Perang Dunia Timur. Jepang, Tiongkok, dan Korea/Bab 6

HISTORICAL SKETCH FROM THE COMING OF THE FIRST EUROPEAN TRAVELERS TO THE PRESENT TIME.

A New Dynasty of Shoguns—Mendez Pinto’s Visit—Arrival of the Jesuit Missionaries—Kind Reception of Christianity—Quarrels Between the Sects—Beginning of Christian Persecution—Expulsion of the Missionaries—Torture and Martyrdom—The Massacre of Shimabara—Expulsion of all Foreigners—Closing the Door of Japan—History of the Last Shogunate—Arrival of Commodore Perry’s Fleet—The Knock at the Door of Japan—An Era of Treaty Making—Rapid Advance of Western Manners and Ideas in Japan—Attacks on Foreigners—The Abolition of the Shogunate—Japan’s Last Quarter Century.

Hitherto we have seen two readily distinguishable periods in the history of Japan, the period during which the mikados were the actual as well as the nominal rulers of the empire; and the period during which the imperial power more and more passed into the hands of usurping mayors of the palace, and the country was kept in an almost constant ferment with the feuds of rival noble families which coveted this honor. Successively the power, although not always the title, of shogun, had been held by members of the Minamoto, Hojo, Ashikaga, Ota and Toyotomi families. With Iyeyasu we pass into a third period, like the second in that the dual system of feudal government still prevailed, but unlike it in that it was a period of peace. Much strife had accompanied the erection of the fabric of feudalism, but it now stood complete. The mikado in Kioto and the daimios in their different provinces, alike ceased to protest against the dual administration. Within certain limits they had the regulation of their own affairs; the mikado was ever recognized as the source of all authority, and the daimios in their own provinces were petty kings; but it was the shogun in Yeddo who, undisputed, at least in practice, whatever some of the more powerful daimios may have said, swayed the destinies of the empire.

Let us now note the policy which the Shoguns adopted towards the foreigners who as missionaries or merchants had found their 224way to Japan, and the course of settlement and trade of foreigners.

It seems now certain that when Columbus set sail from Spain to discover a new continent, it was not America he was seeking, but the land of Japan. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler, had spent seventeen years, 1275-1292, at the court of the Tartar emperor Kublai Khan, and while in Peking had heard of a land lying to the eastward, called in the language of the Chinese, Zipangu, from which our modern name Japan has been corrupted. Columbus was an ardent student of Polo’s book, which had been published in 1298. He sailed westward across the Atlantic to find this kingdom. He discovered not Japan, but an archipelago in America on whose shores he eagerly inquired concerning Zipangu. Following this voyage, Vasco de Gama and a host of other brave Portuguese navigators sailed into the Orient and came back to tell of densely populated empires enriched with the wealth that makes civilization possible, and of which Europe had scarcely heard. Their accounts fired the hearts of the zealous who longed to convert the heathen, aroused the cupidity of traders who thirsted for gold, and kindled the desire of monarchs to found empires in Asia.

Mendez Pinto, a Portuguese adventurer, seems to have been the first European who landed on Japanese soil. On his return to Europe he told so many wonderful stories that by a pun on his Christian name he was dubbed “the mendacious.” His narrative was, however, as we now know, substantially correct. Pinto while in China had got on board a Chinese junk, commanded by a pirate. They were attacked by another corsair, their pilot was killed, and the vessel was driven off the coast by a storm. They made for the Liu Kiu Islands, but unable to find a harbor, put to sea again. After twenty-three days’ beating about, they sighted the islands of Tanegashima and landed. The name of the island, “island of the seed,” was significant. The arrival of these foreigners was a seed of troubles innumerable. The crop was priestcraft of the worst type, political intrigue, religious persecution, the inquisition, the slave trade, the propagation of Christianity by the sword, sedition, rebellion, and civil war. Its harvest was garnered in the blood of sixty-thousand Japanese.

The native histories recount the first arrival of Europeans in 1542, and note that year as the one in which fire-arms were first introduced. The pirate trader who brought Pinto to Japan cleared twelve hundred per cent. on his cargo, and the three Portuguese returned to China loaded with presents. The new market attracted hundreds of Portuguese adventurers to Japan, who found a ready welcome. The missionary followed the merchant. Already the Portuguese priests and Franciscan friars were numerous in India. Two Jesuits and two Japanese who had been converted at Goa, headed by Xavier, landed at Kagoshima in 1549. Xavier did not have great success, and in a short time left Japan disheartened. He had, however, inspired others who followed him, and their success was amazingly great.

The success of the Jesuit missionaries soon attracted the attention of the authorities. Organtin, a Jesuit missionary in Kioto, writing of his experiences, says that he was asked his name and why he had come to Japan. He replied that he was the Padre Organtin and had come to spread religion. He was told that he could not be allowed at once to spread his religion, but would be informed later on. Nobunaga accordingly took counsel with his retainers as to whether he would allow Christianity to be preached or not. One of these strongly advised not to do so, on the ground that there were already enough religions in the country, but Nobunaga replied that Buddhism had been introduced from abroad and had done good in the country, and he therefore did not see why Christianity should not be granted a trial. Organtin was consequently allowed to erect a church and to send for others of his order, who, when they came, were found to be like him in appearance. Their plan of action was to care for the sick, and so prepare the way for the reception of Christianity, and then to convert every one and make the thirty-six provinces of Japan subject to Portugal. In this last clause we have an explanation of the policy which the Japanese government ultimately adopted towards Christianity and all foreign innovations. Within five years after Xavier visited Kioto, seven churches were established in the vicinity of the city itself, while scores of Christian communities had sprung up in the south-west. 226In 1581 there were two hundred churches and one hundred and fifty thousand native Christians.

In 1583 an embassy of four young noblemen was dispatched by the Christian daimios to the pope to declare themselves vassals of the Holy See. They returned after eight years, having had audience of Phillip II. of Spain, and kissed the feet of the pope at Rome. They brought with them seventeen Jesuit missionaries, an important addition to the list of religious instructors. Spanish mendicant friars from the Philippine Islands, with Dominicans and Augustinians, also flocked into the country, teaching and zealously proselyting. The number of “Christians” at the time of the highest success of the missionaries in Japan was, according to their own figures six hundred thousand, a number that seems to be no exaggeration if quantity and not quality are considered. The Japanese less accurately set down a total of two million nominal adherents to the Christian sects. Among the converts were several princes, large numbers of lords, and gentlemen in high official positions, and beside generals of the army and admirals of the navy. Churches and chapels were numbered by the thousand, and in some provinces crosses and Christian shrines were as numerous as the kindred evidences of Buddhism had been before. The methods of the Jesuits appealed to the Japanese, as did the forms and symbols of the faith, but the Jesuits began to attack most violently the character of the native priests, and to incite their converts to insult their gods, burn the idols and desecrate the old shrines.

As the different orders, Jesuits, Franciscans and Augustinians increased, they began to clash. Political and religious war was almost universal in Europe at the same time, and the quarrels of the various nationalities followed the buccaneers, pirates, traders and missionaries to the distant seas of Japan. All the foreigners, but especially Portuguese, then were slave traders, and thousands of Japanese were bought and sold and shipped to China and the Philippines. The sea ports of Hirado and Nagasaki were the resorts of the lowest class of adventurers of all European nations, and the result was a continuous series of uproars, broils and murders among the foreigners. Such a picture of foreign influence and of Christianity as the Japanese saw it was not calculated 227to make a permanently favorable impression on the Japanese mind.

Latterly Nobunaga had somewhat repented of the favor he had shown to the new religion, though his death occurred before his dissatisfaction had manifested itself in any active repression. Hideyoshi had never been well disposed to Christianity, but other matters prevented him from at once meddling with the policy of his predecessors. In 1588 he ventured to issue an edict commanding the missionaries to assemble at Hirado, an island off the west coast of Kiushiu and prepared to leave Japan, and the missionaries obeyed, but as the edict was not enforced they again returned to the work of evangelization in private as vigorously as ever, averaging ten thousand converts a year. The Spanish mendicant friars pouring in from the Philippines, openly defied Japanese laws. This aroused Hideyoshi’s attention and his decree of expulsion was renewed. Some of the churches were burned. In 1596 six Franciscan and three Jesuit priests with seventeen Japanese converts were taken to Nagasaki and there burned.

When Hideyoshi died, affairs seemed to take a more favorable turn, but only for a few years. Iyeyasu was as much opposed to Christianity as Hideyoshi, and his hatred of the new religion was intensified by his partiality for Buddhism. The new daimios, carrying the policy of their predecessors as taught them by the Jesuits, but reversing its direction, began to persecute their Christian subjects, and to compel them to renounce their faith. The native converts resisted, even to blood and the taking up of arms. The idea of armed rebellion among the farmers was something so wholly new that Iyeyasu suspected foreign instigation. He became more vigilant as his suspicions increased, and resolving to crush this spirit of independence and intimidate the foreign emissaries, met every outbreak with bloody reprisals.

Iyeyasu issued a decree of expulsion against the missionaries in 1600, but the decree was not at once carried into effect. The date of the first arrival in Japan of Dutch merchants was also 1600. They settled in the island of Hirado. In 1606 an edict from Yeddo forbade the exercise of the Christian religion, but an outward show of obedience warded off active persecution. Four years later the Spanish friars again aroused the wrath of the 228government by defying its commands and exhorting the native converts to do likewise. In 1611 Iyeyasu obtained documentary proof of what he had long suspected, the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject state. Fresh edicts were issued, and in 1614 twenty-two Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars, one hundred and seventeen Jesuits and hundreds of native priests were embarked by force on board junks and sent out of the country. The next year the shogun pushed matters to an extreme with Hideyori, who was entertaining some Jesuit priests, and laid siege to the castle of Ozaka. A battle of unusual ferocity and bloody slaughter raged, ending in the burning of the citadel and the total defeat and death of Hideyori and thousands of his followers. The Jesuit fathers say that one hundred thousand men perished in this brief war.

The exiled foreign friars kept secretly returning, and the shogun pronounced sentence of death against any foreign priest found in the country. Iyemitsu, the next shogun, restricted all foreign commerce in Nagasaki and Hirado; all Japanese were forbidden to leave the country on pain of death. Any European vessel approaching the coast was at once to be referred to Nagasaki, whence it was to be sent home; the whole crew of any junk in which a missionary should reach Japanese shores were to be put to death; and the better to remove all temptation to go abroad, it was decreed that no ships should be constructed above a certain size and with other than the open sterns of coasting vessels.

Fire and sword were used to extirpate Christianity and to paganize the same people who in their youth were Christianized by the same means. Thousands of the native converts fled to China, Formosa and the Philippines. The Christians suffered all sorts of persecutions and tortures that savage ingenuity could devise. Yet few of the natives quailed or renounced their faith. They calmly let the fire of wood, cleft from the crosses before which they once prayed, consume them. Mothers carried their babes to the fire or the edge of the precipice rather than leave them behind to be educated in pagan faith. If any one doubt the sincerity and fervor of the Christian converts of to-day, or the ability of the Japanese to accept a higher form of faith, or their willingness 231to suffer for what they believe, he has but to read the accounts of various witnesses to the fortitude of the Japanese Christians of the seventeenth century.

The persecution reached its climax in the tragedy of Shimabara in 1637. The Christians arose in arms by tens of thousands, seized an old castle, repaired it and fortified it, and raised the flag of rebellion. The armies of veterans sent to besiege it expected an easy victory, and sneered at the idea of having any difficulty in subduing these farmers and peasants. It took two months by land and water, however, of constant attack before the fort was reduced, and the victory was finally gained only with the aid of Dutch cannon furnished under compulsion by the traders of Deshima. After great slaughter the intrepid garrison surrendered, and then began the massacre of thirty-seven thousand Christians. Many of them were hurled into the sea from the top of the island rock of Takaboko-shima, by the Dutch named Pappenberg, in the harbor of Nagasaki.

The result of this series of events was that the favorable policy adopted by Iyeyasu in regard to foreign trade was completely reversed. No foreigners were allowed to set foot on the soil of Japan, except Chinese and a few Dutch merchants. The Dutch gained the privilege of residing in confinement on the little island of Deshima, a piece of made land in the harbor of Nagasaki. Here under degrading restrictions and constant surveillance lived less than a score of Hollanders, who were required every year to send a representative to Yeddo to do homage to the shogun. They were allowed one ship per annum to come from the Dutch East Indies for the exchange of the commodities of Japan for those of Holland.

Says Doctor Griffis in his study of this era of Japanese history, “After nearly a hundred years of Christianity and foreign intercourse, the only apparent results of this contact with another religion and civilization were the adoption of gunpowder and fire-arms as weapons, the use of tobacco and the habit of smoking, the making of sponge cake, the naturalization into the language of a few foreign words, the introduction of new and strange forms of disease, among which the Japanese count the scourge of the venereal virus, and the permanent addition to 232that catalogue of terrors which priest and magistrate in Asiatic countries ever hold as welcome, to overawe the herd. For centuries the mention of that name would bate the breath, blanch the cheek and smite with fear as with an earthquake shock. It was the synonym of sorcery, sedition, and all that was hostile to the purity of the home and the peace of society. All over the empire, in every city, town, village and hamlet; by the roadside, ferry or mountain pass; at every entrance to the capitol, stood the public notice boards on which with prohibitions against the great crimes that disturbed the relations of society’s government was one tablet written with a deeper brand of guilt, with a more hideous memory of blood, with a more awful terror of torture, than when the like superscription was affixed at the top of a cross that stood between two thieves on a little hill outside Jerusalem. Its daily and familiar sight startled ever and anon the peasants who clasped hands and uttered a fresh prayer; the Bonze, or Buddhist priest, to add new venom to his maledictions; the magistrate to 233shake his head; and to the mother a ready word to hush the crying of her fretful babe. That name was Christ. So thoroughly was Christianity or the “corrupt sect” supposed to be eradicated before the end of the seventeenth century, that its existence was historical, remembered only as an awful scar on the national memory. No vestiges were supposed to be left of it, and no knowledge of its tenets was held save by a very few scholars in Yeddo, trained experts who were kept as a sort of spiritual blood hounds to scent out the adherents of the accursed creed. It was left to our day since the recent opening of Japan, for them to discover that a mighty fire had been smoldering for over two centuries beneath the ashes of persecutions. As late as 1829 seven persons, six men and an old woman, were crucified in Ozaka on suspicion of being Christians and communicating with foreigners. When the French brethren of the Mission Apostolique of Paris came to Nagasaki in 1860, they found in the villages around them over ten thousand people who held the faith of their fathers of the seventeenth century.”

The Portuguese were not the only race to attempt to open a permanent trade with Japan. Captain John Saris, with three ships, left England in April, 1611, with letters from King James I. to the “Emperor” (shogun) of Japan. Landing at Hirado he was well received, and established a factory in charge of Richard Cocks. The captain and a number of the party visited Yeddo and other cities and obtained from the shogun a treaty defining the privileges of trade, and signed Minamoto Iyeyasu. After a tour of three months Saris arrived at Hirado again, having 234visited Kioto, where he saw the splendid Christian churches and Jesuit palaces. After discouraging attempts to open a trade with Siam, Corea and China, and hostilities having broken out between them and the Dutch, the English abandoned the project of permanent trade with Japan, and all subsequent attempts to reopen it failed.

Will Adams, who was an English pilot, and the first of his nation in Japan, arrived in 1607 and lived in Yeddo till he died thirteen years later. He rose into favor with the shoguns and the people by the sheer force of a manly, honest character. His knowledge of shipbuilding, mathematics, and foreign affairs made him a very useful man. Although treated with kindness and honor, he was not allowed to leave Japan. He had a wife and daughter in England. Adams had a son and daughter born to him in Japan, and there are still living Japanese who claim descent from him. One of the streets of Yeddo was named after him, and the people of that street still hold an annual celebration on the fifteenth of June in his honor.

The history of the two centuries and a half that followed the triumphs of Iyeyasu is that of profound peace and stern isolation. We must pass rapidly in review of them. This great shogun took pains to arrange the empire after the appointment to the office, in such a way that the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, the dynasty which he founded, should have strictest power and most certain descent. His sons and daughters were married where they would be most powerful in influence with the great families of daimios. It must not be forgotten that Iyeyasu and 235his successor were both in theory and in reality vassals of the emperor, though they assumed protection of the imperial person. Neither the shogun nor the daimios were acknowledged at Kioto as nobles of the empire. The lowest kuge, or noble, was above the shogun in rank. The shogun could obtain his appointment only from the mikado. He was simply the most powerful among the daimios, who had won that pre-eminence by the sword, and who by wealth and power and a skillfully wrought plan of division of land among the other daimios was able to rule.

In 1600 and the years following, Iyeyasu employed an army of three hundred thousand laborers in Yeddo improving and building the city. Before the end of the century, Yeddo had a population of more than half a million, but it never did have, as the Hollanders guessed and the old text books told us, two million five hundred 236thousand souls. Outside of Yeddo the strength of the great unifier was spent on public roads and highways, post stations, bridges, castles and mines. He spent the last years of his life engaged in erasing the scars of war by his policy of conciliation, securing the triumphs of peace, perfecting his plans for fixing in stability a system of government, and in collecting books and manuscripts. He bequeathed his code of laws to his chief retainers, and advised his sons to govern in the spirit of kindness. He died on the eighth of March, 1616.

The grandson of Iyeyasu, Iyemitsu, was another great shogun, and it was he who established the rule that all the daimios should visit and reside in Yeddo during half the year. Gradually these rules became more and more restrictive, until the guests became mere vassals. Their wives and children were kept as hostages in Yeddo. During his rule the Christian insurrection and massacre at Shimabara took place. Yeddo was vastly improved, with aqueducts, fire watch towers, the establishment of mints, weights and measures. A general survey of the empire was executed; maps of various provinces and plans of the daimios’ castles were made; the councils called Hiojo-sho (discussion and decision), and Wakadoshiyori (assembly of elders), were established and Corean envoys received. The height of pride and ambition which this shogun had already reached, is seen in the fact that in a letter of reply to Corea he is referred to as Tai Kun, (“Tycoon”), a title never conferred by the mikado on any one, nor had Iyemitsu any legal right to it. It was assumed in a sense honorary or meaningless to any Japanese, unless highly jealous of the mikado’s sovereignty, and was intended to overawe the Coreans. The approximate interpretation of it is “great ruler.”

Under the strong rule of the Tokugawa shoguns, therefore, the long distracted Japanese empire at length enjoyed two-and-a-half centuries of peace and prosperity. The innate love of art, literature, and education, which almost constant warfare had prevented from duly developing among the people, had now an opportunity of producing fruit. And as it had shown itself in former intervals of rest, so was it now. Under the patronage of Iyeyasu was composed the Dai Nihon Shi, the first detailed history of Japan. Tsunayoshi, his successor, 1681 to 1709, founded at Seido a Confucian 237university, and was such an enthusiast for literature that he used to assemble the princes and high officials about him and expound to them passages from the Chinese classics. Yoshimune, another shogun, was much interested in astronomy and other branches of science, beside doing much to improve agriculture. Legal matters also engaged his attention; he altered Iyeyasu’s policy so far as to publish a revised criminal code, and improved the administration of the law, forbidding the use of torture except in cases where there was flagrant proof of guilt. He built an astronomical observatory at Kanda and established at his court a professorship of Chinese literature.

Iyenori, shogun from 1787 to 1838, threw the classes of the Confucian university open to the public. Every body from the nobility down to the masses of the people began to appreciate literary studies. Maritime commerce within the limits of the four seas was encouraged by the shogun’s government, regular service of junks being established between the principal ports. Nor must it be forgotten that to the Tokugawas is due the foundation of the great modern city of Yeddo with its vast fortifications and its triumphs of art in the shrines of Shiba and Uyeno. It was at this period too that the matchless shrines of Nikko were reared in memory of the greatness of Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu. The successors of the former, the shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty, fourteen in all, were with one exception buried alternately in the cemeteries of Zozoji and Toyeizan, in the city districts of Shiba and Uyeno.

But throughout all this period of peace and progress the light of the outer world was excluded. The people made the best use of the light they had, but after all it was but dim. The learning by rote of thousands of Chinese characters, and the acquisition of skill in the composition of Chinese and Japanese verse, were little worthy to be the highest literary attainments possible to the most aspiring of the youth of Japan. In the domain of art there was more that was inviting, but scientific knowledge was tantalizingly meagre and that little was overlaid with Chinese absurdities. When we consider that the isolation of the country was due to no spirit of exclusiveness in the national character, that indeed it was the result of a policy that actually went against the grain of 238the people, how many restless spirits must there have been during these long years, who kept longing for more light. Fortunately there was one little chink at Deshima, in the harbor at Nagasaki, and of this some of the more earnest were able to take advantage. Many instances are recorded and there must be many more of which we can know nothing, of Japanese students displaying the truest heroism in surmounting the difficulties that lay in the way of their acquiring foreign knowledge. Let us now see how there came at length an unsettled dawn, and after the clouds of this had cleared, a dazzling inpouring of the light.

It was the American Union which opened the door of Japan to western civilization. It had been desired by all of the European nations, as well as by the United States, to obtain access to Japanese ports. Supplies were frequently needed, particularly water and coal, but no distress was ever considered a sufficient excuse for the Japanese to permit the landing of a foreign vessel’s crew. Shipwrecked sailors frequently passed through seasons of great trial and danger, before they were restored to their own people. Even Japanese sailors who were shipwrecked on other shores, or carried out to sea, were refused re-admission to their own country when rescued by foreigners.

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry of the American navy, urged upon President Millard Fillmore the necessity and possibility of making some sort of a treaty with the exclusive empire. It was decided that the most effective way to advance this desire was to sail into the bay of Yeddo with a squadron sufficient to command respect. A fleet was assigned to the undertaking, under the command of Perry, and the American vessels sailed away to the Orient to rendezvous at the chief city of the Liu Kiu islands, Napha. From Napha the fleet sailed for Japan, the Susquehanna, the flagship, the advance of the line of the ships of seventeen nations.

It was on the seventh day of July, 1853, under a sky and over a sea of perfect calm, that the four American warships appeared off Uraga in the Bay of Yeddo. Without delay the officials of Uraga emphatically notified the “barbarian” envoy that he must go to Nagasaki, where all business with foreigners had to be done. The barbarian refused to go. He informed the messengers 241that he was the bearer of a letter from the President of the United States to the Emperor of Japan; that he had sailed as near as possible to the destination of the letter and would now deliver it and continue it on its way by land, but he would not retrace his path until the letter was delivered. The shogun Iyeyoshi on receiving information of such decision, was exceedingly troubled and called his officials to a council. Alarm was wide spread, and it was ordered that strict watch should be kept along the shore to prevent the barbarian vessels from committing acts of violence. During the eight days while Commodore Perry’s fleet was waiting in the Bay of Yeddo, the boats of his ships were busily engaged in taking soundings and surveying the shores and the anchorage. No sailors were permitted to land, and no natives were molested. Every effort was made to indicate to the Japanese the desire for a peaceful friendship.

A learned Chinese scholar was sent by the shogun to Uraga, who acted as an official and eminent interpreter in an interview with the American envoy. Continued councils were called by the shogun, not only of his chief officers but of the daimios, the nobles, and the retired nobles of Yeddo. The citizens of Yeddo and the surrounding villages were in great tumult, fearing that there would be a war, for which the country was totally unprepared. Meanwhile the envoy was impatiently demanding an answer. At last, after eight days, the patience and the impatience, combined with the demonstrations made by the vessels of the fleet, which were highly impressive to the Japanese who had never seen a steamboat, won success for Commodore Perry’s message. A high Japanese commissioner came to Uraga, prepared a magnificent pavilion for the ceremonies, and announced himself ready to receive the letter to the emperor. With great pomp and ceremony the Americans landed and in this pavilion with proper formalities, delivered the letter and presents from the president. Then having, for the first time in history, gained several important points of etiquette in a country where etiquette was more than law or morals, the splendid diplomat and warrior Perry sailed away with his fleet July 17, 1853.

It was in response to a temporizing policy on the part of Japan, and to the good judgment and careful decision of Commodore 242Perry, that the fleet sailed away without demanding an immediate reply to his letter. The American envoy was informed that in a matter of so much importance a decision could not be at once reached, and that if he now left, he would on his return get a definite answer. No wonder there was commotion. The nineteenth century had come suddenly into contact with the fourteenth. The spirit of commerce and the spirit of feudalism, two great but conflicting forces, met in their full development, and the result was necessarily a convulsion. We are hardly surprised to hear that the shogun died before Commodore Perry’s return, or that during the next few years the land was harassed by earthquakes and pestilences.

Perry’s second appearance was in February, 1854, this time with a much larger fleet. A hot debate took place in the shogun’s council as to the answer that should be given. The old daimio of Mito, the head of one of the three families, which, forming the Tokugawa clan, furnished the occupants of the shogunate, wanted to fight and settle the question once for all. “At first,” he said, “they will give us philosophical instruments, machinery and other curiosities; will take ignorant people in; and trade being their chief object they will manage to impoverish the country, after which they will treat us just as they like, perhaps behave with the greatest rudeness and insult us, and end by swallowing up Japan. If we do not drive them away now we shall never have another opportunity.”

Others gave contrary advice, saying, “If we try to drive them away they will immediately commence hostilities, and then we shall be obliged to fight. If we once get into a dispute we shall have an enemy to fight who will not be easily disposed of. He does not care how long he will have to spend over it, but he will come with myriads of men-of-war and surround our shores completely; however large a number of ships we might destroy, he is so accustomed to that sort of thing that he would not care in the least. In time the country would be put to an immense expense and the people plunged into misery. Rather than allow this, as we are not the equals of foreigners in the mechanical arts, let us have intercourse with foreign countries, learn their drill and tactics, and when we have made the nation as united as one 243family, we shall be able to go abroad and give lands in foreign countries to those who have distinguished themselves in battle.”

The latter view carried and a treaty with the United States was signed on the thirty-first of March, 1854. Now be it observed that the shogun did this without the sanction of the mikado, whom indeed he had never yet consulted on the matter, and that he subscribed himself Tai Kun, (“Tycoon,”) or great ruler, a title to which he had no right and which if it meant anything at all involved an assumption of the authority of supreme ruler in the empire. This was the view naturally taken by Perry and by the ambassadors from European countries who a few years later obtained treaties with Japan. They were under the impression that they were dealing with the emperor; and hearing of the existence of another potentate living in an inland city, surrounded with a halo of national veneration, they conceived the plausible but erroneous theory that the tycoon was the temporal sovereign, and this mysterious mikado the spiritual sovereign of the country. They little dreamed that the so-called tycoon was no sovereign at all, and that consequently the treaties which he signed had no legal validity.

The shogun could ill afford thus to lay himself open to the charge of treason. From the first there had been a certain class of daimios who had never heartily submitted to the Tokugawa administration. The principal clans which thus submitted to the regime under protest against what they considered a usurpation, an encroachment on the authority of the mikado, whom alone they recognized as the divinely appointed ruler of Japan, were those of Satsuma, Choshiu, and Tosa. As the years of peace cast their spell over the nation, making the people forgetful of war and transforming the descendants of Iyeyasu into luxurious idlers, much more like impotent mikados than successors of the energetic soldier and law-giver, their hopes more and more arose that an opportunity would be given them to overthrow the shogunate and bring about the unification of the empire at the hands of the mikado. Their time had now come. The shogun was enervated and he had so far forgotten himself as to open the country to foreign trade, without the sanction of the “Son of Heaven.” It was this illegal act of the shogun that precipitated 244the confusion, violence and disaster of the next few years, reaching ultimately in 1868 to the complete overthrow of his own power and the restoration of the mikado to his rightful position as actual as well as nominal ruler of the empire.

Fearing the consequences of the illegal act into which he had been driven, the shogun lost no time in sending messengers to Kioto to inform the mikado of what had happened and seek his sanction to the policy adopted. It was plead in excuse for the course of conduct, that affairs had reached such a condition that the shogun was driven to sign the treaty. The emperor in great agitation summoned a council. The decision was unanimous against the shogun’s action, and the messengers were informed that no sanction could be given to the treaty. The next important step was not taken until July, 1858, when Lord Elgin arrived with propositions on the part of Great Britain for a treaty of amity and commerce. He was unaccompanied by any armed force, and brought a steam yacht as a present from Queen Victoria to the tycoon of Japan.

A few months later treaties were entered into with all the leading powers of Europe, but if there was a political lull between 1854 and 1858, the poor Japanese had distractions of a very different kind. From a violent earthquake and consequent conflagration, one hundred and four thousand of the inhabitants of Yeddo lost their lives. A terrific storm swept away one hundred thousand more, and in a visitation of cholera thirty thousand persons perished in Yeddo alone. Moreover, just when the treaties were being signed, the shogun Iyesada died, “as if,” says Sir R. Alcock, “a further victim was required for immolation on the altar of the outraged gods of Japan.”

The political tempest that had been gathering now swept over the nation. For the next ten years there was so much disorder, intrigue, and bloodshed, that Japan became among the western nations a byword for treachery and assassination. Defenseless foreigners were cut down in the streets of Yeddo and Yokohama and even in the legations. Twice was the British legation attacked, on one of the occasions being taken by storm and held for a time by a band of free-lances. No foreigner’s life was safe. Even when out on the most trivial errand, every foreign resident 245was accompanied by an armed escort furnished by the shogun’s government. It is needless to give an account of all the different assassinations, successful or attempted, which darkened the period. The secretary to the American legation was cut down near Shiba, Yeddo, when returning from the Prussian legation with an armed escort; a Japanese interpreter attached to the British legation was fatally stabbed in broad daylight while standing at the legation flagstaff; one of the guard at the same legation murdered two Englishmen in the garden and then committed suicide; an Englishman was cut down on the highway between Yokohama and Yeddo by certain retainers of the daimio of Satsuma, whose procession he had unwittingly crossed on horseback; and these were not all.

It is not a satisfactory answer to say that hatred of foreigners was the leading motive that inspired all these acts of violence. This was no doubt more or less involved, but the true explanation is to be found in the hostility of the mikado’s partisans to the shogun’s government. All possible means were taken to thwart the shogun and bring him into complications with the ambassadors at his court. Every attack on a foreigner brought fresh trouble upon the Yeddo government and hastened its collapse. Long before foreigners arrived, the seeds of revolution had sprouted and their growth was showing above the soil. It is to the state of political parties and of feudalism at this epoch in Japanese history, and not to mere ill will against foreigners, that this policy of intrigue and assassination must be ascribed.

It would take too long to discuss all the complications of this period and to inquire, for instance, how far when the Japanese government failed to arrest and execute the murderer of Mr. Richardson, the British were justified in demanding an indemnity of $500,000 from the shogun and $125,000 from the daimio of Satsuma, or in enforcing their demands with a threatened bombardment of Yeddo and an actual bombardment of Kagoshima. It is out of our scope here to inquire into the shelling of the batteries of the daimio of Choshiu, at Shimonoseki, in turn by the Americans, British, French and Dutch, the men of Choshiu having fired upon some Dutch, American, and French vessels that had entered the straits against the prohibition of the Japanese. 246An indemnity of $3,000,000 was also exacted and distributed among these nations.

Such stern measures doubtless appeared to the foreign ambassadors necessary to prevent the expulsion or even the utter extermination of foreigners. Whether their policy was mistaken or not, certain it is that they can have had no adequate conception of the difficulties with which the shogun had to contend. The position of that ruler was one of such distraction as might well evoke for him the pity of every disinterested onlooker. Do as he would, he could not escape trouble; on the one side were the mikado’s partisans ever growing in power and in determination to crush him, and on the other were the equally irresistible foreigners with their impatient demands and their alarming threats. He was as helpless as a man between a wall of rock and an advancing tide.

The internal difficulties of the country were increased by dissensions which broke out in the imperial court. The clans of Satsuma and Choshiu had been summoned to Kioto to preserve order. For some reason the former were relieved of this duty, or rather privilege, and it therefore devolved exclusively upon the Choshiu men. Taking advantage of their position, the Choshiu men persuaded the mikado to undertake a progress to the province of Yamato, there to proclaim his intention of taking the field against foreigners; but this proposal roused the jealousy of the other clans at the imperial court, as they feared that the men of Choshiu were planning to obtain possession of the mikado’s person and thus acquire pre-eminence. The intended expedition was abandoned, and the men of Choshiu, accompanied by Sanjo, afterward prime minister of the reformed government, and six other nobles who had supported them, were banished from Kioto.

The ill feeling thus occasioned between Choshiu and Satsuma, was fomented by an unfortunate incident which occurred at Shimonoseki early in 1864. The former clan recklessly fired upon a vessel, which being of European build they mistook for a foreign one, but which really belonged to Satsuma. Thus Choshiu was in disfavor both with the shogun and with the mikado, and in this year we have the strange spectacle of these two rulers leaguing their forces together for its punishment. 247August 20, 1864, the Choshiu men advanced upon Kioto, but were repulsed with much slaughter, only however after the greater part of the city had been destroyed by fire. The rebellion was not at once quelled; indeed the Choshiu samurai were proving themselves more than a match for the troops which the shogun had sent against them, when at length the imperial court ordered the fighting to be abandoned. Simultaneously with the Choshiu rebellion the shogun had to meet an insurrection by the daimio of Mito, in the east. His troubles no doubt hastened his death, which took place at Osaka in September, 1866, shortly before the war against Choshiu terminated. Then there succeeded Keiki, the last of the shoguns.

It should be noted, however, that before this the mikado’s sanction had been obtained to the foreign treaties. In November, 1865, British, French, and Dutch squadrons came to anchor off Hiogo, of which the foreign settlement of Kobe is now a suburb, and sent letters to Kioto demanding the imperial consent. The nearness of such an armed force was too great an argument to be withstood, and the demand was granted. Little more than a year after his accession to the shogunate Keiki resigned. In doing so he proved himself capable of duly appreciating the national situation. Now that foreigners had been admitted, it was more necessary than ever that the government should be strong, and this, it was seen, was impossible without the abolition of the old dual system. He had secured the mikado’s consent to the treaties, on the condition that they should be revised, and that Hiogo should never be opened as a port of foreign commerce.

But the end had not yet come. On the same day when the shogunate was abolished, January 3, 1868, the forces friendly to the Tokagawas were dismissed from Kioto, and the guardianship of the imperial palace was committed to the clans of Satsuma, Tosa, and Geishiu. This measure gave Keiki great offense, and availing himself of a former order of the court which directed him to continue the conduct of affairs, he marched with his retainers and friends to Ozaka and sent a request to the mikado that all Satsuma men who had any share in the government should be dismissed. To this the court would not consent, and 248Keiki marched against Kioto with a force of thirty thousand men, his declared object being to remove from the mikado his bad counselors. A desperate engagement took place at Fushimi, in which the victory was with the loyalists. But this was only the beginning of a short but sharp civil war, of which the principal fighting was in the regions between Yeddo and Nikko.

The restoration was at last complete. Proclamation was made “to sovereigns of all foreign nations and their subjects, that permission had been granted to the shogun Yoshinobu, or Keiki, to return the governing power in accordance with his own request;” and the manifesto continued: “henceforward we shall exercise supreme authority both in the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of emperor should be substituted for that of tycoon which had been hitherto employed in the treaties.” Appended were the seal of Dai Nippon, and the signature of Mutsuhito, this being the first occasion in Japanese history on which the name of an emperor had appeared during his lifetime.

With the triumph of the imperial party one might have expected a return to the old policy of isolation. There can be no doubt that when the Satsuma, Choshiu, and other southern clans commenced their agitation for the abolition of the shogunate, their ideas with regard to foreign intercourse were decidedly retrogressive. But after all, the leading motive which inspired them was dissatisfaction with the semi-imperial position occupied by the upstart Tokugawas; to this their opposition to foreigners was quite secondary. It so happened that the Tokugawa shoguns got involved with foreigners, and it was so much the worse for the foreigners. To go deeper, what was at the bottom of this desire was the overthrow of the shogunate. Doubtless their patriotism, what they had at heart, was the highest welfare of their country, and this they believed impossible without its unification. Their primary motive then, being patriotism, we need not be surprised that they were willing to entertain the notion that perhaps after all the prosperity of their country might best be insured by the adoption of a policy of free foreign intercourse. This idea more and more commended itself, until it became a conviction; and when they got into power they astonished the 251world by the thoroughness with which they broke loose from the old traditions and entered upon a policy of enlightened reformation. To the political and social revolution which accompanied the restoration of the mikado in 1868, there has been no parallel in the history of mankind.

One of the first acts of the mikado after the restoration, was to assemble the kuges and daimios and make oath before them “that a deliberative assembly should be formed, and all measures be decided upon by public opinion; that impartiality and justice should form the basis of his action; and that intellect and learning should be sought for throughout the world in order to establish the foundations of the empire.” In the mid-summer of 1868, the mikado, recognizing Yeddo as really the center of the nation’s life, made it the capital of the empire and transferred his court thither; but the name Yeddo, being distasteful on account of its associations with the shogunate, was abolished, and the city renamed Tokio, or “Eastern Capital.” At the same time the ancient capital Kioto, received the new name of Saikio or “Western Capital.” For the creation of a central administration, however, more was necessary than the abolition of the shogunate and the establishment of the mikado’s authority. The great fabric of feudalism still remained intact. Within his own territory each daimio was practically an independent sovereign, taxing his subjects as he saw fit, often issuing his own currency, and sometimes even granting passports so as to control intercourse with neighboring provinces. Here was a formidable barrier to the consolidation of the empire. But the reformers had the courage and the tact necessary to remove it.

The first step towards the above revolution was taken in 1869, when the daimios of Satsuma, Choshiu, Hizen, and Tosa addressed a memorial to the mikado requesting his authorization for the resignation of their fiefs into his hands. Other nobles followed their example, and the consequence was the acceptance by the mikado of control over the land and revenues of the different provinces, the names of the clans however being still preserved, and the daimios allowed to remain over them as governors, each with one-tenth of the former assessment of his territory as rental. By this arrangement the evil of too suddenly terminating 252the relation between the clans and their lords was sought to be avoided, but it was only temporary; in 1871 the clan system was totally abolished, and the country redivided for administrative purposes, with officers chosen irrespectively of hereditary rank or clan connection.

But the payment of hereditary pensions and allowances of the ex-daimios and ex-samurai proved such a drain upon the national resources that in 1876 the reformed government found it necessary to compulsorily convert them into capital sums. The rate of commutation varied from five years’ purchase in the case of the largest pensions, to fourteen years’ in that of the smallest. The number of the pensioners with whom they had thus to deal was three hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred and twenty-eight. The act of the daimios in thus suppressing themselves looks at first sight like a grand act of self-sacrifice, as we are not accustomed to see landed proprietors manifesting such disinterestedness for the patriotic object of advancing their country’s good. But the vast majority of daimios had come to be mere idlers, as the greater mikado had been. Their territories were governed by the more able and energetic of their retainers, and it was a number of these men that had most influence in bringing about the restoration of the mikado’s authority. Intense patriots, they saw that the advancement of their country could not be realized without its unification, and at the same time they cannot but have preferred a larger scope for their talents, which service immediately under the mikado would give them. From being ministers of their provincial governments, they aspired to be ministers of the imperial government. They were successful; and their lords, who had all along been accustomed to yield to their advice quite cheerfully, acquiesced when asked for the good of the empire to give up their fiefs to the mikado. One result of this is that while most of the ex-daimios have retired into private life, the country is now governed almost exclusively by ex-samurai. Such sweeping changes were not to be accomplished without rousing opposition and even rebellion. The government incurred much risk in interfering with the ancient privileges of the samurai. It is not surprising that several rebellions had to be put down during the years immediately succeeding 1868.

253Dr. William Elliot Griffis, in his exhaustive and interesting work, “The Mikado’s Empire,” discusses at length the change of Japan from feudalism to its present condition, the abolition of the shogunate, and the rebellions that followed that event. He declares that popular impression to be wrong which suggests that the immediate cause of the fall of the shogun’s government, the restoration of the mikado to supreme power, and the abolition of the dual and feudal systems, was the presence of foreigners on the soil of Japan. The foreigners and their ideas were the occasion, not the cause, of the destruction of the dual system of government. Their presence served merely to hasten what was already inevitable.

The history of Japan from the abolition of feudalism in 1871 up to the present time, is a record of advance in all the arts of western civilization. The mikado, Mutsuhito, has shown himself to be much more than a petty divinity, a real man. He has taken a firm stand in advocacy of the introduction of western customs, wherever they were improvements. The imperial navy, dockyards, and machine shops have been a pride to him. He has withdrawn himself from mediæval seclusion and assumed divinity, and has made himself accessible and visible to his subjects. He has placed the empress in a position like to that occupied by the consorts of European monarchs, and with her he has adopted European attire. In the latter part of June, 1872, the mikado left Tokio in the flagship of Admiral Akamatsu, and made a tour throughout the south and west of his empire. For the first time in twelve centuries the emperor of Japan moved freely and unveiled among his subjects.

Again in the same year Japan challenged the admiration of Christendom. The coolie trade, carried on by Portuguese at Macao, in China, between the local kidnappers and Peru and Cuba, had long existed in defiance of the Chinese government. Thousands of ignorant Chinese were yearly decoyed from Macao and shipped in sweltering shipholds, under the name of “passengers.” In Cuba and Peru their contracts were often broken, they were cruelly treated, and only a small portion of them returned alive to tell their wrongs. The Japanese government had with a fierce jealousy watched the beginning of such a 254traffic on their own shores. In the last days of the shogunate, coolie traders came to Japan to ship irresponsible hordes of Japanese coolies and women to the United States. To their everlasting shame, be it said some were Americans. Among the first things done by the mikado’s government after the restoration, was the sending of an official who effected the joyful delivery of these people and their return to their homes.

So the Japanese set to work to destroy this nefarious traffic. The Peruvian ship Maria Luz, loaded with Chinese, entered the port of Yokohama. Two fugitive coolies in succession swam to the English war ship Iron Duke. Hearing the piteous story of their wrongs, Mr. Watson, the British chargé d’affaires, called the attention of the Japanese authorities to these illegal acts in their waters. A protracted enquiry was instituted and the coolies landed. The Japanese refused to force them on board against their will, and later shipped them to China, a favor which was gratefully acknowledged by the Chinese government. This act of a pagan nation achieved a grand moral victory for the world and humanity. Within four years the coolie traffic, which was but another name for the slave trade, was abolished from the face of the earth, and the coolie prisons of Macao were in ruins. Yet the act of freeing the Chinese coolies in 1872 was done in the face of clamor and opposition, and a rain of protests from 257the foreign consuls, ministers, and a part of the press. Abuse and threats and diplomatic pressure were in vain. The Japanese never wavered, but marched straight to the duty before them, the liberation of the slaves. The British chargé and the American consul, Colonel Charles O. Shepherd, alone gave hearty support and unwavering sympathy to the right side.

During the same year, 1872, two legations and three consulates were established abroad, and from that time forward the number has been increasing until the representatives of Japan’s government are found all over the world. Scores of daily newspapers and hundreds of weeklies have been furnishing the country with information and awakening thought. The editors are often men of culture or students returned from abroad.

The Corean war project had, in 1872, become popular in the cabinet and was the absorbing theme of the army and navy. During the Tokugawa period Corea had regularly sent embassies of homage and congratulation to Japan; but not relishing the change of affairs in 1868, disgusted at the foreignizing tendencies of the mikado’s government, incensed at Japan’s departure from Turanian ideals, and emboldened by the failure of the French and American expeditions, Corea sent insulting letters taunting Japan with slavish truckling to the foreign barbarians, declared herself an enemy, and challenged Japan to fight. About this time a Liu Kiu junk was wrecked on eastern Formosa. The crew was killed by the savages, and, it is said, eaten. The Liu Kiuans appealed to their tributary lords at Satsuma, who referred the matter to Tokio. English, Dutch, American, German, and Chinese ships have from time to time been wrecked on this cannibal coast, the terror of the commerce of Christendom. Their war ships vainly attempted to chastise the savages. Soyejima, with others, conceived the idea of occupying the coast, to rule the wild tribes, and of erecting light houses in the interests of commerce. China laid no claim to eastern Formosa, all trace of which was omitted from the maps of the “Middle Kingdom.” In the spring of 1873, Soyejima went to Peking and there, among other things granted him, was an audience with the Chinese emperor. He thus reaped the results of the diplomatic labors of half a century. The Japanese ambassador stood upright before 258the “Dragon Face” and the “Dragon Throne,” robed in the tight black dress-coat, trousers, and linen of western civilization, bearing the congratulations of the young mikado of the “Sunrise Kingdom” to the youthful emperor of the “Middle Kingdom.” In the Tsung-li Yamen, Chinese responsibility over eastern Formosa was disavowed, and the right of Japan to chastise the savages granted. A Japanese junk was wrecked on Formosa, and its crew stripped and plundered while Soyejima was absent in China. This event piled fresh fuel on the flames of the war feeling now popular even among the unarmed classes.

Japan at this time had to struggle with opposition within and without, to every move in the direction of advancement in civilization. Says Griffis, “At home were the stolidly conservative peasantry backed by ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, and political hostility. On their own soil they were fronted by aggressive foreigners who studied all Japanese questions through the spectacles of dollars and cents and trade, and whose diplomatists too often made the principles of Shylock their system. Outside the Asiatic nations beheld with contempt, jealousy and alarm the departure of one of their number from Turanian ideas, principles, and civilization. China with ill-concealed anger, Corea with open defiance taunted Japan with servile submission to the ‘foreign devils.’

“For the first time the nation was represented to the world by 259an embassy at once august and plenipotentiary. It was not a squad of petty officials or local nobles going forth to kiss a toe, to play the part of figure-heads, or stool-pigeons, to beg the aliens to get out of Japan, to keep the scales on foreign eyes, to buy gun-boats, or to hire employees. A noble of highest rank, and blood of immemorial antiquity, with four cabinet ministers, set out to visit the courts of the fifteen nations having treaties with Dai Nippon. They were accompanied by commissioners representing every government department, sent to study and report upon the methods and resources of foreign civilizations. They arrived in Washington February 29, 1872, and for the first time in history a letter signed by the mikado was seen outside of Asia. It was presented by the ambassadors, robed in their ancient Yamato costume, to the President of the United States on the 4th of March, Mr. Arinori Mori acting as interpreter. The first president of the free republic, and the men who had elevated the eta to citizenship stood face to face in fraternal accord. The one hundred and twenty-third sovereign of an empire in its twenty-sixth centennial saluted the citizen ruler of a nation whose century aloe had not yet bloomed. On the 6th of March they were welcomed on the floor of Congress. This day marked the formal entrance of Japan upon the theater of universal history.”

In its subordinate objects the embassy was a signal success. Much was learned of Christendom. The results at home were the splendid series of reforms which mark the year 1872 as epochal. But in its prime object the embassy was an entire failure. One constant and supreme object was ever present, beyond amusement or thirst for knowledge. It was to ask that in the revision of the treaties the extra-territoriality clause be stricken out, that foreigners be made subject to the laws of Japan. The failure of the mission was predicted by all who knew the facts. From Washington to St. Petersburg point-blank refusal was made. No Christian governments would for a moment trust their people to pagan edicts and prisons. While Japan slandered Christianity by proclamations, imprisoned men for their beliefs, knew nothing of trial by jury, of the habeas corpus writ, or of modern jurisprudence; in short while Japan 260maintained the institutions of barbarism, they refused to recognize her as a peer among nations.

At home the watchword was progress. Public persecution for conscience' sake vanished. All the Christians torn from their homes and exiled and imprisoned in 1868 were set free and restored to their native villages. Education advanced rapidly, public decency was improved, and the standards of Christendom attempted.

While in Europe Iwakura and his companions in the embassy kept cognizant of home affairs. With eyes opened by all that they had seen abroad, mighty results, but of slow growth, they saw their country going too fast. Behind the war project lay an abyss of ruin. On their return the war scheme brought up in a cabinet meeting was rejected. The disappointment of the army was keen and that of expectant foreign contractors pitiable. The advocates of war among the cabinet ministers resigned and retired to private life. Assassins attacked Iwakura, but his injuries did not result fatally. The spirit of feudalism was against him.

On the 17th of January, the ministers who had resigned sent in a memorial praying for the establishment of a representative assembly in which the popular wish might be discussed. Their request was declined. It was officially declared that Japan was not ready for such institutions. Hizen, the home of one of the great clans of the coalition of 1868, was the chief seat of disaffection. With perhaps no evil intent, Eto, who had been the head of the department of justice, had returned to his home there and was followed by many of his clansmen. Scores of officials and men assembled with traitorous intent, and raised the cry of “On to Corea.” The rebellion was annihilated in ten days. A dozen ringleaders were sent to kneel before the blood pit. The national government was vindicated and sectionalism crushed.

The Formosan affair was also brought to a conclusion. Thirteen hundred Japanese soldiers occupied the island for six months, conquering the savages wherever they met, building roads and fortifications. At last the Chinese government in shame began to urge their claims on Formosa and to declare the Japanese intruders. For a time war seemed inevitable. The 263man for the crisis was Okubo, a leader in the cabinet, the master spirit in crushing the rebellion, and now an ambassador at Peking. The result was that the Chinese paid in solid silver an indemnity of $700,000 and the Japanese disembarked. Japan single-handed, with no foreign sympathy, but with positive opposition, had in the interests of humanity rescued a coast from terror and placed it in a condition of safety. In the face of threatened war a nation having but one-tenth the population, area, or resources of China, had abated not a jot of its just demands nor flinched from battle. The righteousness of her cause was vindicated.

The Corean affair ended happily. In 1875 Kuroda Kiyotaka with men of war entered Corean waters. Patience, skill, and tact were crowned with success. On behalf of Japan a treaty of peace, friendship, and commerce was made between the two countries February 27, 1876. Japan thus peacefully opened this last of the hermit nations to the world.

The rebellions which we have mentioned were of a mild type compared with that which in 1877 shook the government to its foundations. In the limits of our space it is impossible to enter deeply into the causes of the Satsuma rebellion. Its leader, Saigo Takamori, was one of the most powerful members of the reformed government until 1873 when he resigned as some of his predecessors had done, indignant at the peace policy which was pursued. A veritable Cincinnatus, he seems to have won the hearts of all classes around him by the Spartan simplicity of his life and the affability of his manner, and there was none more able or more willing to come to the front when duty to his country called him. It is a thousand pities that such a genuine patriot should have sacrificed himself through a mistaken notion of duty. Ambition to maintain and extend the military fame of his country seems to have blinded him to all other more practical considerations. The policy of Okubo and the rest of the majority in the cabinet, with its regard for peace and material prosperity, was in his eyes unworthy of the warlike traditions of old Japan. But we cannot follow out the story of this famous rebellion—how Saigo established a private school in his native city of Kagoshima for the training of young Shizoku in military tactics, how the reports of the policy of the government more and more dissatisfied 264him, until a rumor that Okubo had sent policemen to Kagoshima to assassinate him precipitated the storm that had been brewing. This report was not supported by satisfactory evidence, although the Kagoshima authorities extorted a so-called confession from a policeman. Okubo was too noble to be guilty of such an act. It was only after eight months of hard fighting, during which victory swayed from one side to another, and the death of Saigo and his leading generals when surrounded at last like rats in a trap, and the expenditure of over forty million yen, that the much tried government could freely draw breath again. The people of Satsuma believe that Saigo’s spirit has taken up its abode in the planet Mars, and that his figure may be seen there when that star is in the ascendant.

By this time railways, telegraphs, lighthouse service, and a navy were well under construction in native works. Two national exhibitions were held, one in 1877 and the second in 1881; the latter particularly was a pretentious one and a great success. In 1879 Japan annexed the Liu Kiu islands, bringing their king to Tokio, there to live as a vassal, and reducing the islands to the position of a prefecture in spite of the warlike threats of China. In the same year occurred the visit to Japan of General Grant while he was on his tour around the world. The famous American was entertained most enthusiastically by the citizens of Tokio for some two weeks in July. The enthusiasm awakened by his visit among the citizens was remarkable. Arches and illuminations were on every hand for miles. The entertainment provided by the Japanese for their distinguished guests at any time is so unique when seen by western eyes that it is always impressive and delightful.