representatives misinterpreted it. They imagined that the shōgun’s ministers sought only to evade their treaty obligations and to render the situation intolerable for foreign residents, whereas in truth the situation threatened to become intolerable for the shōgunate itself. Nevertheless the Yedo officials cannot be entirely acquitted of duplicity. Under pressure of the necessity of self-preservation they effected with Kiōto a compromise which assigned to foreign intercourse a temporary character. The threatened political crisis was thus averted, but the enemies of the dual system of government gained strength daily. One of their devices was to assassinate foreigners in the hope of embroiling the shōgunate with Western powers and thus either forcing its hand or precipitating its downfall. It is not wonderful, perhaps, that foreigners were deceived, especially as they approached the solution of Japanese problems with all the Occidental’s habitual suspicion of everything Oriental. Thus when the Yedo government, cognisant that serious dangers menaced the Yokohama settlement, took precautions to guard it, the foreign ministers convinced themselves that a deliberate piece of chicanery was being practised at their expense; that statecraft rather than truth had dictated the representations made to them by the Japanese authorities; and that the alarm of the latter was simulated for the purpose of finding a pretext to curtail the liberty enjoyed by foreigners. Therefore a suggestion that the inmates of the legations should show themselves as little as possible in the streets of the capital, where at any moment a desperado might cut them down, was treated almost as an insult. Then the Japanese authorities saw no recourse except to attach an armed escort to the person of every foreigner when he moved about the city. But even this precaution, which certainly was not adopted out of mere caprice or with any sinister design, excited fresh suspicions. The British representative, in reporting the event to his government, said that the Japanese had taken the opportunity to graft upon the establishment of spies, watchmen and police-officers at the several legations, a mounted escort to accompany the members whenever they moved about.
Just at this time (1861) the Yedo statesmen, in order to reconcile the divergent views of the two courts, negotiated a marriage between the emperor’s sister and the shōgun. But in order to bring the union about, they had to Attacks upon Foreigners and their Consequences. placate the Kiōto Conservatives by a promise to expel foreigners from the country within ten years. When this became known, it strengthened the hands of the reactionaries, and furnished a new weapon to Yedo’s enemies, who interpreted the marriage as the beginning of a plot to dethrone the mikado. Murderous attacks upon foreigners became more frequent. Two of these assaults had momentous consequences. Three British subjects attempted to force their way through the cortège of the Satsuma feudal chief on the highway between Yokohama and Yedo. One of them was killed and the other two wounded. This outrage was not inspired by the “barbarian-expelling” sentiment: to any Japanese subject violating the rules of etiquette as these Englishmen had violated them, the same fate would have been meted out. Nevertheless, as the Satsuma daimyō refused to surrender his implicated vassals, and as the shōgun’s arm was not long enough to reach the most powerful feudatory in Japan, the British government sent a squadron to bombard his capital, Kagoshima. It was not a brilliant exploit in any sense, but its results were invaluable; for the operations of the British ships finally convinced the Satsuma men of their impotence in the face of Western armaments, and converted them into advocates of liberal progress. Three months previously to this bombardment of Kagoshima another puissant feudatory had thrown down the gauntlet. The Chōshū chief, whose batteries commanded the entrance to the inland sea at Shimonoseki, opened fire upon ships flying the flags of the United States, of France and of Holland. In thus acting he obeyed an edict obtained by the extremists from the mikado without the knowledge of the shōgun, which edict fixed the 11th of May 1863 as the date for practically inaugurating the foreigners-expulsion policy. Again the shōgun’s administrative competence proved inadequate to exact reparation, and a squadron, composed chiefly of British men-of-war, proceeding to Shimonoseki, demolished Chōshū’s forts, destroyed his ships and scattered his samurai. In the face of the Kagoshima bombardment and the Shimonoseki expedition, no Japanese subject could retain any faith in his country’s ability to oppose Occidentals by force. Thus the year 1863 was memorable in Japan’s history. It saw the “barbarian-expelling” agitation deprived of the emperor’s sanction; it saw the two principal clans, Satsuma and Chōshū, convinced of their country’s impotence to defy the Occident; it saw the nation almost fully roused to the disintegrating and weakening effects of the feudal system; and it saw the traditional antipathy to foreigners beginning to be exchanged for a desire to study their civilization and to adopt its best features.
The treaty concluded between the shōgun’s government and the United States in 1858 was of course followed by similar compacts with the principal European powers. From the outset these states agreed to co-operate Ratification of the Treaties. for the assertion of their conventional privileges, and they naturally took Great Britain for leader, though such a relation was never openly announced. The treaties, however, continued during several years to lack imperial ratification, and, as time went by, that defect obtruded itself more and more upon the attention of their foreign signatories. The year 1865 saw British interests entrusted to the charge of Sir Harry Parkes, a man of keen insight, indomitable courage and somewhat peremptory methods, learned during a long period of service in China. It happened that the post of Japanese secretary at the British legation in Yedo was then held by a remarkably gifted young Englishman, who, in a comparatively brief interval, had acquired a good working knowledge of the Japanese language, and it happened also that the British legation in Yedo was already—as it has always been ever since—the best equipped institution of its class in Japan. Aided by these facilities and by the researches of Mr Satow (afterwards Sir Ernest Satow) Parkes arrived at the conclusions that the Yedo government was tottering to its fall; that the resumption of administrative authority by the Kiōto court would make for the interests not only of the West but also of Japan; and that the ratification of the treaties by the mikado would elucidate the situation for foreigners while being, at the same time, essential to the validity of the documents. Two other objects also presented themselves, namely, that the import duties fixed by the conventions should be reduced from 15 to 5% ad valorem, and that the ports of Hiōgō and Osaka should be opened at once, instead of at the expiration of two years as originally fixed. It was not proposed that these concessions should be entirely gratuitous. When the four-power flotilla destroyed the Shimonoseki batteries and sank the vessels lying there, a fine of three million dollars (some £750,000) had been imposed upon the daimyō of Chōshū by way of ransom for his capital, which lay at the mercy of the invaders. The daimyō of Chōshū, however, was in open rebellion against the shōgun, and as the latter could not collect the debt from the recalcitrant clansmen, while the four powers insisted on being paid by some one, the Yedo treasury was finally compelled to shoulder the obligation. Two out of the three millions were still due, and Parkes conceived the idea of remitting this debt in exchange for the ratification of the treaties, the reduction of the customs tariff from 15 to 5% ad valorem and the immediate opening of Hiōgō and Osaka. He took with him to the place of negotiation (Hiōgō) a fleet of British, French and Dutch war-ships, for, while announcing peaceful intentions, he had accustomed himself to think that a display of force should occupy the foreground in all negotiations with Oriental states. This coup may be said to have sealed the fate of the shōgunate. For here again was produced in a highly aggravated form the drama which had so greatly startled the nation eight years previously. Perry had come with his war-ships to the portals of Yedo, and now a foreign fleet, twice as strong as Perry’s, had anchored at the vestibule of the Imperial city itself. No rational Japanese
