At the Emperor's Wish - A Tale of the New Japan

  Money is not yet everything in Japan, however rapidly its power may be advancing. But it is something to the Commoner and it was little better than nothing to the Eta. Kutami was proud of himself, in an humble way; proud that he had something to do with when opportunity to do came to him. More than all he was proud of the new nation, and loyal to it with the last drop of his blood. He was no soldier, but he did his part when the forces of the Empire went over sea to meet the armies of the Chinese in Korea and Manchuria.

The business of his outcast days had grown with great strides under the incentive of his new ambition, and from being merely a tanner and dealer in leather he had become as well a manufacturer of boots and shoes. Now it was that the money he had won furnished the means of making return to the nation, and thousands of soldiers marched and fought in the boots Kutami the Commoner gave to his country.