LL through the night, while Mori and other Imperialists looked interrogatively to the forces within and without the country, and while the dreaded foreigners kept careful watch upon their ships, native artisans reared the structure afterwards known in the memories of the strangers as the “Treaty House.”
Simple as was the building, its erection was attended with certain outward signs which would have led the observer to identify in them the same spirit pervading the market-place, the open public gathering space, the theatres, the shops.
Those who labored under torch-light, an unusual proceeding in itself, were impressed with a misshapen, grotesque, wholly undefined fear. Artisans as they were, they realized, if subconsciously, that their act had in it the germs of a future—dark and ominous, their instincts asserted. The Japanese officials—of a minor grade—who directed the work, being higher in the scale of intelligence, were by no means so vague in their minds. They believed firmly that the raising of this simple building meant the downfall of their country, its government, its institutions. Rapacious foreigners for two centuries had insulted them and flouted at Japan, had returned to accept no delay or parley.
Indeed, certain sub-rosa expressions of opinion and declarations of purpose among officers of the fleet, translated to them by visitors to the foreign ships of that alien nation alone tolerated in Japan at this period—the Dutch—had deepened the alarm. The strangers had said in effect: “No nation has a right to withdraw herself from the comity and commerce of other nations. Japan must come to this view; amicably, if possible, but through cannoned arguments if not otherwise.”
Every act of the strangers thus far had been in accord with this secret expression of policy. The reserve and punctilious etiquette of the Japanese had been met with a bold advance by Commodore Perry’s squadron. At each pretext for delay advanced by the Japanese the ships had moved nearer to Yedo, believed by the officers of the squadron, knowing nothing of the Shogun-Emperor relationship, to be the capital of the Emperor of Japan.
When Perry had been told that he might deliver his letters and credentials to minor officials, he had replied that first they must send to him commissioners second in rank only to the Emperor. Perry himself, imitating the seclusion of those whom he sought to reach, took care to be seen or approached by no Japanese, delegating inferior officers to the task. Now for the first time he was to show himself to the people, and the nobles, the princes Aidzu and Catzu, in their capacity of high commissioners were to meet him.
Thus it was that all watched the work upon the Treaty House in sullen emotion. The workmen themselves moved in complete silence, which was broken not by word, but only by the noise of their operations. Their superiors gave their instructions by gesture or brief word.
The building itself was not pretentious, although its situation on a slight elevation near the water was central, in full view of the fleet out in the bay, and was overlooked by the surrounding heights and bluffs. It consisted of an ante-chamber and a long audience-hall, around whose side a sort of divan had been built. At the head of this apartment a number of chairs were placed for the comfort of the foreigners. In the centre of the space, upon a raised platform, whose tapestries and hangings suggested the altar of some semi-barbarian church, stood an immense, red-lacquered box, destined for the reception of the papers brought by the foreigners for transmittal to the “Emperor.”
In the distance were the encampments containing the retinues of the princes Aidzu and Catzu, to which the artisans withdrew when, as a final touch of preparation, they had secluded the entire surrounding of the Treaty House by the erection of huge bamboo and silken screens.
All were now awaiting the hour of eleven in the morning, the hour set for the ceremonial. The departure of a boat from the Susquehanna was observed. In addition to its rowing crew, it contained a single officer in the stern.