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Under the guidance of Abe Masahiro, one of the ablest statesmen that Yedo ever possessed, batteries were built at Shinagawa to guard the approaches to Yedo; defensive preparations were made along the coasts of Musashi, Sagami, Awa, and Kazusa; the veto against the construction of ocean-going ships was rescinded, and the feudatories were invited to build and arm large vessels; a commission was given to the Dutch at Deshima to procure from Europe a library of useful books; cannon were cast; troops were drilled, and everyone who had acquired expert knowledge through the medium of the Dutch was taken into official favour.
Deshima has now been swallowed up by the Japanese town, and its significance has shifted across the bay to where the smoke and din of the Mitsubishi Dockyard prepare romantic visitors for the modern industrial life of the new Japan. Night and day, the furnace fires are roaring; and ten thousand workmen are busy building ships of war and ships of peace for the Britain of the Pacific.
The "evil sect" was formally prohibited, while edicts were issued declaring that as long as the sun should shine no foreigner should enter Japan and no native should leave it. A slight exception was made in favor of the Dutch, of whom a small number were permitted to reside on the little island of Deshima, in the harbor of Nagasaki, one trading ship being allowed to come there each year.
The men who helped to make true patriots, daring thinkers, inquirers after truth, bringers in of a better time, yes, and even Christians and preachers of the good news of God, were these Dutchmen of Déshima. A Handful of Salt in a Stagnant Mass. The Nagasaki Hollanders were not immaculate saints, neither were they sooty devils. They did not profess to be Christian missionaries.
Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood, and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue of awe. The Dutchmen at Déshima.
But for some time this liberal measure produced no practical effect, since there did not exist even a Dutch-Japanese vocabulary to open the pages of foreign literature for Japanese study. Indeed, very few books were procurable from the Dutch at Deshima.
Foreigners were forbidden to enter, except the Dutch traders who were confined to the little island of Deshima. And natives were forbidden to go out, or to accept at home the religious teachings of foreigners. Only ships suited for the coastwise trade might be built.
There was one place of pilgrimage, toward which the sons of the morning moved, and which, despite the spy and the informer and the vigilance of governors, fed their spirits, and whence they carried the sacred fire, or bore the seed whose harvest we now see. That goal of the pilgrim band was Nagasaki, and the place where the light burned and the sacred flames were kindled was Déshima.
Unknown to Geoffrey, it passed the grey Italianate Catholic cathedral, the shrine of the old Christian faith of Japan planted there by Saint Francis Xavier four hundred years ago. Anchor was cast off the island of Deshima, now moored to the mainland, where during the locked centuries the Dutch merchants had been permitted to remain in profitable servitude.
Japan now began to make the acquaintance of American citizens, who, pursuing the whaling industry in the seas off Alaska and China, passed frequently in their ships within easy sight of the island of Yezo. Occasionally, one of these schooners was cast away on Japan's shores, and as a rule, her people were treated with consideration and sent to Deshima for shipment to Batavia.
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