"brought about by the direct action of the ruling classes with a view to make out their case" against international trade; the Shōgun's councillors, who naturally shrunk from exposing to the gaze of strangers all the intricate, scarcely explicable, and in many respects humiliating complications of their domestic policy, were charged with "sparing no efforts to keep from the Foreign Representatives all sources of exact or reliable information,"[1] and with "misleading and deceiving them as to the real state of things;" and, finally, Japan, seething with elements of unrest that defied the analysis even of her own statesmen, was denounced as a country "where it was difficult to obtain even a modicum of truth" because her condition could not be readily made clear to strangers ignorant of her history and out of all sympathy with her perplexities.
The reader is invited to consider this retrospect, not as reflecting injuriously on the procedure of the foreign diplomatic agents, but merely as illustrating the aspect their moods and methods presented to the Japanese. It must not be forgotten that the enigma of Japanese affairs seemed quite insolvable to foreigners in the early days; that the mysteries surrounding them were well calculated to excite suspicion; and that the murderous outrages of which they were the victims could not fail to provoke passionate resentment.
What has thus far been written applies chiefly
- ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
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