III.

Side by side with the slow travail of Japanese thought, which had found once more, after centuries of error, the key-word of the nation's destiny, the invisible action of European ideas was doing its work among the élite. They slipped in unobserved by the tiny opening at Deshima. The Dutch-closely watched and contemptuously regarded though they were-inspired, nevertheless, a curiosity which was rendered keener by alarm.

Whoever had much intercourse with them became thereby suspect. The government used them as purveyors of information. They became "officers of sight and hearing" between Japan and the rest of the world. But though individuals were strictly forbidden to practise their incantations, the new ideas that crept in through the medium of their trade, infused even into the counsels of the learned the principles of Occidental science. Their pupils began to study astronomy, mathematics, medicine, botany, and natural history. It dawned upon the Japanese mind that the great Nippon was but a small section of the entire universe, and that the tyranny of the shoguns had hitherto cheated them of a priceless treasure.

From the end of the eighteenth century onward, Russian's, English, French and Americans began to appear and make soundings along the coast. Like those birds which tell the sailor that he is approaching land, their flags gave warning to the archipelago of the Sleeping Isles that the world was upon them. In 1838 a Translated for The Living Age.

certain Shojo, or his friend Kazau,-it is uncertain which, for both paid for their temerity with their lives-published under the romantic title of "The Story of a Dream," a pamphlet as curious as it was instructive. The Dutch had warned the government that an American house, desirous of trading with Japan, had fitted out a ship named the Morrison, in which they proposed to send back to their homes seven Japanese subjects, who had been shipwrecked on the coast of China. The author imagines that as he lay one evening in a dreamy state between sleeping and waking, he found himself transported to a meeting of grave and learned men, where the tidings were being discussed. Should they refuse to receive this vessel as they had refused others? Were the old laws still to be enforced in all their merciless rigor? The dialogue was conducted in the tone of good society, without raised voices or excitement of any kind. To one already acquainted with the extreme deliberation of all Japanese discussion,-the waggings of the heads, the immobility of the figure squatted around a brazierthis academic debate presents a vivid image of the twilight gatherings of the period, whose boldest encyclopædists dreamed only of a timid emancipation, speaking in hushed voices and striving to deaden, as by felt slippers moving upon noiseless matting, the footsteps of their thought. We have in this dream an epitome of their whole ethnography. It is as artless as that figure of Atlas shouldering the world with which our geographies used to be embellished. They confound the name of the ship Morrison with that of the

celebrated Chinese scholar, whom they represent as a daimio in command of twenty or thirty thousand men. Nevertheless, they do finally arrive, by curiously roundabout ways, at the point of desiring that their country should be opened, or at least that its doors should be set ajar, in the interest of science and humanity.

And so, at the very moment when western civilization is preparing to force the barriers of Japan, the government of the shogun finds arrayed against it a highly intelligent minority, who feel the need of asserting their solidarity with the human species, and are conscious at the same time of a new sentiment of nationality, which a sort of popular mysticism and a better understanding of the Shintoist faith alike summon to the support of the emperor. They are indeed brave pledges for the future. The mortgage of the Tokugawa is about to expire. Will Japan engage in one of those wars of ideas which break up the soul of a nation as soil is broken by the plough, and let the light of heaven in upon the roots of its fundamental principles?

The arrival of the American squadron under Commodore Perry, in 1852, was destined to hurry the march of events, and to transform into a veritable coup d'état the first vague sketch of a revolution.

The shogun, his pride humbled by the formidable fleet and threatening summons of the American commodore, found himself obliged to treat with the barbarians, and thus furnished his old enemies, the clan who had been vanquished by Yeyasu, with such an opportunity for revolt as might never have occurred in the monotonous life of the hermetically sealed empire. In the men of the south, of Satsuma, Kioshiu, and Tosa,-the Sat-cho-to, as they are collectively called,-the obscure idealism ever at work in the

Japanese mind materializes into an active ambition. And, as is always happening in this land of contradictions, ideas escape and are diffused like vapor. The shogunate, which favors the Europeans in spite of itself, and is swayed in that regard by one of its ablest ministers-too soon assassinated -finds arrayed against it the men who, when once they have obtained the upper hand, will show themselves the most determined partisans of European civilization. The old emperor, whose brain is befogged by superstition, and who personally hates the foreigner, refers his case to princes, who, under color of restoring him, are plotting the exploitation of his patrimony. And these princes, in their turn, are led by samurai chiefs who have already passed judgment on the ignorance and incapacity of their masters.

During the sixteen years between 1852 and 1868, preparations were silently going on for the formidable conflict which every one foresaw. The clans of the south mustered at Kioto, and invested the imperial residence, where these mayors of the enchanted palace the Kuges-were awake at last, and astir. Guerilla bands held the surrounding country, and the Court of Yeddo was fast being depopulated. The great wave of the Tokugawa was breaking in the sudden deaths of short-lived heirs. The shogun surrendered his hostages. Princesses -the wives and daughters of samurai -received the restitution of their feudal estates as sulkily as ever did a Parisienne recalled from exile at Quimper-Corentin. Their habits of luxury, their snobbishness, the fashion that obtains among them of aping the speech and poses of favorite actors, render them strange in the land of their birth, and the ladies of the provincial nobility surmise that these dolls of the shoguns will count for

very little in the big events at hand. Political caucuses are held in restaurants. Western science comes into play. If the government at Yeddo turns to us for military instruction, the Satsuma and other daimios apply to the foreigner for the means of becoming strong enough to cast the foreigner out.

And Europe in general understands nothing at all of what is going on.

Japanese embassies are sent to Europe, and the men who compose them take account of the inferiority of Japan; nevertheless when they return to their country, their reverence for prevailing illusions, the sense of their own youth and of their utter inability to convince the valiant and pugnacious old matamores, added to the prospect of their own speedy succession to power when they will be able astutely to reap the benefit of blunders made and hopes deceived-all these motives combine to close their lips and cause them to rally smilingly to the support of a policy which aims at the overthrow of the shogunate as a preliminary to the expulsion of the stranger.

The shogunate was virtually annihilated in the very first batle. The last of the Tokugawa, Keiki-a clever man, but more apt at turning a Chinese poem than at commanding an armyweary of the fight before it was fairly begun, and only too happy to decorate his weakness with the name of patriotism, abandoned his northern fleet and surrendered without a thought of his regiments and ships stationed in other places. The revolution was consummated-to the amazement of the revolutionists themselves.

The shogunate had been considered mighty, and behold the worm-eaten machine collapsed of itself-and the earth did not tremble under the shock of its fall! Only a cloud of dust arose, and when it cleared away there were the European Powers calmly posted

on the coast of Japan and mildly but firmly requiring of the youthful emperor the fulfilment of the shogunal promises.

I have had the honor of conversing with several of the Imperialist leaders who conducted that coup d'état, and who, from simple samurai, at once became great statesmen and magnates of the empire-such as the Marquis Ito, Marshal Yamagata, and Count Okuma. All agreed in admitting that they were confounded by the abruptness of their victory. But the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from it all is expressed in the words of yet another Japanese:-"Unfortunately for us," he said to me, "the revolution was over too soon. The little fishes come readily to the surface. It requires a long upheaval before the larger fry who live in the depths of the stream emerge into the light." The gale was not violent enough to shake the country to its foundations. Men were expecting a hurricane and they got off with a stiff blow. The most remarkable, probably, of modern revolutions was accomplished as if by magic, and the very men who provoked, or fancied that they provoked it, were unconscious of its extent.

It was a revolution in which abstract ideas bore no part. The only one which it pretended to formulate-that of the expulsion of strangers-was absolutely impracticable. The princes of Satsuma and Choshiu, who proposed to intimidate and even to cannonade the European invader, were the first to succumb to the civilizing influence of his artillery. What could they do under the very eyes of the barbarians? The imperialist samurai who had received a formal promise that the foreigner should be forced to evacuate the land of the gods, asked every morning whether the intruder was to go that day. The reply he received was an exhortation to patience, and grad

ually--though no one ever admitted it -the fact became apparent that the intruder himself had become an indispensable element in the imperial restoration. But for him, discord would immediately break out among the southern clans, who were united against the shogun, but would be far otherwise if it came to a division of his spoil. The menace of Europe had become the best defence of the emperor; and the perception of this fact worked like a precious leaven and awoke, in the Japanese mind, a new conception of patriotism. Hitherto the country had been for the individual only a village, a clan, a province, an island. Now it had suddenly widened, so as to embrace the entire archipelago in one magnetic net. The feudal fences were about to be overthrown, the feudal ditches filled, the distinctions of class abolished. Between 1868 and 1875-thanks to the mere presence of certain Europeans-a small group of irresponsible ministers, kuges and samurai, were able wholly to demolish the feudal régime.

Their task was made easy. The people, careless of what was going on or amused by it, never stirred hand or foot. The majority of the daimios gave up their prerogatives with as good a will as the prisoner's who gives up his chains. They were not only liberated, but they were paid. Their purses were filled, and they had no longer to endure the offensive control of their inferiors. Never were barons more incommoded by their baronies. It was a race to see who would free himself first.

Unhappily the four hundred thousand samurai who lived on the property of the daimios, the "masters of the four classes," as they were called, seemed to be in a less pliable humor. The revolution which they had been so furiously fomenting for sixteen years, the victory which intoxicated them

for one hour, reacted against them. selves. Yesterday they were its instru ments; to-day they had become obstacles in its path. For ten centuries their order had ruled the archipelago; they had written its history and legends in their own blood; they had constituted all its moral greatness and unity. The sword that hung beside them was their "living soul." Whatever of disinterestedness or delicacy the civilization of Japan had brought forth, was identified with them. If any question ever arose of public grievances or governmental reform, they reserved to themselves in their solemn integrity, the privilege of ripping up their own intestines. The chief anxiety of men overtaken by revolution is usually to save their lives; all these people asked was to be guaranteed the high privilege of suicide. Poor souls! The effeminate lives of the daimios had relaxed their old enthusiasm for obedience; but their hearts were true to the interests of their clan. Their affections clung to the site of the feudal chateau and hovered about the dismantled temple. The one real desire of these strange revolutionists was stability.

The frame

work of society might be remodelled if only it could immediately be made to wear a look of immutability. The greatest man among them, Saigo of Satsuma, elaborated a political program which aimed at establishing a form of government that would "require no further change for a thousand years."

With the exception of a few princes, all the men in power had sprung from their class; parvenus like Okubo, Kido, Ito, Okuma, all belonged to southern clans; but ambition, patriotism, some acquaintance with Europe had removed them out of their place. In Okubo the taciturn, a petty samurai of Satsuma and the personal enemy of Saïgo, was embodied a rich deposit of

the hoarded intelligence of that province. He understood perfectly that a modern people can have no organization without a national army; yet the enrolment of merchauts and mere farmers under the same standard with high-born volunteers was a blow at the fundamental principle of the order of samurai.

Deprived of their swords, reduced to a pension, which those who granted it were in a great hurry to pay off, duped and duped again, used by politicians who speculated alternately upon their ignorance and their pride-these unfortunates made a vain attempt at rebellion. Saïgo, big-headed, bull-necked, wearing an impenetrable mask, filled the mountains of Kiushiu with bloodshed which was already an anachronism. But these men, divided as they were by feudal barriers, could never have vanquished troops for whom the interior frontiers had no existence. They had no choice but to come into the compact of new cities. The emperor introduced railways; newspapers multiplied. That vulgar purveyor of Occidental and especially American novelties, Fukusawa, after publishing a "Historical Geography of the World" which inflamed the imaginations of the Japanese, launched a manifesto entitled "Let us Love Knowledge," wherein the pamphleteer made light of the barren honor of the samurai, and seriously maintained that the death of a hero who disembowels himself is no more profitable to the commonwealth than that of the merest Kurumaya!

Alas, the most grievous result of the Japanese revolution was that the men who achieved it found, thereby, employment for their inferior qualities only! Its effect upon the public conscience was to subvert all existing notions. The uncompromising virtue of the samurai isolated them in the midst of a society where intellectual curiosity was beginning to carry the

over

day aristocratic puritanism. They could hold no place in the new order, save by compounding with their old ideal; and the first stages of their new elevation were singularly like a decline. They had ceased to be admired for strict obedience, stoical courage and contempt both of money and of death; and the men among them who succeeded best were those who could conduct a palace intrigue most successfully or make the best bargain for their princes with the rice-merchants of Osaka. Good business-men had been born in the shadow of the daimiat, and the scornful astuteness of the order had produced small Machiavels. The best of the old nobility-those whom I should call the Quakers of Confucianism, lived in close retirement. Others,-a great many others-victims of an utterly unpractical education, after spending the very trifling sum which the government had awarded them for ten centuries of glory, disabled by having been deprived of their swords and unfit for manual labor of any kind, slid rapidly down a steep descent, and landed in the most distressing compromises. death than before life, showed that honor so easily confounded with punctilio, affords but a fragile support to those who trust it exclusively. The future alone can determine with certainty whether it was absolutely necessary, in the interest of Japan, that statesmen who were samurai themselves should make of their own brethren so melancholy an example.

Braver before

their example

The new order in Japan was thus inaugurated, if not by a wholesale bankruptcy of honor, at least by the sacrifice of a certain kind of honor which had been for a long time the currency of noble souls. From this point onward the history of the country seems to me, for all its complexity, merely an illustration of the gradual conquest by the