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Power to appoint a Diplomatic Agent to reside at Yeddo, and Consuls at the open ports; Ample recognition of Consular jurisdiction and of the immunities of exterritoriality; The opening to British subjects, at specified periods, of several of the most important ports and cities of Japan;
The violence of the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct attention to the illegality of his master's rule; and people began to turn their allegiance from Yeddo and the Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his seclusion at Kioto.
Children, in brilliant night robes, run to the verandas to see the early sun; cocks strut in pigmy gardens. Now, from along the streets rise the calls of flower peddlers, of venders of fish, bean-curd, vegetables, and milk. Thus the day comes to modern Tokyo, which the old folks still call Yeddo.
The chromo-lithographs that illustrate these 'Sketches' are fac-similes of paintings by native artists, selected from a series lately published at Yeddo, and sold to foreigners with the connivance, if not by permission, of the authorities; for the spy system in Japan is so perfect, that illicit dealings are next to impossible.
In Corea the pretensions of the ruler of Yeddo had been repelled, if not crushed; but wherever the sea intervened the advantage rested more or less decisively with him. The island of Formosa is dependent upon China, and the western districts are governed by officials duly appointed by the Viceroy of Fuhkien.
As chance did not favor him in the European quarter, he penetrated that inhabited by the native Japanese, determined, if necessary, to push on to Yeddo. The Japanese quarter of Yokohama is called Benten, after the goddess of the sea, who is worshipped on the islands round about.
The Tokugawa period, covering the 270 years during which the Government of the Tycoon was installed in Yeddo, was one during which literature made great progress in Japan.
Respectability is sweeping the picturesque out of life; national costumes are disappearing. The kilt is going or gone in the highlands, and the smock in the southlands, even the Japanese are becoming christian and respectable; in another quarter of a century silk hats and pianos will be found in every house in Yeddo.
All methods were essayed, the liquid, flowing line of the Chinese classics, Tosa's nervous, shattered lightning-strokes of painted motion, the soft, gray reveries of the great Kano school of three centuries before, when, to the contemplative mind all forms of nature, whether of the outer universe or in the soul of man, were but reflecting mirrors of a single faith; the heaped-up gold and malachite of Korin's decoration, sweet realistic studies of the Shijo school, even down to the horrors of "abura-yè," oil-painting, as it is practised in the Yeddo of to-day, each had for him its special interest and its inspiration.
It needed preparation and insight; and what had he done since he was a child but prepare himself with the best culture of Japan, and acquire in his excursions the power and habit of observing? He was but twenty-two, and already all this was clear in his mind, when news reached Choshu that Commodore Perry was lying near to Yeddo. Here, then, was the patriot's opportunity.
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