Word: samurais
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...formal opening of Parliament, sit the Minister of the Navy and the Minister of War. Other Cabinet officers form no more than a decorative background of gold lace. Since last February Japan's Navy Minister has been Admiral Mitsuniasa Yonai, or more formally Yoniuchi-a descendant of the samurai, member of the blue-blooded Satsuma clan and grandson of the extremely wealthy Baron Kentaro Okuma, developer of the South Manchuria Railway...
Japan's present system of peerage, of which the new Premier is a top-ranking member, numbers about 1,000, was established in 1884 as a subtle method of breaking the power of the feudal Samurai. Titles are ki (prince), ko (marquis), haku (count), shi (viscount), dan (baron). All are hereditary titles, all except the first can be conferred on commoners. There is also the equivalent of British knighthood in the Ikai or Kurai. Only in classical poetry or Gilbert & Sullivan is the Emperor called Mikado, is generally called Tenshi (Son of Heaven) or Tenno (Heavenly King...
...attend his own solemn Buddhist funeral and admire the hundreds of wreaths prominent persons had sent to be piled around his coffin was Admiral Keisuke Okada (TIME, March 9). Japanese Army youngsters thought they were killing Premier Okada when they were actually killing his brother-in-law, a Japanese Samurai who bravely pretended to be the Premier...
...Samurai brother-in-law's sacrifice was in one respect vain. Admiral Okada, after his spectacular "resurrection," found it impossible to remain Premier because of pressure from the middle-aged Japanese Radical-Militarists whose young Army assassins so narrowly failed to kill him. Admiral Okada last week had retired from office into deepest political oblivion-his career assassinated by weapons more subtle than the bullets which slew his brother...
...gallant Colonel deliberately palmed himself off on the assassins as the Premier so that they might kill him and take their departure, his heroic sacrifice was in the normal tradition of the Japanese Samurai who inherits the fanatical feudal duty of dying willingly in case of need to save his superior. It was not clear this week, and it may never be clear, exactly how this most amazing mistaken-identity-murder occurred, but it did become clear that Premier Okada secreted himself first in a steel cabinet and later among kitchen wenches...