3 182202465 1721 s$J%*mf- m^W Jfe*'^^*^ *'* WWW;: -'W

BLACK CLOUDS. 333
vate character could save the dual system which was
now tottering to its fall. On the ninth of April a
party of ronins perpetrated so gross an insult to the
Tokugawas that the wrath, both of the protector
and the dictator, was so strongly roused that, in
spite of the intercession of the prince of Choshiu
and a tremendous commotion in the city, the per-
petrators were imprisoned. The Buddhist temple
of To-ji-in was founded by Ashikaga Takauji, the
rival and opponent of Nitta, and the first sho-gun
of the dynasty which at Kamakura overawed the
Mikado from 1333 to 1573. This temple contained
in its reception-room five carved images of these
Ashikaga rulers. A party of ronins, intending a
direct insult to the Tycoon, went at night and cut
off the heads of three of these images ; and carrying
them to the execution ground where the worst crim-
inals were decapitated stuck them in clay on a pil-
lory. When the people of the city who were first
astir saw these heads in such a disgraceful place the
news ran like wildfire through Kyoto, and the protector
and Echizen at once arrested those concerned
in the insulting act. It was a plain and defiant in-
dication that the ronins considered both the Toku-
gawa and the Ashikaga families the country.
equally traitors to
Nevertheless step by step the country advanced
toward institutions before which even feudalism
must fall, and the constitution and representative
government of the future approach. Both the lord
of Echizen and his faithful counselor, Koba, rejoiced