A Diplomat in Japan. Ernest Mason Satow
the sleeping beauty in the wood, and the guardians of the public safety had a task not more onerous than that of waving a fan to keep the flies from disturbing the princess's slumbers. When her dreams were interrupted by the eager and vigorous West the ancient, decrepit and wrinkled watchers were found unfit for their posts, and had to give way to men more fit to cope with the altered circumstances which surrounded them.
Socially the nation was divided into two sections by a wide gulf which it was impossible to pass. On the one hand the sword-bearing families or gentry, whose frequent poverty was compensated for by their privileges of rank, on the other the agricultural, labouring and commercial classes; intermarriage was forbidden between the orders. The former were ruled by the code of honour, offences against which were permitted to be expiated by self-destruction, the famous harakiri or disembowelment, while the latter were subject to a severe unwritten law enforced by cruel and frequent capital punishment. They were the obedient humble servants of the two-sworded class.
Japan had already made the experiment of free intercourse with European states in the middle of the 16th century, when the merchants and missionaries of Portugal were welcomed in the chief ports of Kiû-shiû, and Christianity bade fair to replace the ancient native religions. They were succeeded by the Spaniards, Dutch and English, the two latter nations confining themselves however to commerce. The gigantic missionary undertakings of the two great English-speaking communities of the far West were the creation of a much later time. It will be recollected that in 1580 Spain for a time absorbed Portugal. The Roman Catholics began before long to excite the enmity of the Buddhist and Shintô priesthood, whose temples they had caused to be pulled down and whose revenues they seemed on the point of usurping. Nobunaga had favoured them, but in the civil wars that raged at that period the principal patrons of the Jesuits were overthrown, and the new ruler Taicosama soon proclaimed his hostility to the strangers. Their worst offence was the refusal of a Christian girl to become his concubine. Iyéyasu, a devout Buddhist, pursued the same religious policy as his predecessor in possession of the ruling power. His dislike to Christianity was stimulated by the fact that some of Hidéyori's adherents were Christians, and the young prince Hidéyori was himself known to be on friendly terms with the missionaries. The flame was fanned by the Dutch and English, now become the hereditary political foes of Spain, and the persecution was renewed with greater vigour than ever. Missionaries were sought out with eager keenness, and in the company of their disciples subjected to cruel tortures and the most horrible deaths. The fury of persecution did not relax with Iyéyasu's disappearance from the scene, and the final act of the drama was played out in the time of his grandson.
An insurrection provoked by the oppression of the local daimiôs broke out in the island of Amakusa, where thousands of Christians joined the rebel flag. After a furious struggle the revolt was put an end to on the 24th February, 1638, by the assault and capture of the castle of Shimabara, when 37,000 people, two-thirds of whom were women and children, were put to the sword. It is hardly possible to read the native accounts of this business without a feeling of choking indignation at the ruthless sacrifice of so many unfortunate creatures who were incapable of defence, and whose only crime was their wish to serve the religion which they had chosen for their rule of life. The Portuguese were forbidden ever to set foot again in Japan. The English had previously retired from a commercial contest in which they found their rivals too fortunate and too skilful, and the edict went forth that the Dutch, who now alone remained, should thenceforth be confined to the small artificial island of Déshima, off the town of Nagasaki, where for the next 2–¼ centuries they and the Chinese were permitted to carry on a restricted and constantly diminishing trade. Attempts were made once or twice by the English, and early in the present century by the Russians, to induce the government of Japan to relax their rule, but in vain. The only profit the world has derived from these abortive essays is the entrancing narrative of Golownin, who was taken prisoner in Yezo in connection with a descent made by Russian naval officers in revenge for the rejection of the overtures made by the Russian envoy Resanoff, perhaps the most lifelike picture of Japanese official manners that is anywhere to be met with. No further approaches were made by any Western Government until the United States took the matter in hand in 1852.
CHAPTER IV
TREATIES—ANTI-FOREIGN SPIRIT—MURDER OF FOREIGNERS
The expedition of Commodore Perry to Loochoo and Japan was not the first enterprise of its kind that had been undertaken by the Americans. Having accomplished their own independence as the result of a contest in which a few millions of half-united colonists had successfully withstood the well-trained legions of Great Britain and her German mercenaries (though not, it may be fairly said, without in a great measure owing their success to the very efficient assistance of French armies and fleets), they added to this memory of ancient wrongs a natural fellow-feeling for other nations who were less able to resist the might of the greatest commercial and maritime Power the world has yet seen. While sympathising with Eastern peoples in the defence of their independent rights, they believed that a conciliatory mode of treating them was at least equally well fitted to ensure the concession of those trading privileges to which the Americans are not less indifferent than the English.
In 1836 they had despatched an envoy to Siam and Cochin-China, who was successful in negotiating by peaceful methods a treaty of commerce with the former state. In China, like the other western states, they had profited by the negotiations which were the outcome of the Opium War, without having to incur the odium of using force or the humiliation of finding their softer methods prove a failure in dealing with the obstinate conservatism of Chinese mandarins. For many years their eyes had been bent upon Japan, which lay on the opposite side of the Pacific fronting their own state of California, then rising into fame as one of the great gold-producing regions of the globe. Warned by the fate of all previous attempts to break down the wall of seclusion that hemmed in the 'country of the gods,' they resolved to make such a show of force that with reasonable people, unfamiliar with modern artillery, might prove as powerful an argument as theories of universal brotherhood and the obligations imposed by the comity of nations. They appointed to the chief command a naval officer possessed of both tact and determination, whose judicious use of the former qualification rendered the employ of the second unnecessary. Probably no one was more agreeably surprised than Commodore Perry at the comparative ease with which, on his second visit to the Bay of Yedo, he obtained a Treaty, satisfactory enough as a beginning. No doubt the counsels of the Dutch agent at Nagasaki were not without their effect, and we may also conjecture that the desire which had already begun to manifest itself among some of the lower Samurai for a wider acquaintance with the mysterious outer world was secretly shared by men in high positions. Fear alone would not have induced a haughty government like that of the Shôguns to acquiesce in breaking through a law of restriction that had such a highly creditable antiquity to boast of.
Most men's motives are mixed, and there was on the Japanese side no very decided unwillingness to yield to a show of force, which the pretext of prudence would enable them to justify. England and Russia, then or shortly afterwards at war, followed in the wake of the United States. Next an American Consul-General took up his residence at Shimoda, to look after the interests of whaling vessels, and skilfully made use of the recent events in China to induce the Shôgun's government to extend the concessions already granted. In 1858 the China War having been apparently brought to a successful conclusion, Lord Elgin and the French Ambassador, Baron Gros, ran across to Japan and concluded treaties on the same basis as Mr. Harris, and before long similar privileges were accorded to Holland and Russia. In 1859 the ports of Nagasaki, Hakodaté and Yokohama were thrown open to the trade of the Five Powers, and a new age was inaugurated in Japan.
It was not without opposition that the Shôgun's government had entered into its first engagements with the United States, Great Britain and Russia. An agitation arose when the first American ships anchored in the Bay of Yedo, and there were not wanting bold and rash men ready to undertake any desperate enterprise against the foreign invaders of the sacred soil of Japan. But at this time there was no leader to whom the malcontents could turn for guidance. The Mikado was closely watched by the Shôgun's resident at Kiôto, and the daimiôs