JAPAN'S FOREIGN POLITICS
tinguish it from the jurisdiction exercised by native, or territorial, tribunals. The system was applied to Japan's case, as a matter of course, in 1858. It had been similarly applied in the sixteenth century, in the days of her first foreign intercourse; and just as it had then been one cause of the Dutch traders' imprisonment within the narrow limits of the island of Deshima at Nagasaki, so, in the nineteenth century, it necessitated the confinement of the foreign residents in settlements grouped around the sites of their consular courts; for plain principles of prudence forbade that these residents should have free access to provincial districts far remote from the only tribunals competent to control them. The Japanese negotiators in Yedo raised no objection to the embodiment of this system in the treaties. But it was one of the features most vehemently condemned by the conservative statesmen and politicians in Kōytō, and no sooner had the administration been restored to the Emperor than an embassy was despatched to Europe and America with the object of inducing Occidental Governments to revise the treaties in the sense of abolishing consular jurisdiction and changing the tariff so as to enable Japan to obtain a larger revenue from customs duties.[1]
This embassy sailed in 1871. It had a specific right to raise the question, for the treaties contained a provision declaring them to be subject to
- ↑ See Appendix, note 9.
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