“When in the Land of the Morning, I came as Ambassador, aiming to reach the Eastern Capital, many days passed while the ships lay at anchor in a place called the harbor of Yokohama. One day, in order to beguile the tedium of waiting, we gathered on board and feasted. After sunset the moon rose resplendent, and, in playful mood, I sang this verse:
On Musashi’s bright sea,
The rising moon,
In California
Makes setting gloom.
“Taira Hiraki [Sakuma Shozan] composed this, putting himself in the place of the American Envoy.”
Translated by T. Harada and Wm. Elliot Griffis.
So painful had been the experience of the Japanese that they determined that thereafter no Christian should ever have a foothold in their country; and for nearly three hundred years they were very nearly faithful to this resolve.
The Dutch did, indeed, manage to establish something of a trading station at Nagasaki. The Dutch were from the early days adroit and enterprising traders, but the conditions to which they submitted were so humiliating that the Japanese held them in the heartiest contempt. In fact, the Japanese during the nineteenth century had come to believe that the Christian world had really no thought unconnected with the greed of material gain; and when the clear-eyed historian looks over that world as a whole he cannot escape the feeling that the Japanese were almost justified in their faith. A people who worship Beauty and Art are justified in their contempt for those who worship the twin gods of Utility and Profit.
Nevertheless it is certain that with the introduction of Western civilization wrought by the American fleet the Japanese standards of Liberty and Justice have been immeasurably raised. And that is to say that the Japanese people have gained in happiness more than greedy Western traders have gained in material profits, while the result of spreading the knowledge of Japanese art over the rest of the civilized world needs nothing more than mere mention here. It is with good reason that the American people recall the work under Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry with hearty pride.