In the system in effect in our country in the ancient past everyone was a soldier. In an emergency the emperor became the Marshal, mobilizing the able-bodied youth for military service and thereby suppressing rebellion. When the campaign was over the men returned to their homes and their occupations, whether that of farmer, artisan, or merchant. They differed from the soldiers of a later period who carried two swords and called themselves warriors, living presumptuously without working, and in extreme instances cutting down people in cold blood while officials turned their faces.

Following the appointment of Uzuhiko as Governor of Katsuragi by Emperor Jimmu, military contingents were established as were the systems of imperial guards and coast guards. During the Jinki 1724-28] and Tempyö [729-49] eras the system of Six Headquarters and Two Military Outposts was established for the first time. Following the Högen [1156-58] and Heiji [1159-60] eras, the court became lax, and military control passed into the hands of the warrior class. Feudal conditions spread throughout the country, and there appeared among the people a distinction between the farmer and the soldier. Still later, the distinction between the ruler and the ruled collapsed, giving rise to indescribable evils. Then came the great Restoration of the government. All feudatories returned their fiefs to the Throne, and in 1871 the old prefectural system was restored. On the one hand, warriors who lived without labor for generations have had their stipends reduced and have been stripped of their swords; on the other hand, the four classes of the people are about to receive their right to freedom. This is the way to restore the balance between the high and the low and to grant equal rights to all. It is, in short, the basis of uniting the farmer and the soldier into one. Thus, the soldier is not the soldier of former days. The people are not the people of former days. They are now equally the people of the empire, and there is no distinction between them in their obligations to the State.

No one in the world is exempt from taxation with which the state defrays its expenditures. In this way, everyone should endeavor to repay one's country. The Occidentals call military obligation "blood tax," for it is one's repayment in life-blood to one's country. When the State suffers disaster, the people cannot escape being affected. Thus, the people can ward off disaster to themselves by striving to ward off disaster to the State. And where there is a state, there is military defense; and if there is military defense there must be military service. It follows, therefore, that the law providing for a militia is the law of nature and not an accidental, man-made law. As for the system itself it should be made after a survey of the past and the present, and adapted to the time and circumstance. The Occidental countries established their military systems after several hundred years of study and experience. Thus, their regulations are exact and detailed. However, the difference in geography rules out their wholesale adoption here. We should now select only what is good in them, use them to supplement our traditional military system, establish an army and a navy, require all males who attain the age of twenty, irrespective of class, to register for military service, and have them in readiness for all emergencies. Heads of communities and chiefs of villages should keep this aim in mind and they should instruct the people so that they will understand the fundamental principle of national defense.

from Tsunoda, De Bary and Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition, II: 196-98.