Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Jacobites" to "Japan" (part) (part 4)

Officers are obtained in two ways. There are six local preparatory cadet schools (yonen-gakko) in various parts of the empire, for boys of from 13 to 15. After 3 years at one of these schools a graduate spends 21 months at the central preparatory school (chuo-yonen-gakko), Tōkyō, and if he graduates with sufficient credit at the latter institution, he becomes eligible for admission to the officers’ college (shikan-gakko) without further test of proficiency. The second method of obtaining officers is by competitive examination for direct admission to the officers’ college. In either case the cadet is sent to serve with the colours for 6 to 12 months as a private and non-commissioned officer, before commencing his course at the officers’ college. The period of study at the officers’ college is one year, and after graduating successfully the cadet serves with troops for 6 months on probation. If at the end of that time he is favourably reported on, he is commissioned as a sub-lieutenant. Young officers of engineers and artillery receive a year’s further training at a special college. Officers’ ranks are the same as in the British army, but the nomenclature is more simple. The terms, with their English equivalents, are shōi (second lieutenant), chūi (first lieutenant), tai (captain), shōsa (major), chūsa (lieut.-colonel), taisa (colonel), shōshō (major-general), chūjō (lieut.-general), taishō (general), gensui (field-marshal). All these except the last apply to the same relative ranks in the navy. Promotion of officers in the junior grades is by seniority or merit, but after the rank of captain all promotion is by merit, and thus many officers never rise higher than captain, in which case retirement is compulsory at the age of 48. Except in the highest ranks, a certain minimum period has to be spent in each rank before promotion to the next.

There are three grades of privates: upper soldiers (jōtō-hei), first-class soldiers (ittō-sotsu), and second-class soldiers (nitō-sotsu). A private on joining is a second-class soldier. For proficiency and good conduct he is raised to the rank of first-class soldier, and ultimately to that of upper soldier. Non-commissioned officers are obtained from the ranks, or from those who wish to make soldiering a profession, as in European armies. The grades are corporal (gochō), sergeant (gunsō), sergeant-major (sōchō) and special sergeant-major (tokumu-sōchō).

The pay of the conscript is, as it is everywhere, a trifle (1s. 10d.-3s. 0½d. per month). The professional non-commissioned officers are better paid, the lowest grade receiving three times as much as an upper soldier. Officers’ pay is roughly at about three-quarters of the rates prevailing in Germany, sub-lieutenants receiving about £34, captains £71, colonels £238 per annum, &c. Pensions for officers and non-commissioned officers, according to scale, can be claimed after 11 years’ colour service.

The emperor is the commander-in-chief of the army, and theoretically the sole source of military authority, which he exercises through a general staff and a war department, with the assistance of a board of field-marshals (gensuifu). The general staff has for chief a field-marshal, and for vice-chief a general or lieutenant-general. It includes besides the usual general staff departments, various survey and topographical officers, and the military college is under its direction. The war department is presided over by a general officer on the active list, who is a member of the cabinet without being necessarily affected by ministerial changes. There are, further, artillery and engineer committees, and a remount bureau. The headquarters of coast defences under general officers are Tōkyō, Yokohama, Shimonoseki and Yura. The whole empire is divided into three military districts—eastern, central and western—each under the command of a general or lieutenant-general. The divisional headquarters are as follows:—Guard Tōkyō, I. Tōkyō, II. Sendai, III. Nagoya, IV. Wakayama, V. Hiroshima, VI. Kumamoto, VII. Asahikawa, VIII. Hirosaki, IX. Kasanava, X. Himeji, XI. Senzui, XII. Kokura, XIII. Takata, XIV. Utsonomia, XV. Fushimi, XVI. Kiōto, XVII. Okayama, XVIII. Kurume. Some of these divisions are permanently on foreign service, but their recruiting areas in Japan are maintained. There are also four cavalry brigades, and a number of unassigned regiments of field and mountain artillery, as well as garrison artillery and army technical troops. The organization of the active army by regiments is 176 infantry regiments of 3 battalions; 27 cavalry regiments; 30 field artillery regiments each of 6 and 3 mountain artillery regiments each of 3 batteries; 6 regiments and 6 battalions of siege, heavy field and fortress artillery; 20 battalions engineers; 19 supply and transport battalions.

The medical service is exceptionally well organized. It received unstinted praise from European and American experts who observed it closely during the wars of 1900 and 1904-5. The establishment of surgeons to each division is approximately 100, and arrangements complete in every detail are made for all lines of medical assistance. Much help is rendered by the red cross society of Japan, which has an income of 2,000,000 yen annually, a fine hospital in Tōkyō, a large nursing staff and two specially built and equipped hospital ships. During the early part of the campaign in Pechili, in 1900, the French column entrusted its wounded to the care of the Japanese.

The staple article of commissariat for a Japanese army in the field is hoshii (dried rice), of which three days’ supply can easily be carried in a bag by the soldier. When required for use the rice, being placed in water, swells to its original bulk, and is eaten with a relish of salted fish, dried sea-weed or pickled plums. The task of provisioning an army on these lines is comparatively simple. The Japanese soldier, though low in stature, is well set up, muscular and hardy. He has great powers of endurance, and manœuvres with remarkable celerity, doing everything at the run, if necessary, and continuing to run without distress for a length of time astonishing to European observers. He is greatly subject, however, to attacks of kakke (beri-beri), and if he has recourse to meat diet, which appears to be the best preventive, he will probably lose something of his capacity for prolonged rapid movement. He attacks with apparent indifference to danger, preserves his cheerfulness amid hardships, is splendidly patriotic and has always shown himself thoroughly amenable to discipline.

Of the many educational and training establishments, the most important is the rikugun daigakkō, or army college, where officers, (generally subalterns), are prepared for service in the upper ranks and for staff appointments, the course of study extending over three years. The Toyama school stands next in importance. The courses pursued there are attended chiefly by subaltern officers of dismounted branches, non-commissioned officers also being allowed to take the musketry course. The term of training is five months. Young officers of the scientific branches are instructed at the hōkōgakkō (school of artillery and engineers). There are, further, two special schools of gunnery—one for field, the other for garrison artillery, attended chiefly by captains and senior subalterns of the two branches. There is an inspection department of military education, the inspector-general being a lieutenant-general, under whom are fifteen field and general officers, who act as inspectors of the various schools and colleges and of military educational matters in general.

The Japanese officer’s pay is small and his mode of life frugal. He lives out of barracks, frequently with his own family. His uniform is plain and inexpensive, and he has no desire to exchange it for mufti. He has no mess expenses, contribution to a band, or luxuries of any kind, and as he is nearly always without private means to supplement his pay, his habits are thoroughly economical. He devotes himself absolutely to his profession, living for nothing else, and since he is strongly imbued with an effective conception of the honour of his cloth, instances of his incurring disgrace by debt or dissipation are exceptional. The samurai may be said to have been revived in the officers of the modern army, who preserve and act up to all the old traditions. The system of promotion has evidently much to do with this good result, for no Japanese officer can hope to rise above the rank of captain unless, by showing himself really zealous and capable, he obtains from his commanding officer the recommendation without which all higher educational opportunities are closed to him. Yet promotion by merit has not degenerated into promotion by favour, and corruption appears to be virtually absent. In the stormiest days of parliamentary warfare, when charges of dishonesty were freely preferred by party politicians against all departments of officialdom, no whisper ever impeached the integrity of army officers.

The training of the troops is thorough and strictly progressive, the responsibility of the company, squadron and battery commanders for the training of their commands, and the latitude granted them in choice of means being, as in Germany, the keystone of the system.

Originally the government engaged French officers to assist in organizing the army and elaborating its system of tactics and strategy, and during several years a military mission of French officers resided in Tōkyō and rendered valuable aid to the Japanese. Afterwards German officers were employed, with Jakob Meckel at their head, and they left a perpetually grateful memory. But ultimately the services of foreigners were dispensed with altogether, and Japan now adopts the plan of sending picked men to complete their studies in Europe. Up to 1904 she followed Germany in military matters almost implicitly, but since then, having the experience of her own great war to guide her, she has, instead of modelling herself on any one foreign system, chosen from each whatever seemed most desirable, and also, in many points, taken the initiative herself.

When the power of the sword was nominally restored to the Imperial government in 1868, the latter planned to devote one-fourth of the state’s ordinary revenue to the army and navy. Had the estimated revenue accrued, this would have given a sum of about 3 millions sterling for the two services. But not until 1871, when the troops of the fiefs were finally disbanded, did the government find itself in a position to include in the annual budgets an adequate appropriation on account of armaments. Thenceforth, from 1872 to 1896, the ordinary expenditures of the army varied from three-quarters of a million sterling to 1½ millions, and the extraordinary outlays ranged from a few thousands of pounds to a quarter of a million. Not once in the whole period of 25 years—if 1877 (the year of the Satsuma rebellion) be excepted—did the state’s total expenditures on account of the army exceed 1½ millions sterling, and it redounds to the credit of Japan’s financial management that she was able to organize, equip and maintain such a force at such a small cost. In 1896, as shown above, she virtually doubled her army, and a proportionate increase of expenditure ensued, the outlays for maintenance jumping at once from an average of about 1¼ millions sterling to 2¼ millions, and growing thenceforth with the organization of the new army, until in the year (1903) preceding the outbreak of war with Russia, they reached the figure of 4 millions. Then again, in 1906, six divisions were added, and additional expenses had to be incurred on account of the new overseas garrisons, so that, in 1909, the ordinary outlays reached a total of 7 millions, or about one-seventh of the ordinary revenue of the state. This takes no account of extraordinary outlays incurred for building forts and barracks, providing new patterns of equipment, &c. In 1909 the latter, owing to the necessity of replacing the weapons used in the Russian War, and in particular the field artillery gun (which was in 1905 only a semi-quickfirer), involved a relatively large outlay.

The Navy.—The traditions of Japan suggest that the art of navigation was not unfamiliar to the inhabitants of a country consisting of hundreds of islands and abounding in bays and inlets. Some interpreters of her cosmography discover a great ship in the “floating bridge of heaven” from which the divine procreators of the islands commenced their work, and construe in a similar sense other poetically named vehicles of that remote age. But though the seas were certainly traversed by the early invaders of Japan, and though there is plenty of proof that in medieval times the Japanese flag floated over merchantmen which voyaged as far as Siam and India, and over piratical craft which harassed the coasts of Korea and China, it is unquestionable that in the matter of naval architecture Japan fell behind even her next-door neighbours. Thus, when a Mongol fleet came to Kiūshiū in the 13th century, Japan had no vessels capable of contending against the invaders, and when, at the close of the 16th century, a Japanese army was fighting in Korea, repeated defeats of Japan’s squadrons by Korean war-junks decided the fate of the campaign on shore as well as on sea. It seems strange that an enterprising nation like the Japanese should not have taken for models the great galleons which visited the Far East in the second half of the 16th century under the flags of Spain, Portugal, Holland and England. With the exception, however, of two ships built by a castaway English pilot to order of Iyeyasu, no effort in that direction appears to have been made, and when an edict vetoing the construction of sea-going vessels was issued in 1636 as part of the Tokugawa policy of isolation, it can scarcely be said to have checked the growth of Japan’s navy, for she possessed nothing worthy of the name. It was to the object lesson furnished by the American ships which visited Yedo bay in 1853 and to the urgent counsels of the Dutch that Japan owed the inception of a naval policy. A seamen’s training station was opened under Dutch instructors in 1855 at Nagasaki, a building-slip was constructed and an iron factory established at the same place, and shortly afterwards a naval school was organized at Tsukiji in Yedo, a war-ship the “Kwanko Maru”—presented by the Dutch to the shōgun’s government—being used for exercising the cadets. To this vessel two others, purchased from the Dutch, were added in 1857 and 1858, and these, with one given by Queen Victoria, formed the nucleus of Japan’s navy. In 1860, we find the Pacific crossed for the first time by a Japanese war-ship—the “Kwanrin Maru”—and subsequently some young officers were sent to Holland for instruction in naval science. In fact the Tokugawa statesmen had now thoroughly appreciated the imperative need of a navy. Thus, in spite of domestic unrest which menaced the very existence of the Yedo government, a dockyard was established and fully equipped, the place chosen as its site being, by a strange coincidence, the village of Yokosuka where Japan’s first foreign ship-builder, Will Adams, had lived and died 250 years previously. This dockyard was planned and its construction superintended by a Frenchman, M. Bertin. But although the Dutch had been the first to advise Japan’s acquisition of a navy, and although French aid was sought in the case of the important and costly work at Yokosuka, the shōgun’s government turned to England for teachers of the art of maritime warfare. Captain Tracey, R.N., and other British officers and warrant-officers were engaged to organize and superintend the school at Tsukiji. They arrived, however, on the eve of the fall of the Tokugawa shōgunate, and as the new administration was not prepared to utilize their services immediately, they returned to England. It is not to be inferred that the Imperial government underrated the importance of organizing a naval force. One of the earliest Imperial rescripts ranked a navy among “the country’s most urgent needs” and ordered that it should be “at once placed on a firm foundation.” But during the four years immediately subsequent to the restoration, a semi-interregnum existed in military affairs, the power of the sword being partly transferred to the hands of the sovereign and partly retained by the feudal chiefs. Ultimately, not only the vessels which had been in the possession of the shōgunate but also several obtained from Europe by the great feudatories had to be taken over by the Imperial government, which, on reviewing the situation, found itself owner of a motley squadron of 17 war-ships aggregating 13,812 tons displacement, of which two were armoured, one was a composite ship, and the rest were of wood. Steps were now taken to establish and equip a suitable naval college in Tsukiji, and application having been made to the British government for instructors, a second naval mission was sent from England in 1873, consisting of 30 officers and warrant-officers under Commander (afterwards Vice-Admiral Sir) Archibald Douglas. At the very outset occasions for active service afloat presented themselves. In 1868, the year after the fall of the shōgunate, such ships as could be assembled had to be sent to Yezo to attack the main part of the Tokugawa squadron which had raised the flag of revolt and retired to Hakodate under the command of the shōgun’s admiral, Enomoto. Then in 1874 the duty of convoying a fleet of transports to Formosa had to be undertaken; and in 1877 sea power played its part in crushing the formidable rebellion in Satsuma. Meanwhile the work of increasing and organizing the navy went on steadily. The first steam war-ship constructed in Japan had been a gunboat (138 tons) launched in 1866 from a building-yard established at Ishikawajima, an island near the mouth of the Sumida river on which Tōkyō stands. At this yard and at Yokosuka two vessels of 897 tons and 1450 tons, respectively, were launched in 1875 and 1876, and Japan now found herself competent not only to execute all repairs but also to build ships of considerable size. An order was placed in England in 1875, which produced, three years later, the “Fusō,” Japan’s first ironclad (3717 tons) and the “Kongo” and “Hiei,” steel-frame sister-cruisers of 2248 tons. Meanwhile training, practical and theoretical, in seamanship, gunnery, torpedo-practice and naval architecture went on vigorously, and in 1878 the Japanese flag was for the first time seen in European waters, floating over the cruiser “Seiki” (1897 tons) built in Japan and navigated solely by Japanese. The government, constantly solicitous of increasing the fleet, inaugurated, in 1882, a programme of 30 cruisers and 12 torpedo-boats, and in 1886 this was extended, funds being obtained by an issue of naval loan-bonds. But the fleet did not yet include a single battleship. When the diet opened for the first time in 1890, a plan for the construction of two battleships encountered stubborn opposition in the lower house, where the majority attached much less importance to voting money for war-ships than to reducing the land tax. Not until 1892 was this opposition overcome in deference to an order from the throne that thirty thousand pounds sterling should be contributed yearly from the privy purse and that a tithe of all official salaries should be devoted during the same interval to naval needs. Had the house been more prescient, Japan’s position at the outbreak of war with China in 1894 would have been very different. She entered the contest with 28 fighting craft, aggregating 57,600 tons, and 24 torpedo-boats, but among them the most powerful was a belted cruiser of 4300 tons. Not one battleship was included, whereas China had two ironclads of nearly 8000 tons each. Under these conditions the result of the naval conflict was awaited with much anxiety in Japan. But the Chinese suffered signal defeats (see Chino-Japanese War) off the Yalu and at Wei-hai-wei, and the victors took possession of 17 Chinese craft, including one battleship. The resulting addition to Japan’s fighting force was, however, insignificant. But the naval strength of Japan did not depend on prizes. Battleships and cruisers were ordered and launched in Europe one after the other, and when the Russo-Japanese War (q.v.) came, the fleet promptly asserted its physical and moral superiority in the surprise of Port Arthur, the battle of the 10th of August 1904, and the crowning victory of Tsushima.

As to the development of the navy from 1903 onwards, it is not possible to detail with absolute accuracy the plans laid down by the admiralty in Tōkyō, but the actual state of the fleet in the year 1909 will be apparent from the figures given below.

Japan’s naval strength at the outbreak of the war with Russia in 1904 was:—

Number. Displacement.
Tons.

Battleships 6 84,652

Armoured cruisers 8 73,982

Other cruisers 44 111,470

Destroyers 19 6,519

Torpedo-boats 80 7,119

Totals 157 283,742

Losses during the war were:—

Battleships 2 27,300

Cruisers (second and smaller
classes) 8 18,009

Destroyers 2 705

Torpedo-boats 7 557

Totals 19 46,571

The captured vessels repaired and added to the fleet were:—

Battleships 5 62,524

Cruisers 11 71,276

Destroyers 5 1,740

Totals 21 135,530

The vessels built or purchased after the war and up to the close
of 1908 were:—

Battleships 4 71,500

Armoured cruisers 4 56,700

Other cruisers 5 7,000

Destroyers 33 12,573

Torpedo-boats 5 760

Totals 51 148,533

Some of the above have been superannuated, and the serviceable
fleet in 1909 was:—

Battleships 13 191,380

Armoured cruisers 12 130,683

Other cruisers, coast-defence
ships and gun-boats 47 165,253

Destroyers 55 20,508

Torpedo-boats 77 7,258

Totals 204 515,082

To the foregoing must be added two armoured cruisers—the “Kurama” (14,000) launched at Yokosuka in October 1907, and the “Ibuki” (14,700) launched at Kure in November 1907, but no other battleships or cruisers were laid down in Japan or ordered abroad up to the close of 1908.

There are four naval dockyards, namely, at Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo and Maizuru. Twenty-one vessels built at Yokosuka since 1876 included a battleship (19,000 tons) and an armoured cruiser (14,000 tons); seven built at Kure since 1898 included a battleship (19,000 tons) and an armoured cruiser (14,000 tons). The yards at Sasebo and Maizuru had not yet been used in 1909 for constructing large vessels. Two private yards—the Mitsubishi at Nagasaki and Kobe, and the Kawasaki at the latter place—have built several cruisers, gun-boats and torpedo craft, and are competent to undertake more important work. Nevertheless in 1909 Japan did not yet possess complete independence in this matter, for she was obliged to have recourse to foreign countries for a part of the steel used in ship-building. Kure manufactures practically all the steel it requires, and there is a government steel-foundry at Wakamatsu on which more than 3 millions sterling had been spent in 1909, but it did not yet keep pace with the country’s needs. When this independence has been attained, it is hoped to effect an economy of about 18% on the outlay for naval construction, owing to the cheapness of manual labour and the disappearance both of the manufacturer’s profit and of the expenses of transfer from Europe to Japan.

There are five admiralties—Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo, Maizuru and Port Arthur; and four naval stations—Takeshiki (in Tsushima), Mekong (in the Pescadores), Ominato and Chinhai (in southern Korea).

The navy is manned partly by conscripts and partly by volunteers. About 5500 are taken every year, and the ratio is, approximately, 55% of volunteers and 45% of conscripts. The period of active service is 4 years and that of service with the reserve 7 years. On the average 200 cadets are admitted yearly, of whom 50 are engineers, and in 1906 the personnel of the navy consisted of the following:—

Admirals, combative and non-combative 77

Officers, combative and non-combative, below the rank of admiral 2,867

Warrant officers 9,075

Bluejackets 29,667

Cadets 721

Total 42,407

The highest educational institution for the navy is the naval staff college, in which there are five courses for officers alone. The gunnery and torpedo schools are attended by officers, and also by selected warrant-officers and bluejackets, who consent to extend their service. There is also a mechanical school for junior engineers, warrant-officers and ordinary artificers.

At the naval cadet academy—originally situated in Tōkyō but now at Etajima near Kure—aspirants for service as naval officers receive a 3 years’ academical course and 1 year’s training at sea; and, finally, there is a naval engineering college collateral to the naval cadet academy.

Since 1882, foreign instruction has been wholly dispensed with in the Japanese navy; since 1886 she has manufactured her own prismatic powder; since 1891 she has been able to make quick-firing guns and Schwartzkopf torpedoes, and in 1892 one of her officers invented a particularly potent explosive, called (after its inventor) Shimose powder.

Finance.—Under the feudal system of the Tokugawa (1603-1871), all land in Japan was regarded as state property, and parcelled out into 276 fiefs, great and small, which were assigned to as many feudatories. These were empowered to raise revenue for the support of their households, for administrative purposes, and for the maintenance of troops. The basis of taxation varied greatly in different districts, but, at the time of the Restoration in 1867, the general principle was that four-tenths of the gross produce should go to the feudatory, six-tenths to the farmer. In practice this rule was applied to the rice crop only, the assessments for other kinds of produce being levied partly in money and partly in manufactured goods. Forced labour also was exacted, and artisans and tradesmen were subjected to pecuniary levies. The yield of rice in 1867 was about 154 million bushels, of which the market value at prices then ruling was £24,000,000, or 240,000,000 yen. Hence the grain tax represented, at the lowest calculation, 96,000,000 yen. When the administration reverted to the emperor in 1867 the central treasury was empty, and the funds hitherto employed for governmental purposes in the fiefs continued to be devoted to the support of the feudatories, to the payment of the samurai, and to defraying the expenses of local administration, the central treasury receiving only whatever might remain after these various outlays.

The shōgun himself, whose income amounted to about £3,500,000, did not, on abdicating, hand over to the sovereign either the contents of his treasury or the lands from which he derived his revenues. He contended that funds for the government of the nation as a whole should be levied from the people at large. Not until 1871 did the feudal system cease to exist. The fiefs being then converted into prefectures, their revenues became an asset of the central treasury, less 10% allotted for the support of the former feudatories.

But during the interval between 1867 and 1871, the men on whom had devolved the direction of national affairs saw no relief from crippling impecuniosity except an issue of paper money. This was not a novelty in Japan. Paper money had been known to the people since the middle of the 17th century, and in the era of which we are now writing no less than 1694 varieties of notes were in circulation. There were gold notes, silver notes, cash-notes, rice-notes, umbrella-notes, ribbon-notes, lathe-article-notes, and so on through an interminable list, the circulation of each kind being limited to the issuing fief. Many of these notes had almost ceased to have any purchasing power, and nearly all were regarded by the people as evidences of official greed. The first duty of a centralized progressive administration should have been to reform the currency. The political leaders of the time appreciated that duty, but saw themselves compelled by stress of circumstances to adopt the very device which in the hands of the feudal chiefs had produced such deplorable results. The ordinary revenue amounted to only 3,000,000 yen, while the extraordinary aggregated 29,000,000, and was derived wholly from issues of paper money or other equally unsound sources.

Even on the abolition of feudalism in 1871 the situation was not immediately relieved. The land tax, which constituted nine-tenths of the feudal revenues, had been assessed by varying methods and at various rates by the different feudatories, and re-assessment of all the land became a preliminary essential to establishing a uniform system. Such a task, on the basis of accurate surveys, would have involved years of work, whereas the financial needs of the state had to be met immediately. Under the pressure of this imperative necessity a re-assessment was roughly made in two years, and being continued thereafter with greater accuracy, was completed in 1881. This survey, eminently liberal to the agriculturists, assigned a value of 1,200,000,000 yen to the whole of the arable land, and the treasury fixed the tax at 3% of the assessed value of the land, which was about one-half of the real market value. Moreover, the government contemplated a gradual reduction of this already low impost until it should ultimately fall to 1%. Circumstances prevented the consummation of that purpose. The rate underwent only one reduction of ½%, and thereafter had to be raised on account of war expenditures. On the whole, however, no class benefited more conspicuously from the change of administration than the peasants, since not only was their burden of taxation light, but also they were converted from mere tenants into actual proprietors. In brief, they acquired the fee-simple of their farms in consideration of paying an annual rent equal to about one sixty-sixth of the market value of the land.

In 1873, when these changes were effected, the ordinary revenue of the state rose from 24,500,000 yen to 70,500,000 yen. But seven millions sterling is a small income for a country confronted by such problems as Japan had to solve. She had to build railways; to create an army and a navy; to organize posts, telegraphs, prisons, police and education; to construct roads, improve harbours, light and buoy the coasts; to create a mercantile marine; to start under official auspices numerous industrial enterprises which should serve as object lessons to the people, as well as to lend to private persons large sums in aid of similar projects. Thus, living of necessity beyond its income, the government had recourse to further issues of fiduciary notes, and in proportion as the volume of the latter exceeded actual currency requirements their specie value depreciated.

This question of paper currency inaugurates the story of banking; a story on almost every page of which are to be found inscribed the names of Prince Itō, Marquis Inouye, Marquis Matsukata, Count Okuma and Baron Shibusawa, the fathers of their country’s economic and financial progress in modern times. The only substitutes for banks in feudal days were a few private firms—“households” would, perhaps, be a more correct expression—which received local taxes in kind, converted them into money, paid the proceeds to the central government or to the feudatories, gave accommodation to officials, did some exchange business, and occasionally extended accommodation to private individuals. They were not banks in the Occidental sense, for they neither collected funds by receiving deposits nor distributed capital by making loans. The various fiefs were so isolated that neither social nor financial intercourse was possible, and moreover the mercantile and manufacturing classes were regarded with some disdain by the gentry. The people had never been familiarized with combinations of capital for productive purposes, and such a thing as a joint-stock company was unknown. In these circumstances, when the administration of state affairs fell into the hands of the men who had made the restoration, they not only lacked the first essential of rule, money, but were also without means of obtaining any, for they could not collect taxes in the fiefs, these being still under the control of the feudal barons; and in the absence of widely organized commerce or finance, no access to funds presented itself. Doubtless the minds of these men were sharpened by the necessities confronting them, yet it speaks eloquently for their discernment that, samurai as they were, without any business training whatever, one of their first essays was to establish organizations which should take charge of the national revenue, encourage industry and promote trade and production by lending money at comparatively low rates of interest. The tentative character of these attempts is evidenced by frequent changes. There was first a business bureau, then a trade bureau, then commercial companies, and then exchange companies, these last being established in the principal cities and at the open ports, their personnel consisting of the three great families—Mitsui, Shimada and Ono—houses of ancient repute, as well as other wealthy merchants in Kiōto, Osaka and elsewhere. These exchange companies were partnerships, though not strictly of the joint-stock kind. They formed the nucleus of banks in Japan, and their functions included, for the first time, the receiving of deposits and the lending of money to merchants and manufacturers. They had power to issue notes, and, at the same time, the government issued notes on its own account. Indeed, in this latter fact is to be found one of the motives for organizing the exchange companies, the idea being that if the state’s notes were lent to the companies, the people would become familiarized with the use of such currency, and the companies would find them convenient capital. But this system was essentially unsound: the notes, alike of the treasury and of the companies, though nominally convertible, were not secured by any fixed stock of specie. Four years sufficed to prove the unpracticality of such an arrangement, and in 1872 the exchange companies were swept away, to be succeeded in July 1873 by the establishment of national banks on a system which combined some of the features of English banking with the general bases of American. Each bank had to pay into the treasury 60% of its capital in government notes. It was credited in return with interest-bearing bonds, which bonds were to be left in the treasury as security for the issue of bank-notes to an equal amount, the banks being required to keep in gold the remaining 40% of their capital as a fund for converting the notes, which conversion must always be effected on application. The elaborators of this programme were Ito, Inouye, Okuma and Shibusawa. They added a provision designed to prevent the establishment of too small banks, namely, that the capital of each bank must bear a fixed ratio to the population of its place of business. Evidently the main object of the treasury was gradually to replace its own fiat paper with convertible bank-notes. But experience quickly proved that the scheme was unworkable. The treasury notes had been issued in such large volume that sharp depreciation had ensued; gold could not be procured except at a heavy cost, and the balance of foreign trade being against Japan, some 300,000,000 yen in specie flowed out of the country between 1872 and 1874.

It should be noted that at this time foreign trade was still invested with a perilous character in Japanese eyes. In early days, while the Dutch had free access to her ports, they sold her so much and bought so little in return that an immense quantity of the precious metals flowed out of her coffers. Again, when over-sea trade was renewed in modern times, Japan’s exceptional financial condition presented to foreigners an opportunity of which they did not fail to take full advantage. For, during her long centuries of seclusion, gold had come to hold to silver in her coinage a ratio of 1 to 8, so that gold cost, in terms of silver, only one-half of what it cost in the West. On the other hand, the treaty gave foreign traders the right to exchange their own silver coins against Japanese, weight for weight, and thus it fell out that the foreigner, going to Japan with a supply of Mexican dollars, could buy with them twice as much gold as they had cost in Mexico. Japan lost very heavily by this system, and its effects accentuated the dread with which her medieval experience had invested foreign commerce. Thus, when the balance of trade swayed heavily in the wrong direction between 1872 and 1874, the fact created undue consternation, and moreover there can be no doubt that the drafters of the bank regulations had over-estimated the quantity of available gold in the country.

All these things made it impossible to keep the bank-notes long in circulation. They were speedily returned for conversion; no deposits came to the aid of the banks, nor did the public make any use of them. Disaster became inevitable. The two great firms of Ono and Shimada, which had stood high in the nation’s estimation alike in feudal and in imperial days, closed their doors in 1874; a panic ensued, and the circulation of money ceased almost entirely.

Evidently the banking system must be changed. The government bowed to necessity. They issued a revised code of banking regulations which substituted treasury notes in the place of specie. Each bank was thenceforth required to invest 80% of its capital in 6% state bonds, and these being lodged with the treasury, the bank became competent to issue an equal quantity of its own notes, forming with the remainder of its capital a reserve of treasury notes for purposes of redemption. This was a complete subversion of the government’s original scheme. But no alternative offered. Besides, the situation presented a new feature. The hereditary pensions of the feudatories had been commuted with bonds aggregating 174,000,000 yen. Were this large volume of bonds issued at once, their heavy depreciation would be likely to follow, and moreover their holders, unaccustomed to dealing with financial problems, might dispose of the bonds and invest the proceeds in hazardous enterprises. To devise some opportunity for the safe and profitable employment of these bonds seemed, therefore, a pressing necessity, and the newly organized national banks offered such an opportunity. For bond-holders, combining to form a bank, continued to draw from the treasury 6% on their bonds, while they acquired power to issue a corresponding amount of notes which could be lent at profitable rates. The programme worked well. Whereas, up to 1876, only five banks were established under the original regulations, the number under the new rule was 151 in 1879, their aggregate capital having grown in the same interval from 2,000,000 yen to 40,000,000 yen, and their note issues from less than 1,000,000 to over 34,000,000. Here, then, was a rapidly growing system resting wholly on state credit. Something like a mania for bank-organizing declared itself, and in 1878 the government deemed it necessary to legislate against the establishment of any more national banks, and to limit to 34,000,000 yen the aggregate note issues of those already in existence.

It is possible that the conditions which prevailed immediately after the establishment of the national banks might have developed some permanency had not the Satsuma rebellion broken out in 1877. Increased taxation to meet military outlay being impossible in such circumstances, nothing offered except recourse to further note issues. The result was that by 1881, fourteen years after the Restoration, notes whose face value aggregated 164,000,000 yen had been put into circulation; the treasury possessed specie amounting to only 8,000,000 yen, and 18 paper yen could be purchased with 10 silver ones.

Up to 1881 fitful efforts had been made to strengthen the specie value of fiat paper by throwing quantities of gold and silver upon the market from time to time, and 23,000,000 yen had been devoted to the promotion of industries whose products, it was hoped, would go to swell the list of exports, and thus draw specie to the country. But these devices were now finally abandoned, and the government applied itself steadfastly to reducing the volume of the fiduciary currency on the one hand, and accumulating a specie reserve on the other. The steps of the programme were simple. By cutting down administrative expenditure; by transferring certain charges from the treasury to the local communes; by suspending all grants in aid of provincial public works and private enterprises, and by a moderate increase of the tax on alcohol, an annual surplus of revenue, totalling 7,500,000 yen, was secured. This was applied to reducing the volume of the notes in circulation. At the same time, it was resolved that all officially conducted industrial and agricultural works should be sold—since their purpose of instruction and example seemed now to have been sufficiently achieved—and the proceeds, together with various securities (aggregating 26,000,000 yen in face value) held by the treasury, were applied to the purchase of specie. Had the government entered the market openly as a seller of its own fiduciary notes, its credit must have suffered. There were also ample reasons to doubt whether any available stores of precious metal remained in the country. In obedience to elementary economical laws, the cheap money had steadily driven out the dear, and although the government mint at Osaka, founded in 1871, had struck gold and silver coins worth 80,000,000 yen between that date and 1881, the customs returns showed that a great part of this metallic currency had flowed out of the country. In these circumstances Japanese financiers decided that only one course remained: the treasury must play the part of national banker. Produce and manufactures destined for export must be purchased by the state with fiduciary notes, and the metallic proceeds of their sales abroad must be collected and stored in the treasury. This programme required the establishment of consulates in the chief marts of the Occident, and the organization of a great central bank—the present Bank of Japan—as well as of a secondary bank—the present Specie Bank of Yokohama—the former to conduct transactions with native producers and manufacturers, the latter to finance the business of exportation. The outcome of these various arrangements was that, by the middle of 1885, the volume of fiduciary notes had been reduced to 119,000,000 yen, their depreciation had fallen to 3%, and the metallic reserve of the treasury had increased to 45,000,000 yen. The resumption of specie payments was then announced, and became, in the autumn of that year, an accomplished fact. From the time when this programme began to be effective, Japan entered a period of favourable balance of trade. According to accepted economic theories, the influence of an appreciating currency should be to encourage imports; but the converse was seen in Japan’s case, for from 1882 her exports annually exceeded her imports, the maximum excess being reached in 1886, the very year after the resumption of specie payments.

The above facts deserve to figure largely in a retrospect of Japanese finance, not merely because they set forth a fine economic feat, indicating clear insight, good organizing capacity, and courageous energy, but also because volumes of adverse foreign criticism were written in the margin of the story during the course of the incidents it embodies. Now Japan was charged with robbing her own people because she bought their goods with paper money and sold them for specie; again, she was accused of an official conspiracy to ruin the foreign local banks because she purchased exporters’ bills on Europe and America at rates that defied ordinary competition; and while some declared that she was plainly without any understanding of her own doings, others predicted that her heroic method of dealing with the problem would paralyze industry, interrupt trade and produce widespread suffering. Undoubtedly, to carry the currency of a nation from a discount of 70 or 80% to par in the course of four years, reducing its volume at the same time from 160 to 119 million yen, was a financial enterprise violent and daring almost to rashness. The gentler expedient of a foreign loan would have commended itself to the majority of economists. But it may be here stated, once for all, that until her final adoption of a gold standard in 1897, the foreign money market was practically closed to Japan. Had she borrowed abroad it must have been on a sterling basis. Receiving a fixed sum in silver, she would have had to discharge her debt in rapidly appreciating gold. Twice, indeed, she had recourse to London for small sums, but when she came to cast up her accounts the cost of the accommodation stood out in deterrent proportions. A 9% loan, placed in England in 1868 and paid off in 1889, produced 3,750,000 yen, and cost altogether 11,750,000 yen in round figures; and a 7% loan, made in 1872 and paid off in 1897, produced 10,750,000 yen, and cost 36,000,000 yen. These considerations were supplemented by a strong aversion from incurring pecuniary obligations to Western states before the latter had consented to restore Japan’s judicial and tariff autonomy. The example of Egypt showed what kind of fate might overtake a semi-independent state falling into the clutches of foreign bond-holders. Japan did not wish to fetter herself with foreign debts while struggling to emerge from the rank of Oriental powers.

After the revision of the national bank regulations, semi-official banking enterprise won such favour in public eyes that the government found it necessary to impose limits. This conservative policy proved an incentive to private banks and banking companies, so that, by the year 1883, no less than 1093 banking institutions were in existence throughout Japan with an aggregate capital of 900,000,000 yen. But these were entirely lacking in arrangements for combination or for equalizing rates of interest, and to correct such defects, no less than ultimately to constitute the sole note-issuing institution, a central bank (the Bank of Japan) was organized on the model of the Bank of Belgium, with due regard to corresponding institutions in other Western countries and to the conditions existing in Japan. Established in 1882 with a capital of 4,000,000 yen, this bank has now a capital of 30 millions, a security reserve of 206 millions, a note-issue of 266 millions, a specie reserve of 160 millions, and loans of 525 millions.

The banking machinery of the country being now complete, in a general sense, steps were taken in 1883 for converting the national banks into ordinary joint-stock concerns and for the redemption of all their note-issues. Each national bank was required to deposit with the treasury the government paper kept in its strong room as security for its own notes, and further to take from its annual profits and hand to the treasury a sum equal to 2½% of its notes in circulation. With these funds the central bank was to purchase state bonds, devoting the interest to redeeming the notes of the national banks. Formed with the object of disturbing the money market as little as possible, this programme encountered two obstacles. The first was that, in view of the Bank of Japan’s purchases, the market price of state bonds rose rapidly, so that, whereas official financiers had not expected them to reach par before 1897, they were quoted at a considerable premium in 1886. The second was that the treasury having in 1886 initiated the policy of converting its 6% bonds into 5% consols, the former no longer produced interest at the rate estimated for the purposes of the banking scheme. The national banks thus found themselves in an embarrassing situation and began to clamour for a revision of the programme. But the government, seeing compensations for them in other directions, adhered firmly to its scheme. Few problems have caused greater controversy in modern Japan than this question of the ultimate fate of the national banks. Not until 1896 could the diet be induced to pass a bill providing for their dissolution at the close of their charter terms, or their conversion into ordinary joint-stock concerns without any note-issuing power, and not until 1899 did their notes cease to be legal tender. Out of a total of 153 of these banks, 132 continued business as private institutions, and the rest were absorbed or dissolved. Already (1890 and 1893) minute regulations had been enacted bringing all the banks and banking institutions—except the special banks to be presently described—within one system of semi-annual balance-sheets and official auditing, while in the case of savings banks the directors’ responsibility was declared unlimited and these banks were required to lodge security with the treasury for the protection of their depositors.

Just as the ordinary banks were all centred on the Bank of Japan and more or less connected with it, so in 1895, a group of special institutions, called agricultural and commercial banks, were organized and centred on a hypothec bank, the object of this system being to supply cheap capital to farmers and manufacturers on the security of real estate. The hypothec bank had its head office in Tōkyō and was authorized to obtain funds by issuing premium-bearing bonds, while an agricultural and industrial bank was established in each prefecture and received assistance from the hypothec bank. Two years later (1900), an industrial bank—sometimes spoken of as the crédit mobilier of Japan—was brought into existence under official auspices, its purpose being to lend money against bonds, debentures and shares as well as to public corporations. These various institutions, together with clearing houses, bankers’ associations, the Hokkaidō colonial bank, the bank of Formosa, savings banks (including a post-office savings bank), and a mint complete the financial machinery of modern Japan.

Reviewing this chapter of Japan’s material development, we find that whereas, at the beginning of the Meiji era (1867), the nation did not possess so much as one banking institution worthy of the name, forty years later it had 2211 banks, with a paid-up capital of £40,000,000, reserves of £12,000,000, and deposits of £147,000,000; and whereas there was not one savings bank in 1867, there were 487 in 1906 with deposits of over £50,000,000. The average yearly dividends of these banks in the ten years ending 1906 varied between 9.1 and 9.9%.

Necessarily the movement of industrial expansion was accompanied by a development of insurance business. The beginnings of this kind of enterprise did not become visible, however, until 1881, and even at that comparatively recent date no Japanese laws had yet been enacted for the control of such operations. The commercial code, published in March 1890, was the earliest legislation which met the need, and from that time the number of insurance companies and the volume of their transactions grew rapidly. In 1897, there were 35 companies with a total paid-up capital of 7,000,000 yen and policies aggregating 971,000,000 yen, and in 1906 the corresponding figures were 65 companies, 22,000,000 yen paid up and policies of 4,149,000,000 yen. The premium reserves grew in the same period from 7,000,000 to 108,000,000. The net profits of these companies in 1906 were (in round numbers) 10,000,000 yen.

The origin of clearing houses preceded that of insurance companies in Japan by only two years (1879). Osaka set the example, which was quickly followed by Tōkyō, Kobe, Yokohama, Kiōto and Nagoya. In 1898 the bills handled at these institutions amounted to 1,186,000,000 yen, and in 1907 to 7,484,000,000 yen. Japanese clearing houses are modelled after those of London and New York.

Exchanges existed in Japan as far back as the close of the 17th century. At that time the income of the feudal chiefs consisted almost entirely of rice, and as this was sold to brokers, the latter found it convenient to meet at fixed times and places for conducting their business. Originally their transactions were all for cash, but afterwards they devised time bargains which ultimately developed into a definite form of exchange. The reform of abuses incidental to this system attracted the early attention of the Meiji government, and in 1893 a law was promulgated for the control of exchanges, which then numbered 146. Under this law the minimum share capital of a bourse constituted as a joint-stock company was fixed at 100,000 yen, and the whole of its property became liable for failure on the part of its brokers to implement their contracts. There were 51 bourses in 1908.

Not less remarkable than this economic development was the large part acted in it by officialdom. There were two reasons for this. One was that a majority of the men gifted with originality and foresight were drawn into the ranks of the administration by the great current of the revolution; the other, that the feudal system had tended to check rather than to encourage material development, since the limits of each fief were also the limits of economical and industrial enterprise. Ideas for combination and co-operation had been confined to a few families, and there was nothing to suggest the organization of companies nor any law to protect them if organized. Thus the opening of the Meiji era found the Japanese nation wholly unqualified for the commercial and manufacturing competition in which it was thenceforth required to engage, and therefore upon those who had brought the country out of its isolation there devolved the responsibility of speedily preparing their fellow countrymen for the new situation. To these leaders banking facilities seemed to be the first need, and steps were accordingly taken in the manner already described. But how to educate men of affairs at a moment’s notice? How to replace by a spirit of intelligent progress the ignorance and conservatism of the hitherto despised traders and artisans? When the first bank was organized, its two founders—men who had been urged, nay almost compelled, by officialdom to make the essay—were obliged to raise four-fifths of the capital themselves, the general public not being willing to subscribe more than one-fifth—a petty sum of 500,000 yen—and when its staff commenced their duties, they had not the most shadowy conception of what to do. That was a faithful reflection of the condition of the business world at large. If the initiative of the people themselves had been awaited, Japan’s career must have been slow indeed.

Only one course offered, namely, that the government itself should organize a number of productive enterprises on modern lines, so that they might serve as schools and also as models. Such, as already noted under Industries, was the programme adopted. It provoked much hostile criticism from foreign onlookers, who had learned to decry all official incursions into trade and industry, but had not properly appreciated the special conditions existing in Japan. The end justified the means. At the outset of its administration we find the Meiji government not only forming plans for the circulation of money, building railways and organizing posts and telegraphs, but also establishing dockyards, spinning mills, printing-houses, silk-reeling filatures, paper-making factories and so forth, thus by example encouraging these kinds of enterprise and by legislation providing for their safe prosecution. Yet progress was slow. One by one and at long intervals joint-stock companies came into existence, nor was it until the resumption of specie payments in 1886 that a really effective spirit of enterprise manifested itself among the people. Railways, harbours, mines, spinning, weaving, paper-making, oil-refining, brick-making, leather-tanning, glass-making and other industries attracted eager attention, and whereas the capital subscribed for such works aggregated only 50,000,000 yen in 1886, it exceeded 1,000,000,000 yen in 1906.

When specie payments were resumed in 1885, the notes issued by the Bank of Japan were convertible into silver on demand, the silver standard being thus definitely adopted, a complete reversal of the system inaugurated at the establishment of the national banks on Prince Ito’s return from the United States. Japanese financiers believed from the outset in gold monometallism. But, in the first place, the country’s stock of gold was soon driven out by her depreciated fiat currency; and, in the second, not only were all other Oriental nations silver-using, but also the Mexican silver dollar had long been the unit of account in Far-Eastern trade. Thus Japan ultimately drifted into silver monometallism, the silver yen becoming her unit of currency. So soon, however, as the indemnity that she received from China after the war of 1894-95 had placed her in possession of a stock of gold, she determined to revert to the gold standard. Mechanically speaking, the operation was very easy. Gold having appreciated so that its value in terms of silver had exactly doubled during the first 30 years of the Meiji era, nothing was necessary except to double the denominations of the gold coins in terms of yen, leaving the silver subsidiary coins unchanged. Thus the old 5-yen gold piece, weighing 2.22221 momme of 900 fineness, became a 10-yen piece in the new currency, and a new 5-yen piece of half the weight was coined. No change whatever was required in the reckonings of the people. The yen continued to be their coin of account, with a fixed sterling value of a small fraction over two shillings, and the denominations of the gold coins were doubled. Gold, however, is little seen in Japan; the whole duty of currency is done by notes.

It is not to be supposed that all this economic and financial development was unchequered by periods of depression and severe panic. There were in fact six such seasons: in 1874, 1881, 1889, 1897, 1900 and 1907. But no year throughout the whole period failed to witness an increase in the number of Japan’s industrial and commercial companies, and in the amount of capital thus invested.

To obtain a comprehensive idea of Japan’s state finance, the simplest method is to set down the annual revenue at quinquennial periods, commencing with the year 1878-1879, because it was not until 1876 that the system of duly compiled and published budgets came into existence.

Revenue (omitting fractions)

Year.* Ordinary Revenue
(millions of yen). Extraordinary Revenue
(millions of yen). Total Revenue
(millions of yen).

1878-9 53 9 62

1883-4 76 7 83

1888-9 74 18 92

1893-4 86 28 114

1898-9 133 87 220

1903-4 224 36 260

1908-9 476 144 620

* The Japanese fiscal year is from April 1 to March 31.

The most striking feature of the above table is the rapid growth of revenue during the last three periods. So signal was the growth that the revenue may be said to have sextupled in the 15 years ended 1909. This was the result of the two great wars in which Japan was involved, that with China in 1894-95 and that with Russia in 1904-5. The details will be presently shown.

Turning now to the expenditure and pursuing the same plan, we have the following figures:—

Expenditure (omitting fractions)

Year. Ordinary
Expenditures
(millions of yen). Extraordinary
Expenditures
(millions of yen). Total
Expenditures
(millions of yen).

1878-9 56 5 61

1883-4 68 15 83

1888-9 66 15 81

1893-4 64 20 84

1898-9 119 101 220

1903-4 170 80 250

1908-9 427 193 620

It may be here stated that, with three exceptions, the working of the budget showed a surplus in every one of the 41 years between 1867 and 1908.

The sources from which revenue is obtained are as follow:—

Ordinary Revenue

1894-5. 1898-9. 1903-4. 1908-9.

millions
of yen. millions
of yen. millions
of yen. millions
of yen.

Taxes 70.50 96.20 146.10 299.61

Receipts from stamps and Public Undertakings 14.75 33.00 96.87 164.66

Various Receipts 4.58 3.67 8.15 11.48

It appears from the above that during 15 years the weight of taxation increased fourfold. But a correction has to be applied, first, on account of the tax on alcoholic liquors and, secondly, on account of customs dues, neither of which can properly be called general imposts. The former grew from 16 millions in 1894-1895 to 72 millions in 1908-1909, and the latter from 5¼ millions to 41½ millions. If these increases be deducted, it is found that taxes, properly so called, grew from 70.5 millions in 1894-1895 to 207.86 millions in 1908-1909, an increase of somewhat less than three-fold. Otherwise stated, the burden per unit of population in 1894-1895 was 3s. 6d., whereas in 1908-1909 it was 8s. 4d. To understand the principle of Japanese taxation and the manner in which the above development took place, it is necessary to glance briefly at the chief taxes separately.

The land tax is the principal source of revenue. It was originally fixed at 3% of the assessed value of the land, but in 1877 this ratio was reduced to 2½%, on which basis the tax yielded from 37 to 38 million yen annually. After the war with China (1894-1895) the government proposed to increase this impost in order to obtain funds for an extensive programme of useful public works and expanded armaments (known subsequently as the “first post bellum programme”). By that time the market value of agricultural land had largely appreciated owing to improved communications, and urban land commanded greatly enhanced prices. But the lower house of the diet, considering itself guardian of the farmers’ interests, refused to endorse any increase of the tax. Not until 1889 could this resistance be overcome, and then only on condition that the change should not be operative for more than 5 years. The amended rates were 3.3% on rural lands and 5% on urban building sites. Thus altered, the tax produced 46,000,000 yen, but at the end of the five-year period it would have reverted to its old figure, had not war with Russia broken out. An increase was then made so that the impost varied from 3% to 17½% according to the class of land, and under this new system the tax yielded 85 millions. Thus the exigencies of two wars had augmented it from 38 millions in 1889 to 85 millions in 1907.

The income tax was introduced in 1887. It was on a graduated scale, varying from 1% on incomes of not less than 300 yen, to 3% on incomes of 30,000 yen and upwards. At these rates the tax yielded an insignificant revenue of about 2,000,000 yen. In 1899, a revision was effected for the purposes of the first post bellum programme. This revision increased the number of classes from five to ten, incomes of 300 yen standing at the bottom and incomes of 100,000yen or upwards at the top, the minimum and maximum rates being 1% and 5½%. The tax now produced approximately 8,000,000 yen. Finally in 1904, when war broke out with Russia, these rates were again revised, the minimum now becoming 2%, and the maximum 8.2%. Thus revised, the tax yields a revenue of 27,000,000 yen.

The business tax was instituted in 1896, after the war with China, and the rates have remained unchanged. For the purposes of the tax all kinds of business are divided into nine classes, and the tax is levied on the amounts of sales (wholesale and retail), on rental value of buildings, on number of employees and on amount of capital. The yield from the tax grows steadily. It was only 4,500,000 yen in 1897, but it figured at 22,000,000 yen in the budget for 1908-1909.

The above three imposts constitute the only direct taxes in Japan. Among indirect taxes the most important is that upon alcoholic liquors. It was inaugurated in 1871; doubled, roughly speaking, in 1878; still further increased thenceforth at intervals of about 3 years, until it is now approximately twenty times as heavy as it was originally. The liquor taxed is mainly sake; the rate is about 50 sen (one shilling) per gallon, and the annual yield is 72,000,000 yen.

In 1859, when Japan re-opened her ports to foreign commerce, the customs dues were fixed on a basis of 10% ad valorem, but this was almost immediately changed to a nominal 5% and a real 3%. The customs then yielded a very petty return—not more than three or four million yen—and the Japanese government had no discretionary power to alter the rates. Strenuous efforts to change this system were at length successful, and, in 1899, the tariff was divided into two sections, conventional and statutory; the rates in the former being governed by a treaty valid for 12 years; those in the latter being fixed at Japan’s will. Things remained thus until the war with Russia compelled a revision of the statutory tariff. Under this system the ratio of the duties to the value of the dutiable goods was about 15.65%. The customs yield a revenue of about 42,000,000 yen.

In addition to the above there are eleven taxes, some in existence before the war of 1904-5, and some created for the purpose of carrying on the war or to meet the expenses of a post bellum programme.

Taxes in existence before 1904-1905:—

Name. Yield
(millions of yen).

Tax on soy 4

Tax on sugar 16¼

Mining tax 2

Tax on bourses 2

Tax on issue of bank-notes 1

Tonnage dues ½

Taxes created on account of the war (1904-5) or in its immediate sequel:—

Name. Yield
(millions of yen).

Consumption tax on textile fabrics 19½

Tax on dealers in patent medicines ¼

Tax on communications 21⁄3

Consumption tax on kerosene 1½

Succession tax 1½

Also, as shown above, the land tax was increased by 39 millions; the income tax by 19 millions; the business tax by 15 millions; and the tax on alcoholic liquors by 15 millions. On the whole, if taxes of general incidence and those of special incidence be lumped together, it appears that the burden swelled from 160,000,000 yen before the war to 320,000,000 after it.

The government of Japan carries on many manufacturing undertakings for purposes of military and naval equipment, for ship-building, for the construction of railway rolling stock, for the manufacture of telegraph and light-house materials, for iron-founding and steel-making, for printing, for paper-making and so forth. There are 48 of these institutions, giving employment to 108,000 male operatives and 23,000 female, together with 63,000 labourers. But the financial results do not appear independently in the general budget. Three other government undertakings, however, constitute important budgetary items: they are, the profits derived from the postal and telegraph services, 39,000,000 yen; secondly, from forests, 13,000,000 yen; and thirdly, from railways, 37,000,000 yen. The government further exercises a monopoly of three important staples, tobacco, salt and camphor. In each case the crude article is produced by private individuals from whom it is taken over at a fair price by the government, and, having been manufactured (if necessary), it is resold by government agents at fixed prices. The tobacco monopoly yields a profit of some 33,000,000 yen; the salt monopoly a profit of 12,000,000 yen, and the camphor monopoly a profit of 1,000,000 yen. Thus the ordinary revenue of the state consisted in 1908-1909 of:—

Yen.

Proceeds of taxes 320,000,000

Proceeds of state enterprises (posts and telegraphs, forests and railways) 89,000,000

Proceeds of monopolies 56,000,000

Sundries 11,000,000

Total 476,000,000

The ordinary expenditures of the nine departments of state aggregated—in 1908-1909—427,000,000 yen, so that there was a surplus revenue of 49,000,000 yen.

Japanese budgets have long included an extraordinary section, so called because it embodies outlays of a special and terminable character as distinguished from ordinary and perpetually recurring expenditures. The items in this extraordinary section possessed deep interest in the years 1896 and 1907, because they disclosed the special programmes mapped out by Japanese financiers and statesmen after the wars with China and Russia. Both programmes had the same bases—expansion of armaments and development of the country’s material resources. After her war with China, Japan received a plain intimation that she must either fight again after a few years or resign herself to a career of insignificance on the confines of the Far East. No other interpretation could be assigned to the action of Russia, Germany and France in requiring her to retrocede the territory which she had acquired by right of conquest. Japan therefore made provision for the doubling of her army and her navy, for the growth of a mercantile marine qualified to supply a sufficiency of troop-ships, and for the development of resources which should lighten the burden of these outlays.

The war with Russia ensued nine years after these preparations had begun, and Japan emerged victorious. It then seemed to the onlooking nations that she would rest from her warlike efforts. On the contrary, just as she had behaved after her war with China, so she now behaved after her war with Russia—made arrangements to double her army and navy and to develop her material resources. The government drafted for the year 1907-1908 a budget with three salient features. First, instead of proceeding to deal in a leisurely manner with the greatly increased national debt, Japan’s financiers made dispositions to pay it off completely in the space of 30 years. Secondly, a total outlay of 422,000,000 yen was set down for improving and expanding the army and the navy. Thirdly, expenditures aggregating 304,000,000 yen were estimated for productive purposes. All these outlays, included in the extraordinary section of the budget, were spread over a series of years commencing in 1907 and ending in 1913, so that the disbursements would reach their maximum in the fiscal year 1908-1909 and would thenceforth decline with growing rapidity. To finance this programme three constant sources of annual revenue were provided, namely, increased taxation, yielding some 30 millions yearly; domestic loans, varying from 30 to 40 millions each year; and surpluses of ordinary revenue amounting to from 45 to 75 millions. There were also some exceptional and temporary assets: such as 100,000,000 yen remaining over from the war fund; 50 millions paid by Russia for the maintenance of her officers and soldiers during their imprisonment in Japan; occasional sales of state properties and so forth. But the backbone of the scheme was the continuing revenue detailed above.

The house of representatives unanimously approved this programme. By the bulk of the nation, however, it was regarded with something like consternation, and a very short time sufficed to demonstrate its impracticability. From the beginning of 1907 a cloud of commercial and industrial depression settled down upon Japan, partly because of so colossal a programme of taxes and expenditures, and partly owing to excessive speculation during the year 1906 and to unfavourable financial conditions abroad. To float domestic loans became a hopeless task, and thus one of the three sources of extraordinary revenue ceased to be available. There remained no alternative but to modify the programme, and this was accomplished by extending the original period of years so as correspondingly to reduce the annual outlays. The nation, however, as represented by its leading men of affairs, clamoured for still more drastic measures, and it became evident that the government must study retrenchment, not expansion, eschewing above all things any increase of the country’s indebtedness. A change of ministry took place, and the new cabinet drafted a programme on five bases: first, that all expenditures should be brought within the margin of actual visible revenue, loans being wholly abstained from; secondly, that the estimates should not include any anticipated surpluses of yearly revenue; thirdly, that appropriations of at least 50,000,000 yen should be annually set aside to form a sinking fund, the whole of the foreign debt being thus extinguished in 27 years; fourthly, that the state railways should be placed in a separate account, all their profits being devoted to extensions and repairs; and fifthly, that the period for completing the post bellum programme should be extended from 6 years to 11. This scheme had the effect of restoring confidence in the soundness of the national finances.

National Debt.—When the fiefs were surrendered to the sovereign at the beginning of the Meiji era, it was decided to provide for the feudal nobles and the samurai by the payment of lump sums in commutation, or by handing to them public bonds, the interest on which should constitute a source of income. The result of this transaction was that bonds having a total face value of 191,500,000 yen were issued, and ready-money payments were made aggregating 21,250,000 yen. This was the foundation of Japan’s national debt. Indeed, these public bonds may be said to have represented the bulk of the state’s liabilities during the first 25 years of the Meiji period. The government had also to take over the debts of the fiefs, amounting to 41,000,000 yen, of which 21,500,000 yen were paid with interest-bearing bonds, the remainder with ready money. If to the above figures be added two foreign loans aggregating 16,500,000 yen (completely repaid by the year 1897); a loan of 15,000,000 yen incurred on account of the Satsuma revolt of 1877; loans of 33,000,000 yen for public works, 13,000,000 yen for naval construction, and 14,500,000 yen in connexion with the fiat currency, we have a total of 305,000,000 yen, being the whole national debt of Japan during the first 28 years of her new era under Imperial administration.

The second epoch dates from the war with China in 1894-95. The direct expenditures on account of the war aggregated 200,000,000 yen, of which 135,000,000 yen were added to the national debt, the remainder being defrayed with accumulations of surplus revenue, with a part of the indemnity received from China, and with voluntary contributions from patriotic subjects. As the immediate sequel of the war, the government elaborated a large programme of armaments and public works. The expenditure for these unproductive purposes, as well as for coast fortifications, dockyards, and so on, came to 314,000,000 yen, and the total of the productive expenditures included in the programme was 190,000,000 yen—namely, 120 millions for railways, telegraphs and telephones; 20 millions for riparian improvements; 20 millions in aid of industrial and agricultural banks and so forth—the whole programme thus involving an outlay of 504,000,000 yen. To meet this large figure, the Chinese indemnity, surpluses of annual revenue and other assets, furnished 300 millions; and it was decided that the remaining 204 millions should be obtained by domestic loans, the programme to be carried completely into operation—with trifling exceptions—by the year 1905. In practice, however, it was found impossible to obtain money at home without paying a high rate of interest. The government, therefore, had recourse to the London market in 1899, raising a loan of £10,000,000 at 4%, and selling the £100 bonds at 90. In 1902, it was not expected that Japan would need any further immediate recourse to foreign borrowing. According to her financiers’ forecast at that time, her national indebtedness would reach its maximum, namely, 575,000,000 yen, in the year 1903, and would thenceforward diminish steadily. All Japan’s domestic loans were by that time placed on a uniform basis. They carried 5% interest, ran for a period of 5 years without redemption, and were then to be redeemed within 50 years at latest. The treasury had power to expedite the operation of redemption according to financial convenience, but the sum expended on amortization each year must receive the previous consent of the diet. Within the limit of that sum redemption was effected either by purchasing the stock of the loans in the open market or by drawing lots to determine the bonds to be paid off. During the first two periods (1867 to 1897) of the Meiji era, owing to the processes of conversion, consolidation, &c., and to the various requirements of the state’s progress, twenty-two different kinds of national bonds were issued; they aggregated 673,215,500 yen; 269,042,198 yen of that total had been paid off at the close of 1897, and the remainder was to be redeemed by 1946, according to these programmes.

But at this point the empire became involved in war with Russia, and the enormous resulting outlays caused a signal change in the financial situation. Before peace was restored in the autumn of 1905, Japan had been obliged to borrow 405,000,000 yen at home and 1,054,000,000 abroad, so that she found herself in 1908 with a total debt of 2,276,000,000 yen, of which aggregate her domestic indebtedness stood for 1,110,000,000 and her foreign borrowings amounted to 1,166,000,000. This meant that her debt had grown from 561,000,000 yen in 1904 to 2,276,000,000 yen in 1908; or from 11.3 yen to 43.8 yen per head of the population. Further, out of the grand total, the sum actually spent on account of war and armaments represented 1,357,000,000 yen. The debt carried interest varying from 4 to 5%.

It will be observed that the country’s indebtedness grew by 1,700,000,000 yen, in round numbers, owing to the war with Russia. This added obligation the government resolved to discharge within the space of 30 years, for which purpose the diet was asked to approve the establishment of a national debt consolidation fund, which should be kept distinct from the general accounts of revenue and expenditure, and specially applied to payment of interest and redemption of principal. The amount of this fund was never to fall below 110,000,000 yen annually. Immediately after the war, the diet approved a cabinet proposal for the nationalization of 17 private railways, at a cost of 500,000,000 yen, and this brought the state’s debts to 2,776,000,000 yen in all. The people becoming impatient of this large burden, a scheme was finally adopted in 1908 for appropriating a sum of at least 50,000,000 yen annually to the purpose of redemption.

Local Finance.—Between 1878 and 1888 a system of local autonomy in matters of finance was fully established. Under this system the total expenditures of the various corporations in the last year of each quinquennial period commencing from the fiscal year 1889-1890 were as follow:—

Year. Total Expenditure
(millions of yen).

1889-1890 22

1893-1894 52

1898-1899 97

1903-1904 158

1907-1908 167

In the same years the total indebtedness of the corporations was:—

Year. Debts
(millions of yen).

1890 ¾

1894 10

1899 32

1904 65

1907 89

The chief purposes to which the proceeds of these loans were applied are as follow:—

Millions of yen.

Education 5

Sanitation 12

Industries 13

Public works 52

Local corporations are not competent to incur unrestricted indebtedness. The endorsement of the local assembly must be secured; redemption must commence within 3 years after the date of issue and be completed within 30 years; and, except in the case of very small loans, the sanction of the minister of home affairs must be obtained.

Wealth of Japan.—With reference to the wealth of Japan, there is no official census. So far as can be estimated from statistics for the year 1904-1905, the wealth of Japan proper, excluding Formosa, Sakhalin and some rights in Manchuria, amounts to about 19,896,000,000 yen, the items of which are as follow:—

Yen (10 yen = £1).

Lands 12,301,000,000

Buildings 2,331,000,000

Furniture and fittings 1,080,000,000

Live stock 109,000,000

Railways, telegraphs and telephones 707,000,000

Shipping 376,000,000

Merchandise 873,000,000

Specie and bullion 310,000,000

Miscellaneous 1,809,000,000

Grand total 19,896,000,000

Education.—There is no room to doubt that the literature and learning of China and Korea were transported to Japan in very ancient times, but tradition is the sole authority for current statements that in the 3rd century a Korean immigrant was appointed historiographer to the Imperial court of Japan and another learned man from the same country introduced the Japanese to the treasures of Chinese literature. About the end of the 6th century the Japanese court began to send civilians and religionists direct to China, there to study Confucianism and Buddhism, and among these travellers there were some who passed as much as 25 or 30 years beyond the sea. The knowledge acquired by these students was crystallized into a body of laws and ordinances based on the administrative and legal systems of the Sui dynasty in China, and in the middle of the 7th century the first Japanese school seems to have been established by the emperor Tenchi, followed some 50 years later by the first university. Nara was the site of the latter, and the subjects of study were ethics, law, history and mathematics.

Not until 794, the date of the transfer of the capital to Kiōto, however, is there any evidence of educational organization on a considerable scale. A university was then opened in the capital, with affiliated colleges; and local schools were built and endowed by noble families, to whose scions admittance was restricted, but for general education one institution only appears to have been provided. In this Kiōto university the curriculum included the Chinese classics, calligraphy, history, law, etiquette, arithmetic and composition; while in the affiliated colleges special subjects were taught, as medicine, herbalism, acupuncture, shampooing, divination, the almanac and languages. Admission was limited to youths of high social grade; the students aggregated some 400, from 13 to 16 years of age; the faculty included professors and teachers, who were known by the same titles (hakase and shi) as those applied to their successors to-day; and the government supplied food and clothing as well as books. The family schools numbered five, and their patrons were the Wage, the Fujiwara, the Tachibana (one school each) and the Minamoto (two). At the one institution—opened in 828—where youths in general might receive instruction, the course embraced only calligraphy and the precepts of Buddhism and Confucianism.

The above retrospect suggests that Japan, in those early days, borrowed her educational system and its subjects of study entirely from China. But closer scrutiny shows that the national factor was carefully preserved. The ethics of administration required a combination of two elements, wakon, or the soul of Japan, and kwansai, or the ability of China; so that, while adopting from Confucianism the doctrine of filial piety, the Japanese grafted on it a spirit of unswerving loyalty and patriotism; and while accepting Buddha’s teaching as to three states of existence, they supplemented it by a belief that in the life beyond the grave the duty of guarding his country would devolve on every man. Great academic importance attached to proficiency in literary composition, which demanded close study of the ideographic script, endlessly perplexing in form and infinitely delicate in sense. To be able to compose and indite graceful couplets constituted a passport to high office as well as to the favour of great ladies, for women vied with men in this accomplishment. The early years of the 11th century saw, grouped about the empress Aki, a galaxy of female authors whose writings are still accounted their country’s classics—Murasaki no Shikibu, Akazome Emon, Izumi Shikibu, Ise Taiyu and several lesser lights. To the first two Japan owes the Genji monogatari and the Eiga monogatari, respectively, and from the Imperial court of those remote ages she inherited admirable models of painting, calligraphy, poetry, music, song and dance. But it is to be observed that all this refinement was limited virtually to the noble families residing in Kiōto, and that the first object of education in that era was to fit men for office and for society.

Meanwhile, beyond the precincts of the capital there were rapidly growing to maturity numerous powerful military magnates who despised every form of learning that did not contribute to martial excellence. An illiterate era ensued which reached its climax with the establishment of feudalism at the close of the 12th century. It is recorded that, about that time, only one man out of a force of five thousand could decipher an Imperial mandate addressed to them. Kamakura, then the seat of feudal government, was at first distinguished for absence of all intellectual training, but subsequently the course of political events brought thither from Kiōto a number of court nobles whose erudition and refinement acted as a potent leaven. Buddhism, too, had been from the outset a strong educating influence. Under its auspices the first great public library was established (1270) at the temple Shōmyo-ji in Kanazawa. It is said to have contained practically all the Chinese and Japanese books then existing, and they were open for perusal by every class of reader. To Buddhist priests, also, Japan owed during many years all the machinery she possessed for popular education. They organized schools at the temples scattered about in almost every part of the empire, and at these tera-koya, as they were called, lessons in ethics, calligraphy, reading and etiquette were given to the sons of samurai and even to youths of the mercantile and manufacturing classes.

When, at the beginning of the 17th century, administrative supremacy fell into the hands of the Tokugawa, the illustrious founder of that dynasty of shōguns, Iyeyasu, showed himself an earnest promoter of erudition. He employed a number of priests to make copies of Chinese and Japanese books; he patronized men of learning and he endowed schools. It does not appear to have occurred to him, however, that the spread of knowledge was hampered by a restriction which, emanating originally from the Imperial court in Kiōto, forbade any one outside the ranks of the Buddhist priesthood to become a public teacher. To his fifth successor Tsunayoshi (1680-1709) was reserved the honour of abolishing this veto. Tsunayoshi, whatever his faults, was profoundly attached to literature. By his command a pocket edition of the Chinese classics was prepared, and the example he himself set in reading and expounding rare books to audiences of feudatories and their vassals produced something like a mania for erudition, so that feudal chiefs competed in engaging teachers and founding schools. The eighth shōgun, Yoshimunē (1716-1749), was an even more enlightened ruler. He caused a geography to be compiled and an astronomical observatory to be constructed; he revoked the veto on the study of foreign books; he conceived and carried out the idea of imparting moral education through the medium of calligraphy by preparing ethical primers whose precepts were embodied in the head-lines of copy-books, and he encouraged private schools. Iyenari (1787-1838), the eleventh shōgun, and his immediate successor, Iyeyoshi (1838-1853), patronized learning no less ardently, and it was under the auspices of the latter that Japan acquired her five classics, the primers of True Words, of Great Learning, of Lesser Learning, of Female Ethics and of Women’s Filial Piety.

Thus it may be said that the system of education progressed steadily throughout the Tokugawa era. From the days of Tsunayoshi the number of fief schools steadily increased, and as students were admitted free of all charges, a duty of grateful fealty as well as the impulse of interfief competition drew thither the sons of all samurai. Ultimately the number of such schools rose to over 240, and being supported entirely at the expense of the feudal chiefs, they did no little honour to the spirit of the era. From 7 to 15 years of age lads attended as day scholars, being thereafter admitted as boarders, and twice a year examinations were held in the presence of high officials of the fief. There were also several private schools where the curriculum consisted chiefly of moral philosophy, and there were many temple schools, where ethics, calligraphy, arithmetic, etiquette and, sometimes, commercial matters were taught. A prominent feature of the system was the bond of reverential affection uniting teacher and student. Before entering school a boy was conducted by his father or elder brother to the home of his future teacher, and there the visitors, kneeling before the teacher, pledged themselves to obey him in all things and to submit unquestioningly to any discipline he might impose. Thus the teacher came to be regarded as a parent, and the veneration paid to him was embodied in a precept: “Let not a pupil tread within three feet of his teacher’s shadow.” In the case of the temple schools the priestly instructor had full cognisance of each student’s domestic circumstances and was guided by that knowledge in shaping the course of instruction. The universally underlying principle was, “serve the country and be diligent in your respective avocations.” Sons of samurai were trained in military arts, and on attaining proficiency many of them travelled about the country, inuring their bodies to every kind of hardship and challenging all experts of local fame.

Unfortunately, however, the policy of national seclusion prevented for a long time all access to the stores of European knowledge. Not until the beginning of the 18th century did any authorized account of the great world of the West pass into the hands of the people. A celebrated scholar (Arai Hakuseki) then compiled two works—Saiyō kibun (Record of Occidental Hearsay), and Sairan igen (Renderings of Foreign Languages)—which embodied much information, obtained from Dutch sources, about Europe, its conditions and its customs. But of course the light thus furnished had very restricted influence. It was not extinguished, however. Thenceforth men’s interest centred more and more on the astronomical, geographical and medical sciences of the West, though such subjects were not included in academical studies until the renewal of foreign intercourse in modern times. Then (1857), almost immediately, the nation turned to Western learning, as it had turned to Chinese thirteen centuries earlier. The Tokugawa government established in Yedo an institution called Bansho-shirabe-dokoro (place for studying foreign books), where Occidental languages were learned and Occidental works translated. Simultaneously a school for acquiring foreign medical art (Seiyo igaku-sho) was opened, and, a little later (1862), the Kaisei-jo (place of liberal culture), a college for studying European sciences, was added to the list of new institutions. Thus the eve of the Restoration saw the Japanese people already appreciative of the stores of learning rendered accessible to them by contact with the Occident.

Commercial education was comparatively neglected in the schools. Sons of merchants occasionally attended the tera-koya, but the instruction they received there had seldom any bearing upon the conduct of trade. Mercantile knowledge had to be acquired by a system of apprenticeship. A boy of 9 or 10 was apprenticed for a period of 8 or 9 years to a merchant, who undertook to support him and teach him a trade. Generally this young apprentice could not even read or write. He passed through all the stages of shop menial, errand boy, petty clerk, salesman and senior clerk, and in the evenings he received instruction from a teacher, who used for textbooks the manual of letter-writing (Shosoku orai) and the manual of commerce (Shōbai orai). The latter contained much useful information, and a youth thoroughly versed in its contents was competent to discharge responsible duties. When an apprentice, having attained the position of senior clerk, had given proof of practical ability, he was often assisted by his master to start business independently, but under the same firm-name, for which purpose a sum of capital was given to him or a section of his master’s customers were assigned.

When the government of the Restoration came into power, the emperor solemnly announced that the administration should be conducted on the principle of employing men of capacity wherever they could be found. This amounted to a declaration that in choosing officials scholastic acquirements would thenceforth take precedence of the claims of birth, and thus unprecedented importance was seen to attach to education. But so long as the feudal system survived, even in part, no general scheme of education could be thoroughly enforced, and thus it was not until the conversion of the fiefs into prefectures in 1871 that the government saw itself in a position to take drastic steps. A commission of investigation was sent to Europe and America, and on its return a very elaborate and extensive plan was drawn up in accordance with French models, which the commissioners had found conspicuously complete and symmetrical. This plan subsequently underwent great modifications. It will be sufficient to say that in consideration of the free education hitherto provided by the feudatories in their various fiefs, the government of the restoration resolved not only that the state should henceforth shoulder the main part of this burden, but also that the benefits of the system should be extended equally to all classes of the population, and that the attendance at primary schools should be compulsory. At the outset the sum to be paid by the treasury was fixed at 2,000,000 yen, that having been approximately the expenditure incurred by the feudatories. But the financial arrangements suffered many changes from time to time, and finally, in 1877, the cost of maintaining the schools became a charge on the local taxes, the central treasury granting only sums in aid.

Every child, on attaining the age of six, must attend a common elementary school, where, during a six-years’ course, instruction is given in morals, reading, arithmetic, the rudiments of technical work, gymnastics and poetry. Year by year the attendance at these schools has increased. Thus, whereas in the year 1900, only 81.67% of the school-age children of both sexes received the prescribed elementary instruction, the figure in 1905 was 94.93%. The desire for instruction used to be keener among boys than among girls, as was natural in view of the difference of inducement; but ultimately this discrepancy disappeared almost completely. Thus, whereas the percentage of girls attending school was 75.90 in 1900, it rose to 91.46 in 1905, and the corresponding figures for boys were 90.55 and 97.10 respectively. The tuition fee paid at a common elementary school in the rural districts must not exceed 5s. yearly, and in the urban districts, 10s.; but in practice it is much smaller, for these elementary schools form part of the communal system, and such portion of their expenses as is not covered by tuition fees, income from school property and miscellaneous sources, must be defrayed out of the proceeds of local taxation. In 1909 there were 18,160 common elementary schools, and also 9105 schools classed as elementary but having sections where, subsequently to the completion of the regular curriculum, a special supplementary course of study might be pursued in agriculture, commerce or industry (needle-work in the case of girls). The time devoted to these special courses is two, three or four years, according to the degree of proficiency contemplated, and the maximum fees are 15d. per month in urban districts and one-half of that amount in rural districts.

There are also 294 kindergartens, with an attendance of 26,000 infants, whose parents pay 3d. per month on the average for each child. In general the kindergartens are connected with elementary schools or with normal schools.

If a child, after graduation at a common elementary school, desires to extend its education, it passes into a common middle school, where training is given for practical pursuits or for admission to higher educational institutions. The ordinary curriculum at a common middle school includes moral philosophy, English language, history, geography, mathematics, natural history, natural philosophy, chemistry, drawing and the Japanese language. Five years are required to graduate, and from the fourth year the student may take up a special technical course as well as the main course; or, in accordance with local requirements, technical subjects may be taught conjointly with the regular curriculum throughout the whole time. The law provides that there must be at least one common middle school in each prefecture. The actual number in 1909 was 216.

Great inducements attract attendance at a common middle school. Not only does the graduation certificate carry considerable weight as a general qualification, but it also entitles a young man to volunteer for one year’s service with the colours, thus escaping one of the two years he would have to serve as an ordinary conscript.

The graduate of a common middle school can claim admittance, without examination, to a high school, where he spends three years preparing to pass to a university, or four years studying a special subject, as law, engineering or medicine. By following the course in a high school, a youth obtains exemption from conscription until the age of 28, when one year as a volunteer will free him from all service with the colours. A high-school certificate of graduation entitles its holder to enter a university without examination, and qualifies him for all public posts.

For girls also high schools are provided, the object being to give a general education of higher standard. Candidates for admission must be over 12 years of age, and must have completed the second-year course of a higher elementary school. The regular course of study requires 4 years, and supplementary courses as well as special art courses may be taken.

In addition to the schools already enumerated, which may be said to constitute the machinery of general education, there are special schools, generally private, and technical schools (including a few private), where instruction is given in medicine and surgery, agriculture, commerce, mechanics, applied chemistry, navigation, electrical engineering, art (pictorial and applied), veterinary science, sericulture and various other branches of industry. There are also apprentices’ schools, classed under the heading of elementary, where a course of not less than six months, and not more than four years, may be taken in dyeing and weaving, embroidery, the making of artificial flowers, tobacco manufacture, sericulture, reeling silk, pottery, lacquer, woodwork, metal-work or brewing. There are also schools—nearly all supported by private enterprise—for the blind and the dumb.

Normal schools are maintained for the purpose of training teachers, a class of persons not plentiful in Japan, doubtless because of an exceptionally low scale of emoluments, the yearly pay not exceeding £60 and often falling as low as £15.

There are two Imperial universities, one in Tōkyō and one in Kiōto. In 1909 the former had about 220 professors and instructors and 2880 students. Its colleges number six: law, medicine, engineering, literature, science and agriculture. It has a university hall where post-graduate courses are studied, and it publishes a quarterly journal giving accounts of scientific researches, which indicate not only large erudition, but also original talent. The university of Kiōto is a comparatively new institution and has not given any signs of great vitality. In 1909 its colleges numbered four: law, medicine, literature and science; its faculty consisted of about 60 professors with 70 assistants, and its students aggregated about 1100.

Except in the cases specially indicated, all the figures given above are independent of private educational institutions. The system pursued by the state does not tend to encourage private education, for unless a private school brings its curriculum into exact accord with that prescribed for public institutions of corresponding grade, its students are denied the valuable privilege of partial exemption from conscription, as well as other advantages attaching to state recognition. Thus the quality of the instruction being nominally the same, the rate of fees must also be similar, and no margin offers to tempt private enterprise.

Public education in Japan is strictly secular: no religious teaching of any kind is permitted in the schools. There are about 100 libraries. Progress is marked in this branch, the rate of growth having been from 43 to 100 in the five-year period ended 1905. The largest library is the Imperial, in Tōkyō. It had about half a million volumes in 1909, and the daily average of visitors was about 430.

Apart from the universities, the public educational institutions in Japan involve an annual expenditure of 3½ millions sterling, out of which total a little more than half a million is met by students’ fees; 2¾ millions are paid by the communes, and the remainder is defrayed from various sources, the central government contributing only some £28,000. It is estimated that public school property—in land, buildings, books, furniture, &c., aggregates 11 millions sterling.

VII.—Religion

The primitive religion of Japan is known by the name of Shintō, which signifies “the divine way,” but the Japanese maintain that this term is of comparatively modern application. The term Shintō being obviously of Chinese origin, cannot have been used in Japan before she became acquainted with the Chinese language. Now Buddhism did not reach Japan until the 6th century, and a knowledge of the Chinese language had preceded it by only a hundred years. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the primitive religion of Japan had no name, and that it did not begin to be called Shintō until Buddhism had entered the field. The two creeds remained distinct, though not implacably antagonistic, until the beginning of the 9th century, when they were welded together into a system of doctrine to which the name Ryōbu-Shintō (dual Shintō) was given. In this new creed the Shintō deities were regarded as avatars of Buddhist divinities, and thus it may be said that Shintō was absorbed into Buddhism. Probably that would have been the fate of the indigenous creed in any circumstances, for a religion without a theory as to a future state and without any code of moral duties could scarcely hope to survive contact with a faith so well equipped as Buddhism in these respects. But Shintō, though absorbed, was not obliterated. Its beliefs survived; its shrines survived; its festivals survived, and something of its rites survived also.

Shintō, indeed, may be said to be entwined about the roots of Japan’s national existence. Its scripture—as the Kojiki must be considered—resembles the Bible in that both begin with the cosmogony. But it represents the gods as peopling the newly created earth with their own offspring instead of with human beings expressly made for the purpose. The actual work of creation was done by a male deity, Izanagi, and a female deity, Izanami. From the right eye of the former was born Amaterasu, who became goddess of the sun; from his left eye, the god of the moon; and from his nose, a species of Lucifer. The grandson of the sun goddess was the first sovereign of Japan, and his descendants have ruled the land in unbroken succession ever since, the 121st being on the throne in 1909. Thus it is to Amaterasu (the heaven-illuminating goddess) that the Japanese pay reverence above all other deities, and it is to her shrine at Ise that pilgrims chiefly flock.

The story of creation, as related in the Kojiki, is obviously based on a belief that force is indestructible, and that every exercise of it is productive of some permanent result. Thus by the motions of the creative spirit there spring into existence all the elements that go to make up the universe, and these, being of divine origin, are worshipped and propitiated. Their number becomes immense when we add the deified ghosts of ancestors who were descended from the gods and whose names are associated with great deeds. These ancestors are often regarded as the tutelary deities of districts, where they receive special homage and where shrines are erected to them. The method of worship consists in making offerings and in the recital of rituals (norito). Twenty-seven of these rituals were reduced to writing and embodied in a work called Engishiki (927). Couched in antique language, these liturgies are designed for the dedication of shrines, for propitiating evil, for entreating blessings on the harvest, for purification, for obtaining household security, for bespeaking protection during a journey, and so forth. Nowhere is any reference found to a future state of reward or punishment, to deliverance from evil, to assistance in the path of virtue. One ceremonial only is designed to avert the consequences of sin or crime; namely, the rite of purification, which, by washing with water and by the sacrifice of valuables, removes the pollution resulting from all wrong-doing. Originally performed on behalf of individuals, this ō-barai ultimately came to be a semi-annual ceremony for sweeping away the sins of all the people.

Shintō is thus a mixture of ancestor-worship and of nature-worship without any explicit code of morals. It regards human beings as virtuous by nature; assumes that each man’s conscience is his best guide; and while believing in a continued existence beyond the grave, entertains no theory as to its pleasures or pains. Those that pass away become disembodied spirits, inhabiting the world of darkness (yomi-no-yo) and possessing power to bring sorrow or joy into the lives of their survivors, on which account they are worshipped and propitiated. Purity and simplicity being essential characteristics of the cult, its shrines are built of white wood, absolutely without decorative features of any kind, and fashioned as were the original huts of the first Japanese settlers. There are no graven images—a fact attributed by some critics to ignorance of the glyptic art on the part of the original worshippers—but there is an emblem of the deity, which generally takes the form of a sword, a mirror or a so-called jewel, these being the insignia handed by the sun goddess to her grandson, the first ruler of Japan. This emblem is not exposed to public view: it is enveloped in silk and brocade and enclosed in a box at the back of the shrine. The mirror sometimes prominent is a Buddhist innovation and has nothing to do with the true emblem of the creed.

From the 9th century, when Buddhism absorbed Shintō, the two grew together so intimately that their differentiation seemed hopeless. But in the middle of the 17th century a strong revival of the indigenous faith was effected by the efforts of a group of illustrious scholars and politicians, at whose head stood Mabuchi, Motoori and Hirata. These men applied themselves with great diligence and acumen to reproduce the pure Shintō of the Kojiki and to restore it to its old place in the nation’s reverence, their political purpose being to educate a spirit of revolt against the feudal system which deprived the emperor of administrative power. The principles thus revived became the basis of the restoration of 1867; Shintō rites and Shintō rituals were readopted, and Buddhism fell for a season into comparative disfavour, Shintō being regarded as the national religion. But Buddhism had twined its roots too deeply around the heart of the people to be thus easily torn up. It gradually recovered its old place, though not its old magnificence, for its disestablishment at the hands of the Meiji government robbed it of a large part of its revenues.

Buddhism entered China at the beginning of the Christian era, but not until the 4th century did it obtain any strong footing. Thence, two centuries later (522), it reached Japan through Korea. The reception extended to it was not encouraging at first. Its images and its brilliant appurtenances might well deter a nation which had never seen an idol nor ever worshipped in a decorated temple. But the ethical teachings and the positive doctrines of the foreign faith presented an attractive contrast to the colourless Shintō. After a struggle, not without bloodshed, Buddhism won its way. It owed much to the active patronage of Shōtoku taishi, prince-regent during the reign of the empress Suiko (593-621). At his command many new temples were built; the country was divided into dioceses under Buddhist prelates; priests were encouraged to teach the arts of road-making and bridge-building, and students were sent to China to investigate the mysteries of the faith at its supposed fountain-head. Between the middle of the 7th century and that of the 8th, six sects were introduced from China, all imperfect and all based on the teachings of the Hinayana system. Up to this time the propagandists of the creed had been chiefly Chinese and Korean teachers. But from the 8th century onwards, when Kiōto became the permanent capital of the empire, Japanese priests of lofty intelligence and profound piety began to repair to China and bring thence modified forms of the doctrines current there. It was thus that Dengyō daishi (c. 800) became the founder of the Tendai (heavenly tranquillity) sect and Kōbō daishi (774-834) the apostle of the Shingon (true word). Other sects followed, until the country possessed six principal sects in all with thirty-seven sub-sects. It must be remembered that Buddhism offers an almost limitless field for eclecticism. There is not in the world any literary production of such magnitude as the Chinese scriptures of the Mahayana. “The canon is seven hundred times the amount of the New Testament. Hsüan Tsang’s translation of the Prajna paramita is twenty-five times as large as the whole Christian Bible.”

It is natural that out of such a mass of doctrine different systems should be elaborated. The Buddhism that came to Japan prior to the days of Dengyō daishi was that of the Vaipulya school, which seems to have been accepted in its entirety. But the Tendai doctrines, introduced by Dengyō, Iikaku and other fellow-thinkers, though founded mainly on the Saddharma pundarika, were subjected to the process of eclecticism which all foreign institutions undergo at Japanese hands. Dengyō studied it in the monastery of Tientai which “had been founded towards the close of the 6th century of our era on a lofty range of mountains in the province of Chehkiang by the celebrated preacher Chikai” (Lloyd, “Developments of Japanese Buddhism,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xxii.), and carrying it to Japan he fitted its disciplinary and meditative methods to the foundations of the sects already existing there.

This eclecticism was even more marked in the case of the Shingon (true word) doctrines, taught by Dengyō’s illustrious contemporary, Kōbō daishi, who was regarded as the incarnation of Vairocana. He led his countrymen, by a path almost wholly his own, from the comparatively low platform of Hinayana Buddhism, whose sole aim is individual salvation, to the Mahayana doctrine, which teaches its devotee to strive after perfect enlightenment, not for his own sake alone, but also that he may help his fellows and intercede for them. Then followed the Jōdo (Pure Land) sect, introduced in 1153 by a priest, Senku, who is remembered by later generations as Hōnen shōnin. He taught salvation by faith ritualistically expressed. The virtue that saves comes, not from imitation of and conformity to the person and character of the saviour Amida, but from blind trust in his efforts and ceaseless repetition of pious formulae. It is really a religion of despair rather than of hope, and in that respect it reflects the profound sympathy awakened in the bosom of its teacher by the sorrows and sufferings of the troublous times in which he lived.

A favourite pupil of Hōnen shōnin was Shinran (1173-1262). He founded the Jōdo Shinshū (true sect of jōdo), commonly called simply Shinshū and sometimes Monto, which subsequently became the most influential of Japanese sects, with its splendid monasteries, the two Hongwana-ji in Kiōto. The differences between the doctrines of this sect and those of its predecessors were that the former “divested itself of all metaphysics”; knew nothing of a philosophy of religion, dispensed with a multiplicity of acts of devotion and the keeping of many commandments; did not impose any vows of celibacy or any renunciation of the world, and simply made faith in Amida the all in all. In modern days the Shinshū sect has been the most progressive of all Buddhist sects and has freely sent forth its promising priests to study in Europe and America. Its devotees make no use of charms or spells, which are common among the followers of other sects.

Anterior by a few years to that introduction of the Shinshū was the Zen sect, which has three main divisions, the Rinzai (1168), the Sōtō (1223) and the Obaku (1650). This is essentially a contemplative sect. Truth is reached by pure contemplation, and knowledge can be transmitted from heart to heart without the use of words. In that simple form the doctrine was accepted by the Rinzai believers. But the founders of the Sōtō branch—Shōyo taishi and Butsuji zenshi—added scholarship and research to contemplation, and taught that the “highest wisdom and the most perfect enlightenment are attained when all the elements of phenomenal existence are recognized as empty, vain and unreal.” This creed played an important part in the development of Bushidō, and its priests have always been distinguished for erudition and indifference to worldly possessions.

Last but not least important among Japanese sects of Buddhism is the Nichiren or Hokke, called after its founder, Nichiren (1222-1282). It was based on the Saddharma pundarika, and it taught that there was only one true Buddha—the moon in the heavens—the other Buddhas being like the moon reflected in the waters, transient, shadowy reflections of the Buddha of truth. It is this being who is the source of all phenomenal existence, and in whom all phenomenal existence has its being. The imperfect Buddhism teaches a chain of cause and effect; true Buddhism teaches that the first link in this chain of cause and effect is the Buddha of original enlightenment. When this point has been reached true wisdom has at length been attained. Thus the monotheistic faith of Christianity was virtually reached in one God in whom all creatures “live, move and have their being.” It will readily be conceived that these varied doctrines caused dissension and strife among the sects professing them. Sectarian controversies and squabbles were nearly as prominent among Japanese Buddhists as they were among European Christians, but to the credit of Buddhism it has to be recorded that the stake and the rack never found a place among its instruments of self-assertion. On the other hand, during the wars that devastated Japan from the 12th to the end of the 16th century, many of the monasteries became military camps, and the monks, wearing armour and wielding glaives, fought in secular as well as religious causes.

The story of the first Christian missionaries to Japan is told elsewhere (see § VIII. Foreign Intercourse). Their work suffered an interruption for more than 200 years until, in 1858, almost simultaneously with the conclusion of the treaties, a small band of Catholic fathers entered Japan from the Riūkiū islands, where they had carried on their ministrations since 1846. They found that, in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki, there were some small communities where Christian worship was still carried on. It would seem that these communities had not been subjected to any severe official scrutiny. But the arrival of the fathers revived the old question, and the native Christians, or such of them as refused to apostatize, were removed from their homes and sent into banishment. This was the last example of religious intolerance in Japan. At the instance of the foreign representatives in Tōkyō the exiles were set at liberty in 1873, and from that time complete freedom of conscience existed in fact, though it was not declared by law until the promulgation of the constitution in 1889. In 1905 there were 60,000 Roman Catholic converts in Japan forming 360 congregations, with 130 missionaries and 215 teachers, including 145 nuns. These were all European. They were assisted by 32 Japanese priests, 52 Japanese nuns, 280 male catechists and 265 female catechists and nurses. Three seminaries for native priests existed, together with 58 schools and orphanages and two lepers’ homes. The whole was presided over by an archbishop and three bishops.

The Anglican Church was established in Japan in 1859 by two American clergymen who settled in Nagasaki, and now, in conjunction with the Episcopal Churches of America and Canada, it has missions collectively designated Nihon Sei-Kōkai. There are 6 bishops—2 American and 4 English—with about 60 foreign and 50 Japanese priests and deacons, besides many foreign lay workers of both sexes and Japanese catechists and school teachers. The converts number 11,000. The Protestant missions include Presbyterian (Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai), Congregational (Kumi-ai), Methodist, Baptist and the Salvation Army (Kyusei-gun). The pioneer Protestant mission was founded in 1859 by representatives of the American Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed Churches. To this mission belongs the credit of having published, in 1880, the first complete Japanese version of the New Testament, followed by the Old Testament in 1887. The Presbyterians, representing 7 religious societies, have over a hundred missionaries; 12,400 converts; a number of boarding schools for boys and girls and day schools. The Congregational churches are associated exclusively with the mission of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions. They have about 11,400 converts, and the largest Christian educational institution in Japan, namely, the Dōshisha in Kiōto. The Methodists represent 6 American societies and 1 Canadian. They have 130 missionaries and 10,000 converts; boarding schools, day schools, and the most important Christian college in Tōkyō, namely, the Awoyama Gaku-in. The Baptists represent 4 American societies; have 60 missionaries, a theological seminary, an academy for boys, boarding schools for girls, day schools and 3500 converts. The Salvation Army, which did not enter Japan until 1895, has organized 15 corps, and publishes ten thousand copies of a fortnightly magazine, the War Cry (Toki no Koe). Finally, the Society of Friends, the American and London Religious Tract Societies and the Young Men’s Christian Association have a number of missions. It will be seen from the above that the missionaries in Japan, in the space of half a century (1858 to 1908), had won 110,000 converts, in round numbers. To these must be added the Orthodox Russian Church, which has a fine cathedral in Tōkyō, a staff of about 40 Japanese priests and deacons and 27,000 converts, the whole presided over by a bishop. Thus the total number of converts becomes 137,000. In spite of the numerous sects represented in Japan there has been virtually no sectarian strife, and it may be said of the Japanese converts that they concern themselves scarcely at all about the subtleties of dogma which divide European Christianity. Their tendency is to consider only the practical aspects of the faith as a moral and ethical guide. They are disposed, also, to adapt the creed to their own requirements just as they adapted Buddhism, and this is a disposition which promises to grow.

VIII.—Foreign Intercourse

Foreign Intercourse in Early and Medieval Times.—There can be no doubt that commerce was carried on by Japan with China and Korea earlier that the 8th century of the Christian era. It would appear that from the very outset over-sea trade was regarded as a government monopoly. Foreigners were allowed to travel freely in the interior of the country provided that they submitted their baggage for official inspection and made no purchases of weapons of war, but all imported goods were bought in the first place by official appraisers who subsequently sold them to the people at arbitrarily fixed prices. Greater importance attached to the trade with China under the Ashikaga shōguns (14th, 15th and 16th centuries), who were in constant need of funds to defray the cost of interminable military operations caused by civil disturbances. In this distress they turned to the neighbouring empire as a source from which money might be obtained. This idea seems to have been suggested to the shōgun Takauji by a Buddhist priest, when he undertook the construction of the temple Tenryū-ji. Two ships laden with goods were fitted out, and it was decided that the enterprise should be repeated annually. Within a few years after this development of commercial relations between the two empires, an interruption occurred owing partly to the overthrow of the Yuen Mongols by the Chinese Ming, and partly to the activity of Japanese pirates and adventurers who raided the coasts of China. The shōgun Yoshimitsu (1368-1394), however, succeeded in restoring commercial intercourse, though in order to effect his object he consented that goods sent from Japan should bear the character of tribute and that he himself should receive investiture at the hands of the Chinese emperor’s ambassador. The Nanking government granted a certain number of commercial passports, and these were given by the shōgun to Ouchi, feudal chief of Cho-shu, which had long been the principal port for trade with the neighbouring empire. Tribute goods formed only a small fraction of a vessel’s cargo: the bulk consisted of articles which were delivered into the government’s stores in China, payment being received in copper cash. It was from this transaction that the shōgun derived a considerable part of his profits, for the articles did not cost him anything originally, being either presents from the great temples and provincial governors or compulsory contributions from the house of Ouchi. As for the gifts by the Chinese government and the goods shipped in China, they were arbitrarily distributed among the noble families in Japan at prices fixed by the shōgun’s assessor. Thus, so far as the shōgun was concerned, these enterprises could not fail to be lucrative. They also brought large profits to the Ouchi family, for, in the absence of competition, the products and manufactures of each country found ready sale in the markets of the other. The articles found most suitable in China were swords, fans, screens, lacquer wares, copper and agate, and the goods brought back to Japan were brocade and other silk fabrics, ceramic productions, jade and fragrant woods. The Chinese seem to have had a just appreciation of the wonderful swords of Japan. At first they were willing to pay the equivalent of 12 guineas for a pair of blades, but by degrees, as the Japanese began to increase the supply, the price fell, and at the beginning of the 16th century all the diplomacy of the Japanese envoys was needed to obtain good figures for the large and constantly growing quantity of goods that they took over by way of supplement to the tribute. Buddhist priests generally enjoyed the distinction of being selected as envoys, for experience showed that their subtle reasoning invariably overcame the economical scruples of the Chinese authorities and secured a fine profit for their master, the shōgun. In the middle of the 16th century these tribute-bearing missions came to an end with the ruin of the Ouchi family and the overthrow of the Ashikaga shōguns, and they were never renewed.

Japan’s medieval commerce with Korea was less ceremonious than that with China. No passports had to be obtained from the Korean government. A trader was sufficiently equipped when he carried a permit from the So family, which held the island of Tsushima in fief. Fifty vessels were allowed to pass yearly from ports in Japan to the three Japanese settlements in Korea. Little is recorded about the nature of this trade, but it was rudely interrupted by the Japanese settlers, who, offended at some arbitrary procedure on the part of the local Korean authorities, took up arms (A.D. 1510) and at first signally routed the Koreans. An army from Seoul turned the tables, and the Japanese were compelled to abandon the three settlements. Subsequently the shōgun’s government—which had not been concerned in the struggle—approached Korea with amicable proposals, and it was agreed that the ringleaders of the raiders should be decapitated and their heads sent to Seoul, Japan’s compliance with this condition affording, perhaps, a measure of the value she attached to neighbourly friendship. Thenceforth the number of vessels was limited to 25 annually and the settlements were abolished. Some years later, the Japanese again resorted to violent acts of self-assertion, and on this occasion, although the offenders were arrested by order of the shōgun Yoshiharu, and handed over to Korea for punishment, the Seoul court persisted in declining to restore the system of settlements or to allow the trade to be resumed on its former basis. Fifty years afterwards the taikō’s armies invaded Korea, overrunning it for seven years, and leaving, when they retired in 1598, a country so impoverished that it no longer offered any attraction to commercial enterprise from beyond the sea.

The Portuguese discovered Japan by accident in 1542 or 1543—the exact date is uncertain. On a voyage to Macao from Siam, a junk carrying three Portuguese was blown from her course and fetched Tanegashima, a small island lying south of the province of Satsuma. The Japanese, always hospitable and inquisitive, welcomed the newcomers and showed special curiosity about the arquebuses carried by the Portuguese, fire-arms being then a novelty in Japan and all weapons of war being in great request. Conversation was impossible, of course, but, by tracing ideographs upon the sand, a Chinese member of the crew succeeded in explaining the cause of the junk’s arrival. She was then piloted to a more commodious harbour, and the Portuguese sold two arquebuses to the local feudatory, who immediately ordered his armourer to manufacture similar weapons. Very soon the news of the discovery reached all the Portuguese settlements in the East, and at least seven expeditions were fitted out during the next few years to exploit this new market. Their objective points were all in the island of Kiūshiū—the principal stage where the drama—ultimately converted into a tragedy—of Christian propagandism and European commercial intercourse was acted in the interval between 1542 and 1637.

It does not appear that the Jesuits at Macao, Goa or other centres of Portuguese influence in the East took immediate advantage of the discovery of Japan. The pioneer propagandist was Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima on the 15th of August 1549. During the interval of six (or seven) years that separated this event from the drifting of the junk to Tanegashima, the Portuguese had traded freely in the ports of Kiūshiū, had visited Kiōto, and had reported the Japanese capital to be a city of 96,000 houses, therefore larger than Lisbon. Xavier would certainly have gone to Japan even though he had not been specially encouraged, for the reports of his countrymen depicted the Japanese as “very desirous of being instructed,” and he longed to find a field more promising than that inhabited by “all these Indian nations, barbarous, vicious and without inclination to virtue.” There were, however, two special determinants. One was a request addressed by a feudatory, supposed to have been the chief of the Bungo fief, to the viceroy of the Indies at Goa; the other, an appeal made in person by a Japanese named Yajiro, whom the fathers spoke of as Anjiro, and who subsequently attained celebrity under his baptismal name, Paul of the holy faith. No credible reason is historically assigned for the action of the Japanese feudatory. Probably his curiosity had been excited by accounts which the Portuguese traders gave of the noble devotion of their country’s missionaries, and being entirely without bigotry, as nearly all Japanese were at that epoch, he issued the invitation partly out of curiosity and partly from a sincere desire for progress. Anjiro’s case was very different. Labouring under stress of repentant zeal, and fearful that his evil acts might entail murderous consequences, he sought an asylum abroad, and was taken away in 1548 by a Portuguese vessel whose master advised him to repair to Malacca for the purpose of confessing to Xavier. This might well have seemed to the Jesuits a providential dispensation, for Anjiro, already able to speak Portuguese, soon mastered it sufficiently to interpret for Xavier and his fellow-missionaries (without which aid they must have remained long helpless in the face of the immense difficulty of the Japanese language), and to this linguistic skill he added extraordinary gifts of intelligence and memory. Xavier, with two Portuguese companions and Anjiro, were excellently received by the feudal chiefs of Satsuma and obtained permission to preach their doctrine in any part of the fief. This permit is not to be construed as an evidence of official sympathy with the foreign creed. Commercial considerations alone were in question. A Japanese feudal chief in that era had sedulously to foster every source of wealth or strength, and as the newly opened trade with the outer world seemed full of golden promise, each feudatory was not less anxious to secure a monopoly of it in the 16th century than the Ashikaga shōguns had been in the 15th. The Satsuma daimyō was led to believe that the presence of the Jesuits in Kagoshima would certainly prelude the advent of trading vessels. But within a few months one of the expected merchantmen sailed to Hirado without touching at Kagoshima, and her example was followed by two others in the following year, so that the Satsuma chief saw himself flouted for the sake of a petty rival, Matsudaira of Hirado. This fact could not fail to provoke his resentment. But there was another influence at work. Buddhism has always been a tolerant religion, eclectic rather than exclusive. Xavier, however, had all the bigoted intolerance of his time. The Buddhist priests in Kagoshima received him with courtesy and listened respectfully to the doctrines he expounded through the mouth of Anjiro. Xavier rejoined with a display of aggressive intolerance which shocked and alienated the Buddhists. They represented to the Satsuma chief that peace and good order were inconsistent with such a display of militant propagandism, and he, already profoundly chagrined by his commercial disappointment, issued in 1550 an edict making it a capital offence for any of his vassals to embrace Christianity. Xavier, or, more correctly speaking, Anjiro, had won 150 converts, who remained without molestation, but Xavier himself took ship for Hirado. There he was received with salvoes of artillery by the Portuguese merchantmen lying in the harbour and with marks of profound respect by the Portuguese traders, a display which induced the local chief to issue orders that courteous attention should be paid to the teaching of the foreign missionaries. In ten days a hundred baptisms took place; another significant index of the mood of the Japanese in the early era of Occidental intercourse: the men in authority always showed a complaisant attitude towards Christianity where trade could be fostered by so doing, and wherever the men in authority showed such an attitude, considerable numbers of the lower orders embraced the foreign faith. Thus, in considering the commercial history of the era, the element of religion constantly thrusts itself into the foreground.

Xavier next resolved to visit Kiōto. The first town of importance he reached on the way was Yamaguchi, capital of the Chōshū fief, situated on the northern shore of the Shimonoseki Strait. There the feudal chief, Ouchi, though sufficiently courteous and inquisitive, showed no special cordiality towards humble missionaries unconnected with commerce, and the work of proselytizing made no progress, so that Xavier and his companion, Fernandez, pushed on to Kiōto. The time was mid-winter; the two fathers suffered terrible privations during their journey of two months on foot, and on reaching Kiōto they found a city which had been almost wholly reduced to ruins by internecine war. Necessarily they failed to obtain audience of either emperor or shōgun, at that time the most inaccessible potentates in the world, the Chinese “son of heaven” excepted, and nothing remained but street preaching, a strange resource, seeing that Xavier, constitutionally a bad linguist, had only a most rudimentary acquaintance with the profoundly difficult tongue in which he attempted to expound the mysteries of a novel creed. A fortnight sufficed to convince him that Kiōto was unfruitful soil. He therefore returned to Yamaguchi. But he had now learned a lesson. He saw that propagandism without scrip or staff and without the countenance of those sitting in the seats of power would be futile in Japan. So he obtained from Hirado his canonicals, together with a clock and other novel products of European skill, which, as well as credentials from the viceroy of India, the governor of Malacca and the bishop of Goa, he presented to the Chōshū chief. His prayer for permission to preach Christianity was now readily granted, and Ouchi issued a proclamation announcing his approval of the introduction of the new religion and according perfect liberty to embrace it. Xavier and Fernandez now made many converts. They also gained the valuable knowledge that the road to success in Japan lay in associating themselves with over-sea commerce and its directors, and in thus winning the co-operation of the feudal chiefs.

Nearly ten years had now elapsed since the first Portuguese landed in Kagoshima, and during that time trade had gone on steadily and prosperously. No attempt was made to find markets in the main island: the Portuguese confined themselves to Kiūshiū for two reasons: one, that having no knowledge of the coasts, they hesitated to risk their ships and their lives in unsurveyed waters; the other, that whereas the main island, almost from end to end, was seething with internecine war, Kiūshiū remained beyond the pale of disturbance and enjoyed comparative tranquillity. At the time of Xavier’s second sojourn in Yamaguchi, a Portuguese ship happened to be visiting Bungo, and at its master’s suggestion the great missionary proceeded thither, with the intention of returning temporarily to the Indies. At Bungo there was then ruling Otomo, second in power to only the Satsuma chief among the feudatories of Kiūshiū. By him the Jesuit father was received with all honour. Xavier did not now neglect the lesson he had learned in Yamaguchi. He repaired to the Bungo chieftain’s court, escorted by nearly the whole of the Portuguese crew, gorgeously bedizened, carrying their arms and with banners flying. Otomo, a young and ambitious ruler, was keenly anxious to attract foreign traders with their rich cargoes and puissant weapons of war. Witnessing the reverence paid to Xavier by the Portuguese traders, he appreciated the importance of gaining the goodwill of the Jesuits, and accordingly not only granted them full freedom to teach and preach, but also enjoined upon his younger brother, who, in the sequel of a sudden rebellion, had succeeded to the lordship of Yamaguchi, the advisability of extending protection to Torres and Fernandez, then sojourning there. After some four months’ stay in Bungo, Xavier set sail for Goa in February 1552. Death overtook him in the last month of the same year.

Xavier’s departure from Japan marked the conclusion of the first epoch of Christian propagandism. His sojourn in Japan extended to 27 months. In that time he and his coadjutors won about 760 converts. In Satsuma more than a year’s labour produced 150 believers. There Xavier had the assistance of Anjiro to expound his doctrines. No language lends itself with greater difficulty than Japanese to the discussion of theological questions. The terms necessary for such a purpose are not current among laymen, and only by special study, which, it need scarcely be said, must be preluded by an accurate acquaintance with the tongue itself, can a man hope to become duly equipped for the task of exposition and dissertation. It is open to grave doubt whether any foreigner has ever attained the requisite proficiency. Leaving Anjiro in Kagoshima to care for the converts made there, Xavier pushed on to Hirado, where he baptized a hundred Japanese in a few days. Now we have it on the authority of Xavier himself that in this Hirado campaign “none of us knew Japanese.” How then did they proceed? “By reciting a semi-Japanese volume” (a translation made by Anjiro of a treatise from Xavier’s pen) “and by delivering sermons, we brought several over to the Christian cult.” Sermons preached in Portuguese or Latin to a Japanese audience on the island of Hirado in the year 1550 can scarcely have attracted intelligent interest. On his first visit to Yamaguchi, Xavier’s means of access to the understanding of his hearers was confined to the rudimentary knowledge of Japanese which Fernandez had been able to acquire in 14 months, a period of study which, in modern times, with all the aids now procurable, would not suffice to carry a student beyond the margin of the colloquial. No converts were won. The people of Yamaguchi probably admired the splendid faith and devotion of these over-sea philosophers, but as for their doctrine, it was unintelligible. In Kiōto the same experience was repeated, with an addition of much physical hardship. But when the Jesuits returned to Yamaguchi in the early autumn of 1551, they baptized 500 persons, including several members of the military class. Still Fernandez with his broken Japanese was the only medium for communicating the profound doctrines of Christianity. It must be concluded that the teachings of the missionaries produced much less effect than the attitude of the local chieftain.

Only two missionaries, Torres and Fernandez, remained in Japan after the departure of Xavier, but they were soon joined by three others. These newcomers landed at Kagoshima and found that, in spite of the official veto against the adoption of Christianity, the feudal chief had lost nothing of his desire to foster foreign trade. Two years later, all the Jesuits in Japan were assembled in Bungo. Their only church stood there; and they had also built two hospitals. Local disturbances had compelled them to withdraw from Yamaguchi, not, however, before their violent disputes with the Buddhist priests in that town had induced the feudatory to proscribe the foreign religion, as had previously been done in Kagoshima. From Funai, the chief town of Bungo, the Jesuits began in 1579 to send yearly reports to their Generals in Rome. These reports, known as the Annual Letters, comprise some of the most valuable information available about the conditions then existing in Japan. They describe a state of abject poverty among the lower orders; poverty so cruel that the destruction of children by their famishing parents was an everyday occurrence, and in some instances choice had to be made between cannibalism and starvation. Such suffering becomes easily intelligible when the fact is recalled that Japan had been racked by civil war during more than 200 years, each feudal chief fighting for his own hand, to save or to extend his territorial possessions. From these Annual Letters it is possible also to gather a tolerably clear idea of the course of events during the years immediately subsequent to Xavier’s departure. There was no break in the continuity of the newly inaugurated foreign trade. Portuguese ships visited Hirado as well as Bungo, and in those days their masters and crews not only attended scrupulously to their religious duties, but also showed such profound respect for the missionaries that the Japanese received constant object lessons in the influence wielded over the traders by the Jesuits. Thirty years later, this orderly and reverential demeanour was exchanged for riotous excesses such as had already made the Portuguese sailor a byword in China. But in the early days of intercourse with Japan the crews of the merchant vessels seem to have preached Christianity by their exemplary conduct. Just as Xavier had been induced to visit Bungo by the anxiety of a ship-captain for Christian ministrations, so in 1557 two of the fathers repaired to Hirado in obedience to the solicitations of Portuguese sailors. There the fathers, under the guidance of Vilela, sent brothers to parade the streets ringing bells and chaunting litanies; they organized bands of boys for the same purpose; they caused the converts, and even children, to flagellate themselves at a model of Mount Calvary, and they worked miracles, healing the sick by contact with scourges or with a booklet in which Xavier had written litanies and prayers. It may well be imagined that such doings attracted surprised attention in Japan. They were supplemented by even more striking practices. For a sub-feudatory of the Hirado chief, having been converted, showed his zeal by destroying Buddhist temples and throwing down the idols, thus inaugurating a campaign of violence destined to mark the progress of Christianity throughout the greater part of its history in Japan. There followed the overthrowing of a cross in the Christian cemetery, the burning of a temple in the town of Hirado, and a street riot, the sequel being that the Jesuit fathers were compelled to return once more to Bungo. It is essential to follow all these events, for not otherwise can a clear understanding be reached as to the aspects under which Christianity presented itself originally to the Japanese. The Portuguese traders, reverent as was their demeanour towards Christianity, did not allow their commerce to be interrupted by vicissitudes of propagandism. They still repaired to Hirado, and rumours of the wealth-begetting effects of their presence having reached the neighbouring fief of Omura, its chief, Sumitada, made overtures to the Jesuits in Bungo, offering a port free from all dues for ten years, a large tract of land, a residence for the missionaries and other privileges. The Jesuits hastened to take advantage of this proposal, and no sooner did the news reach Hirado than the feudatory of that island repented of having expelled the fathers and invited them to return. But while they hesitated, a Portuguese vessel arrived at Hirado, and the feudal chief declared publicly that no need existed to conciliate the missionaries, since trade went on without them. When this became known in Bungo, Torres hastened to Hirado, was received with extraordinary honours by the crew of the vessel, and at his instance she left the port, her master declaring that “he could not remain in a country where they maltreated those who professed the same religion as himself.” Hirado remained a closed port for some years, but ultimately the advent of three merchantmen, which intimated their determination not to put in unless the anti-Christian ban was removed, induced the feudal chief to receive the Jesuits, once more. This incident was paralleled a few years later in the island of Amakusa, where a petty feudatory, in order to attract foreign trade, as the missionaries themselves frankly explain, embraced Christianity and ordered all his vassals to follow his example; but when no Portuguese ship appeared, he apostatized, required his subjects to revert to Buddhism arid made the missionaries withdraw. In fact, the competition for the patronage of Portuguese traders was so keen that the Hirado feudatory attempted to burn several of their vessels because they frequented the territorial waters of his neighbour and rival, Sumitada. The latter became a most stalwart Christian when his wish was gratified. He set himself to eradicate idolatry throughout his fief with the strong arm, and his fierce intolerance provoked results which ended in the destruction of the Christian town at the newly opened free port. Sumitada, however, quickly reasserted his authority, and five years later (1567), he took a step which had far-reaching consequences, namely, the building of a church at Nagasaki, in order that Portuguese commerce might have a centre and the Christians an assured asylum. Nagasaki was then a little fishing village. In five years it grew to be a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and Sumitada became one of the richest of the Kiūshiū feudatories. When in 1573 successful conflicts with the neighbouring fiefs brought him an access of territory, he declared that he owed these victories to the influence of the Christian God, and shortly afterwards he publicly proclaimed banishment for all who would not accept the foreign faith. There were then no Jesuits by his side, but immediately two hastened to join him, and “these, accompanied by a strong guard, but yet not without danger of their lives, went round causing the churches of the Gentiles, with their idols, to be thrown to the ground, while three Japanese Christians went preaching the law of God everywhere. Three of us who were in the neighbouring kingdoms all withdrew therefrom to work in this abundant harvest, and in the space of seven months twenty thousand persons were baptized, including the bonzes of about sixty monasteries, except a few who quitted the State.” In Bungo, however, where the Jesuits were originally so well received, it is doubtful whether Christian propagandism would not have ended in failure but for an event which occurred in 1576, namely, the conversion of the chieftain’s son, a youth of some 16 years. Two years later Otomo himself came over to the Christian faith. He rendered inestimable aid, not merely within his own fief, but also by the influence he exercised on others. His intervention, supported by recourse to arms, obtained for the Jesuits a footing on the island of Amakusa, where one of the feudatories gave his vassals the choice of conversion or exile, and announced to the Buddhist priests that unless they accepted Christianity their property would be confiscated and they themselves banished. Nearly the whole population of the fief did violence to their conscience for the sake of their homes. Christianity was then becoming established in Kiūshiū by methods similar to those of Islam and the inquisition. Another notable illustration is furnished by the story of the Arima fief, adjoining that of Sumitada (Omura), where such resolute means had been adopted to force Christianity upon the vassals. Moreover, the heads of the two fiefs were brothers. Accordingly, at the time of Sumitada’s very dramatic conversion, the Jesuits were invited to Arima and encouraged to form settlements at the ports of Kuchinotsu and Shimabara, which thenceforth began to be frequented by Portuguese merchantmen. The fief naturally became involved in the turmoil resulting from Sumitada’s iconoclastic methods of propagandism; but, in 1576, the then ruling feudatory, influenced largely by the object lesson of Sumitada’s prosperity and puissance, which that chieftain openly ascribed to the tutelary aid of the Christian deity, accepted baptism and became the “Prince Andrew” of missionary records. It is written in those records that “the first thing Prince Andrew did after his baptism was to convert the chief temple of his capital into a church, its revenues being assigned for the maintenance of the building and the support of the missionaries. He then took measures to have the same thing done in the other towns of his fief, and he seconded the preachers of the gospel so well in everything else that he could flatter himself that he soon would not have one single idolater in his states.” Thus in the two years that separated his baptism from his death, twenty thousand converts were won in Arima. But his successor was an enemy of the alien creed. He ordered the Jesuits to quit his dominions, required the converts to return to their ancestral faith, and caused “the holy places to be destroyed and the crosses to be thrown down.” Nearly one-half of the converts apostatized under this pressure, but others had recourse to a device of proved potency. They threatened to leave Kuchinotsu en masse, and as that would have involved the loss of foreign trade, the hostile edict was materially modified. To this same weapon the Christians owed a still more signal victory. For just at that time the great ship from Macao, now an annual visitor, arrived in Japanese waters carrying the visitor-general, Valegnani. She put into Kuchinotsu, and her presence, with its suggested eventualities, gave such satisfaction that the feudatory offered to accept baptism and to sanction its acceptance by his vassals. This did not satisfy Valegnani, a man of profound political sagacity. He saw that the fief was menaced by serious dangers at the hands of its neighbours, and seizing the psychological moment of its extreme peril, he used the secular arm so adroitly that the fief’s chance of survival seemed to be limited to the unreserved adoption of Christianity. Thus, in 1580, the chieftain and his wife were baptized; “all the city was made Christian; they burned their idols and destroyed 40 temples, reserving some materials to build churches.”

Christian propagandism had now made substantial progress. The Annual Letter of 1582 recorded that at the close of 1581, thirty-two years after the landing of Xavier in Japan, there were about 150,000 converts, of whom some 125,000 were in Kiūshiū and the remainder in Yamaguchi, Kiōto and the neighbourhood of the latter city. The Jesuits in the empire then numbered 75, but down to the year 1563 there had never been more than 9, and down to 1577, not more than 18. The harvest was certainly great in proportion to the number of sowers. But it was a harvest mainly of artificial growth; forced by the despotic insistence of feudal chiefs who possessed the power of life and death over their vassals, and were influenced by a desire to attract foreign trade. To the Buddhist priests this movement of Christian propagandism had brought an experience hitherto unknown to them, persecution on account of creed. They had suffered for interfering in politics, but the fierce cruelty of the Christian fanatic now became known for the first time to men themselves conspicuous for tolerance of heresy and receptivity of instruction. They had had no previous experience of humanity in the garb of an Otomo of Bungo, who, in the words of Crasset, “went to the chase of the bonzes as to that of wild beasts, and made it his singular pleasure to exterminate them from his states.”

In 1582 the first Japanese envoys sailed from Nagasaki for Europe. The embassy consisted of four youths, the oldest not more than 16, representing the fiefs of Arima, Omura and Bungo. They visited Lisbon, Madrid and Rome, and in all these cities they were received with displays of magnificence such as 16th century Europe delighted to make. That, indeed, had been the motive of Valegnani in organizing the mission: he desired to let the Japanese see with their own eyes how great were the riches and might of Western states.

In the above statistics of converts at the close of 1581 mention is made of Christians in Kiōto, though we have already seen that the visit by Xavier and Fernandez to that city was wholly barren of results. A second visit, however, made by Vilela in 1559, proved more successful. He carried letters of recommendation from the Bungo chieftain, and the proximate cause of his journey was an invitation from a Buddhist priest in the celebrated monastery of Hiei-zan, who sought information about Christianity. This was before the razing of temples and the overthrow of idols had commenced in Kiūshiū. On arrival at Hiei-zan, Vilela found that the Buddhist prior who had invited him was dead and that only a portion of the old man’s authority had descended to his successor. Nevertheless the Jesuit obtained an opportunity to expound his doctrines to a party of bonzes at the monastery. Subsequently, through the good offices of a priest, described as “one of the most respected men in the city,” and with the assistance of the Bungo feudatory’s letter, Vilela enjoyed the rare honour of being received by the shōgun in Kiōto, who treated him with all consideration and assigned a house for his residence. It may be imagined that, owing such a debt of gratitude to Buddhist priests, Vilela would have behaved towards them and their creed with courtesy. But the Jesuit fathers were proof against all influences calculated to impair their stern sense of duty. Speaking through the mouth of a Japanese convert, Vilela attacked the bonzes in unmeasured terms and denounced their faith. Soon the bonzes, on their side, were seeking the destruction of these uncompromising assailants with insistence inferior only to that which the Jesuits themselves would have shown in similar circumstances. Against these perils Vilela was protected by the goodwill of the shōgun, who had already issued a decree threatening with death any one who injured the missionaries or obstructed their work. In spite of all difficulties and dangers these wonderful missionaries, whose courage, zeal and devotion are beyond all eulogy, toiled on resolutely and even recklessly, and such success attended their efforts that by 1564 many converts had been won and churches had been established in five walled towns within a distance of 50 miles from Kiōto. Among the converts were two Buddhist priests, notoriously hostile at the outset, who had been nominated as official commissioners to investigate and report upon the doctrine of Christianity. The first conversion en masse was due to pressure from above. A petty feudatory, Takayama, whose fief lay at Takatsuki in the neighbourhood of the capital, challenged Vilela to a public controversy, the result of which was that the Japanese acknowledged himself vanquished, embraced Christianity and invited his vassals as well as his family to follow his example. This man’s son—Takayama Yūsho—proved one of the stanchest supporters of Christianity in all Japan, and has been immortalized by the Jesuits under the name of Don Justo Ucondono. Incidentally this event furnishes an index to the character of the Japanese samurai: he accepted the consequences of defeat as frankly as he dared it. In the same year (1564) the feudatory of Sawa, a brother of Takayama, became a Christian and imposed the faith on all his vassals, just as Sumitada and other feudal chiefs had done in Kiūshiū. But the Kiōto record differs from that of Kiūshiū in one important respect—the former is free from any intrusion of commercial motives.

Kiōto was at that time the scene of sanguinary tumults, which culminated in the murder of the shōgun (1565), and led to the issue of a decree by the emperor proscribing Christianity. In Japanese medieval history this is one of the only two instances of Imperial interference with Christian propagandism. There is evidence that the edict was obtained at the instance of one of the shōgun’s assassins and certain Buddhist priests. The Jesuits—their number had been increased to three—were obliged to take refuge in Sakai, now little more than a suburb of Osaka, but at that time a great and wealthy mart, and the only town in Japan which did not acknowledge the sway of any feudal chief. Three years later they were summoned thence to be presented to Oda Nobunaga, one of the greatest captains Japan has ever produced. In the very year of Xavier’s landing at Kagoshima, Nobunaga had succeeded to his father’s fief, a comparatively petty estate in the province of Owari. In 1568 he was seated in Kiōto, a maker of shōguns and acknowledged ruler of 30 among the 66 provinces of Japan. Had Nobunaga, wielding such immense power, adopted a hostile attitude towards Christianity, the fires lit by the Jesuits in Japan must soon have been extinguished. Nobunaga, however, to great breadth and liberality of view added strong animosity towards Buddhist priests. Many of the great monasteries had become armed camps, their inmates skilled equally in field-attacks and in the defence of ramparts. One sect (the Nichiren), which was specially affected by the samurai, had lent powerful aid to the murderers of the shōgun three years before Nobunaga’s victories carried him to Kiōto, and the armed monasteries constituted imperia in imperio which assorted ill with his ambition of complete supremacy. He therefore welcomed Christianity for the sake of its opposition to Buddhism, and when Takayama conducted Froez from Sakai to Nobunaga’s presence, the reception accorded to the Jesuit was of the most cordial character. Throughout the fourteen years of life that remained to him, Nobunaga continued to be the constant friend of the missionaries in particular and of foreigners visiting Japan in general. He stood between the Jesuits and the Throne when, in reply to an appeal from the Buddhist priests, the emperor, for the second time, issued an anti-Christian decree (1568); he granted a site for a church and residence at Azuchi on Lake Biwa, where his new fortress stood; he addressed to various powerful feudatories letters signifying a desire for the spread of Christianity; he frequently made handsome presents to the fathers, and whenever they visited him he showed a degree of accessibility and graciousness very foreign to his usually haughty and imperious demeanour. The Jesuits themselves said of him: “This man seems to have been chosen by God to open and prepare the way for our faith.” Nevertheless they do not appear to have entertained much hope at any time of converting Nobunaga. They must have understood that their doctrines had not made any profound impression on a man who could treat them as this potentate did in 1579, when he plainly showed that political exigencies might at any moment induce him to sacrifice them. His last act, too, proved that sacrilege was of no account in his eyes, for he took steps to have himself apotheosized at Azuchi with the utmost pomp and circumstance. Still nothing can obscure the benefits he heaped upon the propagandists of Christianity.

The terrible tumult of domestic war through which Japan passed in the 15th and 16th centuries brought to her service three of the greatest men ever produced in Occident or Orient. They were Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Iyeyasu. Hideyoshi, as Nobunaga’s lieutenant, contributed largely to the building of the latter’s fortunes, and, succeeding him in 1582, brought the whole 66 provinces of the empire under his own administrative sway. For the Jesuits now the absorbing question was, what attitude Hideyoshi would assume towards their propagandism. His power was virtually limitless. With a word he could have overthrown the whole edifice created by them at the cost of so much splendid effort and noble devotion. They were very quickly reassured. In this matter Hideyoshi walked in Nobunaga’s footsteps. He not only accorded a friendly audience to Father Organtino, who waited on him as representative of the Jesuits, but also he went in person to assign to the company a site for a church and a residence in Osaka, where there was presently to rise the most massive fortress ever built in the East. At that time many Christian converts were serving in high positions, and in 1584 the Jesuits placed it on record that “Hideyoshi was not only not opposed to the things of God, but he even showed that he made much account of them and preferred them to all the sects of the bonzes.... He is entrusting to Christians his treasures, his secrets and his fortresses of most importance, and shows himself well pleased that the sons of the great lords about him should adopt our customs and our law.” Two years later in Osaka he received with every mark of cordiality and favour a Jesuit mission which had come from Nagasaki seeking audience, and on that occasion his visitor recorded that he spoke of an intention of christianizing one half of Japan. Nor did Hideyoshi confine himself to words. He actually signed a patent licensing the missionaries to preach throughout all Japan, and exempting not only their houses and churches from the billeting of soldiers but also the priests themselves from local burdens. This was in 1586, on the eve of Hideyoshi’s greatest military enterprise, the invasion of Kiūshiū and its complete reduction. He carried that difficult campaign to completion by the middle of 1587, and throughout its course he maintained a uniformly friendly demeanour towards the Jesuits. But suddenly, when on the return journey he reached Hakata in the north of the island, his policy underwent a radical metamorphosis. Five questions were by his order propounded to the vice-provincial of the Jesuits: “Why and by what authority he and his fellow-propagandists had constrained Japanese subjects to become Christians? Why they had induced their disciples and their sectaries to overthrow temples? Why they persecuted the bonzes? Why they and other Portuguese ate animals useful to men, such as oxen and cows? Why the vice-provincial allowed merchants of his nation to buy Japanese to make slaves of them in the Indies?” To these queries Coelho, the vice-provincial, made answer that the missionaries had never themselves resorted, or incited, to violence in their propagandism or persecuted bonzes; that if their eating of beef were considered inadvisable, they would give up the practice; and that they were powerless to prevent or restrain the outrages perpetrated by their countrymen. Hideyoshi read the vice-provincial’s reply and, without comment, sent him word to retire to Hirado, assemble all his followers there, and quit the country within six months. On the next day (July 25, 1587) the following edict was published:—

“Having learned from our faithful councillors that foreign priests have come into our estates, where they preach a law contrary to that of Japan, and that they even had the audacity to destroy temples dedicated to our Kami and Hotoke; although the outrage merits the most extreme punishment, wishing nevertheless to show them mercy, we order them under pain of death to quit Japan within twenty days. During that space no harm or hurt will be done to them. But at the expiration of that term, we order that if any of them be found in our states, they should be seized and punished as the greatest criminals. As for the Portuguese merchants, we permit them to enter our ports, there to continue their accustomed trade, and to remain in our states provided our affairs need this. But we forbid them to bring any foreign priests into the country, under the penalty of the confiscation of their ships and goods.”

How are we to account for this apparently rapid change of mood on the part of Hideyoshi? Some historians insist that from the very outset he conceived the resolve of suppressing Christianity and expelling its propagandists, but that he concealed his design pending the subjugation of Kiūshiū, lest, by premature action, he might weaken his hand for that enterprise. This hypothesis rests mainly on conjecture. Its formulators found it easier to believe in a hidden purpose than to attribute to a statesman so shrewd and far-seeing a sudden change of mind. A more reasonable theory is that, shortly before leaving Osaka for Kiūshiū, Hideyoshi began to entertain doubts as to the expediency of tolerating Christian propagandism, and that his doubts were signally strengthened by direct observation of the state of affairs in Kiūshiū. While still in Osaka, he one day remarked publicly that “he feared much that all the virtue of the European priests served only to conceal pernicious designs against the empire.” There had been no demolishing of temples or overthrowing of images at Christian instance in the metropolitan provinces. In Kiūshiū, however, very different conditions prevailed. There Christianity may be said to have been preached at the point of the sword. Temples and images had been destroyed wholesale; vassals in thousands had been compelled to embrace the foreign faith; and the missionaries themselves had come to be treated as demi-gods whose nod was worth conciliating at any cost of self-abasement. Brought into direct contact with these evidences of the growth of a new power, temporal as well as spiritual, Hideyoshi may well have reached the conclusion that a choice had to be finally made between his own supremacy and that of the alien creed, if not between the independence of Japan and the yoke of the great Christian states of Europe.

Hideyoshi gauged the character of the medieval Christians with sufficient accuracy to know that for the sake of their faith they would at any time defy the laws of the island. His estimate received immediate verification, for when the Jesuits, numbering 120, assembled at Hirado and received his order to embark at once they decided that only those should sail whose services were needed in China. The others remained and went about their duties as usual, under the protection of the converted feudatories. Hideyoshi, however, saw reason to wink at this disregard of his authority. At first he showed uncompromising resolution. All the churches in Kiōto, Osaka and Sakai were demolished, while troops were sent to raze the Christian places of worship in Kiūshiū and seize the port of Nagasaki. These troops were munificently dissuaded from their purpose by the Christian feudatories. But Hideyoshi did not protest, and in 1588 he allowed himself to be convinced by a Portuguese envoy that in the absence of missionaries foreign trade must cease, since without the intervention of the fathers peace and good order could not be maintained among the merchants. Rather than suffer the trade to be interrupted Hideyoshi agreed to the coming of priests, and thenceforth, during some years, Christianity not only continued to flourish and grow in Kiūshiū but also found a favourable field of operations in Kiōto itself. Care was taken that Hideyoshi’s attention should not be attracted by any salient evidences of what he had called a “diabolical religion,” and thus for a time all went well. There is evidence that, like the feudal chiefs in Kiūshiū, Hideyoshi set great store by foreign trade and would even have sacrificed to its maintenance and expansion something of the aversion he had conceived for Christianity. He did indeed make one very large concession. For on being assured that Portuguese traders could not frequent Japan unless they found Christian priests there to minister to them, he consented to sanction the presence of a limited number of Jesuits. The statistics of 1595 show how Christianity fared under even this partial tolerance, for there were then 137 Jesuits in Japan with 300,000 converts, among whom were 17 feudal chiefs, to say nothing of many men of lesser though still considerable note, and even not a few bonzes.

For ten years after his unlooked-for order of expulsion, Hideyoshi preserved a tolerant mien. But in 1597 his forbearance gave place to a mood of uncompromising severity. The reasons of this second change are very clear, though diverse accounts have been transmitted. Up to 1593 the Portuguese had possessed a monopoly of religious propagandism and over-sea commerce in Japan. The privilege was secured to them by agreement between Spain and Portugal and by a papal bull. But the Spaniards in Manila had long looked with somewhat jealous eyes on this Jesuit reservation, and when news of the disaster of 1587 reached the Philippines, the Dominicans and Franciscans residing there were fired with zeal to enter an arena where the crown of martyrdom seemed to be the least reward within reach. The papal bull, however, demanded obedience, and to overcome that difficulty a ruse was necessary: the governor of Manila agreed to send a party of Franciscans as ambassadors to Hideyoshi. In that guise the friars, being neither traders nor propagandists, considered that they did not violate either the treaty or the bull. It was a technical subterfuge very unworthy of the object contemplated, and the friars supplemented it by swearing to Hideyoshi that the Philippines would submit to his sway. Thus they obtained permission to visit Kiōto, Osaka and Fushimi, but with the explicit proviso that they must not preach. Very soon they had built a church in Kiōto, consecrated it with the utmost pomp, and were preaching sermons and chaunting litanies there in flagrant defiance of Hideyoshi’s veto. Presently their number received an access of three friars who came bearing gifts from the governor at Manila, and now they not only established a convent in Osaka, but also seized a Jesuit church in Nagasaki and converted the circumspect worship hitherto conducted there by the fathers into services of the most public character. Officially checked in Nagasaki, they charged the Jesuits in Kiōto with having intrigued to impede them, and they further vaunted the courageous openness of their own ministrations as compared with the clandestine timidity of the methods which wise prudence had induced the Jesuits to adopt. Retribution would have followed quickly had not Hideyoshi’s attention been engrossed by an attempt to invade China through Korea. At this stage, however, a memorable incident occurred. Driven out of her course by a storm, a great and richly laden Spanish galleon, bound for Acapulco from Manila, drifted to the coast of Tosa province, and running—or being purposely run—on a sand-bank as she was being towed into port by Japanese boats, broke her back. She carried goods to the value of some 600,000 crowns, and certain officials urged Hideyoshi to confiscate her as derelict, conveying to him at the same time a detailed account of the doings of the Franciscans and their open flouting of his orders. Hideyoshi, much incensed, commanded the arrest of the Franciscans and despatched officers to Tosa to confiscate the “San Felipe.” The pilot of the galleon sought to intimidate these officers by showing them on a map of the world the vast extent of Spain’s dominions, and being asked how one country had acquired such extended sway, replied: “Our kings begin by sending into the countries they wish to conquer missionaries who induce the people to embrace our religion, and when they have made considerable progress, troops are sent who combine with the new Christians, and then our kings have not much trouble in accomplishing the rest.”

On learning of this speech Hideyoshi was overcome with fury. He condemned the Franciscans to have their noses and ears cut off, to be promenaded through Kiōto, Osaka and Sakai, and to be crucified at Nagasaki. “I have ordered these foreigners to be treated thus, because they have come from the Philippines to Japan, calling themselves ambassadors, although they were not so; because they have remained here far too long without my permission; because, in defiance of my prohibition, they have built churches, preached their religion and caused disorders.” Twenty-six suffered under this sentence—six Franciscans, three Japanese Jesuits and seventeen native Christians, chiefly domestic servants of the Franciscans. They met their fate with noble fortitude. Hideyoshi further issued a special injunction against the adoption of Christianity by a feudal chief, and took steps to give practical effect to his expulsion edict of 1587. The governor of Nagasaki received instructions to send away all the Jesuits, permitting only two or three to remain for the service of the Portuguese merchants. But the Jesuits were not the kind of men who, to escape personal peril, turn their back upon an unaccomplished work of grace. There were 125 of them in Japan at that time. In October 1597 a junk sailed out of Nagasaki harbour, her decks crowded with seeming Jesuits. In reality she carried 11 of the company, the apparent Jesuits being disguised sailors. It is not to be supposed that such a manœuvre could be hidden from the local authorities. They winked at it, until rumour became insistent that Hideyoshi was about to visit Kiūshiū in person, and all Japanese in administrative posts knew how Hideyoshi visited disobedience and how hopeless was any attempt to deceive him. Therefore, early in 1598, really drastic steps were taken. Churches to the number of 137 were demolished in Kiūshiū, seminaries and residences fell, and the governor of Nagasaki assembled there all the fathers of the company for deportation to Macao by the great ship in the following year. But while they waited, Hideyoshi died. It is not on record that the Jesuits openly declared his removal from the earth to have been a special dispensation in their favour. But they pronounced him an execrable tyrant and consigned his “soul to hell for all eternity.” Yet no impartial reader of history can pretend to think that a 16th-century Jesuit general in Hideyoshi’s place would have shown towards an alien creed and its propagandists even a small measure of the tolerance exercised by the Japanese statesman towards Christianity and the Jesuits.

Hideyoshi’s death occurred in 1598. Two years later, his authority as administrative ruler of all Japan had passed into the hands of Iyeyasu, the Tokugawa chief, and thirty-nine years later the Tokugawa potentates had not only exterminated Christianity in Japan but had also condemned their country to a period of international isolation which continued unbroken until 1853, an interval of 214 years. It has been shown that even when they were most incensed against Christianity, Japanese administrators sought to foster and preserve foreign trade. Why then did they close the country’s doors to the outside world and suspend a commerce once so much esteemed? To answer that question some retrospect is needed. Certain historians allege that from the outset Iyeyasu shared Hideyoshi’s misgivings about the real designs of Christian potentates and Christian propagandists. But that verdict is not supported by facts. The first occasion of the Tokugawa chief’s recorded contact with a Christian propagandist was less than three months after Hideyoshi’s death. There was then led into his presence a Franciscan, by name Jerome de Jesus, originally a member of the fictitious embassy from Manila. This man’s conduct constitutes an example of the invincible zeal and courage inspiring a Christian priest in those days. Barely escaping the doom of crucifixion which overtook his companions, he had been deported from Japan to Manila at a time when death seemed to be the certain penalty of remaining. But no sooner had he been landed at Manila than he took passage in a Chinese junk, and, returning to Nagasaki, made his way secretly from the far south of Japan to the province of Kii. There arrested, he was brought into the presence of Iyeyasu, and his own record of what ensued is given in a letter subsequently sent to Manila:—

“When the Prince saw me he asked how I had managed to escape the previous persecution. I answered him that at that date God had delivered me in order that I might go to Manila and bring back new colleagues from there—preachers of the divine law—and that I had returned from Manila to encourage the Christians, cherishing the desire to die on the cross in order to go to enjoy eternal glory like my former colleagues. On hearing these words the Emperor began to smile, whether in his quality of a pagan of the sect of Shaka, which teaches that there is no future life, or whether from the thought that I was frightened at having to be put to death. Then, looking at me kindly, he said, ‘Be no longer afraid and no longer conceal yourself, and no longer change your habit, for I wish you well; and as for the Christians who every year pass within sight of the Kwantō where my domains are, when they go to Mexico with their ships, I have a keen desire for them to visit the harbours of this island, to refresh themselves there, and to take what they wish, to trade with my vassals and to teach them how to develop silver mines; and that my intentions may be accomplished before my death, I wish you to indicate to me the means to take to realize them.’ I answered that it was necessary that Spanish pilots should take the soundings of his harbours, so that ships might not be lost in future as the ‘San Felipe’ had been, and that he should solicit this service from the governor of the Philippines. The Prince approved of my advice, and accordingly he has sent a Japanese gentleman, a native of Sakai, the bearer of this message.... It is essential to oppose no obstacle to the complete liberty offered by the Emperor to the Spaniards and to our holy order, for the preaching of the holy gospel.... The same Prince (who is about to visit the Kwantō) invites me to accompany him to make choice of a house, and to visit the harbour which he promises to open to us; his desires in this respect are keener than I can express.”

The above version of the Tokugawa chief’s mood is confirmed by events, for not only did he allow the contumelious Franciscan to build a church—the first—in Yedo and to celebrate Mass there, but also he sent three embassies to the Philippines, proposing reciprocal freedom of commerce, offering to open ports in the Kwantō and asking for competent naval architects. He never obtained the architects, and though the trade came, its volume was small in comparison with the abundance of friars that accompanied it. There is just a possibility that Iyeyasu saw in these Spanish monks an instrument of counteracting the influence of the Jesuits, for he must have known that the Franciscans opened their mission in Yedo by “declaiming with violence against the fathers of the company of Jesus.” In short, the Spanish monks assumed towards the Jesuits in Japan the same intolerant and abusive tone that the Jesuits themselves had previously assumed towards Buddhism.

At that time there appeared upon the scene another factor destined greatly to complicate events. It was a Dutch merchant ship, the “Liefde.” Until the Netherlands revolted from Spain, the Dutch had been the principal distributors of all goods arriving at Lisbon from the Far East; but in 1594 Philip II. closed the port of Lisbon to these rebels, and the Dutch met the situation by turning their prows to the Orient to invade the sources of Portuguese commerce. One of the first expeditions despatched for that purpose set out in 1598, and of the five vessels composing it one only was ever heard of again. This was the “Liefde.” She reached Japan during the spring of 1600, with only four-and-twenty alive out of her original crew of 110. Towed into the harbour at Funai, the “Liefde” was visited by Jesuits, who, on discovering her nationality, denounced her to the local authorities as a pirate and endeavoured to incense the Japanese against them. The “Liefde” had on board in the capacity of “pilot major” an Englishman, Will Adams of Gillingham in Kent, whom Iyeyasu summoned to Osaka, where there commenced between the rough British sailor and the Tokugawa chief a curiously friendly intercourse which was not interrupted until the death of Adams twenty years later. The Englishman became master ship-builder to the Yedo government; was employed as diplomatic agent when other traders from his own country and from Holland arrived in Japan, received in perpetual gift a substantial estate, and from first to last possessed the implicit confidence of the shōgun. Iyeyasu quickly discerned the man’s honesty, perceived that whatever benefits foreign commerce might confer would be increased by encouraging competition among the foreigners, and realized that English and Dutch trade presented the wholesome feature of complete dissociation from religious propagandism. On the other hand, he showed no intolerance to either Spaniards or Portuguese. He issued (1601) two official patents sanctioning the residence of the fathers in Kiōto, Osaka and Nagasaki; he employed Father Rodriguez as interpreter to the court at Yedo; and in 1603 he gave munificent succour to the Jesuits who were reduced to dire straits owing to the capture of the great ship from Macao by the Dutch and the consequent loss of several years’ supplies for the mission in Japan.

It is thus seen that each of the great trio of Japan’s 16th-century statesmen—Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu—adopted at the outset a most tolerant demeanour towards Christianity. The reasons of Hideyoshi’s change of mood have been set forth. We have now to examine the reasons that produced a similar metamorphosis in the case of Iyeyasu. Two causes present themselves immediately. The first is that, while tolerating Christianity, Iyeyasu did not approve of it as a creed; the second, that he himself, whether from state policy or genuine piety, strongly encouraged Buddhism. Proof of the former proposition is found in an order issued by him in 1602 to insure the safety of foreign merchantmen entering Japanese ports: it concluded with the reservation, “but we rigorously forbid them” (foreigners coming in such ships) “to promulgate their faith.” Proof of the latter is furnished by the facts that he invariably carried about with him a miniature Buddhist image which he regarded as his tutelary deity, and that he fostered the creed of Shaka as zealously as Oda Nobunaga had suppressed it. There is much difficulty in tracing the exact sequence of events which gradually educated a strong antipathy to the Christian faith in the mind of the Tokugawa chief. He must have been influenced in some degree by the views of his great predecessor, Hideyoshi. But he did not accept those views implicitly. At the end of the 16th century he sent a trusted emissary to Europe for the purpose of directly observing the conditions in the home of Christianity, and this man, the better to achieve his aim, embraced the foreign faith, and studied it from within as well as from without. The story that he had to tell on his return could not fail to shock the ruler of a country where freedom of conscience had existed from time immemorial. It was a story of the inquisition and of the stake; of unlimited aggression in the name of the cross; of the pope’s overlordship which entitled him to confiscate the realm of heretical sovereigns; of religious wars and of well-nigh incredible fanaticism. Iyeyasu must have received an evil impression while he listened to his emissary’s statements. Under his own eyes, too, were abundant evidences of the spirit of strife that Christian dogma engendered in those times. From the moment when the Franciscans and Dominicans arrived in Japan, a fierce quarrel began between them and the Jesuits; a quarrel which even community of suffering could not compose. Not less repellent was an attempt on the part of the Spaniards to dictate to Iyeyasu the expulsion of all Hollanders from Japan, and on the part of the Jesuits to dictate the expulsion of the Spaniards. The former proposal, couched almost in the form of a demand, was twice formulated, and accompanied on the second occasion by a scarcely less insulting offer, namely, that Spanish men-of-war would be sent to Japan to burn all Dutch ships found in the ports of the empire. If in the face of proposals so contumelious of his sovereign authority Iyeyasu preserved a calm and dignified mien, merely replying that his country was open to all comers, and that, if other nations had quarrels among themselves, they must not take Japan for battle-ground, it is nevertheless unimaginable that he did not strongly resent such interference with his own independent foreign policy, and that he did not interpret it as foreshadowing a disturbance of the realm’s peace by sectarian quarrels among Christians. These experiences, predisposing Iyeyasu to dislike Christianity as a creed and to distrust it as a political influence, were soon supplemented by incidents of an immediately determinative character. The first was an act of fraud and forgery committed in the interests of a Christian feudatory by a trusted official, himself a Christian. Thereupon Iyeyasu, conceiving it unsafe that Christians should fill offices at his court, dismissed all those so employed, banished them from Yedo and forbade any feudal chief to harbour them. The second incident was an attempted survey of the coast of Japan by a Spanish mariner and a Franciscan friar. Permission to take this step had been obtained by an envoy from New Spain, but no deep consideration of reasons seems to have preluded the permission on Japan’s side, and when the mariner (Sebastian) and the friar (Sotelo) hastened to carry out the project, Iyeyasu asked Will Adams to explain this display of industry. The Englishman replied that such a proceeding would be regarded in Europe as an act of hostility, especially on the part of the Spaniards or Portuguese, whose aggressions were notorious. He added, in reply to further questions, that “the Roman priesthood had been expelled from many parts of Germany, from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland and England, and that although his own country preserved the pure form of the Christian faith from which Spain and Portugal had deviated, yet neither English nor Dutch considered that that fact afforded them any reason to war with, or to annex, States which were not Christian solely for the reason that they were non-Christian.” Iyeyasu reposed entire confidence in Adams. Hearing the Englishman’s testimony, he is said to have exclaimed, “If the sovereigns of Europe do not tolerate these priests, I do them no wrong if I refuse to tolerate them.” Japanese historians add that Iyeyasu discovered a conspiracy on the part of some Japanese Christians to overthrow his government by the aid of foreign troops. It was not a widely ramified plot, but it lent additional importance to the fact that the sympathy of the fathers and their converts was plainly with the only magnate in the empire who continued to dispute the Tokugawa supremacy, Hideyori, the son of Hideyoshi. Nevertheless Iyeyasu shrank from proceeding to extremities in the case of any foreign priest, and this attitude he maintained until his death (1616). Possibly he might have been not less tolerant towards native Christians also had not the Tokugawa authority been openly defied by a Franciscan father—the Sotelo mentioned above—in Yedo itself. Then (1613) the first execution of Japanese converts took place, though the monk himself was released after a short incarceration. At that time, as is still the case even in these more enlightened days, insignificant differences of custom sometimes induced serious misconceptions. A Christian who had violated the secular law was crucified in Nagasaki. Many of his fellow-believers kneeled around his cross and prayed for the peace of his soul. A party of converts were afterwards burned to death in the same place for refusing to apostatize, and their Christian friends crowded to carry off portions of their bodies as holy relics. When these things were reported to Iyeyasu, he said, “Without doubt that must be a diabolic faith which persuades people not only to worship criminals condemned to death for their crimes, but also to honour those who have been burned or cut in pieces by the order of their lord” (feudal chief).

The fateful edict ordering that all foreign priests should be collected in Nagasaki preparatory to removal from Japan, that all churches should be demolished, and that the converts should be compelled to abjure Christianity, was issued on the 27th of January 1614. There were then in Japan 122 Jesuits, 14 Franciscans, 9 Dominicans, 4 Augustins and 7 secular priests. Had these men obeyed the orders of the Japanese authorities by leaving the country finally, not one foreigner would have suffered for his faith in Japan, except the 6 Franciscans executed at Nagasaki by order of Hideyoshi in 1597. But suffering and death counted for nothing with the missionaries as against the possibility of winning or keeping even one convert. Forty-seven of them evaded the edict, some by concealing themselves at the time of its issue, the rest by leaving their ships when the latter had passed out of sight of the shore of Japan, and returning by boats to the scene of their former labours. Moreover, in a few months, those that had actually crossed the sea re-crossed it in various disguises, and soon the Japanese government had to consider whether it would suffer its authority to be thus flouted or resort to extreme measures.

During two years immediately following the issue of the anti-Christian decree, the attention of the Tokugawa chief and indeed of all Japan was concentrated on the closing episode of the great struggle which assured to Iyeyasu final supremacy as administrative ruler of the empire. That episode was a terrible battle under the walls of Osaka castle between the adherents of the Tokugawa and the supporters of Hideyori. In this struggle fresh fuel was added to the fire of anti-Christian resentment, for many Christian converts threw in their lot with Hideyori, and in one part of the field the Tokugawa troops found themselves fighting against a foe whose banners were emblazoned with the cross and with images of the Saviour and St James, the patron saint of Spain. But the Christians had protectors. Many of the feudatories showed themselves strongly averse from inflicting the extreme penalty on men and women whose adoption of an alien religion had been partly forced by the feudatories themselves. As for the people at large, their liberal spirit is attested by the fact that five fathers who were in Osaka castle at the time of its capture made their way to distant refuges without encountering any risk of betrayal. During these events the death of Iyeyasu took place (June 1, 1616), and pending the dedication of his mausoleum the anti-Christian crusade was virtually suspended.

In September 1616 a new anti-Christian edict was promulgated by Hidetada, son and successor of Iyeyasu. It pronounced sentence of exile against all Christian priests, including even those whose presence had been sanctioned for ministering to the Portuguese merchants: it forbade the Japanese, under the penalty of being burned alive and of having all their property confiscated, to have any connexion with the ministers of religion or to give them hospitality. It was forbidden to any prince or lord to keep Christians in his service or even on his estates, and the edict was promulgated with more than usual solemnity, though its enforcement was deferred until the next year on account of the obsequies of Iyeyasu. This edict of 1616 differed from that issued by Iyeyasu in 1614, since the latter did not prescribe the death penalty for converts refusing to apostatize. But both agreed in indicating expulsion as the sole manner of dealing with the foreign priests. As for the shōgun and his advisers, it is reasonable to assume that they did not anticipate much necessity for recourse to violence. They must have known that a great majority of the converts had joined the Christian church at the instance or by the command of their local rulers, and nothing can have seemed less likely than that a creed thus lightly embraced would be adhered to in defiance of torture and death. It is moreover morally certain that had the foreign propagandists obeyed the Government’s edict and left the country, not one would have been put to death. They suffered because they defied the laws of the land. Some fifty missionaries happened to be in Nagasaki when Hidetada’s edict was issued. A number of these were apprehended and deported, but several of them returned almost immediately. This happened under the jurisdiction of Omura, who had been specially charged with the duty of sending away the bateren (padres). He appears to have concluded that a striking example must be furnished, and he therefore ordered the seizure and decapitation of two fathers, De l’Assumpcion and Machado. The result completely falsified his calculations, and presaged the cruel struggle now destined to begin.

The bodies, placed in different coffins, were interred in the same grave. Guards were placed over it, but the concourse was immense. The sick were carried to the sepulchre to be restored to health. The Christians found new strength in this martyrdom; the pagans themselves were full of admiration for it. Numerous conversions and numerous returns of apostates took place everywhere.

In the midst of all this, Navarette, the vice-provincial of the Dominicans, and Ayala, the vice-provincial of the Augustins, came out of their retreat, and in full priestly garb started upon an open propaganda. The two fanatics—for so even Charlevoix considers them to have been—were secretly conveyed to the island Takashima and there decapitated, while their coffins were weighted with big stones and sunk in the sea. Even more directly defiant was the attitude of the next martyred priest, an old Franciscan monk, Juan de Santa Martha. He had for three years suffered all the horrors of a medieval Japanese prison, when it was proposed to release him and deport him to New Spain. His answer was that, if released, he would stay in Japan and preach there. He laid his head on the block in August 1618. But from that time until 1622 no other foreign missionary suffered capital punishment in Japan, though many of them arrived in the country and continued their propagandism there. During that interval, also, there occurred another incident eminently calculated to fix upon the Christians still deeper suspicion of political designs. In a Portuguese ship captured by the Dutch a letter was found instigating the Japanese converts to revolt, and promising that, when the number of these disaffected Christians was sufficient, men-of-war would be sent to aid them. Not the least potent of the influences operating against the Christians was that pamphlets were written by apostates attributing the zeal of the foreign propagandists solely to political motives. Yet another indictment of Spanish and Portuguese propagandists was contained in a despatch addressed to Hidetada in 1620 by the admiral in command of the British and Dutch fleet then cruising in Far-Eastern waters. In that document the friars were flatly accused of treacherous practices, and the Japanese ruler was warned against the aggressive designs of Philip of Spain. In the face of all this evidence the Japanese ceased to hesitate, and a time of terror ensued for the fathers and their converts. The measures adopted towards the missionaries gradually increased in severity. In 1617 the first two fathers put to death (De l’Assumpcion and Machado) were beheaded, “not by the common executioner, but by one of the first officers of the prince.” Subsequently Navarette and Ayala were decapitated by the executioner. Then, in 1618, Juan de Santa Martha was executed like a common criminal, his body being dismembered and his head exposed. Finally, in 1622, Zuñiga and Flores were burnt alive. The same year was marked by the “great martyrdom” at Nagasaki when 9 foreign priests went to the stake with 19 Japanese converts. The shōgun seems to have been now labouring under vivid fear of a foreign invasion. An emissary sent by him to Europe had returned on the eve of the “great martyrdom” after seven years abroad, and had made a report more than ever unfavourable to Christianity. Therefore Hidetada deemed it necessary to refuse audience to a Philippine embassy in 1624 and to deport all Spaniards from Japan. Further, it was decreed that no Japanese Christian should thenceforth be suffered to go abroad for commerce, and that though non-Christians or men who had apostatized might travel freely, they must not visit the Philippines. Thus ended all intercourse between Japan and Spain. It had continued for 32 years and had engendered a widespread conviction that Christianity was an instrument of Spanish aggression.

Iyemitsu, son of Hidetada, now ruled in Yedo, though Hidetada himself remained the power behind the throne. The year (1623) of the former’s accession to power had been marked by the re-issue of anti-Christian decrees, and by the martyrdom of some 500 Christians within the Tokugawa domains, whither the tide of persecution now flowed for the first time. Thenceforth the campaign was continuous. The men most active and most relentless in carrying on the persecution were Mizuno and Takenaka, governors of Nagasaki, and Matsukura, feudatory of Shimabara. By the latter were invented the punishment of throwing converts into the solfataras at Unzen and the torture of the fosse, which consisted in suspension by the feet, head downwards, in a pit until blood oozed from the mouth, nose and ears. Many endured this latter torture for days, until death came to their relief, but a few—notably the Jesuit provincial Ferreyra—apostatized. Matsukura and Takenaka were so strongly obsessed by the Spanish menace that they contemplated the conquest of the Philippines in order to deprive the Spaniards of a Far-Eastern base. But timid counsels then prevailed in Yedo, where the spirit of a Nobunaga, a Hideyoshi or an Iyeyasu no longer presided. Of course the measures of repression grew in severity as the fortitude of the Christians became more obdurate. It is not possible to state the exact number of victims. Some historians say that, down to 1635, no fewer than 280,000 were punished, but that figure is probably exaggerated, for the most trustworthy records indicate that the converts never aggregated more than 300,000, and many of these, if not a great majority, having accepted the foreign faith very lightly, doubtless discarded it readily under menace of destruction. Every opportunity was given for apostatizing and for escaping death. Immunity could be secured by pointing out a fellow-convert, and when it is observed that among the seven or eight feudatories who embraced Christianity only two or three died in that faith, we must conclude that not a few cases of recanting occurred among the commoners. Remarkable fortitude, however, is said to have been displayed. If the converts were intrepid their teachers showed no less courage. Again and again the latter defied the Japanese authorities by coming to the country or returning thither after having been deported. Ignoring the orders of the governors of Macao and Manila and even of the king of Spain himself, they arrived, year after year, to be certainly apprehended and sent to the stake after brief periods of propagandism. In 1626 they actually baptized over 3000 converts. Large rewards were paid to anyone denouncing a propagandist, and as for the people, they had to trample upon a picture of Christ in order to prove that they were not Christians.

Meanwhile the feuds between the Dutch, the Spaniards and the Portuguese never ceased. In 1636, the Dutch found on a captured Portuguese vessel a report of the governor of Macao describing a two days’ festival which had been held there in honour of Vieyra, the vice-provincial whose martyrdom had just taken place in Japan. This report the Dutch handed to the Japanese authorities “in order that his majesty may see more clearly what great honour the Portuguese pay to those he has forbidden his realm as traitors to the state and to his crown.” Probably the accusation added little to the resentment and distrust already harboured by the Japanese against the Portuguese. At all events the Yedo government took no step distinctly hostile to Portuguese laymen until 1637, when an edict was issued forbidding any foreigners to travel in the empire, lest Portuguese with passports bearing Dutch names might enter it. This was the beginning of the end. In the last month of 1637 a rebellion broke out, commonly called the “Christian revolt of Shimabara,” which sealed the fate of Japan’s foreign intercourse for over 200 years.

The promontory of Shimabara and the island of Amakusa enclose the gulf of Nagasaki on the west. Among all the fiefs in Japan, Shimabara and Amakusa had been the two most thoroughly christianized in the early years of Jesuit propagandism. Hence in later days they were naturally the scene of the severest persecutions. Still the people would probably have suffered in silence had they not been taxed beyond all endurance to supply funds for an extravagant chief who employed savage methods of extortion. Japanese annals, however, relegate the taxation grievance to an altogether secondary place, and attribute the revolt solely to the instigation of five samurai who led a roving life to avoid persecution for their adherence to Christianity. Whichever version be correct, it is certain that the outbreak ultimately attracted all the Christians from the surrounding regions, and was regarded by the authorities as in effect a Christian rising. The Amakusa insurgents passed over to Shimabara, and on the 27th of January 1638 the whole body—numbering, according to some authorities, 20,000 fighting men with 17,000 women and children; according to others, little more than one-half of these figures—took possession of the dilapidated castle of Hara, which stood on a plateau with three sides descending perpendicularly to the sea, a hundred feet beneath, and with a swamp on its fourth front. There the insurgents, who fought under flags with red crosses and whose battle cries were “Jesus,” “Maria” and “St Iago,” successfully maintained themselves against the repeated assaults of strong forces until the 12th of April, when, their ammunition and their provisions alike exhausted, they were overwhelmed and put to the sword, with the exception of 105 prisoners. During the siege the Dutch were enabled to furnish a vivid proof of enmity to the Christianity of the Spaniards and the Portuguese. For the guns in possession of the besiegers being too light to accomplish anything, Koeckebacker, the factor at Hirado, was invited to send ships carrying heavier metal. He replied with the “de Ryp” of 20 guns, which threw 426 shot into the castle in 15 days. Probably the great bulk of the remaining Japanese Christians perished at the massacre of Hara. Thenceforth there were few martyrs.

It has been clearly shown that Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu were all in favour of foreign intercourse and trade, and that the Tokugawa chief, even more than his predecessor Hideyoshi, made strenuous efforts to differentiate between Christianity and commerce, so that the latter might not be involved in the former’s fate. In fact the three objects which Iyeyasu desired most earnestly to compass were the development of foreign commerce, the acquisition of a mercantile marine and the exploitation of Japan’s mines. He offered the Spaniards, Portuguese, English and Dutch a site for a settlement in Yedo, and had they accepted the offer the country might never have been closed. In his time Japan was virtually a free-trade country. Importers had not to pay any duties. It was expected, however, that they should make presents to the feudatory into whose port they carried their goods, and these presents were often very valuable. Naturally the Tokugawa chief desired to attract such a source of wealth to his own domains. He sent more than one envoy to Manila to urge the opening of commerce direct with the regions about Yedo, and to ask the Spaniards for competent naval architects. Perhaps the truest exposition of his attitude is given in a law enacted in 1602:—

“If any foreign vessel by stress of weather is obliged to touch at any principality or to put into any harbour of Japan, we order that, whoever these foreigners may be, absolutely nothing whatever that belongs to them or that they may have brought in their ship, shall be taken from them. Likewise we rigorously prohibit the use of any violence in the purchase or the sale of any of the commodities brought by their ship, and if it is not convenient for the merchants of the ship to remain in the port they have entered, they may pass to any other port that may suit them, and therein buy and sell in full freedom. Likewise we order in a general manner that foreigners may freely reside in any part of Japan they choose, but we rigorously forbid them to promulgate their faith.”

It was in that mood that he granted (1605) a licence to the Dutch to trade in Japan, his expectation doubtless being that the ships which they promised to send every year would make their dépôt at Uraga or in some other place near Yedo. But things were ordered differently. The first Hollanders that set foot in Japan were the survivors of the wrecked “Liefde.” Thrown into prison for a time, they were approached by emissaries from the feudatory of Hirado, who engaged some of them to teach the art of casting guns and the science of gunnery to his vassals, and when two of them were allowed to leave Japan, he furnished them with the means of doing so, at the same time making promises which invested Hirado with attractions as a port of trade, though it was then and always remained an insignificant fishing village. The Dutch possessed precisely the qualifications suited to the situation then existing in Japan: they had commercial potentialities without any religious associations. Fully appreciating that fact, the shrewd feudatory of Hirado laid himself out to entice the Dutchmen to his fief, and he succeeded. Shortly afterwards, an incident occurred which clearly betrayed the strength of the Tokugawa chief’s desire to exploit Japan’s mines. The governor-general of the Philippines (Don Rodrigo Vivero y Velasco), his ship being cast away on the Japanese coast on a voyage to Acapulco, was received by Iyeyasu, and in response to the latter’s request for fifty miners, the Spaniard formulated terms to which Iyeyasu actually agreed: that half the produce of the mines should go to the miners; that the other half should be divided between Iyeyasu and the king of Spain; that the latter might send commissioners to Japan to look after his mining interests, and that these commissioners might be accompanied by priests who would be entitled to have public churches for holding services. This was in 1609, when the Tokugawa chief had again and again imposed the strictest veto on Christian propagandism. There can be little doubt that he understood the concession made to Don Rodrigo in the sense of Hideyoshi’s mandate to the Jesuits in Nagasaki, namely, that a sufficient number might remain to minister to the Portuguese traders frequenting the port. Iyeyasu had confidence in himself and in his countrymen. He knew that emergencies could be dealt with when they arose and he sacrificed nothing to timidity. But his courageous policy died with him and the miners did not come. Neither did the Spaniards ever devote any successful efforts to establishing trade with Japan. Their vessels paid fitful visits to Uraga, but the Portuguese continued to monopolize the commerce.

In 1611 a Dutch merchantman (the “Brach”) reached Hirado with a cargo of pepper, cloth, ivory, silk and lead. She carried two envoys, Spex and Segerszoon, and in the very face of a Spanish embassy which had just arrived from Manila expressly for the purpose of “settling the matter regarding the Hollanders,” the Dutchmen obtained a liberal patent from Iyeyasu. Twelve years previously, the merchants of London, stimulated generally by the success of the Dutch in trade with the East, and specially by the fact that “these Hollanders had raised the price of pepper against us from 3 shillings per pound to 6 shillings and 8 shillings,” organized the East India Company which immediately began to send ships eastward. Of course the news that the Dutch were about to establish a trading station in Japan reached London speedily, and the East India Company lost no time in ordering one of their vessels, the “Clove,” under Captain Saris, to proceed to the Far-Eastern islands. She carried a quantity of pepper, and on the voyage she endeavoured to procure some spices at the Moluccas. But the Dutch would not suffer any poaching on their valuable monopoly. The “Clove” entered Hirado on the 11th of June 1613. Saris seems to have been a man self-opinionated, of shallow judgment and suspicious. Though strongly urged by Will Adams to make Uraga the seat of the new trade, though convinced of the excellence of the harbour there, and though instructed as to the great advantage of proximity to the shōgun’s capital, he appears to have conceived some distrust of Adams, for he chose Hirado. From Iyeyasu Captain Saris received a most liberal charter, which plainly displayed the mood of the Tokugawa shōgun towards foreign trade:—

1. The ship that has now come for the first time from England over the sea to Japan may carry on trade of all kinds without hindrance. With regard to future visits (of English ships) permission will be given in regard to all matters.

2. With regard to the cargoes of ships, requisition will be made by list according to the requirements of the shōgunate.

3. English ships are free to visit any port in Japan. If disabled by storms they may put into any harbour.

4. Ground in Yedo in the place which they may desire shall be given to the English, and they may erect houses and reside and trade there. They shall be at liberty to return to their country whenever they wish to do so, and to dispose as they like of the houses they have erected.

5. If an Englishman dies in Japan of disease, or any other cause, his effects shall be handed over without fail.

6. Forced sales of cargo, and violence, shall not take place.

7. If one of the English should commit an offence, he should be sentenced by the English General according to the gravity of his offence.

(Translated by Professor Riess.)

The terms of the 4th article show that the shōgun expected the English to make Yedo their headquarters. Had Saris done so, he would have been free from all competition, would have had an immense market at his very doors, would have economized the expense of numerous overland journeys to the Tokugawa court, and would have saved the payment of many “considerations.” The result of his mistaken choice and subsequent bad management was that, ten years later (1623), the English factory at Hirado had to be closed, having incurred a total loss of about £2000. In condonation of this failure it must be noted that a few months after the death of Iyeyasu, the charter he had granted to Saris underwent serious modification. The original document threw open to the English every port in Japan; the revised document limited them to Hirado. But this restriction may be indirectly traced to the blunder of not accepting a settlement in Yedo and a port at Uraga. For the Tokugawa’s foreign policy was largely swayed by an apprehension lest the Kiūshiū feudatories, over whom the authority of Yedo had never been fully established, might, by the presence of foreign traders, come into possession of such a fleet and such an armament as would ultimately enable them to wrest the administration of the empire from Tokugawa hands. Hence the precaution of confining the English and the Dutch to Hirado, the fief of a daimyō too petty to become formidable, and to Nagasaki which was an imperial city. But evidently an English factory in Yedo and English ships at Uraga would have strengthened the Tokugawa ruler’s hand instead of supplying engines of war to his political foes. It must also be noted that the question of locality had another injurious outcome. It exposed the English—and the Dutch also—to crippling competition at the hands of a company of rich Osaka monopolists, who, as representing an Imperial city and therefore being pledged to the Tokugawa interests, enjoyed Yedo’s favour and took full advantage of it. These shrewd traders not only drew a ring round Hirado, but also sent vessels on their own account to Cochin China, Siam, Tonkin, Cambodia and other places, where they obtained many of the staples in which the English and the Dutch dealt. Still the closure of the English factory at Hirado was purely voluntary. From first to last there had been no serious friction between the English and the Japanese. The company’s houses and godowns were not sold. These as well as the charter were left in the hands of the daimyō of Hirado, who promised to restore them should the English re-open business in Japan. The company did think of doing so on more than one occasion, but no practical step was taken until the year 1673, when a merchantman, aptly named the “Return,” was sent to seek permission. The Japanese, after mature reflection, made answer that as the king of England was married to a Portuguese princess, British subjects could not be permitted to visit Japan. That this reply was suggested by the Dutch is very probable; that it truly reflected the feeling of the Japanese government towards Roman Catholics is certain.

The Spaniards were expelled from Japan in 1624, the Portuguese in 1638. Two years before the latter event, the Yedo government took a signally retrogressive step. They ordained that no Japanese vessel should go abroad; that no Japanese subject should leave the country, and that, if detected attempting to do so, he should be put to death, the vessel that carried him and her crew being seized “to await our pleasure”; that any Japanese resident abroad should be executed if he returned; that the children and descendants of Spaniards together with those who had adopted such children should not be allowed to remain on pain of death; and that no ship of ocean-going dimensions should be built in Japan. Thus not only were the very children of the Christian propagandists driven completely from the land, but the Japanese people also were sentenced to imprisonment within the limits of their islands, and the country was deprived of all hope of acquiring a mercantile marine. The descendants of the Spaniards, banished by the edict, were taken to Macao in two Portuguese galleons. They numbered 287 and the property they carried with them aggregated 6,697,500 florins. But if the Portuguese derived any gratification from this sweeping out of their much-abused rivals, the feeling was destined to be short-lived. Already they were subjected to humiliating restrictions.

“From 1623 the galleons and their cargoes were liable to be burnt and their crews executed if any foreign priest was found on board of them. An official of the Japanese government was stationed in Macao for the purpose of inspecting all intending passengers, and of preventing any one that looked at all suspicious from proceeding to Japan. A complete list and personal description of every one on board was drawn up by this officer, a copy of it was handed to the captain and by him it had to be delivered to the authorities who met him at Nagasaki before he was allowed to anchor. If in the subsequent inspection any discrepancy between the list and the persons actually carried by the vessel appeared, it would prove very awkward for the captain. Then in the inspection of the vessel letters were opened, trunks and boxes ransacked, and all crosses, rosaries or objects of religion of any kind had to be thrown overboard. In 1635 Portuguese were forbidden to employ Japanese to carry their umbrellas or their shoes, and only their chief men were allowed to bear arms, while they had to hire fresh servants every year. It was in the following year (1636) that the artificial islet of Deshima was constructed for their special reception, or rather imprisonment. It lay in front of the former Portuguese factory, with which it was connected by a bridge, and henceforth the Portuguese were to be allowed to cross this bridge only twice a year—at their arrival and at their departure. Furthermore, all their cargoes had to be sold at a fixed price during their fifty days’ stay to a ring of licensed merchants from the imperial towns.”

The imposition of such irksome conditions did not deter the Portuguese, who continued to send merchandise-laden galleons to Nagasaki. But in 1638 the bolt fell. The Shimabara rebellion was directly responsible. Probably the fact of a revolt of Christian converts, in such numbers and fighting with such resolution, would alone have sufficed to induce the weak government in Yedo to get rid of the Portuguese altogether. But the Portuguese were suspected of having instigated the Shimabara insurrection, and the Japanese authorities believed that they had proof of the fact. Hence, in 1638, an edict was issued proclaiming that as, in defiance of the government’s order, the Portuguese had continued to bring missionaries to Japan; as they had supplied these missionaries with provisions and other necessaries, and as they had fomented the Shimabara rebellion, thenceforth any Portuguese ship coming to Japan should be burned, together with her cargo, and every one on board of her should be executed. Ample time was allowed before enforcing this edict. Not only were the Portuguese ships then at Nagasaki permitted to close up their commercial transactions and leave the port, but also in the following year when two galleons arrived from Macao, they were merely sent away with a copy of the edict and a stern warning. But the Portuguese could not easily become reconciled to abandon a commerce from which they had derived splendid profits prior to the intrusion of the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English, and from which they might now hope further gains, since, although the Dutch continued to be formidable rivals, the Spaniards had been excluded, the English had withdrawn, and the Japanese, by the suicidal policy of their own rulers, were no longer able to send ships to China. Therefore they took a step which resulted in one of the saddest episodes of the whole story. Four aged men, the most respected citizens of Macao, were despatched (1640) to Nagasaki as ambassadors in a ship carrying no cargo but only rich presents. They bore a petition declaring that for a long time no missionaries had entered Japan from Macao, that the Portuguese had not been in any way connected with the Shimabara revolt, and that interruption of trade would injure Japan as much as Portugal. These envoys arrived at Nagasaki on the 1st of July 1640, and 24 days sufficed to bring from Yedo, whither their petition had been sent, peremptory orders for their execution as well as executioners to carry out the orders. There was no possibility of resistance. The Japanese had removed the ship’s rudder, sails, guns and ammunition, and had placed the envoys, their suite and the crews under guard in Deshima. On the 2nd of August they were all summoned to the governor’s hall of audience, where, after their protest had been heard that ambassadors should be under the protection of international law, the sentence written in Yedo 13 days previously was read to them. The following morning the Portuguese were offered their lives if they would apostatize. Every one rejected the offer, and being then led out to the martyrs’ mount, the heads of the envoys and of 57 of their companions fell. Thirteen were saved to carry the news to Macao. These thirteen, after witnessing the burning of the galleon, were conducted to the governor’s residence who gave them this message:—

“Do not fail to inform the inhabitants of Macao that the Japanese wish to receive from them neither gold nor silver, nor any kind of presents or merchandise; in a word, absolutely nothing which comes from them. You are witnesses that I have caused even the clothes of those who were executed yesterday to be burned. Let them do the same with respect to us if they find occasion to do so; we consent to it without difficulty. Let them think no more of us, just as if we were no longer in the world.”

Finally the thirteen were taken to the martyrs’ mount where, set up above the heads of the victims, a tablet recounted the story of the embassy and the reasons for the execution, and concluded with the words:—

“So long as the sun warms the earth, let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan, and let all know that if King Philip himself, or even the very God of the Christians, or the great Shaka contravene this prohibition, they shall pay for it with their heads.”

Had the ministers of the shōgun in Yedo desired to make clear to future ages that to Christianity alone was due the expulsion of Spaniards and Portuguese from Japan and her adoption of the policy of seclusion they could not have placed on record more conclusive testimony. Macao received the news with rejoicing in that its “earthly ambassadors had been made ambassadors of heaven,” but it did not abandon all hope of overcoming Japan’s obduracy. When Portugal recovered her independence in 1640, the people of Macao requested Lisbon to send an ambassador to Japan, and on the 16th of July 1647 Don Gonzalo de Siqueira arrived in Nagasaki with two vessels. He carried a letter from King John IV., setting forth the severance of all connexion between Portugal and Spain, which countries were now actually at war, and urging that commercial relations should be re-established. The Portuguese, having refused to give up their rudders and arms, soon found themselves menaced by a force of fifty thousand samurai, and were glad to put out of port quietly on the 4th of September. This was the last episode in the medieval history of Portugal’s intercourse with Japan.

When (1609) the Dutch contemplated forming a settlement in Japan, Iyeyasu gave them a written promise that “no man should do them any wrong and that he would maintain and defend them as his own subjects.” Moreover, the charter granted to them contained a clause providing that, into whatever ports their ships put, they were not to be molested or hindered in any way, but, “on the contrary, must be shown all manner of help, favour and assistance.” They might then have chosen any port in Japan for their headquarters, but they had the misfortune to choose Hirado. For many years they had no cause to regret the choice. Their exclusive possession of the Spice Islands and their own enterprise and command of capital gave them the leading place in Japan’s over-sea trade. Even when things had changed greatly for the worse and when the English closed their books with a large loss, it is on record that the Dutch were reaping a profit of 76% annually. Their doings at Hirado were not of a purely commercial character. The Anglo-Dutch “fleet of defence” made that port its basis of operations against the Spaniards and the Portuguese. It brought its prizes into Hirado, the profits to be equally divided between the fleet and the factories, Dutch and English, which arrangement involved a sum of a hundred thousand pounds in 1622. But after the death of Iyeyasu there grew up at the Tokugawa court a party which advocated the expulsion of all foreigners on the ground that, though some professed a different form of Christianity from that of the Castilians and Portuguese, it was nevertheless one and the same creed. This policy was not definitely adopted, but it made itself felt in a discourteous reception accorded to the commandant of Fort Zelandia when he visited Tōkyō in 1627. He attempted to retaliate upon the Japanese vessels which put into Zelandia in the following year, but the Japanese managed to seize his person, exact reparation for loss of time and obtain five hostages whom they carried to prison in Japan. The Japanese government of that time was wholly intolerant of any injury done to its subjects by foreigners. When news of the Zelandia affair reached Yedo, orders were immediately issued for the sequestration of certain Dutch vessels and for the suspension of the Hirado factory, which veto was not removed for four years. Commercial arrangements, also, became less favourable. The Dutch, instead of selling their silk—which generally formed the principal staple of import—in the open market, were required to send it to the Osaka gild of licensed merchants at Nagasaki, by which means, Nagasaki and Osaka being Imperial cities, the Yedo government derived advantage from the transaction. An attempt to evade this onerous system provoked a very stern rebuke from Yedo, and shortly afterwards all Japanese subjects were forbidden to act as servants to the Dutch outside the latter’s dwellings. The co-operation of the Hollanders in bombarding the castle of Hara during the Shimabara rebellion (1638) gave them some claim on the shōgun’s government, but in the same year the Dutch received an imperious warning that the severest penalties would be inflicted if their ships carried priests or any religious objects or books. So profound was the dislike of everything relating to Christianity that the Dutch nearly caused the ruin of their factory and probably their own destruction by inscribing on some newly erected warehouses the date according to the Christian era. The factory happened to be then presided over by Caron, a man of extraordinary penetration. Without a moment’s hesitation he set 400 men to pull down the warehouses, thus depriving the Japanese of all pretext for recourse to violence. He was compelled, however, to promise that there should be no observance of the Sabbath hereafter and that time should no longer be reckoned by the Christian era. In a few months, further evidence of Yedo’s ill will was furnished. An edict appeared ordering the Dutch to dispose of all their imports during the year of their arrival, without any option of carrying them away should prices be low. They were thus placed at the mercy of the Osaka gild. Further, they were forbidden to slaughter cattle or carry arms, and altogether it seemed as though the situation was to be rendered impossible for them. An envoy despatched from Batavia to remonstrate could not obtain audience of the shōgun, and though he presented, by way of remonstrance, the charter originally granted by Iyeyasu, the reply he received was:—

“His Majesty charges us to inform you that it is of but slight importance to the Empire of Japan whether foreigners come or do not come to trade. But in consideration of the charter granted to them by Iyeyasu, he is pleased to allow the Hollanders to continue their operations, and to leave them their commercial and other privileges, on the condition that they evacuate Hirado and establish themselves with their vessels in the port of Nagasaki.”

The Dutch did not at first regard this as a calamity. During their residence of 31 years at Hirado they had enjoyed full freedom, had been on excellent terms with the feudatory and his samurai, and had prospered in their business. But the pettiness of the place and the inconvenience of the anchorage having always been recognized, transfer to Nagasaki promised a splendid harbour and much larger custom. Bitter, therefore, was their disappointment when they found that they were to be imprisoned in Deshima, a quadrangular island whose longest face did not measure 300 yds., and that, so far from living in the town of Nagasaki, they would not be allowed even to enter it. Siebold writes:—

“A guard at the gate prevented all communications with the city of Nagasaki; no Dutchman without weighty reasons and without the permission of the governor might pass the gate; no Japanese (unless public women) might live in a Dutchman’s house. As if this were not enough, even within Deshima itself our state prisoners were keenly watched. No Japanese might speak with them in his own language unless in the presence of a witness (a government spy) or visit them in their houses. The creatures of the governor had the warehouses under key and the Dutch traders ceased to be masters of their property.”

There were worse indignities to be endured. No Dutchman might be buried in Japanese soil: the dead had to be committed to the deep. Every Dutch ship, her rudder, guns and ammunition removed and her sails sealed, was subjected to the strictest search. No religious service could be held. No one was suffered to pass from one Dutch ship to another without the governor’s permit. Sometimes the officers and men were wantonly cudgelled by petty Japanese officials. They led, in short, a life of extreme abasement. Some relaxation of this extreme severity was afterwards obtained, but at no time of their sojourn in Deshima, a period of 217 years, were the Dutch relieved from irksome and humiliating restraints. Eleven years after their removal thither, the expediency of consulting the national honour by finally abandoning an enterprise so derogatory was gravely discussed, but hopes of improvement supplementing natural reluctance to surrender a monopoly which still brought large gains, induced them to persevere. At that time this Nagasaki over-sea trade was considerable. From 7 to 10 Dutch ships used to enter the port annually, carrying cargo valued at some 80,000 ℔ of silver, the chief staples of import being silk and piece-goods, and the government levying 5% by way of customs dues. But this did not represent the whole of the charges imposed. A rent of 459 ℔ of silver had to be paid each year for the little island of Deshima and the houses standing on it; and, further, every spring, the Hollanders were required to send to Yedo a mission bearing for the shōgun, the heir-apparent and the court officials presents representing an aggregate value of about 550 ℔ of silver. They found their account, nevertheless, in buying gold and copper—especially the latter—for exportation, until the Japanese authorities, becoming alarmed at the great quantity of copper thus carried away, adopted the policy of limiting the number of vessels, as well as their inward and outward cargoes, so that, in 1790, only one ship might enter annually, nor could she carry away more than 350 tons of copper. On the other hand, the formal visits of the captain of the factory to Yedo were reduced to one every fifth year, and the value of the presents carried by him was cut down to one half.

Well-informed historians have contended that, by thus segregating herself from contact with the West, Japan’s direct losses were small. Certainly it is true that she could not have learned much from European nations in the 17th century. They had little to teach her in the way of religious tolerance; in the way of international morality; in the way of social amenities and etiquette; in the way of artistic conception and execution; or in the way of that notable shibboleth of modern civilization, the open door and equal opportunities. Yet when all this is admitted, there remains the vital fact that Japan was thus shut off from the atmosphere of competition, and that for nearly two centuries and a half she never had an opportunity of warming her intelligence at the fire of international rivalry or deriving inspiration from an exchange of ideas. She stood comparatively still while the world went on, and the interval between her and the leading peoples of the Occident in matters of material civilization had become very wide before she awoke to a sense of its existence. The sequel of this page of her history has been faithfully summarized by a modern writer:—

“A more complete metamorphosis of a nation’s policy could scarcely be conceived. In 1541 we find the Japanese celebrated, or notorious, throughout the whole of the Far East for exploits abroad; we find them known as the ‘kings of the sea’; we find them welcoming foreigners with cordiality and opposing no obstacles to foreign commerce or even to the propagandism of foreign creeds; we find them so quick to recognize the benefits of foreign trade and so apt to pursue them that, in the space of a few years, they establish commercial relations with no less than twenty over-sea markets; we find them authorizing the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English to trade at every port in the empire; we find, in short, all the elements requisite for a career of commercial enterprise, ocean-going adventure and industrial liberality. In 1641 everything is reversed. Trade is interdicted to all Western peoples except the Dutch, and they are confined to a little island 200 yards in length by 80 in width; the least symptom of predilection for any alien creed exposes a Japanese subject to be punished with awful rigour; any attempt to leave the limits of the realm involves decapitation; not a ship large enough to pass beyond the shadow of the coast may be built. However unwelcome the admission, it is apparent that for all these changes Christian propagandism was responsible. The policy of seclusion adopted by Japan in the early part of the 17th century and resolutely pursued until the middle of the 19th, was anti-Christian, not anti-foreign. The fact cannot be too clearly recognized. It is the chief lesson taught by the events outlined above. Throughout the whole of that period of isolation, Occidentals were not known to the Japanese by any of the terms now in common use, as gwaikoku-jin, seiyō-jin, or i-jin, which embody the simple meanings ‘foreigner,’ ‘Westerner’ or ‘alien’: they were popularly called bateren (padres). Thus completely had foreign intercourse and Christian propagandism become identified in the eyes of the people. And when it is remembered that foreign intercourse, associated with Christianity, had come to be synonymous in Japanese ears with foreign aggression, with the subversal of the mikado’s ancient dynasty, and with the loss of the independence of the ‘country of the gods,’ there is no difficulty in understanding the attitude of the nation’s mind towards this question.”

Foreign Intercourse in Modern Times.—From the middle of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th, Japan succeeded in rigorously enforcing her policy of seclusion. But in the concluding days of this epoch two influences began to disturb her self-sufficiency. One was the gradual infiltration of light from the outer world through the narrow window of the Dutch prison at Deshima; the other, frequent apparitions of Russian vessels on her northern coasts. The former was a slow process. It materialized first in the study of anatomy by a little group of youths who had acquired accidental knowledge of the radical difference between Dutch and Japanese conceptions as to the structure of the human body. The work of these students reads like a page of romance. Without any appreciable knowledge of the Dutch language, they set themselves to decipher a Dutch medical book, obtained at enormous cost, and from this small beginning they passed to a vague but firm conviction that their country had fallen far behind the material and intellectual progress of the Occident. They laboured in secret, for the study of foreign books was then a criminal offence; yet the patriotism of one of their number outweighed his prudence, and he boldly published a brochure advocating the construction of a navy and predicting a descent by the Russians on the northern borders of the empire. Before this prescient man had lain five months in prison, his foresight was verified by events. The Russians simulated at the outset a desire to establish commercial relations by peaceful means. Had the Japanese been better acquainted with the history of nations, they would have known how to interpret the idea of a Russian quest for commercial connexions in the Far East a hundred years ago. But they dealt with the question on its superficial merits, and, after imposing on the tsar’s envoys a wearisome delay of several months at Nagasaki, addressed to them a peremptory refusal together with an order to leave that port forthwith. Incensed by such treatment, and by the subsequent imprisonment of a number of their fellow countrymen who had landed on the island of Etorofu in the Kuriles, the Russians resorted to armed reprisals. The Japanese settlements in Sakhalin and Etorofu were raided and burned, other places were menaced and several Japanese vessels were destroyed. The lesson sank deep into the minds of the Yedo officials. They withdrew their veto against the study of foreign books, and they arrived in part at the reluctant conclusion that to offer armed opposition to the coming of foreign ships was a task somewhat beyond Japan’s capacity. Japan ceased, however, to attract European attention amid the absorbing interest of the Napoleonic era, and the shōgun’s government, misinterpreting this respite, reverted to their old policy of stalwart resistance to foreign intercourse.

Meanwhile another power was beginning to establish close contact with Japan. The whaling industry in Russian waters off the coast of Alaska and in the seas of China and Japan had attracted large investments of American capital and was pursued yearly by thousands of American citizens. In one season 86 of these whaling vessels passed within easy sight of Japan’s northern island, Yezo, so that the aspect of foreign ships became quite familiar. From time to time American schooners were cast away on Japan’s shores. Generally the survivors were treated with tolerable consideration and ultimately sent to Deshima for shipment to Batavia. Japanese sailors, too, driven out of their route by hurricanes and caught in the stream of the “Black Current,” were occasionally carried to the Aleutian Islands, to Oregon or California, and in several instances these shipwrecked mariners were taken back to Japan with all kindness by American vessels. On such an errand of mercy the “Morrison” entered Yedo Bay in 1837, proceeding thence to Kagoshima, only to be driven away by cannon shot; and on such an errand the “Manhattan” in 1845 lay for four days at Uraga while her master (Mercater Cooper) collected books and charts. It would seem that his experience induced the Washington government to attempt the opening of Japan. A ninety-gun ship and a sloop were sent on the errand. They anchored off Uraga (July 1846) and Commodore Biddle made due application for trade. But he received a positive refusal, and having been instructed by his government to abstain from any act calculated to excite hostility or distrust, he quietly weighed anchor and sailed away.

In this same year (1846) a French ship touched at the Riukiu (Luchu) archipelago and sought to persuade the islanders that their only security against British aggression was to place themselves under the protection of France. In fact Great Britain was now beginning to interest herself in south China, and more than one warning reached Yedo from Deshima that English war-ships might at any moment visit Japanese waters. The Dutch have been much blamed for thus attempting to prejudice Japan against the Occident, but if the dictates of commercial rivalry, as it was then practised, do not constitute an ample explanation, it should be remembered that England and Holland had recently been enemies, and that the last British vessel, seen at Nagasaki had gone there hoping to capture the annual Dutch trading-ship from Batavia. Deshima’s warnings, however, remained unfulfilled, though they doubtless contributed to Japan’s feeling of uneasiness. Then, in 1847, the king of Holland himself intervened. He sent to Yedo various books, together with a map of the world and a despatch advising Japan to abandon her policy of isolation. Within a few months (1849) of the receipt of his Dutch majesty’s recommendation, an American brig, the “Preble,” under Commander J. Glynn, anchored in Nagasaki harbour and threatened to bombard the town unless immediate delivery were made of 18 seamen who, having been wrecked in northern waters, were held by the Japanese preparatory to shipment for Batavia. In 1849 another despatch reached Yedo from the king of Holland announcing that an American fleet might be expected in Japanese waters a year later, and that, unless Japan agreed to enter into friendly commercial relations, war must ensue. Appended to this despatch was an approximate draft of the treaty which would be presented for signature, together with a copy of a memorandum addressed by the Washington government to European nations, justifying the contemplated expedition on the ground that it would inure to the advantage of Japan as well as to that of the Occident.

In 1853, Commodore Perry, with a squadron of four ships-of-war and 560 men, entered Uraga Bay. So formidable a foreign force had not been seen in Japanese waters since the coming of the Mongol Armada. A panic ensued among the people—the same people who, in the days of Hideyoshi or Iyeyasu, would have gone out to encounter these ships with assured confidence of victory. The contrast did not stop there. The shōgun, whose ancestors had administered the country’s affairs with absolutely autocratic authority, now summoned a council of the feudatories to consider the situation; and the Imperial court in Kiōto, which never appealed for heaven’s aid except in a national emergency such as had never been witnessed since the creation of the shōgunate, now directed that at the seven principal shrines and at all the great temples special prayers should be offered for the safety of the land and for the destruction of the aliens. Thus the appearance of the American squadron awoke in the cause of the country as a whole a spirit of patriotism hitherto confined to feudal interests. The shōgun does not seem to have had any thought of invoking that spirit: his part in raising it was involuntary and his ministers behaved with perplexed vacillation. The infirmity of the Yedo Administration’s purpose presented such a strong contrast to the single-minded resolution of the Imperial court that the prestige of the one was largely impaired and that of the other correspondingly enhanced. Perry, however, was without authority to support his proposals by any recourse to violence. The United States government had relied solely on the moral effect of his display of force, and his countrymen had supplied him with a large collection of the products of peaceful progress, from sewing machines to miniature railways. He did not unduly press for a treaty, but after lying at anchor off Uraga during a period of ten days and after transmitting the president’s letter to the sovereign of Japan, he steamed away on the 17th of July, announcing his return in the ensuing spring. The conduct of the Japanese subsequently to his departure showed how fully and rapidly they had acquired the conviction that the appliances of their old civilization were powerless to resist the resources of the new. Orders were issued rescinding the long-enforced veto against the construction of sea-going ships; the feudal chiefs were invited to build and arm large vessels; the Dutch were commissioned to furnish a ship of war and to procure from Europe all the best works on modern military science; every one who had acquired any expert knowledge through the medium of Deshima was taken into official favour; forts were built; cannon were cast and troops were drilled. But from all this effort there resulted only fresh evidence of the country’s inability to defy foreign insistence, and on the 2nd of December 1853, instructions were issued that if the Americans returned, they were to be dealt with peacefully. The sight of Perry’s steam-propelled ships, their powerful guns and all the specimens they carried of western wonders, had practically broken down the barriers of Japan’s isolation without any need of treaties or conventions. Perry returned in the following February, and after an interchange of courtesies and formalities extending over six weeks, obtained a treaty pledging Japan to accord kind treatment to shipwrecked sailors; to permit foreign vessels to obtain stores and provisions within her territory, and to allow American ships to anchor in the ports at Shimoda and Hakodate. On this second occasion Perry had 10 ships with crews numbering two thousand, and when he landed to sign the treaty, he was escorted by a guard of honour mustering 500 strong in 27 boats. Much has been written about his judicious display of force and his sagacious tact in dealing with the Japanese, but it may be doubted whether the consequences of his exploit have not invested its methods with extravagant lustre. Standing on the threshold of modern Japan’s wonderful career, his figure shines by the reflected light of its surroundings.

Russia, Holland and England speedily secured for themselves treaties similar to that concluded by Commodore Perry in 1854. But Japan’s doors still remained closed to foreign commerce, and it was reserved for another citizen of the great republic to open them. This was Townsend Harris (1803-1878), the first U.S. consul-general in Japan. Arriving in August 1856, he concluded, in June of the following year, a treaty securing to American citizens the privilege of permanent residence at Shimoda and Hakodate, the opening of Nagasaki, the right of consular jurisdiction and certain minor concessions. Still, however, permission for commercial intercourse was withheld, and Harris, convinced that this great goal could not be reached unless he made his way to Yedo and conferred direct with the shōgun’s ministers, pressed persistently for leave to do so. Ten months elapsed before he succeeded, and such a display of reluctance on the Japanese side was very unfavourably criticized in the years immediately subsequent. Ignorance of the country’s domestic politics inspired the critics. The Yedo administration, already weakened by the growth of a strong public sentiment in favour of abolishing the dual system of government—that of the mikado in Kiōto and that of the shōgun in Yedo—had been still further discredited by its own timid policy as compared with the stalwart mien of the throne towards the question of foreign intercourse. Openly to sanction commercial relations at such a time would have been little short of reckless. The Perry convention and the first Harris convention could be construed, and were purposely construed, as mere acts of benevolence towards strangers; but a commercial treaty would not have lent itself to any such construction, and naturally the shōgun’s ministers hesitated to agree to an apparently suicidal step. Harris carried his point, however. He was received by the shōgun in Yedo in November 1857, and on the 29th of July 1858 a treaty was signed in Yedo, engaging that Yokohama should be opened on the 4th of July 1859 and that commerce between the United States and Japan should thereafter be freely carried on there. This treaty was actually concluded by the shōgun’s Ministers in defiance of their failure to obtain the sanction of the sovereign in Kiōto. Foreign historians have found much to say about Japanese duplicity in concealing the subordinate position occupied by the Yedo administration towards the Kiōto court. Such condemnation is not consistent with fuller knowledge. The Yedo authorities had power to solve all problems of foreign intercourse without reference to Kiōto. Iyeyasu had not seen any occasion to seek imperial assent when he granted unrestricted liberty of trade to the representatives of the East India Company, nor had Iyemitsu asked for Kiōto’s sanction when he issued his decree for the expulsion of all foreigners. If, in the 19th century, Yedo shrank from a responsibility which it had unhesitatingly assumed in the 17th, the cause was to be found, not in the shōgun’s simulation of autonomy, but in his desire to associate the throne with a policy which, while recognizing it to be unavoidable, he distrusted his own ability to make the nation accept. But his ministers had promised Harris that the treaty should be signed, and they kept their word, at a risk of which the United States’ consul-general had no conception. Throughout these negotiations Harris spared no pains to create in the minds of the Japanese an intelligent conviction that the world could no longer be kept at arm’s length, and though it is extremely problematical whether he would have succeeded had not the Japanese themselves already arrived at that very conviction, his patient and lucid expositions coupled with a winning personality undoubtedly produced much impression. He was largely assisted, too, by recent events in China, where the Peihō forts had been captured and the Chinese forced to sign a treaty at Tientsin. Harris warned the Japanese that the British fleet might be expected at any moment in Yedo Bay, and that the best way to avert irksome demands at the hands of the English was to establish a comparatively moderate precedent by yielding to America’s proposals.

This treaty could not be represented, as previous conventions had been, in the light of a purely benevolent concession. It definitely provided for the trade and residence of foreign merchants, and thus finally terminated Japan’s traditional isolation. Moreover, it had been concluded in defiance of the Throne’s refusal to sanction anything of the kind. Much excitement resulted. The nation ranged itself into three parties. One comprised the advocates of free intercourse and progressive liberality; another, while insisting that only the most limited privileges should be accorded to aliens, was of two minds as to the advisability of offering armed resistance at once or temporizing so as to gain time for preparation; the third advocated uncompromising seclusion. Once again the shōgun convoked a meeting of the feudal barons, hoping to secure their co-operation. But with hardly an exception they pronounced against yielding. Thus the shōgunate saw itself compelled to adopt a resolutely liberal policy: it issued a decree in that sense, and thenceforth the administrative court at Yedo and the Imperial court in Kiōto stood in unequivocal opposition to each other, the Conservatives ranging themselves on the side of the latter, the Liberals on that of the former. It was a situation full of perplexity to outsiders, and the foreign 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 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 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 could suppose that this parade of force was for purely peaceful purposes, or that rejection of the amicable bargain proposed by Great Britain’s representative would be followed by the quiet withdrawal of the menacing fleet, whose terrible potentialities had been demonstrated at Kagoshima and Shimonoseki. The seclusionists, whose voices had been nearly silenced, raised them in renewed denunciation of the shōgun’s incompetence to guarantee the sacred city of Kiōto against such trespasses, and the emperor, brought once more under the influence of the anti-foreign party, inflicted a heavy disgrace on the shōgun by dismissing and punishing the officials to whom the latter had entrusted the conduct of negotiations at Hiōgō. Such procedure on the part of the throne amounted to withdrawing the administrative commission held by the Tokugawa family since the days of Iyeyasu. The shōgun resigned. But his adversaries not being yet ready to replace him, he was induced to resume office, with, however, fatally damaged prestige. As for the three-power squadron, it steamed away successful. Parkes had come prepared to write off the indemnity in exchange for three concessions. He obtained two of the concessions without remitting a dollar of the debt.

The shōgun did not long survive the humiliation thus inflicted on him. He died in the following year (1866), and was succeeded by Keiki, destined to be the last of the Tokugawa rulers. Nine years previously this same Keiki had been put forward by the seclusionists as candidate for the shōgunate. Yet no sooner did he attain that distinction in 1866 than he remodelled the army on French lines, engaged English officers to organize a navy, sent his brother to the Paris Exhibition, and altered many of the forms and ceremonies of his court so as to bring them into accord with Occidental fashions. The contrast between the politics he represented when a candidate for office in 1857 and the practice he adopted on succeeding to power in 1866 furnished an apt illustration of the change that had come over the spirit of the time. The most bigoted of the exclusionists were now beginning to abandon all idea of expelling foreigners and to think mainly of acquiring the best elements of their civilization. The Japanese are slow to reach a decision but very quick to act upon it when reached. From 1866 onwards the new spirit rapidly permeated the whole nation; progress became the aim of all classes, and the country entered upon a career of intelligent assimilation which, in forty years, won for Japan a universally accorded place in the ranks of the great Occidental powers.

[Continued in volume XV slice III.]

The highest rate of subscription to a daily journal is twelve shillings per annum, and the usual charge for advertisement is from 7d. to one shilling per line of 22 ideographs (about nine words).

It is first boiled in a lye obtained by lixiviating wood ashes; it is next polished with charcoal powder; then immersed in plum vinegar and salt; then washed with weak lye and placed in a tub of water to remove all traces of alkali, the final step being to digest in a boiling solution of copper sulphate, verdigris and water.

This method is some 300 years old. It is by no means a modern invention, as some writers have asserted.

Obtained from the shell of the Halictis.

In 1877 there were 120 English engineers, drivers and foremen in the service of the railway bureau. Three years later only three advisers remained.

The largest is the mitsubishi at Nagasaki. It has a length of 722 ft. Next stands the kawasaki at Kobe, and in the third place is the uraga.

They were called fuda-sashi (ticket-holders), a term derived from the fact that rice-vouchers were usually held in a split bamboo which was thrust into a pile of rice-bags to indicate their buyer.

In 1725, when the population of Yedo was about three-quarters of a million, the merchandise that entered the city was 861,893 bags of rice; 795,856 casks of sake; 132,892 casks of soy (fish-sauce); 18,209,987 bundles of fire-wood; 809,790 bags of charcoal; 90,811 tubs of oil; 1,670,850 bags of salt and 3,613,500 pieces of cotton cloth.

Some derive this term from mika, an ancient Japanese term for “great,” and to, “place.”

The names given in italics are those more commonly used. Those in the first column are generally of pure native derivation; those in the second column are composed of the Chinese word shū, a “province,” added to the Chinese pronunciation of one of the characters with which the native name is written. In a few cases both names are used.

The mayor of a town (shichō) is nominated by the minister for home affairs from three men chosen by the town assembly.

The term hyaku-shō, here translated “working man,” means literally “one engaged in any of the various callings” apart from military service. In a later age a further distinction was established between the agriculturist, the artisan, and the trader, and the word hyaku-shō then came to carry the signification of “husbandman” only.

A tent was simply a space enclosed with strips of cloth or silk, on which was emblazoned the crest of the commander. It had no covering.

The Japanese never at any time of their history used poisoned arrows; they despised them as depraved and inhuman weapons.

The general term for commoners as distinguished from samurai.

The privilege at first led to great abuses. It became a common thing to employ some aged and indigent person, set him up as the head of a “branch family,” and give him for adopted son a youth liable to conscription.

Conscription without lot is thus the punishment for all failures to comply with and attempts to evade the military laws.

Sons of officers’ widows, or of officers in reduced circumstances, are educated at these schools either free or at reduced charges, but are required to complete the course and to graduate.

Uniform does not vary according to regiments or divisions. There is only one type for the whole of the infantry, one for the cavalry, and so on (see Uniforms, Naval and Military). Officers largely obtain their uniforms and equipment, as well as their books and technical literature through the Kai-ko-sha, which is a combined officers’ club, benefit society and co-operative trading association to which nearly all belong.

The term maru subsequently became applicable to merchantmen only, war-ships being distinguished as kan.

The reader should be warned that absolute accuracy cannot be claimed for statistics compiled before the Meiji era.

The yen is a silver coin worth about 2s.: 10 yen = £1.

In addition to the above grant, the feudatories were allowed to retain the reserves in their treasuries; thus many of the feudal nobles found themselves possessed of substantial fortunes, a considerable part of which they generally devoted to the support of their former vassals.

The Bank of Japan was established as a joint-stock company in 1882. The capital in 1909 was 30,000,000 yen. In it alone is vested note-issuing power. There is no limit to its issues against gold or silver coins and bullion, but on other securities (state bonds, treasury bills and other negotiable bonds or commercial paper) its issues are limited to 120 millions, any excess over that figure being subject to a tax of 5% per annum.

The amounts include the payments made in connexion with what may be called the disestablishment of the Church. There were 29,805 endowed temples and shrines throughout the empire, and their estates aggregated 354,481 acres, together with 1¾ million bushels of rice (representing 2,500,000 yen). The government resumed possession of all these lands and revenues at a total cost to the state of a little less than 2,500,000 yen, paid out in pensions spread over a period of fourteen years. The measure sounds like wholesale confiscation. But some extenuation is found in the fact that the temples and shrines held their lands and revenues under titles which, being derived from the feudal chiefs, depended for their validity on the maintenance of feudalism.

This sum represents interest-bearing bonds issued in exchange for fiat notes, with the idea of reducing the volume of the latter. It was a tentative measure, and proved of no value.

In this is included a sum of 110,000,000 yen distributed in the form of loan-bonds among the officers and men of the army and navy by way of reward for their services during the war of 1904-5.

When war broke out in 1904 the local administrative districts took steps to reduce their outlays, so that whereas the expenditures totalled 158,000,000 yen in 1903-1904, they fell to 122,000,000 and 126,000,000 in 1904-1905 and 1905-1906 respectively. Thereafter however, they expanded once more.

This includes 22¼ millions of loans raised abroad.

The problem was to induce the co-operation of a feudatory whose castle served for frontier guard to the fief of a powerful chief, his suzerain. The feudatory was a Christian. Nobunaga seized the Jesuits in Kiōto, and threatened to suppress their religion altogether unless they persuaded the feudatory to abandon the cause of his suzerain.

The mutilation was confined to the lobe of one ear. Crucifixion, according to the Japanese method, consisted in tying to a cross and piercing the heart with two sharp spears driven from either side. Death was always instantaneous.

See A History of Christianity in Japan (1910), by Otis Cary.

The Imperial cities were Yedo, Kiōto, Osaka and Nagasaki. To this last the English were subsequently admitted. They were also invited to Kagoshima by the Shimazu chieftain, and, had not their experience at Hirado proved so deterrent, they might have established a factory at Kagoshima.

A History of Japan (Murdoch and Yamagata).

H.M.S. “Phaeton,” which entered that port in 1808.