[9] Count Inouyé, the foremost statesman of the new Japan, is said to have confessed that he set fire to the British Legation with his own hand with the express object of embarrassing the Tycoon's Government.
[10] The following souvenir of Count Mutsu, Foreign Minister of Japan, who died in 1897, told by Mr J. F. Lowder and quoted in 'Things Japanese' by Mr Basil Hall Chamberlain, affords a graphic illustration of this point. "In the very early Sixties, when he was in his nineteenth or twentieth year, he was in Nagasaki desirous of acquiring a knowledge of English. A lady of my acquaintance taking an interest in him used to devote an hour or two every morning to teaching him to read and write, but it was not long before he came to me despairing of his slow progress, and asking whether I could not give him a berth on board ship where nothing but English was spoken. Believing him to be physically too weak to stand such an ordeal, I endeavoured to dissuade him, but without success; and so with some misgivings I shipped him as a cabin-boy, which was the only position I could obtain for him, on board a small British schooner that used in those days to voyage between Nagasaki and Shanghai. How long he remained on board I cannot say, but my recollection is that it was a very considerable time."
[11] The foreign trade of Japan now (1900) approximates 40 millions sterling, exports and imports being very nearly balanced.
SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK IN PEKING, 1865-1869.
Contrast between Peking and Yedo--Finds old comrade Wade--The Manchu statesmen, Kung and Wênsiang--Material progress pressed upon them--Their failure to appreciate foreign advice.
Sir Rutherford Alcock had spent only a few months in England when he was appointed to succeed Sir Frederick Bruce as Minister to China, he himself being succeeded in Japan by Sir Harry Parkes. Sir Rutherford reached his post in Peking at the close of 1865. The change of scene from Japan back to China was even more striking than that from China to Japan had been in 1859. The excitement of shooting the rapids was succeeded by the weariness of meandering among mud-shoals--the same medium to work in, only under different conditions. Fundamentally the international problem was identical in Japan and China--the conflict between aggression and resistance. Rational dread of, and natural repulsion to, foreigners, inspired alike the policies of both countries. Where they differed was in the manner of meeting the invasion. Japan braced herself nervously to the effort, and, distinguishing between what was feasible and what was not, organised a counter-invasion unsuspected by foreign nations, whom she subdued by their own strength. China, on the other hand, opposed a fatalistic and unreasoning resistance, making no intelligent counter-stroke and showing no true anticipation of the issues of the struggle. The energy of ambitious youth on the one side; on the other mere inertia, irresponsive to the stimulus of pride, shame, patriotism, or even material interest. Bearing this contrast in mind, we may partly understand the prosaic _rôle_ which foreign representatives were doomed in China to play from the time the capital was forced open by Anglo-French arms in 1860.