The white men knew very little about Japan until the sixteenth century. No overland travellers, like Marco Polo, had been there to bring back news to the West. About the middle of the sixteenth century a few Portuguese trading vessels touched it, and the very famous Jesuit missionary Xavier introduced Christianity. Here, however, as elsewhere, the Jesuits seem to have caused trouble by interfering with politics, and the exclusion of the foreigners was enforced more strictly than ever. Gradually, especially towards the end of the eighteenth century, trade with foreigners began to grow, chiefly with the Dutch, the Russians, and the Americans.
But still Japan continued, like China, to hold aloof as much as possible from all intercourse with the West, and with its science and progress. America at length took the decided step of sending a strong naval force and demanding the opening of a port to American ships of trade. This was in 1850, but the real opening up of the country did not begin until after the end of feudalism and the establishment of the Mikado's single power in 1867. And then a most extraordinary change did happen—a change perhaps more extraordinary than any other of which we find record in the whole history of mankind.
We may describe the story of China for many centuries as the story of a people buried in a profound sleep. She shows but little immediate sign of awaking from that slumber even to-day. The story of Japan in the latter half of the nineteenth century we may designate as the most astonishing awakening of a nation out of slumber that the world has ever known.
Even now the part played by great China is only a passive, a negative part (except, of course, so far as her own people are concerned), but the part played by little Japan, though perfectly passive until some two-thirds of the nineteenth century had gone, has been startlingly vigorous and effective. The truth is that beneath the slumbering surface the spirit of the people had always been active, inquiring, ready for any novelty that struck them as valuable—in great contrast to the indifference of the Chinese. Their seclusion had been forced upon them by their rulers. When that enforcement ceased, they welcomed with very keen intelligence all the progress in science and thought which steam and evolution had given to the West. In religion and in art they seem to have been satisfied to follow their own traditions, but they took every possible opportunity to learn lessons that might be of practical use. Military experts were called from Germany and naval experts from Great Britain to teach the art of war by land and sea. Scientific, educational, and legal advisers were engaged. The nation set itself with astonishing quickness to learn all that the West could teach it, and within a few years the efficiency of both army and navy were very thoroughly proved.
OLD JAPAN: ENTRANCE TO THE TOMBS, TOKIO.