Fiske, in his Outline of Cosmic Philosophy, made a very interesting remark about societies like those of China, ancient Egypt, and ancient Assyria. "I am expressing," he said, "something more than an analogy, I am describing a real homology so far as concerns the process of development,--when I say that these communities simulated modern European nations, much in the same way that a tree-fern of the carboniferous period simulated the exogenous trees of the present time." So far as this is true of China, it is likewise true of Japan. The constitution of the old Japanese society was no more than an amplification of the constitution of the family,--the patriarchal family of primitive times. All modern Western societies have been developed out of a like patriarchal condition: the early civilizations of Greece and Rome were similarly constructed, upon a lesser scale. But the patriarchal family in Europe was disintegrated thousands of years ago; the gens and the curia dissolved and disappeared; the originally distinct classes became fused together; and a total reorganization of society was gradually
{p. 230}
effected, everywhere resulting in the substitution of voluntary for compulsory coöperation. Industrial types of society developed; and a state-religion overshadowed the ancient and exclusive local cults. But society in Japan never, till within the present era, became one coherent body, never developed beyond the clan-stage. It remained a loose agglomerate of clan-groups, or tribes, each religiously and administratively independent of the rest; and this huge agglomerate was kept together, not by voluntary coöperation, but by strong compulsion. Down to the period of Meiji, and even for some time afterward, it was liable to split and fall asunder at any moment that the central coercive power showed signs of weakness. We may call it a feudalism; but it resembled European feudalism only as a tree-fern resembles a tree.

Let us first briefly consider the nature of the ancient Japanese society. Its original unit was not the household, but the patriarchal family,--that is to say, the gens or clan, a body of hundreds or thousands of persons claiming descent from a common ancestor, and so religiously united by a common ancestor-worship,--the cult of the Ujigami. As I have said before, there were two classes of these patriarchal families: the Ô-uji, or Great Clans; and the Ko-uji, or Little Clans. The lesser were branches of the greater, and subordinate to
{p. 231}
them,--so that the group formed by an Ô-uji with its Ko-uji might be loosely compared with the Roman curia or Greek phratry. Large bodies of serfs or slaves appear to have been attached to the various great Uji; and the number of these, even at a very early period, seems to have exceeded that of the members of the clans proper. The different names given to these subject-classes indicate different grades and kinds of servitude. One name was tomobé, signifying bound to a place, or district; another was yakabé, signifying bound to a family; a third was kakibé, signifying bound to a close, or estate; yet another and more general term was tami, which anciently signified "dependants," but is now used in the meaning of the English word "folk." . . . There is little doubt that the bulk of the people were in a condition of servitude, and that there were many forms of servitude. Mr. Spencer has pointed out that a general distinction between slavery and serfdom, in the sense commonly attached to each of those terms, is by no means easy to establish; the real state of a subject-class, especially in early forms of society, depending much more upon the character of the master, and the actual conditions of social development, than upon matters of privilege and legislation. In speaking of early Japanese institutions, the distinction is particularly hard to draw: we are still but little informed as to the condition of the subject
{p. 232}
classes in ancient times. It is safe to assert, however, that there were then really but two great classes,--a ruling oligarchy, divided into many grades; and a subject population, also divided into many grades. Slaves were tattooed, either on the face or some part of the body, with a mark indicating their ownership. Until within recent years this system of tattooing appears to have been maintained in the province of Satsuma,--where the marks were put especially upon the hands; and in many other provinces the lower classes were generally marked by a tattoo on the face. Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,--a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records. Their unions were not recognized: a fact which reminds us of the distinction among the Romans between connubium and contubernium; and the children of a slave-mother by a free father remained slaves.[1] In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state-property, and great numbers were
[1. In the year 645, the Emperor Kôtoku issued the following edict on the subject:--
"The law of men and women shall be that the children born of a free man and a free woman shall belong to the father; if a free man takes to wife a slave-woman, her children shall belong to the mother; if a free woman marries a slave-man, the children shall belong to the father; if they are slaves of two houses, the children shall belong to the mother. The children of temple-serfs shall follow the rule for freemen. But in regard to others who become slaves, they shall be treated according to the rule for slaves.--Aston's translation of the Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 202.]
{p. 233}
then emancipated,--including nearly all--probably all--who were artizans or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence; but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom. The greater number certainly had no family names,--which is considered evidence of a former slave-condition. Slaves proper were registered in the names of their owners: they do not seem to have had a cult of their own,--in early times, at least. But, prior to Meiji, only the aristocracy, samurai, doctors, and teachers--with perhaps a few other exceptions--could use a family name. Another queer bit of evidence or, the subject, furnished by the late Dr. Simmons, relates to the mode of wearing the hair among the subject-classes. Up to the time of the Ashikaga shôgunate (1334 A.D.), all classes excepting the nobility, samurai, Shintô priests, and doctors, shaved the greater part of the head, and wore queues; and this fashion of wearing the hair was called yakko-atama or dorei-atama--terms signifying "slave-head," and indicating that the fashion originated in a period of servitude.
About the origin of Japanese slavery, much remains to be learned. There are evidences of successive immigrations; and it is possible that some, at least, of the earlier Japanese settlers were reduced by later invaders to the status of servitude. Again,
{p. 234}
there was a considerable immigration of Koreans and Chinese, some of whom might have voluntarily sought servitude as a refuge from worse evils. But the subject remains obscure. We know, however, that degradation to slavery was a common punishment in early times; also, that debtors unable to pay became the slaves of their creditors; also, that thieves were sentenced to become the slaves of those whom they had robbed.[1] Evidently there were great differences in the conditions of servitude. The more unfortunate class of slaves were scarcely better off than domestic animals; but there were serfs who could not be bought or sold, nor employed at other than special work; these were of kin to their lords, and may have entered voluntarily into servitude for the sake of sustenance and protection. Their relation to their masters reminds us of that of the Roman client to the Roman patron.
As yet it is difficult to establish any clear distinction between the freedmen and the freemen of ancient Japanese society; but we know that the free population, ranking below the ruling class,
[1. An edict issued by the Empress Jitô, in 690, enacted that a father could sell his son into real slavery; but that debtors could be sold only into a kind of serfdom. The edict ran thus: "If a younger brother of the common people is sold by his elder brother, he should be classed with freemen; if a child is sold by his parents, he should be classed with slaves; persons confiscated into slavery, by way of payment of interest on debts, are to be classed with freemen; and their children, though born of a union with a slave, are to be all classed with freemen."--Aston's Nihongi, Vol. II, p. 402.]
{p. 235}
consisted of two great divisions: the kunitsuko and the tomonotsuko. The first were farmers, descendants perhaps of the earliest Mongol invaders, and were permitted to hold their own lands independently of the central government: they were lords of their own soil, but not nobles. The tomonotsuko were artizans,--probably of Korean or Chinese descent, for the most part,--and numbered no less than 180 clans. They followed hereditary occupations; and their clans were attached to the imperial clans, for which they were required to furnish skilled labour.
Originally each of the Ô-uji and Ko-uji had its own territory, chiefs, dependants, serfs, and slaves. The chieftainships were hereditary,--descending from father to son in direct succession from the original patriarch. The chief of a great clan was lord over the chiefs of the subclans attached to it: his authority was both religious and military. It must not be forgotten that religion and government were considered identical.
All Japanese clan-families were classed under three heads,--Kôbétsu, Shinbétsu, and Bambétsu. The Kôbétsu ("Imperial Branch") represented the so-called imperial families, claiming descent from the Sun-goddess; the Shinbétsu ("Divine Branch") were clans claiming descent from other deities, terrestrial or celestial; the Bambétsu ("Foreign Branch") represented the mass of the people. {p. 236} Thus it would seem that, by the ruling classes, the common people were originally considered strangers,--Japanese only by adoption. Some scholars think that the term Bambétsu was at first given to serfs or freedmen of Chinese or Korean descent. But this has not been proved. It is only certain that all society was divided into three classes, according to ancestry; that two of these classes constituted a ruling oligarchy;[1] and that the third, or "foreign" class represented the bulk of the nation,--the plebs.
There was a division also into castes--kabané or sei. (I use the term "castes," following Dr. Florenz, a leading authority on ancient Japanese civilization, who gives the meaning of sei as equivalent to that of the Sanscrit varna, signifying "caste" or "colour.") Every family in the three great divisions of Japanese society belonged to some caste; and each caste represented at first some occupation or calling. Caste would not seem to have developed any very rigid structure in Japan; and there were early tendencies to a confusion of the kabané. In the seventh century the confusion became so great that the Emperor Temmu thought it necessary to reorganize the sei; and by him all the clan-families were regrouped into eight new castes.
[1. Dr. Florenz accounts for the distinction between Kôbétsu and Shinbétsu as due to the existence of two military ruling classes,--resulting from two successive waves of invasion or immigration. The Kôbétsu were the followers of Jimmu Tennô; the Shinbétsu were earlier conquerors who had settled in Yamato prior to the advent of Jimmu. These first conquerors, he thinks, were not dispossessed.]
{p. 237}
Such was the primal constitution of Japanese society; and that society was, therefore, in no true sense of the term, a fully formed nation. Nor can the title of Emperor be correctly applied to its early rulers. The German scholar, Dr. Florenz, was the first to establish these facts, contrary to the assumption of Japanese historians. He has shown that the "heavenly sovereign" of the early ages was the hereditary chief of one Uji only,--which Uji, being the most powerful of all, exercised influence over many of the others. The authority of the "heavenly sovereign" did not extend over the country. But though not even a king,--outside of his own large group of patriarchal families,--he enjoyed three immense prerogatives. The first was the right of representing the different Uji before the common ancestral deity,--which implies the privileges and powers of a high priest. The second was the right of representing the different Uji in foreign relations: that is to say, he could make peace or declare war in the name of all the clans, and therefore exercised the supreme military authority. His third prerogative included the right to settle disputes between clans; the right to nominate a clan-patriarch, in case that the line of direct succession to the chieftainship of any Uji came to an end; the right to establish new Uji; and the right to abolish an Uji guilty of so acting as to endanger the welfare of the rest. He was, therefore, Supreme Pontiff, Supreme Military Commander, {p. 238} Supreme Arbitrator, and Supreme Magistrate. But he was not yet supreme king: his powers were exercised only by consent of the clans. Later he was to become the Great Khan in very fact, and even much more,--the Priest-Ruler, the God-King, the Deity-Incarnate. But with the growth of his dominion, it became more and more difficult for him to exercise all the functions originally combined in his authority; and, as a consequence of deputing those functions, his temporal sway was doomed to decline, even while his religious power continued to augment.
The earliest Japanese society was not, therefore, even a feudalism in the meaning which we commonly attach to that word: it was a union of clans at first combined for defence and offence,--each clan having a religion of its own. Gradually one clan-group, by power of wealth and numbers, obtained such domination that it was able to impose its cult upon all the rest, and to make its hereditary chief Supreme High Pontiff. The worship of the Sun-goddess so became a race-cult; but this worship did not diminish the relative importance of the other clan-cults,--it only furnished them with a common tradition. Eventually a nation formed; but the clan remained the real unit of society; and not until the present era of Meiji was its disintegration effected--at least in so far as legislation could accomplish.
{p. 239}
We may call that period during which the clans became really united under one head, and the national cult was established, the First Period of Japanese Social Evolution. However, the social organism did not develop to the limit of its type until the era of the Tokugawa shôguns,--so that, in order to study it as a completed structure, we must turn to modern times. Yet it had taken on the vague outline of its destined form as early as the reign of the Emperor Temmu, whose accession is generally dated 673 A.D. During that reign Buddhism appears to have become a powerful influence at court; for the Emperor practically imposed a vegetarian diet upon the people-proof positive of supreme power in fact as well as in theory. Even before this time society had been arranged into ranks and grades,--each of the upper grades being distinguished by the form and quality of the official head-dresses worn; but the Emperor Temmu established many new grades, and reorganized the whole administration, after the Chinese manner, in one hundred and eight departments. Japanese society then assumed, as to its upper ranks, nearly--all the hierarchical forms which it presented down to the era of the Tokugawa shôguns, who consolidated the system without seriously changing its fundamental structure. We may say that from the close of the First Period of its social evolution, the nation remained practically separated into two classes: the
{p. 240}
governing class, including all orders of the nobility and military; and the producing class, comprising all the rest. The chief event of the Second Period of the social evolution was the rise of the military power, which left the imperial religious authority intact, but usurped all the administrative functions(this subject will be considered in a later chapter). The society eventually crystallized by this military power was a very complex structure--outwardly resembling a huge feudalism, as we understand the term, but intrinsically different from any European feudalism that ever existed. The difference lay especially in the religious organization of the Japanese communities, each of which, retaining its particular cult and patriarchal administration, remained essentially separate from every other. The national cult was a bond of tradition, not of cohesion: there was no religious unity. Buddhism, though widely accepted, brought no real change into this order of things; for, whatever Buddhist creed a commune might profess, the real social bond remained the bond of the Ujigami. So that, even as fully developed under the Tokugawa rule, Japanese society was still but a great aggregate of clans and subclans, kept together by military coercion.
At the head of this vast aggregate was the Heavenly Sovereign, the Living God of the race,--Priest-Emperor and Pontiff Supreme,--representing the oldest dynasty in the world.
{p. 241}
Next to him stood the Kugé, or ancient nobility,--descendants of emperors and of gods. There were, in the time of the Tokugawa, 155 families of this high nobility. One of these, the Nakatomi, held, and still holds, the highest hereditary priesthood: the Nakatomi were, under the Emperor, the chiefs of the ancestral cult. All the great clans of early Japanese history--such as the Fujiwara, the Taira, the Minamoto--were Kugé; and most of the great regents and shôguns of later history were either Kugé or descendants of Kugé.
Next to the Kugé ranked the Buké, or military class,--also called Monofufu, Wasaraü, or Samurahi (according to the ancient writing of these names),--with an extensive hierarchy of its own. But the difference, in most cases, between the lords and the warriors of the Buké was a difference of rank based upon income and title: all alike were samurai, and nearly all were of Kôbétsu or Shinbétsu descent. In early times the head of the military class was appointed by the Emperor, only as a temporary commander-in-chief: afterwards, these commanders-in-chief, by usurpation of power, made their office hereditary, and became veritable imperatores, in the Roman sense. Their title of shôgun is well known to Western readers. The shôgun ruled over between two and three hundred lords of provinces or districts, whose powers and privileges varied according to income and grade. Under the Tokugawa
{p. 242}
shôgunate there were 292 of these lords, or daimyô. Before that time each lord exercised supreme rule over his own domain; and it is not surprising that the Jesuit missionaries, as well as the early Dutch and English traders should have called the daimyô "kings." The despotism of the daimyô was first checked by the founders of the Tokugawa dynasty, Iyéyasu, who so restricted their powers that they became, with some exceptions, liable to lose their estates if proved guilty of oppression and cruelty. He ranked them all in four great classes: (1) Sanké, or Go-Sanké, the "Three Exalted Families" (those from whom a successor to the shôgunate might be chosen, in case of need); (2) Kokushû, "Lords of Provinces"; (3) Tozama, "Outside-Lords"; (4) Fudai, "Successful Families": a name given to those families promoted to lordship or otherwise rewarded for fealty to Iyéyasu. Of the Sanké, there were three clans, or families: of the Kokushû, eighteen; of the Tozama, eighty-six; and of the Fudai, one hundred and seventy-six. The income of the least of these daimyô was 10,000 koku of rice (we may say about £10,000, though the value of the koku differed greatly at different periods); and the income of the greatest, the Lord of Kaga, was estimated at 1,027,000 koku.
The great daimyô had their greater and lesser vassals; and each of these, again, had his force of trained samurai, or fighting gentry. There was
{p. 243}
also a particular class of soldier-farmers, called gôshi, some of whom possessed privileges and powers exceeding those of the lesser daimyô. These gôshi, who were independent landowners, for the most part, formed a kind of yeomanry; but there were many points of difference between the social position of the gôshi and that of the English yeomen.
Besides reorganizing the military class, Iyéyasu created several new subclasses. The more important of these were the hatamoto and the gokénin. The hatamoto, whose appellation signifies "banner-supporters," numbered about 2000, and the gokénin about 5000. These two bodies of samurai formed the special military force of the shôgun; the hatamoto being greater vassals, with large incomes; and the gokénin lesser vassals, with small incomes, who ranked above other common samurai only because of being directly attached to the shôgun's service. . . . The total number of samurai of all grades was about 2,000,000. They were exempted from taxation, and privileged to wear two swords.

Such, in brief outline, was the general ordination of those noble and military classes by whom the nation was ruled with great severity. The bulk of the common people were divided into three classes (we might even say castes, but for Indian ideas long associated with the term): Farmers, Artizans, and Merchants.
{p. 244}
Of these three classes, the farmers (hyakushô) were the highest; ranking immediately after the samurai. Indeed, it is hard to draw a line between the samurai class and the farming-class,--because many samurai were farmers also, and because some farmers held a rank considerably above that of ordinary samurai. Perhaps we should limit the term hyakushô (farmers, or peasantry) to those tillers of the soil who lived only by agriculture, and were neither of Kôbétsu nor Shinbétsu descent. . . . At all events, the occupation of the peasant was considered honourable: a farmer's daughter might become a servant in the imperial household itself--though she could occupy only an humble position in the service. Certain farmers were privileged to wear swords. It appears that in the early ages of Japanese society there was no distinction between farmers and warriors: all able-bodied farmers were then trained fighting-men, ready for war at any moment,--a condition paralleled in old Scandinavian society. After a special military class had been evolved, the distinction between farmer and samurai still remained vague in certain parts of the country. In Satsuma and in Tosa, for example, the samurai continued to farm down to the present era: the best of the Kyûshû samurai were nearly all farmers; and their, superior stature and strength were commonly attributed to their rustic occupations. In other parts of the country, as in Izumo, farming was forbidden to samurai:
{p. 245}
they were not even allowed to hold rice-land, though they might own forest-land. But in various provinces they were permitted to farm, even while strictly forbidden to follow any other occupation,--any trade or craft. . . . At no time did any degradation attach to the pursuit of agriculture. Some of the early emperors took a personal interest in farming; and in the grounds of the Imperial Palace at Akasaka may even now be seen a little rice-field. By religious tradition, immemorially old, the first sheaf of rice grown within the imperial grounds should be reaped and offered by the imperial hand to the divine ancestors as a harvest offering, on the occasion of the Ninth Festival,--Shin-Shô-Sai.[1]

Below the peasantry ranked the artizan-class (Shôkunin), including smiths, carpenters, weavers, potters,--all crafts, in short. Highest among these were reckoned, as we might expect, the sword-smiths. Sword-smiths not infrequently rose to dignities far beyond their class: some had conferred upon them the high title of Kami, written with the same character used in the title of a daimyô, who was usually termed the Kami of his province or district. Naturally they enjoyed the patronage of the highest,--emperors and Kugé. The Emperor Go-Toba is known to have worked at sword-making in a smithy
[1. At this festival the first new silk of the year, as well as the first of the new rice-crop, is still offered to the Sun-goddess by the Emperor in person.]
{p. 246}
of his own. Religious rites were practised during the forging of a blade down to modern times. . . .
All the principal crafts had guilds; and, as a general rule, trades were hereditary. There are good historical grounds for supposing that the ancestors of the Shôkunin were mostly Koreans and Chinese.
The commercial class (Akindô), including bankers, merchants, shopkeepers, and traders of all kinds, was the lowest officially recognized. The business of money-making was held in contempt by the superior classes; and all methods of profiting by the purchase and re-sale of the produce of labour were regarded as dishonourable. A military aristocracy would naturally look down upon the trading-classes; and there is generally, in militant societies, small respect for the common forms of labour. But in Old Japan the occupations of the farmer and the artizan were not despised: trade alone appears to have been considered degrading,--and the discrimination may have been partly a moral one. The relegation of the mercantile class to the lowest place in the social scale must have produced some curious results. However rich, for example, a rice-dealer might be, he ranked below the carpenters or potters or boat-builders whom he might employ,--unless it happened that his family originally belonged to another class. In later times
{p. 247}
the Akindô included many persons of other than Akindô descent; and the class thus virtually retrieved itself.

Of the four great classes of the nation--Samurai, Farmers, Artizans, and Merchants (the Shi-No-Ko-Shô, as they were briefly called, after the initial characters of the Chinese terms used to designate them)--the last three were counted together under the general appellation of Heimin, "common folk." All heimin were subject to the samurai; any samurai being privileged to kill the heimin showing him disrespect. But the heimin were actually the nation: they alone created the wealth of the country, produced the revenues, paid the taxes, supported the nobility and military and clergy. As for the clergy, the Buddhist (like the Shintô) priests, though forming a class apart, ranked with the samurai, not with the heimin.
Outside of the three classes of commoners, and hopelessly below the lowest of them, large classes of persons existed who were not reckoned as Japanese, and scarcely accounted human beings. Officially they were mentioned generically as chôri, and were counted with the peculiar numerals used in counting animals: ippiki, nihiki, sambiki, etc. Even to-day they are commonly referred to, not as persons (hito), but as "things" (mono). To English readers (chiefly through Mr. Mitford's yet unrivalled Tales of Old
{p. 248}
Japan) they are known as Éta; but their appellations varied according to their callings. They were pariah-people: Japanese writers have denied, upon apparently good grounds, that the chôri belong to the Japanese race. Various tribes of these outcasts followed occupations in the monopoly of which they were legally confirmed: they were well-diggers, garden-sweepers, straw-workers, sandal-makers, according to local privileges. One class was employed officially in the capacity of torturers and executioners; another was employed as night-watchmen; a third as grave-makers. But most of the Éta followed the business of tanners and leather-dressers. They alone had the right to slaughter and flay animals, to prepare various kinds of leather, and to manufacture leather sandals, stirrup-straps, and drumheads,--the making of drumheads being a lucrative occupation in a country where drums were used in a hundred thousand temples. The Éta had their own laws, and their own chiefs, who exercised powers of life and death. They lived always in the suburbs or immediate neighbourhood of towns, but only in separate settlements of their own. They could enter the town to sell their wares, or to make purchases; but they could not enter any shop, except the shop of a dealer in footgear.[1] As professional singers they were tolerated; but they were forbidden to enter any house--so they could perform their music or sing
[1. This is still the rule in certain parts of the country.]
{p. 249}
their songs only in the street, or in a garden. Any occupations other than their hereditary callings were strictly forbidden to them. Between the lowest of the commercial classes and the Éta, the barrier was impassable as any created by caste-tradition in India; and never was Ghetto more separated from the rest of a European city by walls and gates, than an Éta settlement from the rest of a Japanese town by social prejudice. No Japanese would dream of entering an Éta settlement unless obliged to do so in some official capacity. . . . At the pretty little seaport of Mionoséki, I saw an Éta settlement, forming one termination of the crescent of streets extending round the bay. Mionoséki is certainly one of the most ancient towns in Japan; and the Éta village attached to it must be very old. Even to-day, no Japanese habitant of Mionoséki would think of walking through that settlement, though its streets are continuations of the other streets: children never pass the unmarked boundary; and the very dogs will not cross the prejudice-line. For all that the settlement is clean, well built,--with gardens, baths, and temples of its own. It looks like any well-kept Japanese village. But for perhaps a thousand years there has been no fellowship between the people of those contiguous communities. . . . Nobody can now tell the history of these outcast folk: the cause of their social excommunication has long been forgotten.
{p. 250}
Besides the Éta proper, there were pariahs called hinin,--a name signifying "not-human-beings." Under this appellation were included professional mendicants, wandering minstrels, actors, certain classes of prostitutes, and persons outlawed by society. The hinin had their own chiefs, and their own laws. Any person expelled from a Japanese community might join the hinin; but that signified good-by to the rest of humanity. The Government was too shrewd to persecute the hinin. Their gipsy-existence saved a world of trouble. It was unnecessary to keep petty offenders in jail, or to provide for people incapable of earning an honest living, so long as these could be driven into the hinin class. There the incorrigible, the vagrant, the beggar, would be kept under discipline of a sort, and would practically disappear from official cognizance. The killing of a hinin was not considered murder, and was punished only by a fine.

The reader should now be able to form an approximately correct idea of the character of the old Japanese society. But the ordination of that society was much more complex than I have been able to indicate,--so complex that volumes would be required to treat the subject in detail. Once fully evolved, what we may still call Feudal Japan, for want of a better name, presented most of the features of a doubly-compound society of the militant type, with
{p. 251}
certain marked approaches toward the trebly-compound type. A striking peculiarity, of course, is the absence of a true ecclesiastical hierarchy,--due to the fact that Government never became dissociated from religion. There was at one time a tendency on the part of Buddhism to establish a religious hierarchy independent of central authority; but there were two fatal obstacles in the way of such a development. The first was the condition of Buddhism itself,--divided into a number of sects, some bitterly opposed to others. The second obstacle was the implacable hostility of the military clans, jealous of any religious power capable of interfering, either directly or indirectly, with their policy. So soon as the foreign religion began to prove itself formidable in the world of act-ion, ruthless measures were decided; and the frightful massacres of priests by Nobunaga, in the sixteenth century, ended the political aspirations of Buddhism in Japan.
Otherwise the regimentation of society resembled that of all antique civilizations of the militant type,--all action being both positively and negatively regulated. The household ruled the person; the five-family group; the household; the community, the group; the lord of the soil, the community; the Shôgun, the lord. Over the whole body of the producing classes, two million samurai had power of life and death; over these samurai the daimyô held a like power; and the daimyô were subject to the Shôgun.
{p. 252}
Nominally the Shôgun was subject to the Emperor, but not in fact: military usurpation disturbed and shifted the natural order of the higher responsibility. However, from the nobility downwards, the regulative discipline was much reinforced by this change in government. Among the producing classes there were countless combinations--guilds of all sorts; but these were only despotisms within despotisms--despotisms of the communistic order; each member being governed by the will of the rest; and enterprise, whether commercial or industrial, being impossible outside of some corporation. . . . We have already seen that the individual was bound to the commune--could not leave it without a permit, could not marry out of it. We have seen also that the stranger was a stranger in the old Greek and Roman sense,--that is to say an enemy, a hostis,--and could enter another community only by being religiously. adopted into it. As regards exclusiveness, therefore, the social conditions were like those of the early European communities; but the militant conditions resembled rather those of the great Asiatic empires.

Of course such a society had nothing in common with any modern form of Occidental civilization. It was a huge mass of clan-groups, loosely united under a duarchy, in which the military head was omnipotent, and the religious head only an object of
{p. 253}
worship,--the living symbol of a cult. However this organization might outwardly resemble what we are accustomed to call feudalism, its structure was rather like that of ancient Egyptian or Peruvian society,--minus the priestly hierarchy. The supreme figure is not an Emperor in our meaning of the word,--not a king of kings and vicegerent of heaven,--but a God incarnate, a race-divinity, an Inca descended from the Sun. About his sacred person, we see the tribes ranged in obeisance,--each tribe, nevertheless, maintaining its own ancestral cult; and the clans forming these tribes, and the communities forming these clans, and the households forming these communities, have all their separate cults; and out of the mass of these cults have been derived the customs and the laws. Yet everywhere the customs and the laws differ more or less, because of the variety of their origins: they have this only in common,--that they exact the most humble and implicit obedience, and regulate every detail of private and public life. Personality is wholly suppressed by coercion; and the coercion is chiefly from within, not from without,--the life of every individual being so ordered by the will of the rest as to render free action, free speaking, or free thinking, out of the question. This means something incomparably harsher than the socialistic tyranny of early Greek society: it means religious communism doubled with a military despotism of
{p. 254}
the most terrible kind. The individual did not legally exist,--except for punishment; and from the whole of the producing-classes, whether serfs or freemen, the most servile submission was ruthlessly exacted.
It is difficult to believe that any intelligent man of modern times could endure such conditions and live (except under the protection of some powerful ruler, as in the case of the English pilot Will Adams, created a samurai by Iyéyasu): the incessant and multiform constraint upon mental and moral life would of itself be enough to kill. . . . Those who write to-day about the extraordinary capacity of the Japanese for organization, and about the "democratic spirit" of the people as natural proof of their fitness for representative government in the Western sense, mistake appearances for realities. The truth is that the extraordinary capacity of the Japanese for communal organization, is the strongest possible evidence of their unfitness for any modern democratic form of government. Superficially the difference between Japanese social organization, and local self-government in the modern American, or the English colonial meaning of the term, appears slight; and we may, justly admire the perfect self-discipline of a Japanese community. But the real difference between the two is fundamental, prodigious,--measurable only by thousands of years. It is the difference between compulsory and free
{p. 255}
coöperation,--the difference between the most despotic form of communism, founded upon the most ancient form of religion, and the most highly evolved form of industrial union, with unlimited individual right of competition.
There exists a popular error to the effect that what we call communism and socialism in Western civilization--are modern growths, representing aspiration toward some perfect form of democracy. As a matter of fact these movements represent reversion,--reversion toward the primitive conditions of human society. Under every form of ancient despotism we find exactly the same capacity of self-government among the people: it was manifested by the old Egyptians and Peruvians as well as by the early Greeks and Romans; it is exhibited to-day by Hindoo and Chinese communities; it may be studied in Siamese or Annamese villages quite as well as in Japan. It means a religious communistic despotism,--a supreme social tyranny suppressing personality, forbidding enterprise, and making competition a public offence. Such self-government also has its advantages:

--
--- highly wharepaku ---

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--
--- highly wharepaku ---

YOU'VE BEEN HIT BY THE

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--
--- highly wharepaku ---

There can surely be nobody so petty or so apathetic in his outlook that he has no desire to discover by what means and under what system of government the Romans succeeded in less than fifty-three years (for him it was the period from 220, just before the outbreak of the Second Punic War, to 167, the conclusion of the Third Macedonian War against Perseus) in bringing under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited world, an achievement which is without parallel in human history.

Polybius had fared better than most of the leaders and intellectuals that Rome had taken from Achaea. While a prisoner, he met the head of one of Rome's great families,Scipio Aemilianus. Scipio found Polybius good company and exchanged books with him. He took Polybius with him on military campaigns, and he introduced Polybius to Rome's high society. Polybius remained in Rome after the other captives returned to Greece, and Scipio became his patron while he attempted to write the history of Rome to 146 BCE -- a work that happened to be compatible with the views of his patrons. Polybius accompanied Scipio to Carthage and witnessed its destruction in the Third Punic War. Polybius covers the history of the Second Punic was as well, relying on information available to him in Roman records. Polybius is one of the most important early historians.

Polybius sought to explain how Rome was able to become master over the Greeks. He described the Romans as having moderation, integrity, valor, boldness, discipline and frugality in greater amounts than have other peoples. This, he wrote, enabled Rome to unite and to close ranks when faced with danger. His fellow Greeks, he wrote, were more literate and educated than the Romans but when faced with adversity they had weakened themselves by division and argument.
Polybius described the superiority of Romans as belonging mainly to the aristocrats. Common people, Roman and otherwise, he saw as lightheaded, filled with lawless appetites and inclined toward bursts of anger and fits of temper. He described the recent rebellion of Greece's common people against Rome as insane folly, and he believed that despite its abuses Rome was bestowing upon the Greeks great benefits.

Polybius saw Rome's patriarchal tradition and its religion as serving the cohesion that made Rome successful. Awe of the supernatural, he wrote, helps maintain cohesion. Religion, he wrote, helps to pacify the common man's anarchic temper. And he described Rome's elite and other ruling elites as using religion with this in mind.
Polybius saw Rome's success as partly the result of its willingness to enforce discipline by such punishments as executing a sentry for neglecting his duty or beating a soldier with a cudgel for throwing away his weapon, or beating a soldier for boasting in order to get a decoration, or for homosexuality. He saw strength in Rome's willingness to punish by decimation -- the killing of every tenth man -- in any military unit that had displayed cowardice.

Polybius believed that societies went through cycles of growth, decay and fall. And, believing that low birth rates contributed to decline , he warned Rome's aristocracy about their declining numbers. He wrote of the incorruptibility of the Romans but warned them about their new hedonism and the lack of discipline that was creeping into their army. He warned them about the spread of indifference and a growing influence of the mob.

Polybius wrote that Rome's success was in part the result of its superior institutions and in part the result of its superior people, and at least a few historians in modern times would describe the Romans as having had a genius at making law. Having given Rome's elite credit for Rome's success, would Polybius have blamed them for its decay? After Polybius, Rome's institutions would prove inadequate in channeling the impulses of its citizens, and, despite their so-called genius at law, the Romans would fail to create laws that would improve their institutions and maintain order. Instead, rising in Rome was a new politics of violence.

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--- highly wharepaku ---

Do you want to come over and kill some time
Do you want to come over and kill some time
Do you want to come over and kill some time
Throw your arms around ... me

lovely lyrics from this modern love by bloc party on the album silent alarm

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Just remember kids. Anorexia has all of the advantages of bulimia wtihout the mess.

나는 너의 동성애 행동을 가장 작은 7개의 방법에 안 으로 교란 발견한다

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--- highly wharepaku ---