Makers of Japan

by J. Morris

(a) To fortify all points of strategical importance on the coast territories.

(b) To prohibit the export of copper to Holland, and to undertake the manufacture of a large number of cannon. (The impression conveyed is that many thousands of such guns were to be cast, and that the material was to be bronze.)

(c) To build powerful men-of-war, on the Western model.

(d) To promote the trade with foreign countries, by every means at command, external commerce being essential to the national development, and at the same time to put a check on the self-seeking ambitions of the Dutch merchants at Nagasaki, and induce them to abandon their evil ways.

(e) To strengthen the navy. (Considering that Japan was not supposed to have had a navy until quite recent years, this provision would at first sight appear to be somewhat superfluous, but the reference is, of course, to the very few sailing vessels fit to carry guns which had been built in the days of the Tokugawa regime, on lines that had been handed down to the native shipbuilders from the time of Will Adams, the sailor and shipwright of London, who, after his vessel’s wreck on the Japanese coast, at the dawn of the seventeenth century, entered the employ of the then Shogun, and for the remainder of his life devoted himself to the service of his adopted country.)

(f) To establish schools and in every way spread a knowledge of the benefits of a liberal education.

(g) To familiarise people with the principles of sound government, by the introduction of beneficent regulations, and to lead them to appreciate its advantages by the establishment of organised rule on enlightened methods.

(h) To employ only the more intelligent persons in offices of higher rank.

It will readily be comprehended that these recommendations, had they been adopted, would at the outset have involved such sweeping reforms in the methods of administration as would have procured for Sakuma in any case a whole host of enemies, for there were vested interests to be considered in those times as in every age, and it is not at all surprising to learn that his proposals were not received with any degree of favour: admirable as they were in conception, they struck at the very root of the system on which the Tokugawa rule was based, after the closing of the country to foreign intercourse in 1638, which was that of complete seclusion from the rest of the world, and the memorandum was, as might be said, pigeon-holed for future reference.