JAPAN
treasuries of the feudal chiefs also became depleted, the purchasing power of all incomes having been greatly reduced by the financial abuses of the Shogunate. Many of the nobles were heavily indebted to wealthy merchants, and few retained any sentiment of loyalty towards the Yedo Court. Japan was now visited by a calamity to which she is particularly liable, scarcity of bread-stuff owing to failure of the rice-crop, which is of as much importance to her as wheat and beef combined are to England. A three years' famine afflicted the nation, from 1833 to 1835. Starving folk began to wander about committing outrages, and one of the Shōgun's trusted vassals, a man[1] of the highest repute, headed an abortive rebellion. Then, in 1838, the Yedo Castle was destroyed by fire, and a special levy, in the form of a heavy income tax, had to be resorted to.
Amid all these troubles the Dutch at Nagasaki sent information to Yedo that British vessels might be expected at any moment, carrying some shipwrecked Japanese subjects. The Dutch, it may be observed, lost no opportunity of arousing Japanese suspicion against the English. Commercial rivalry was not more scrupulous in those days than it is at present. It happened that a man of exceptional ability and resolution, Mizuno Tadakuni, was then at the head of the Yedo administration. He issued an order that, for whatever purpose foreign ships came, they must be
- ↑ See Appendix, note 26.
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