CHAPTER XX

JAPAN. AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY

We returned to Yedo and the next few weeks were spent in the usual humdrum way, transacting routine business, cursing the heat and the mosquitoes, until towards the end of July, when Sir Harry Parkes and I started for the Island of Yesso; I, with Sir Harry Keppel in his yacht, the _Salamis_; my chief in the _Basilisk_. It was a very interesting trip, for apart from all else it gave me my first and only sight of the Ainu aborigines. The business part of the trip was concerned with an inquiry into the commerce of the western coast of Japan, and especially with an endeavour to find some suitable port for opening to foreign trade. And so it happened that on the 7th of August the _Salamis_, the _Basilisk_ under Captain Hewitt, with Satow on board, and the surveying ship _Serpent_ (Commander Bullock), were assembled in the harbour of Nanao, a town of Noto on the west coast belonging to the principality of Kaga, the richest noble in Japan.

The Bay of Nanao is partially closed by a small island and Sir Harry Parkes felt that it would be valuable as a port for foreign trade—far more useful than Niigata, with its open roadstead and treacherous bar. As he was extremely anxious to enter into communication with the clan of Kaga, it was arranged that two of the Prince’s councillors should come from Kanazawa, the capital of the province, to hold a conference. There was some delay about this and it was not until Friday, the 9th of August, that the meeting took place.

Sir Harry used every endeavour to impress upon the Kaga representatives the desirability of entering into friendly relations with foreigners, as the Princes of Satsuma, Tosa and Uwajima had done; but his arguments were of no great avail. Kaga had evidently not yet quite made up his mind as to which side he would take in the impending struggle; the plea put forward by his agents as a reason for not opening Nanao as a port to foreign trade was that if they did so the Government of the Tycoon would inevitably seize upon it, and take possession of what had been the birthright of Kaga since remote times. The emissaries raised every possible objection, and the more they opposed the more determined Sir Harry was to get something out of them. At last, after giving them the roughest edge of his tongue, which in his case meant a good deal, he said that since they were so unfriendly he should send two of his officials, Mr. Satow and myself, to Kanazawa and thence we should travel overland to join him at Ōsaka. This suggestion, as may be supposed, was not very favourably received, and the interview broke up with a little less than a show of politeness.

When the Tycoon’s people, officers who had been detailed to help Commander Bullock on his surveying expedition, heard that Mr. Satow and I were to undertake this journey overland, they made a great fuss, declared that it was impossible; that they could not be answerable for our lives, and that on behalf of their Government they must decline all responsibility. The Tycoon’s writ clearly did not run in such provinces as Kaga and Echizen, through which we must pass. But these were considerations which left Sir Harry unmoved.

Still, though he was determined to gain some knowledge of the west coast, where no foreigners had ever penetrated, and, if possible, to establish relations with the clans and people, he was evidently a little nervous, for when we were taking leave of him, and the Admiral and Captain Hewitt went so far as to express great fear of the dangers which we must face, he tried to make out that it was our own foolhardiness which prompted the idea. This I repudiated at once, saying that we were quite willing to obey his orders in the matter, as a question of duty, but that we certainly should not have thought of undertaking the journey for a whim, which would not be fair upon our people at home. Sir Harry only laughed. To do him justice it was just the sort of trip that he himself would have delighted in, for where his own life was concerned he was always as big a gambler as the ace of spades.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR, AGED 28.

_By Samuel Lawrence._]

We landed in the afternoon. The _Salamis_ got up steam and was off. The _Basilisk_ followed. The _Serpent_ was still lying peacefully at anchor. That evening we spent in making ready for our start the next morning. The Tycoon’s officers tried hard to persuade us that they must go with us. This we stoutly resisted; they would have been absolutely worse than useless, for they were mere underlings, they could not protect us, and would simply be spies interfering with any possibility of friendly intercourse with the local people.

We pointed out to them that their duty was to remain with Commander Bullock, under whose orders they at present were. In the end after a good deal of whining on their part that if any evil thing happened to us they would suffer, they agreed to leave us in peace provided that we would absolve them from all responsibility; so at last they went off to the _Serpent_, after having taken a formal receipt from the Kaga men for our bodies, certified safe and sound at the time of delivery!

We started on the 10th of August. With the Kaga people sulky and still sore at the dressing which they had received the day before from our chief, the outset was not encouraging; however, grumpiness is no feature of the Japanese nature, and no ill-will could for long make a stand against Satow’s pleasant and conciliatory ways, and we were soon on far better terms with our guides than we had any right to expect.

Two smart palanquins had been provided for us and ordinary ones for our two attendants—Satow’s retainer, a Samurai named Noguchi, and my Chinese servant Lin Fu. A guard of twenty men armed with sword and dirk, long staves, and a crest of two paddles crossed, the badge of the Maéda family,[1] was to escort us, whether for show or for protection might be reckoned uncertain. They were, at any rate, of use in steering us through the crowds which in every small town, village, or cluster of houses were hustling for a first place to see the strange wild beasts.

Hot as it was, so soon as we were out of the town we left the cramping discomforts of our palanquins and walked along the pretty valley trending in a south-westerly direction. The scenery was charming—here a lagoon, there a long stretch of seashore, and, above all, on the east the towering mountains of Echiu, said to be some ten thousand feet high, veritable “hills whose heads touch heaven.” Everywhere the characteristic forest foliage of Japan; and where is foliage more picturesquely beautiful?

We passed along one stretch of sandy beach fringing a sea the dancing wavelets of which were as blue as the heaven above them, just the setting for one of those old world legends in which the Japanese delight. Such a legend is the story of the invention of the one-stringed lute, which might have been dear to Paganini, though it is not played with a bow. It is true that the scene of it lay far away in another province, but it seems to fit in here, for it came to my mind as we wandered along the romantic shore.

Once upon a time, in the dark long ago, there was at the Court of Kiōto a Kugé, or noble, who was dearly loved by the Son of Heaven; but he had reason to say, “Put not your trust in princes;” like women, they are apt to change; in the caprice of a moment, the Kugé fell into disgrace and was banished to a lonely place called Suma, a distant village occupied by humble fisher-folk. Days and days he spent by the seaside, mourning over the happiness which seemed to have fled from him for ever. One morning on the beach he spied a water-worn board, a piece of jetsam from some perished junk which the ebbing tide had left upon the sand, and as he looked he wondered, and said to himself, for he was well skilled in art, “Perhaps even this poor old piece of wreck may have music in it, had I but the skill to draw out its soul.” So he pondered and racked his brain to think how if it were fitted with a string and bridge the intervals should be distanced. Remaining buried in thought, he of a sudden saw a little flight of sandpipers who came and settled upon the beach near him, making a pattern which seemed to him to have some mystic meaning in it, and he wondered whether if he were to copy it on his piece of board it might be the solution of his problem. When he put it to the test he discovered to his joy that he had found the one-stringed lute which to this day is known as Sumagoto, the harp of Suma.

So with sweet strains he beguiled the weariness of the long, lonely hours. Hard by was a poor fisherman’s cottage, lowly indeed, but exquisitely clean and dainty, with a whole garden of dark blue iris in the warmly thatched roof. The old fisherman and his wife became very friendly with the fallen noble, and their daughter, a lovely maiden of sixteen, would sit by the hour listening entranced by the sweetness of his music. They loved one another and were married, and she brought the light of her beauty and grace to charm into happiness the misery of his banishment. And so the months sped by until one day there came a messenger from the court to say that pity had touched the heart of the Son of Heaven and the Kugé was to be restored to his former dignities. But he was a faithful lover, and took his humble mate with him to Kiōto, where she became a great lady and they lived happily ever after. And that is the story of the harp of Suma.

But this is a digression. Through the great heat we trudged along, stopping once in a while to rest in the pleasant coolness of some pretty tea-house, feasting on fragrant melons and those delicious apples which are a dainty of that countryside. Some of the inns were very attractive and the people most polite and kindly disposed; we had no reason to complain of our reception in Kaga. The Kaga Samurai is not a fierce warrior like the men of Satsuma and Tosa, nor is he an astute politician like the leaders of the Chōshiu folk. Those we met seemed to be quiet and peaceful, perhaps a little bit slow-coaches, rich and prosperous, while their Prince, who, as I have hinted before, was rather inclined to sit upon the fence, held an important position in the Empire on account of his huge wealth.

Our second day’s journey lay through very pretty scenery, past Takamatsu, a picturesque fishing village on the seashore, to Tsubata, a flourishing little post-town, where we found a capital inn and spent the night refreshed by an excellent Japanese dinner.

On Monday, the 12th of August, we started at 7.45 on our third day’s tramp, which was to bring us to Kanazawa, the Kaga capital. We rested in a temple at a place called Morimoto, where we had the usual feast of melons and apples. The crowds were now beginning to be enormous; our guides were anxious that we should walk into the city, the white castle walls of which were visible peering out of a glorious dark cloud of pine trees about a mile away.

We, however, had become surfeited of being a raree show at Ōsaka and elsewhere, and we were conscious that in our shabby travelling clothes we should present anything but a dignified appearance, so we tucked ourselves up in our palanquins with the modesty of brides. Hordes of spectators lined the streets, and even a lotus pond which commanded a good view of a very pretty resting-place which had been prepared for us was full of paddlers. The sightseers were of all ages, sorts and conditions in life, and amongst them we noticed a great number of comely maidens, for the ladies of Kaga are good to look upon. A tortuous course brought us to our inn, where we were received with the most dignified courtesy and all the hospitable politeness of which Japan is such a pattern. Our sitting-room had been strewed with a huge velvet pile carpet, and red lacquer chairs had been brought out of a temple for our use, our hosts not realizing that long custom had inured us to the native fashion of squatting on the mats. Soon an envoy arrived from the Prince, expressing anxiety for our healths on account of the great heat and regretting that he himself was not well enough to receive us; I answered, swearing eternal friendship with Japan and especially with Kaga, on behalf of Sir Harry Parkes. A feast was brought in at which the envoy presided, and soon the very smart but very uncomfortable chairs were discarded and we were hobnobbing with the _saké_ cups according to true Japanese etiquette. Presently the Prince’s doctors arrived offering medical attendance, pills and potions, in case we should need them.

At that time, be it remembered, the medical profession was still under the Chinese influence, and we should hardly have been prepared to subscribe to its methods, among which acupuncture and the burning with moxa held a high but painful place. So we expressed our gratitude, pleading excellent health as an excuse for not submitting to a consultation. A political conversation followed, which was supposed to be absolutely confidential, though as it was carried on in the presence of apparently anybody who chose to come in and listen, the maintenance of its deadly secrecy was not much to be relied upon.

That, however, was not our affair; we had nothing to conceal, for the Tycoon’s Government knew perfectly well what was the object of our visit, and that we should do all in our power to bring about the opening of Nanao to foreign trade. The Kaga people used the old arguments. They were perfectly ready to admit foreign trade, but they could not agree to their harbour being made anything more than an anchorage where goods might be landed; the rest would follow—but they repeated that they were in deadly fear lest the Tycoon should make an attempt to seize it. By the time the envoy left we had become excellent friends, and Satow had made arrangements for carrying on communications with Kanazawa from Yedo. A great point gained, for as I have said, the clan was one to be held in reckoning. Satow even went so far as to offer to take two Kaga men as pupils; two of the clan, we heard, were already studying in England.

As soon as our official interview was over we set out to see the town, a huge place, hilly and picturesquely planted, of which the size had not been exaggerated. It was said to hold 500,000 inhabitants. We found some excellent shops where silks and lacquer and fans (for which the town is famous, the sticks being the special secret of a family called Suba) were to be had at exorbitant prices; but I managed to secure a very ancient piece of lacquer, one of the three or four best specimens that ever came in my way, and one or two other treasures. Kutani (“The nine valleys”) is close to Kanazawa, and as a matter of course we had to buy a few specimens of the curious red ware for which it is famous. We also found some capital book-shops.

The civility and kindness of all the people whom we met was beyond praise. In the evening we received a message from the _machi-bugiyo_, the Governor of the city, begging us to prolong our stay and to make some excursions in the neighbouring country. The invitation was so pressing that we could not well refuse, and so on the following day, after a morning of shopping at prices enhanced by the intermediary of the inn servants, who could not resist the temptation of a small squeeze, we started on horseback for Kanaiwa, an open roadstead about four miles off. Our saddles, of European fashion, made of paper in imitation of leather, and the bridles, were something that must be seen to be believed. The unshod ponies were as bad as usual, but Japan is not a horsey country.

Two resting-places had been made ready to break this five-mile ride, and another at the end! There was not much to be seen when we reached our destination—a sandy beach and open sea, with a tiny stream running into it. It was not easy to guess why our kind hosts had been so keen to show it to us. We got home again before dark. In the evening two of the Prince’s gentlemen came in for an after-dinner chat. They talked again about the possibility of opening Nanao to foreign trade, saying very sensibly that it would not be well to do anything which might have the appearance of smuggling, and that it would be best to tell the Bakufu (Government of the Tycoon) that if foreign vessels were admitted there would surely be a certain amount of goods exchanged. We urged them to write in that sense to Yedo. We then started upon general politics. Their view as to the state of parties at that moment was that the Bakufu ought to be supported on general principles, but that its power should be kept within bounds. We talked on till late into the night, my conviction still being that Kaga had not at that time any determined policy. It was obvious that there was no leading influential man such as those whom we knew in other clans. I handed them a letter of thanks for all the kindness which we had received, which Satow translated into Japanese; and they took their leave with great courtesy.

The following morning (August 14) we started off again after a most friendly leave-taking, everybody begging us to come again. Our host begs us to stop at a medicine shop kept by his father-in-law to buy a wonderful drug called _shisetsu_, made of nitre and musk, a panacea for all the ills to which flesh is heir. The crowds were as thick as ever, with many very attractive young ladies. From our first resting-place we looked back upon the great city where we had been so kindly received, and saw the castle, typical of a feudalism that was so near its end, standing with its high white towers on rising ground, lording it over the burghers’ houses below, among the pine trees with which the whole town is planted. A striking and picturesque view, and a happy memory, the value of which is enhanced by that patina in which time enwraps all beautiful things.

The rest of our journey through the province of Kaga was not very eventful. Wherever we went we were met with the same gracious and unexpected kindness that had made our stay at Kanazawa so pleasant. We could not help being struck by the great prosperity of the country. We passed through such towns as Mattō, with two thousand houses, Komatsu, with two thousand five hundred, all under the mild rule of the Prince of Kaga, and a happier people it would be difficult to find.

On the 15th we reached the frontier of Echizen, where to the outspoken indignation of our Kaga friends, a petty official, a mere understrapper, had been sent to meet us. Here again the Kaga people exacted from the Echizen men a receipt for our bodies. I wonder how it was worded? Item, received, two English officials, sound in wind and limbs, etc.? I should have liked to have seen the document.

It pretty soon became evident that although the Echizen people were ready to entertain us, and even to go to considerable expense in so doing, we must not look for any real friendship. It was, no doubt, kind to give us champagne and to provide smart pages of honour to fan us in the great heat—small gentlemen who reminded one of the dear little boys who waited upon the great Lord Cardinal when the wicked jackdaw of Reims stole his ring, but there was no show of civility, and in Fukui, the capital, such persons of gentle birth as flocked to the temple of Honguanji, where we were, to tell the truth, magnificently lodged, only came to crowd the passages and stare at us as if we had been gorillas. The intentional rudeness was unmistakable. The Prince of Echizen was at that time notoriously opposed to all foreign intercourse, and his feelings were reflected in the conduct of his people.

On the 17th we crossed the Echizen boundary, glad to be quit of an unfriendly and surly people, who again handed us over against a formal receipt to the representatives of Ii Kamon no Kami. On the following day we reached Nagahama, a place which had been visited by Sir Harry Parkes and his party in May, so we were no longer a novelty and attracted little attention, which was a mercy. Here we were met by an officer of the Tycoon with a guard of eighteen of the Bettégumi (foreign guards), which very much robbed the journey of its interest, for under the eyes and ears of the Bakufu it was of course out of the question to hold any familiar intercourse with the people of the various places through which we might pass. This day we came to a place called Yanagosé, where there was a curious institution, a _sekisho_, or barrier, which no woman might go through without a passport. Talk about women’s rights!

On the 20th of August we reached Kasatsu, where we proposed to remain for the afternoon to enable me to write up my report, which was bound to be rather a long affair, for we had gathered together a formidable budget of political and commercial information—now, after nearly half a century crowded with stirring events, altogether obsolete, but at that time full of interest. Here we met two or three officials with whom Satow was acquainted, and with whom, after dinner, we were engaged until past midnight in the usual discussions about politics, which, when held with persons connected with the Bakufu, were as tedious as they were vapid. More interesting, and as it turned out more fortunate for us, was the interminable wrangle about the road which we were to take on the morrow. We had determined on taking the shortest cut to Ōsaka, through Ōtsu, a little town at the further end of the Biwa lake. The Japanese officials were equally determined that we should not go to Ōtsu at all, making every sort of difficulty, obviously on account of its proximity to Kiōto, the sacred city. As a bait they offered to show us the famous temple of Ishiyama, which had been closed to Sir Harry. We were obstinate, Satow not a little suspicious at this great eagerness to take us sightseeing, and quite appreciating what the real object was. The landlord of the inn put in a word: “If the gentlemen are so eager to obtain commercial information, why don’t they go to see the famous Uji tea-district? That will be of great interest to them, whereas there is nothing to see at Ōtsu.” We stuck to our guns, and expressed our unalterable decision to take the nearest road by Ōtsu. We told them that we knew quite well what they were driving at, and that they had been sent on purpose to play this trick upon us; that if they had been candid with us we might have agreed, but in the circumstances, No! They seemed very much crestfallen, but returned to the charge.

At last I lost patience, and turning suddenly round, told them that if they would write me an official letter explicitly stating their reasons, I would go by Uji, if not, guard or no guard, we would go through Ōtsu. After a little grumbling, they agreed to write such a letter, and went away to draft it. No fewer than three drafts were rejected as inadmissible, because they stated that we had not the Government permission to travel, which as diplomatists we had a right to do, and otherwise confused the issue; but at last they brought a satisfactory letter, in which they said that great complications had arisen at Kiōto on account of Sir Harry’s passing through in May, and they begged us therefore as a favour to go by Uji. It was a hard-won triumph for us.

I have dwelt upon this midnight parley at Kusatsu at greater length than would have been justifiable had it not been for its consequences.

When we reached Ōsaka two days later, Noguchi, Satow’s Samurai attendant, went to a tea-house in the city in which he overheard a party of men belonging to the Tosa clan, in a compartment separated from him by a paper screen, telling of their disappointment at having the day before missed the chance of murdering the two foreigners who were defiling the neighbourhood of the sacred city. It appeared that a band of four hundred men of the Tosa, Satsuma and Chōshiu clans had gone out to Ōtsu to lie in wait for us. Had we taken the route which we proposed, through Ōtsu, we should have been dead men. It was a narrow escape; a very near thing!

The fun of the thing was that the Japanese officials, in persuading us to change our route, had not the remotest suspicion of what they were saving us from.

Weeks afterwards I heard the whole story confirmed by Gotō Shōjirō. He was at the time _rusui_, or agent in charge of the _yashiki_ (palace) of the Prince of Tosa at Kiōto, and heard of the plot which he did all in his power to stop. But his men broke out of the _yashiki_, determined to wreak their hatred of foreigners on us. Gotō’s name must appear often in these recollections; he became one of my best friends in Japan, and risked his own life in the attack upon the Legation, when we were on our way to the Mikado’s Court in the following year—as I shall presently relate.

August 21st.—We left Kusatsu at 5.45 a.m. The heat was appalling; what with mosquitoes and discussions we had had but scanty sleep; moreover we had for the last day or two had little food, save rice with tea, of which we could not eat our fill, for the condiments with which the Japanese encourage their appetite for rice were as salt as brine, and to us impossible. Partly by river, and partly on the tramp, stopping every now and then to wash out our mouths, through beautiful scenery with a glorious view of the great plain in which lie Kiōto and Fushimi—the place of the thrilling memories of the civil war—we reached Uji at four o’clock, very much done up with the heat and very tired.

As for the famous Temple of Ishiyama, which was to be the reward of our listening to the blandishments of our friends of the night before, it had been hermetically sealed to us, and all our knocking at the door brought no answer. Seven years afterwards, on board a steamer in the Pacific, I met a Japanese gentleman who had been present and had watched our discomfiture and vain knockings. We bought a little tea at Uji, as a matter of course; and at six o’clock got into a comfortable houseboat in which we drifted down the stream, resting and looking back upon the entrancing view. Toward morning we fell asleep.

August 22nd at 5.30 a.m. we were in sight of the glorious old Castle of Ōsaka, and landing at six, took up our quarters in our old temple in the Nakadéramachi. So our venturesome eleven days’ journey came to an end; it had been intensely interesting and exciting. We never knew what might happen; when we lay down at night we blessed our luck that there had been no mischance, and when the morning came we pinched ourselves to see whether we were really still alive: there were so many wandering anti-foreign fanatics throughout the country, against whom even our kind Kaga friends could not have protected us! However, it all ended well, and we were successful in gaining all the information that our chief wanted. Unfortunately the interest of our expedition paled before a tragedy. For at five Sir Harry Parkes arrived with the news of the cruel murder of two bluejackets of H.M.S. _Icarus_. They had been literally hacked to pieces by a party of brawling Samurai. These poor fellows’ fate brought home to us the danger to which we had so nearly fallen victims.

This murder led to endless interviews and discussions, which were complicated by the fact that our people were on the wrong tack. There was a suspicion that the murderers were Samurai of the Tosa clan—a suspicion born of the fact that a small steamer and a sailing vessel belonging to Tosa had slipped secretly out of Nagasaki harbour before daylight on the morning after the crime had been committed. It was afterwards proved that they belonged to a quite different clan, which was duly punished later. But the chief murderer had previously committed suicide by _hara-kiri_.

The discussions served to make us better acquainted and increased our respect for Gotō Shōjirō, who represented his Prince and who proved himself to be a man of first-rate ability, quite able to hold his own against our rather peppery chief—not an easy man to discuss matters with. He turned out to be one of the three or four ablest men who engineered the revolution. Like the famous Saigo, of Satsuma, and others of the leaders in the various clans, Gotō expressed himself as keenly anxious to establish a Gi-ji-in, or parliament. That did not come about until some eighteen months later, and when it did ripen into being it turned out to be a very embryonic affair.

Mercifully for Japan, speech-making had never played the same part in her public life that it has done in some other countries, and the Parliament started more like a debating society in a public school than a grave assembly of legislators, which, as a matter of fact, they were not. They might register their opinions, but they could not enact laws.

August 31st.—Satow and myself had been invited by the Prince of Awa to go and pay him a visit at his castle in the Island of Shikoku (“the four countries,” so called from the principalities of Awa, Tosa, Sanuki and Iyo into which it was divided). Had the visit taken place as it was originally meant, we should no doubt have been able over the wine-cups to gather a good deal of information as to the attitude of the four clans in the crisis, together with a good many particulars in regard to the personalities of their leading men. But unfortunately at the last moment Sir Harry Parkes insisted on going too, with the Admiral and their respective staffs, in the _Salamis_ and the _Basilisk_; so the whole expedition was spoilt, and degenerated into a sort of official demonstration, at which the usual stale old political platitudes were served up—perfectly useless discussions, in which sincerity was apt to play a very meagre part on both sides. The weather, moreover, played us every conceivable trick by which to make us uncomfortable.

The Prince, however, was very kind and courteous, and he had prepared a most amusing theatrical entertainment for us, in which his retainers acted with great spirit. They were dressed in the long trousers worn at Court, but did not wear the _yéboshi_ (black lacquer cap). The plot of the first piece, which consisted of three characters, the master, a servant and a guest, was very funny. The master tells his servant to imitate him in everything that he does, and the servant takes the order literally, and passes on to the guest everything that the master says to him. The enraged master cuffs the servant, who passes the thrashing on to the guest, and so it goes on—a series of practical jokes like the “spill and pelt” scene in a pantomime, until the master’s patience is exhausted and he finally kicks the servant out.

Then came what was a sort of Oriental first-cousin to Offenbach’s _Les Deux Aveugles_. A man advertises for persons deprived by nature of their senses or limbs to enter his service. In answer to this there arrive a lame man, a dumb man, and a blind man—all these parts capitally acted. These three cripples are ruined gamblers who have adopted their disguises as beggars to get employment. The great man accepts them, and having placed them in charge of three storehouses, goes out. The men recognize one another and propose to go to the storehouse where the _saké_ is kept and have a drink, after which they may divide the money in the treasure-house. Of course they get roaring drunk, and by the time the master comes back each has forgotten his part. The blind man becomes dumb, the lame man blind, and the dumb man is afflicted with deafness. The exposure of the impostors is full of fun.

After the play—the wine-cup and bibulous affection. The Prince of Awa swears that he is the Admiral’s son and elder brother to Sir Harry Parkes; Awaji no Kami, the Prince’s son, claims intimate relationship with Satow.

The next day there was a review of some five hundred men in a sort of tatterdemalion European dress, some with boots, some without, those who had them being as “justly vain” as Sir Plume “of amber snuff-box and the nice conduct of a clouded cane.” The drill was capital.

In the evening I left for Yedo in the _Salamis_ with the Admiral. Satow went to Sasaki in Tosa with Sir Harry to investigate the case of the _Icarus_ murders. The Tosa people, who, as I have said, were ultimately proved to be innocent, with Gotō as spokesman, took up a very dignified position. Yōdo (the _de facto_ ruler of the clan, though he had nominally become _inkiyō_ (retired) whom Satow visited) declared that if his men were proved guilty he would punish them; if they were innocent nothing should stir him from his line of conduct. It must have been galling to Sir Harry to be told by Gotō that he was allowing his temper to get the better of his discretion. A dignified demeanour is the only attitude to observe with the Japanese, who, whatever their faults may be, are gentlemen to their finger-tips. Bluster does not succeed, but that was a lesson which our chief, with all his great qualities, never learned, and in this case he was completely worsted.

Satow remained at Nagasaki till the 7th of November, so I was all alone at Yedo in my little temple Monriuin. As a precaution I had the walks all round the garden strewn with cockle-shells to sound an alarm in the event of there being any unwelcome visitors after dark. One night I was awakened about twelve o’clock by the crunching of my faithful guardian cockles. I jumped up and lighted candles and lamps, roused the servants, gave my sword and revolver to my Chinese servant, Lin Fu, upon whom I could depend, and stood at the chief door with my Spencer rifle. The ruffians, seeing that we were ready for them, made off. There were five or six of them, as I knew, for it had been raining heavily and the following morning I found the marks in the grass where they had slid in a sitting position down the little hill, which was deeply scored with their posteriors and heels—mighty unpleasant! I was too near the evilly-reputed wine-shops of Shinagawa, famous like the wynds of Old Edinburgh for brawls between the clans, and as the haunts of the Jō-i, the fanatics opposed to foreign intercourse.

Another time, as I was leaving home in the morning to go to the Legation, I saw the dead body of a Samurai lying in a pool of blood outside my gate. It was covered with a piece of matting, but the head had been carried off to be deposited, according to the strict rules of _Kataki-uchi_ (vendetta), upon the grave of an enemy killed by last night’s victim in some previous quarrel.

These were quite everyday occurrences in the Yedo of what the Japanese now call “the olden time” (_mukashi_)—that is the period before the revolution, only forty-eight years ago!

Meantime, although there was no great outward show politically, the underground fires of revolution were silently gathering strength. The Tycoon had resigned his office—in fact abolished it—though he still in some inconsistent way claimed to be conducting affairs, and of course remained at the head of the Tokugawa clan. The Daimios, with Satsuma, Chōshiu and Tosa at their head, were said to be arming, and even to have established a camp at Ōsaka. The Tosa people asserted that the Tycoon, in his resignation, had only followed the advice contained in a memorial from their clan, dated in October, which they showed to Satow. The document advocated the establishment of a Parliament consisting of an upper and lower house, the erection of schools of science and learning in the great cities, and the negotiation of new foreign treaties. The emissaries of the Daimios were more than ever keen to obtain instruction in Parliamentary procedure. They were evidently all anxiety to stand well with us.

[Illustration: OLD JAPAN.

_From a water-colour drawing by C. Wirgman._]

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