Chapter I: The Origin and Past History of Japan

Different opinions respecting Japan and the reforms which have been
carried out in that Empire within the past few years—Necessity of
understanding something of Japanese history in order to appreciate
the recent transformation in the country—Origin of the
Japanese—Early history—The Mikados—The Japanese adopt Chinese
civilization between the fifth and eighth centuries of our
era—Inability for the Japanese to accept certain Chinese
institutions—Decline of the absolute power of the Mikados—Military
government adopted in the twelfth century—Japanese
feudalism—Increase of power among the feudal lords in the
fourteenth century—Civil wars and anarchy in the fifteenth
century—Order re-established and the Government centralized
through the action of the great military chieftains at the end of
the sixteenth century—Foundation of the dynasty of the Tokugawa
Shoguns—Europeans in Japan in the sixteenth century—The Japanese
accept our civilization with enthusiasm—Rapid spread of
Christianity—Reaction in the seventeenth century—Purely political
causes—Persecution of Christians and the expulsion of
foreigners—Japan isolated during nearly two centuries.

The absolute isolation which Japan preserved for over three hundred years and her systematic rejection of any attempt at the introduction of even a ray of Western civilization, is not, it must be confessed, without fascination for all who take interest in the history of a people who, during the last thirty years, have become so popular and so progressive as the Japanese. Suddenly, and without any explicable cause, the country, which was as carefully sealed to the outer world as the enchanter’s famous casket, was thrown wide open, not only to admit, but even to court, foreign progress, science and civilization, and now Japan has definitively accepted without any hesitation the most absolute changes and audacious innovations in her political and social systems, and has effected a transformation in her manners, ideas, and customs, not to mention costumes, such as has never before been achieved by any other nation in so brief a space of time.

At first Europe watched this extraordinary evolution with interest, not unmingled, however, with scepticism, finding it difficult to take seriously what might in the end prove but a passing fashion or the result of caprice. Many, indeed, felt anxious lest the introduction of modern civilization into a country so deliciously quaint and fascinating as Japan might destroy the charm of a population of artists, and, moreover, do irreparable damage to that exquisite art for which it is so justly celebrated. For many, Japan ought to have remained the land of lovely china, of rich lacquers, of _kakimonos_, _musmes_ and chrysanthemums. Indeed, who could be expected to believe that the home of the _geisha_ and of all sorts of dainty delights, of dwarf trees and liliputian tea-gardens, could possibly acclimatize the smoky industries, the strict militarism and the matter of fact judicial and political systems of our humdrum civilization? As well expect such a transformation in a world of butterflies and glittering dragon-flies as in the Empire of the Mikado. One eminent writer declared that ‘the Japan of to-day is but a bad translation’; and yet another says: ‘I find Japan a sort of anæmic dwarf. I know that she is of antediluvian antiquity, but for all that I cannot help thinking this little old mummy, bedecking herself in the trappings of Western civilization, supremely ridiculous.’ This was the opinion held not only by casual visitors to Japan, but also by not a few who had lived for years in the country, and who were never happy excepting when contrasting the solid qualities of the Chinese, their circumspection, their prudence, and their profound attachment to ancient customs, with the intense vanity and frivolity of the Japanese.

What could not be achieved by twenty-five years of hard work and peaceful progress in the way of convincing Europe of the earnestness of her intentions Japan did in less than six months by her military successes. When Europe beheld the triumphant achievements of the Mikado’s army, she had to confess that Japan was not quite the butterfly she had imagined, and began to study with greater attention the remarkable work which had been accomplished in that Empire. But the wonderful progress made in Japan during the last half of this century would not seem so extraordinary were the history of the Land of Flowers and its people better known. By the light of the past, the Revolution of 1868, which led to the suppression of the feudal system in Japan, and to the opening of the ports throughout the country, becomes clear and sequent.

In the fifth century of our era Japanese history begins to assume definite form, and the chronicles of the Kojiki and the Nihongi, which were written in the eighth century, cease to record mythological events and to deal with those purely human. Since that date the ancestors of the present Emperor have been ruling sovereigns over the two meridional islands Kiu-Siu and Sikoku, and the south-western section of the great Island of Hondo. According to tradition, they had already been reigning princes for over a thousand years, and their history, like that of almost every other great dynasty, stretches back into the night of time, when the world was peopled by gods and demigods. The first Emperor, Jimmu-Tenno, was a grandson of Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun, herself a great-granddaughter of the gods Izanaghi and Izanami, who were the actual founders of Japan. We next learn that Japan sprang direct from the hands of the gods, whereas all the other countries of the world, even those from whom she is pleased to accept modern civilization, originated through the evolution of natural forces. Jimmu-Tenno having alighted on this earth from heaven on the island of Kiu-Siu, passed thence viâ the Inland Sea to Hondo, where, after conquering ‘people of the same race as his own subjects,’ who inhabited these parts, he subdued the whole of the western part of the island, even to the zone of the central forests, ‘which were peopled by barbarians.’ In the year 660 B.C., he established himself in the province of Yamato, where they pretend in our day to have discovered his tomb. It is from this very early date that the Japanese begin their history. Jimmu-Tenno was succeeded by several generations of Mikados, of whom the first seventeen were centenarians, who lived between a hundred and a hundred and forty years each. In those distant times, the gods, it seems, took the same personal interest in Japanese affairs as they condescended to do in those of the Trojans. The history, however, of Japan, in its legendary period, like that of most other countries, is exceedingly sketchy and contains nothing of a positive character until the year 200 A.D., when an Amazonian Empress, who rejoiced in the rather startling name of Jingo, headed a successful campaign against the Koreans.

Contemporary historical research has resulted in clearing away a good deal of the mist which shrouded in a veil of mystery the primitive history of Japan. It would seem, however, for instance, that some centuries before our era the Mongolian pirates indulged in frequent incursions upon the western coast of the country in much the same unpleasant manner as did, some thousand years later, the Normans in Europe. After exterminating the natives, who were not numerous, they established themselves, together with their wives and families, in the island of Kiu-Siu. Later on, an illustrious chief, who turns out on closer acquaintance to be none other than Jimmu-Tenno, of legendary fame, crossed over to the great island and ‘found it peopled by inhabitants of the same race as himself’; hence it becomes evident that there were two distinct migrations from the mainland of the ancestors of the actual Japanese, a fact confirmed in a double cycle of heroic legends, one of which deals with the island of Kiu-Siu and the other with the province of Idzuma, situated on the west coast of Hondo, an island opposite Korea.

The Japanese, therefore, form a part of the great family scientifically known as the Uralo-Altaic, which includes the Finns, the Hungarians, the Turks, the Mongols and the Koreans. The different branches of this family appear to be less closely united than are those of the white race, but on the other hand, their languages, which are distinctly agglutinant, have certainly a common origin. It should be remarked that the Chinese do not form part of this group, constituting a family quite apart, whose language is distinctly monosyllabic and rhythmic. Their handwriting, however, was adopted by the Japanese between a thousand and twelve hundred years ago, as were also a number of words describing objects which up to that time were unknown to them, and probably introduced from China. If it is an undoubted fact that the Chinese and Japanese belong to the Yellow Race, the link which unites them is quite as remote as that which exists between a Frenchman and a German on the one hand, or an Arab and a Kabyle on the other. A superficial analogy between the Chinese and the Japanese must not mislead us. The very sparse indigenous race which the Korean immigrants found upon the south and south-west of Japan were of the same family as the Ainos of our time, of whom some 15,000 still linger in Yezo, the great southern island of the Archipelago; and, moreover, they belonged to the same race as the Ghilaks of the Amur, and the tribes to the north-east of Siberia. These Ainos, who exist by hunting and fishing, are considered to be the hairiest people on earth; they are mere savages, quite as dirty in their habits as the Japanese are clean. They had in all probability little or nothing to do with the formation of the actual population.

The civilization of the ancient Japanese until the fifth or sixth century of our era was, it seems, most primitive. Writing was unknown, and the people were but just emancipated from the Stone Age, their knowledge of the use of metal being very limited. They owned a few domestic animals, the horse and the dog, and also poultry. They cultivated rice, millet, barley, two sorts of peas, and in addition to these cereals the sea and the rivers supplied them with fish, and the forests with flesh. They apparently ate more meat than do their descendants of the present day, a fact due, of course, to the introduction of Buddhism, whose followers are, or should be, vegetarians. As to their houses, they were of wood and extremely simple.

The Shinto religion, which has become once more the State religion, has a mythology formed out of legends dealing with the generation of the gods who preceded the advent of the Imperial family. Out of the eight hundred myriads of divinities only some half-dozen are now venerated. Among these is Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun, and ancestress of Jimmu-Tenno. The spirits of the deceased Mikados and of certain heroes are known as _Kami_, ‘superior beings,’ and are honoured by this title, as are also the ancestors of each family. Beyond this Shintoism recognises neither dogma nor ethics. A writer of the last century thus apologizes for this easy-going creed. ‘It was,’ says he, ‘invented by the Chinese, because they are a very immoral people; but in Japan morality is not needed, since the Japanese have only to act according to the dictates of their hearts to do well. To obey the Emperor, who is the descendant of the gods, and almost a god himself, and follow one’s natural inclinations, are the only precepts imposed upon its followers by Shintoism, and a pilgrimage to the nearest temple once a year the only kind of divine service exacted. There are no public ceremonies, excepting an occasional hieratic dance performed by young girls. In the wooden temples roofed with bark, which are supposed to reproduce the habitations of the primitive Japanese, there are no ornaments, no sculpture, and no representations whatever of the Divinity. The priests, who wear no distinctive costume, and who lead the lives of ordinary citizens, occasionally don a rich garment with long flowing sleeves, go to the various temples and perform certain very simple rites in the presence of a mystic mirror to be found in every temple, a facsimile of one given by the Goddess of the Sun to her grandson Jimmu-Tenno, as an emblem of purity. A white horse will also sometimes be seen within the precincts of the temples. The only sacrifice is the offering of fruits, fish, wine, and rice, accompanied by the recitation of certain prayers in the ancient Japanese language; this is, it must be confessed, an exceedingly primitive cultus, but it was the only one known in Japan until the sixth century, at which epoch began the great development of Chinese civilization in Japan, originally introduced, however, by the invasion of Korea by the Japanese armies at the commencement of the third century. The Korean envoys who brought the annual tribute to their Japanese conquerors eventually became the pioneers of civilization among the more primitive race which had overcome them. They brought into the country, for instance, in the year 284 the art of writing. Possibly this date is erroneous and ought to be 400, the period when, according to a very ancient tradition, the first mention of medicine is made in the national history, on the occasion of the grave illness of the then reigning Mikado, who was cured by a Korean physician. Then followed the silkworm, and the mulberry-tree, the arts of spinning and weaving. Finally, in 552 the first image of Buddha appeared, and eventually led to the introduction of the religion of Sakyamuni.

From this period until the beginning of the seventh century there was a perfect invasion of the arts, customs, and opinions, religious, social, and political, of the neighbouring continent. Then was for the first time displayed that ardour which is so peculiar to the Japanese, and, if I might so say, also of that rage for civilization—true, it was then only Chinese civilization—which characterizes them at the present day.

Buddhism triumphed without formidable opposition, and at the beginning of the seventh century there were not less than forty-six temples and 1,385 priests or Buddhist monks in Japan. The Chinese calendar was adopted, the language, writing and literature of China were studied with enthusiasm. Ambassadors and special missions were sent to the continent to examine on the spot the religion, the arts, the industries and also the government of the Chinese and their political and judicial system. Thus it so came to pass that feudalism was introduced centuries before it was imposed upon Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. At the death of the Empress Suiko in 628, under whose reign all these reforms took place, Japan was completely remodelled after the image and likeness of China. The remarkable feature about this transformation is its resemblance to the revolution now in progress. It was effected without the least opposition or violence. The methods used then were the same as those which are being employed to-day: the sending forth of missions and the employment of foreigners by the Government to study and introduce everything that was likely to improve the country and its people. Above all, there existed a universal goodwill and eagerness to stimulate the advance movement. Japan, therefore, by her wonderful powers of assimilation, was suddenly converted from a barbarian to a civilized country. Nevertheless, however deep-rooted was the influence of China, it did not interfere with the architecture and the art of the Japanese, which remained distinct. The good sense of this able people taught them to distinguish between the different elements in the civilization which they were introducing, to reject those which did not suit them, and to transform others which were better fitted to their inclination. A reaction, however, set in between the eighth and the eleventh centuries which enabled the Japanese to recover sufficient of their identity and yet retain most of the innovations in their industries, agriculture, and fine arts, in the culture of which latter they eventually surpassed their masters. The new religion suited them admirably, and it remains to this day much less corrupt in Japan than it is among the Chinese themselves. The official and administrative system introduced from China, being opposed to the natural bent of the Japanese mind, was, however, soon rejected, and they returned to their own, which suited them better.

The mandarinate was never acclimatized, and the principle of heredity always remained in force. The divers degrees of dignity, at first twelve in number and then nineteen, were never given, as in China, to individuals, but to families as hereditary titles. The position, for instance, of Prime Minister, or _Kwambaku_, became hereditary in a great family of the Court, that of the Fujiwaras, from which, moreover, according to tradition, the Empress was invariably selected. Then began to manifest itself that very peculiar trait in the history of Japan of real authority very rarely being vested in the hand of the man supposed to exercise it. The Mikado, who, from the ninth century onwards, was invariably a child, and abdicated in youth to retire into a monastery, is supposed to reign and yet never govern. This was the beginning of a system of Imperial self-effacement which lasted over a thousand years. Presently we discover that the hereditary _Kwambaku_ also exercises no authority, which is exactly the opposite of what took place in Europe in the Middle Ages, where, if a Sovereign retired into privacy, his Prime Minister was pretty certain to become forthwith correspondingly prominent. In the Middle Ages, at an epoch when Europe was engaged in fighting and slaughtering, the Court of Kioto was a centre of art, pleasure and poetry, in which, however, authority was completely set aside.

In the meantime, feudalism established itself in the country. Side by side with the effeminate aristocracy of the _kuges_, certain nobles descended from collateral branches of the Imperial family, and who in their time had occupied great official positions, both in the provinces and in the capital, leaving subalterns to fulfil their duties, now formed themselves into a military and territorial aristocracy, and, whilst profound peace reigned in the greater part of the country, carried on a war against the Koreans in its south-eastern limits, and against the Ainos, who had been driven back to the north of Hondo, in the north-east. The custom imported from China by the Japanese of separating the civil from the military functionaries, combined with a genius for heredity, led in the course of time to the creation of many great military families, under whose authority or lead clans of soldiers grouped and gradually separated themselves from the rest of the population. The chiefs of these clans in due time became, especially in the tenth century, in the north and eastern provinces, independent, so that by degrees their influence during the two succeeding centuries in the Government was paramount, and the Court of Kioto was the object of perpetual dissensions between two great military families, the Taira, and the Minamoto, both descendants of Emperors of the eighth and ninth centuries. They had each a claimant to the Imperial throne, who was invariably an infant. A Taira, Kiyomori, governed Japan from 1156 to 1181 in the position of Prime Minister. He ordered the Minamoto family to be massacred; one or two of its members, however, escaped, among them Yoritomo, the son of the chief. In due course of time this Yoritomo created a revolution in Kwanto in his own favour. Upon learning of the death of Kiyomori he straightway marched upon Kioto in company with his bastard brother, Yoshitsune, who had escaped from a monastery to which he had been relegated. Between them they seized the capital and proclaimed a child of seven years of age Emperor in the place of the Mikado Antoku, who was not much older, and who was carried off by the Taira to the island of Kiu-Siu. The great naval battle of Dan-no-ura, won by Yoshitsune in 1185 at the mouth of the Inland Sea, completed the ruin of the Taira, who, together with their Emperor, were nearly all slain in the disaster to their fleet, which made Yoritomo master of Japan.

Yoritomo behaved with the utmost ingratitude to his brother Yoshitsune, who had so largely contributed to his success. He ordered him never to appear again at Court, and sent a group of assassins to pursue him to the farther end of the island. His life was frequently saved, thanks to the shrewdness of the giant monk Benkei and the devotion of the dancing-girl Shidzuka. The adventures of the brave Yoshitsune and his death by suicide has supplied Japanese literature with a number of interesting and picturesque legends not unlike those which delighted our ancestors in the Middle Ages.

After these events, the feudal system was firmly established in Japan for over seven centuries, and we hear no more of Chinese methods of administration. This is mainly due to the warlike character of the Japanese people and to the increasing power of the feudal chiefs, who had naturally, in order to maintain their reputation, to keep the country in a perpetual ferment of political or civil war. The striking difference between the feudal system in Japan and that which existed contemporaneously in Europe is that the Japanese ruler was never the Sovereign. He was called the Shogun, or Sei-i-tai-Shogun, literally, ‘General charged with the duty of subjugating the barbarians.’ This title was first bestowed upon Yoritomo in 1192. It was the Shogun’s duty to govern. In theory he was responsible to the Emperor, whose humble servant he was supposed to be. As a matter of fact, the Mikado had long since ceased to interfere in the government, and lived in the palace of Gosho at Kioto in the midst of luxury, his generals and ministers paying him no other respect than that of mere ceremony.

The new power of the Shogunate instituted by Yoritomo was not long before it also became attenuated. In 1198, immediately after the death of its founder, his father-in-law, Hojo Tokimasa, seized the reins of government, and in 1219 the posterity of Yoritomo was already extinct. The supreme authority was by this time definitely vested in the family of the Hojo, whose chief took the title of Shikken, or Regent, and chose and dethroned the Shoguns, usually children, at his pleasure, selecting them either from the Imperial family or from that of the Fujiwaras. The period during which this curious regime lasted is perhaps the most brilliant and the most prosperous in the history of Japan in the Middle Ages; but eventually Japan fell into a sort of feudal anarchy, bearing a close affinity to that which existed in Germany at the same epoch. The power of the Hojos was finally broken in 1334, thanks to the combined action of the feudal lords, aided by a Mikado named Go-Daigo, who happened for once to be possessed of some energy. The executive, however, did not remain long in the hands of this Emperor. His chief lieutenant, Ashikago Takauji, rose up against him, obliged him to flee from his capital, and replaced him by another member of the Imperial family, at the same time electing himself Shogun. From 1337 to 1392 Japan had two rival dynasties of Mikados. Notwithstanding these disturbances, the Court of the Shoguns Ashikagas was very often extremely brilliant, both from the literary and the artistic point of view. During the fifteenth century civil wars raged again, and the authority of both Mikado and Shogun consequently dwindled into insignificance. In the provinces the warriors, known as _samourai_, gradually became hereditary, recognising no authority but that of their feudal lords, the daimios. The country became poor, the population rapidly dwindled, and all the arts except that of the armourer tended to disappear. The opening years of the sixteenth century beheld Japan in a pitiable plight indeed, the population decimated by terrible epidemics and earthquakes, as well as civil wars, and such was her condition that she might have been compared to France after the Hundred Years’, or Germany after the Thirty Years’, War. When St. Francis Xavier visited the country in 1550 he was appalled by its misery. It was a far cry then from the Japan of his days to the Cipango, the golden land of promise so greatly vaunted by Marco Polo three centuries earlier. The feudal system in Japan, however, had been of great use in forming the character of the people; it preserved in them those virile qualities so conspicuously absent among the Chinese.

The close of the sixteenth century witnessed the decline and fall of feudalism throughout the Empire, which led to the re-establishment of centralization. This was due to the energy of three great military chiefs, Nobunaga, Ieyas, and Hideyoshi, the first of whom was descended from the Taira and the second from the Minamoto, and therefore both were essentially aristocratic. The third, however, was about the only personage in medieval Japan who ever rose from the ranks to occupy a towering position in the State. Ota Nobunaga, after having considerably aggrandized the very small principality which he had inherited from his father, interfered in the quarrels of a succession of Shoguns, and deposing in 1573 the last Ashikaga, seized the Government as Prime Minister, and compelled the daimios to obey him. He curbed the encroachments of the Buddhist monks, who had accumulated during the long period of the civil wars immense landed estates; but at last, hemmed in by his many enemies, this remarkable man ended his career by disembowelling himself, an unpleasant but evidently popular method of committing suicide with the Japanese.

Hideyoshi, who from groom had become principal lieutenant to Nobunaga, extinguished all further spirit of resistance on the part of the feudal barons. Once Japan was united, he wished to establish its power beyond the limits of the Empire, and for this purpose sent an expedition into Korea, which, however, only resulted in ruining that country, thanks to the quarrels and dissensions which took place between the Japanese generals, some of whom were Christians and others Buddhists.

At the death of Hideyoshi in 1598, the power of the daimios, even that of the great princes of the south-west, Choshiu and Satsuma, was already much attenuated, and everything was ready for a change similar to that which took place in France under Louis XI. It led to the quasi-independence of the lords being suppressed in favour of a feudality of a purely domestic character. The principal factor in this change was Tokugawa Ieyas, who had been one of the chief generals of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi. Placed by this last at the head of the council of the regency, which had to exercise power during the minority of his son Hideyori, Ieyas was not long before he quarrelled with his co-regents. Assuming the command of an army, recruited in the north and the east of the Empire, he in 1600 defeated at Sekigahara the united forces of the clans of the south and the west, and thus made himself master of Japan. Instead of a purely ephemeral sovereignty, he founded a dynasty and a régime which lasted for 250 years, as the result of his ability and that of his son and grandson. Before proceeding further in detailing the political and social organization of this interesting country, it will be well to pause and consider an event of supreme importance which took place in the sixteenth century, and the effect of which explains much that is now happening. I refer to the period of the great Portuguese colonization, when that now small kingdom had annexed vast possessions in the Indies, and had added new ones in Cochin China and in the south of China to her Empire.

In 1542, three Portuguese, who had taken passage on board a Chinese junk, were wrecked upon the southern coast of Japan. Among the other passengers happened to be a Chinaman, who volunteered as interpreter. He seems, however, to have entertained for foreigners the same contempt as that in which they are held by his compatriots in this year of grace 1900. He described the Portuguese to the Japanese as people who were very little better than savages, who did not know how to write Chinese, and as being, moreover, profoundly ignorant of the art of eating their food with chopsticks. We may conclude, therefore, that these worthy Portuguese did not produce a very favourable impression. In 1545, the navigator Fernan Mendez Pinto arrived at the little island of Tanegashima, to the south of Kiu-Siu, and was well received by the feudal lord of that district. The powerful Prince of Bungo, father-in-law to the Lord of Tanegashima, having heard of the strangers, invited them to his capital in the north-east of Kiu-Siu, and entertained them very handsomely. Pinto was so favourably impressed by all he saw that two years later he returned to the same spot, carrying off with him two Japanese fugitives from justice. They had the fortune of being converted to Christianity by St. Francis Xavier, and served him as interpreters when the renowned Jesuit missionary landed on August 15, 1549, at Kagoshima, the capital of the Prince of Satsuma. The earliest converts were a few relatives of the interpreters. The Prince received the saint very favourably, and the Princess insisted upon him composing for her benefit a summary of the Articles of the Christian Faith, together with the translation of the principal prayers. St. Francis immediately edited a Japanese version of the Catechism and a translation of the Credo. Unfortunately, in the course of time the Prince of Satsuma was much offended by certain Portuguese sailors, who, probably on account of the obstacles they encountered in the attempt, refused to land in his dominions, and betook themselves and their merchandise further on to those of his rivals. Greatly annoyed at their behaviour, the prince now ordered the missionaries to quit his dominions. St. Francis obeyed and proceeded to the capital of the Prince of Bungo, who was highly delighted to see him, and assisted him in a number of ways to found churches and missions, so that when the great missionary left Japan in 1551, Christianity was fairly established in the country. Presently Japan was inundated with Portuguese missionaries, sailors, and merchants. The Japanese, with an eye as much to business as to social improvement, encouraged this influx of strangers in the hope of its leading to a profitable commerce being established between the two countries. The Jesuits, too, whose influence the Japanese quickly recognised, were treated with the utmost cordiality and respect. So great was the Japanese power of assimilation, that Mendez Pinto tells us that, having made a present of an arquebus to the Prince of Tanegashima, that potentate caused it to be imitated, and very soon afterwards the navigator was shown six weapons exactly like his own. A few months later there were 30,000 distributed in the province of Bungo, and 300,000 throughout the country. These figures may be taken with a grain of salt; nevertheless, there must have been a very firm foundation for the story. In 1582, forty years after the arrival of the Portuguese, artillery played a great part in the Battle of Shigutake, one of Hideyoshi’s greatest victories.

Whether material or spiritual motives were at the bottom of the rapid progress made by Christianity at this period it would be difficult to say. Princes, literary men, priests, even Buddhists, rich and poor alike, presented themselves in hundreds to receive baptism, and even Nobunaga, if he did not actually profess the new religion, at any rate favoured its propaganda. At the time of his death in 1582 there were fully 600,000 converts in the centre and the south of Japan; half the daimios in the island of Kiu-Siu had embraced Christianity, together with the greater part of their subjects; the Prince of Tosa, in the island of Sikokou, and many daimios in the centre and west of the great island had also been baptized. There were not less than 200 churches, some of which were even situated in the capital of the Empire. In Nagasaki, which in 1567 had become the centre of foreign commerce, there was scarcely a pagan left. In 1582 an embassy, sent to Rome by the Princes of Bungo, Arima and Omura, was solemnly received by Pope Sixtus V. It afterwards proceeded on a tour through Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Although Hideyoshi apparently did not display the same enthusiasm for Christianity as did his neighbours, nevertheless, their number continued to increase; and during the last ten years of the sixteenth century it is believed there were over a million converts to the Roman Church out of a population of between eight or ten millions, a marvellous record for fifty years’ missionary labour. Unfortunately, it was not to last long, although, to be sure, the brief epoch of its success was marked by a material progress quite as astonishing as the spiritual, for, with the religion of the Europeans, the Japanese had adopted a great many of their arts and industries. Tobacco, for instance, began to be cultivated, and boats built on European models transported Japanese trade as far afield as the Gulf of Mexico. Strangers could travel from one end of the country to the other without fear of being molested by the natives, and St. Francis Xavier had every reason to say that the ‘Japanese nation was the delight of his heart.’ Presently Hideyoshi became alarmed lest the system of government which he had formulated might eventually be overthrown through the missionaries and by possible religious wars occasioned by so abrupt a change in the opinions and ethics of an entire nation. He feared lest the admission into the country of so many merchants and missionaries might not be the prelude to another invasion of a hostile character, resulting in the conquest and annexation of Japan to some European power or other. It is even said that a Portuguese captain was sufficiently imprudent to inform Hideyoshi that the King, his master, had the intention of sending priests into the dominions of the Mikado with the object of ultimately landing troops, who, aided by the native Christians, should effect his overthrow. Whether these words were ever spoken or not is uncertain, but they were undoubtedly the expression of the thoughts of contemporary European Sovereigns, a fact which the Japanese soon learnt when they came to be a little better acquainted with the proceedings of the Portuguese in India. In a word, the suspicions of the Japanese rulers were awakened, and even the brilliant services rendered by the Christian General Konishi could not efface them, and the impression was further increased by the rivalry which existed between the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and also between the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the English and the Dutch, who were perpetually accusing each other of most malevolent designs. In 1587 Hideyoshi issued an edict ordering all missionaries to leave Japan within twenty-four days, which, however, remained a dead-letter until 1597, when it was put into force—in consequence of the imprudence of the Spanish Franciscans, who began preaching in the open air, and even in the streets of Kioto, which resulted in a riot and in seventeen native Christians being put to death at Nagasaki. Ieyas continued the persecution throughout 1614, as did his son and grandson, who, between them, contrived to extirpate Christianity in every part of the Empire before 1638. For years the inhabitants of Nagasaki were condemned to trample upon the Crucifix in the presence of the authorities, and even as late as 1868 placards were still to be seen stuck up in the streets offering rewards for the denunciation of members of the ‘forbidden, lying, and corrupt sect.’

The immediate result of this persecution, which was extremely severe, was the exclusion from Japan of all outside influence, for the foreigner and Christianity had become in the eyes of the Government a moral, social, as well as political dissolvent. The evil conduct of the European sailors, who, even according to the statement of the missionaries themselves, had carried off women and children in great numbers, to sell into slavery at Manila or Macao, and their dissolute behaviour generally, cast opprobrium upon the religion which they professed, and thus it came to pass that the Japanese accused the Christians of not practising the ethics they taught, but, on the contrary, of giving a bad example by their disrespect to parents, superiors, and to all in authority.

In 1609 and 1611 Ieyas granted the Dutch the right of trading all over the island, but his son, Hidetada, being suspicious of their good intentions, closed all harbours to them, excepting those of Hirado and Nagasaki in the island of Kiu-Siu, and, furthermore, prohibited the Japanese from leaving their country under any pretext. From 1637 the Dutch and the Chinese alone were authorized to trade in Japanese waters, and then only through the port of Nagasaki. Confined within the narrow limits of the island of Deshima, condemned to submit to the most abject humiliations, and never allowed to go ashore excepting once a year on a special mission to Yedo, when they conveyed presents to the Shogun, before whom they had to crawl upon their hands and knees, the agents of the Dutch East India Company entertained with Japan commercial relations of the scantiest kind. With this sole exception, Japan, which had acted in so liberal a manner towards foreigners, became in a short time a sealed book to the outer world.