“What are your intentions regarding these foreigners?”
“Are you here to treat with me, young Mori?”
“If you wish, yes. I represent a considerable party in the empire. I ask with right, for one day I shall unthrone your excellency.”
Iyesada turned himself quickly upon his elbow, while his eyes continued to scrutinize the other keenly.
“What would you do in my place?” he asked.
“Refuse their every demand and drive them into the sea,” returned Mori, as the blood tinged his cheek.
“No, you would not; that is, not if you are as far-sighted as I take you to be. Japan has been sealed to the foreigners for two hundred years, during which time she has grown strong in the development of her resources and her civilization. That period is at an end. It can never return. Foreign nations will demand trade with us. They will not depart at our refusal. They will use force, if necessary, holding that every nation must share in the comity of nations. If a nation refuse, they will divide her.”
“Pah!” said Mori, impatiently. “Is the policy, then, of our Imperial realm to be dictated by a hoard of barbarous peoples concerning whom we know naught, save what our history in the past has taught us? When in the years long past they were admitted to our lands and we opened our arms in hospitality towards them, what was our reward? Foreign disease, insolent demands, a fanatical religion, intolerant and exacting. Finally we came to be treated as dogs by these our inferiors until we were forced to expel them, since which time has not our land been the happier for our seclusion?”
“It would seem,” said Iyesada, “that you are not, in spite of the reports I have heard concerning you, keeping abreast of the times. You are not a son of the dawning new Japan; you would retard the progression which is pressing upon us from all sides.”
“I would not have this progression come from the outside. I would have my country advance from within. That is the reason I am an Imperialist. You are right, my lord; a new Japan is about to dawn, but not through the invasion of yonder barbarians, but because the rightful ruler of our country will be restored to his throne.”