became an overwhelming force only when the country had been opened in 1854, indeed, properly speaking, only in the sixties. From that time dates the appearance in this country of a new figure,—the foreign employé; and the foreign employé is the creator of New Japan. To the Japanese Government belongs the credit of conceiving the idea and admitting the necessity of the great change, furnishing the wherewithal, engaging the men, and profiting by their labours, resembling in this a wise patient who calls in the best available physician, and assists him by every means in his power. The foreign employé has been the physician, to whom belongs the credit of working the marvellous cure which we all see. One set of Englishmen—at first a single Englishman, the late Lieut. A. G. S. Hawes—took the navy in hand, and transformed junk manners and methods into those of a modern man-of-war. Another undertook the mint, with the result that Oriental confusion made way for a uniform coinage equal to any in the world. No less a feat than the reform of the entire educational system was chiefly the work of a handful of Americans. The resolute stand taken by a Frenchman led to the abolition of torture.[1] The same Frenchman began the codification of Japanese law, which Germans continued and completed. Germans for years directed the whole higher medical instruction of the country, and the larger steamers of the two principal steamship companies are still com-
- ↑ This forward step was entirely due to the personal initiative of Monsieur Boissonade de Fontarabie. On day—it was on the 15th April, 1875—when busy with the preliminaries for the work of codification, he heard groans in an adjoining apartment, and asked what they meant. An evasive answer was returned; but he persisted, and finally burst into the room whence the groans issued, to find a man stretched on the torture-boards with layers of heavy stones piled on his legs. Returning to his Japanese colleagues, he plainly told them that such horrors and civilised law could not coexist, that torture must cease, or that he would resign. On the very next day he sent in a memorandum to the Minister of Justice, containing his resignation in the event of compliance being withheld. Some months elapsed, the translation of his memorandum was delayed, and many specious reasons were alleged by Japanese officialdom for the maintenance of a usage so ancient, which had moreover quite recently (25th August, 1874) been re-affirmed both in principle and in practice, provision having actually then been made afresh for monthly statistics on the subject! Nevertheless, Mr. Boissonade's unremitting efforts succeeded in interesting certain high officials in the cause, and torture was rendered illegal by a notification dated 10th June, 1876.
