With his knowledge of the history and institutions of his country, the Author was able to fill up the blanks in short notices of history contained in elementary Japanese books. He was further enabled to go over the red-books of the empire, which enter into the details of the pedigrees of illustrious families, and into the minutiæ of Government offices.
The supposed unalterable character of these institutions induces those who have any pretensions to learning in China and Japan to master and retain by memory the names and duties of the different offices in the various departments of Government; and they are frequently found to be good authorities upon questions upon which there is no published information.
In the history of the intercourse of the Jesuits with Japan, the letters of the fathers have been almost the only authorities relied upon; while in the more recent events contemporary publications have been used.
In taking notes from the conversation of a Japanese who could speak but little English, in too many cases they were written down in what is known in China as “pigeon English”; and the Author has to acknowledge and regret that in many cases the cramped nature of the notes has not been entirely removed, and for such instances he craves the indulgence of the reader.
HISTORY OF JAPAN
CHAPTER I
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY AND COURT
Man, in the earlier periods of his existence, when he was as yet putting forth his juvenile strength to subdue creation, was ever inclined to look upon the great forces of nature as difficulties in his path and obstacles to his progress, which, in his more mature strength, he has come to regard as aids to help him, and to cherish as the very means to the attainment of his ends. Such an object of awe to the earlier mariner was the great ocean, when he had no compass to guide him over its unknown and apparently boundless expanse, and with no knowledge of the winds and no experience of the currents. When he had no means of keeping food or fresh water for any great length of time, he was a bold man who would venture far out of sight of land. Provided with the faithful compass, men became bolder; they enlarged their vessels, making longer voyages, until they ran over the length and breadth of the Eastern seas. Still the China Sea, with its typhoons and its monsoons and currents, down to a comparatively recent period, was looked upon as an obstacle which was to be smoothed down and not to be wrestled with. To beat up the China Sea against the northeastern monsoon was considered a rash struggle and a fool hardy waste of time, and in consequence the trade-voyages to China were confined to vessels going up the sea in summer with the southerly monsoon and returning in winter with the northerly. Obstacles such as these made mariners unwilling to run the risk of pushing up the sea the length of Shanghai or Japan, when the time of their return was a matter of so much doubt.
In the present age, when man is thinking himself of some importance from the little odds and ends of knowledge he has stored up, the ocean, instead of being a barrier of separation between islands and continents, has become what the Mediterranean Sea was to the Old World—a link of connection, a highway of commerce, and steam has become a bridge by which distant shores have been joined together. The world is now finding out that she is one—that the interests of nations are one, and that no one part of the body can say to the other, “I have no need of thee.” If Japan has hitherto felt herself in a position to use such an expression to her fellow-members of the body cosmopolitan, and the feeling has been responded to by their acquiescence, the time and circumstances seem to have arrived when this seclusion is to be ended. The distance at which these islands seemed to lie from the heart of the world’s circulation, Europe, has been almost annihilated, and European nations have through the settlements in India and China crept up alongside of the isles of the East. The difficulties of access have been smoothed away, her sumptuary laws have been abrogated, while the produce of her rich soil is daily increasing to meet the demands which are made upon it, and which she is becoming willing and ready to exchange for that of which she is more in need.
Steam has been the active agent in bringing about these changes, causing the pulses of trade to beat with greater frequency and with increased vigor. But to any one who looks below the surface there may be seen other agents at work, all concurring at this crisis in the world’s existence to produce changes of portentous magnitude. The discoveries of chemistry, whether by the aggressive forces obtained in the manufacture of munitions of war, or by the more widely extended but silent beneficial operations of such an agent as quinine, steam with all its ramifications of wealth, the telegraph with its tenfold power of convertibility, the discovery of gold at the most remote parts of the world, have combined to produce, by the sudden influx of real wealth, by the intermingling of ranks of men, and by the rapid throwing into men’s minds of a quantity of information or of knowledge, a condition of things in the mass which makes that mass kneadable by those who can knead it, and fitted for the reception of any leaven, for good or for evil, which may be mixed with it. The mingling of ranks in the social system, the disturbance of creeds in the religious, the confounding of parties in the political, are preparing the way for some world-wide change, by which old systems are to be done away and new established. It is not working in one nation alone, but in all: it is not confined to Christendom, showing that the time to come is not to be like times past; but that the time is coming when it is possible for one person to aim at one rule over the whole world. This change is coming up like the rising of water. It may overwhelm all existing things like a wave. Some call it Progress, others Democracy, but, whatever it be, it is evident that every existing institution is to get such a shaking that only the things that cannot be shaken will stand.