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to the lord. This naturally extended the practice of adoption, and thus in time it came to be considered that to prevent forfeiture of estate was the only reason for adoption, although doubtless the religious one was always the deepest: even if a man died without leaving any children, natural or adopted, by a legal fiction the property was retained, since his death was concealed till permission was given by the lord for him to adopt a son; and only after this permission was given, his death was announced. Not only escheat, but forfeiture, as in England, was incurred, if the vassal proved faithless to his lord. Each Daimio lived with his retainers in a walled town; while the other three classes of society, the agriculturists, the artizans, and the merchants, lived outside—the farmer in different parts of the territory, the latter in the Joka, or space immediately below the wall. This is illustrated by the relative position of the patricians and plebians in the early Latin communities, in which the patricians lived on the arx or hill, and the plebeians on the low ground beneath it. For instance: the commons in Rome lived in the Suburra at the foot of the Capitoline Hill.
Again we find in Western Europe the exact contrast to this arrangement; for in it the barons and their retainers lived in the country, and the commons in the walled towns, protected by which, commercial interests grew and expanded. Each daimiate was isolated and provided all things necessary for it from within itself, thus realising the idea of independence which the Greek states strove in vain to accomplish. Thus the other three classes were necessarily found in each daimiate, and the members of these clans remained as a rule unchanged. Still there was never a caste system in Japan; there was no religious barrier between each class. The condition of things was the same as in ancient Egypt and was produced by the same instinctive tendency which we find always present in antiquity, to abide in the old ways as much as possible.
2.—Such is the condition of society in Japan as pictured to us in the “Legacy of Iyeyas.” Family life formed
