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Its government changed from one hand to another in the centuries that separated the Kamakura epoch from the Tokugawa, and in the latter epoch we find the Matsumae daimyo ruling all the islands northward of the Tsugaru Straits. But the Matsumae administration contented itself with imposing taxes and left the people severely alone.
The query occupied attention in all the capitals of the world during several days, and conjectures were as numerous as they were conflicting. But Admiral Togo had no moment of hesitation. He knew that only two routes were possible, and that one of them, the Tsugaru Strait, could be strewn with mines at very brief notice. The Russians dare not take that risk.
From our return on the 6th, to sailing on the 12th, there was but one fair twenty-four hours the rest from blustering to furious; and we went out with the promise of a gale which did not with evening "in the west sink smilingly forsworn." The Iroquois ran through Tsugaru Strait under canvas, with a barometer rather tumbling than falling, and an east wind fast freshening to heavy.
Tsugaru Strait is practically under Japan's complete control; she can close it at any moment with mines. But the channel between the Korean peninsula and Kyushu has a width of 102 miles, and would therefore be a fine open seaway were it free from islands.
The Sea of Japan, which, on the east, washes the shores of the Japanese islands and on the west those of Russia and Korea, has virtually only two routes communicating with the Pacific Ocean. One is in the north, namely, the Tsugaru Strait; the other is in the south, namely, the channel between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese island of Kyushu.
Of three possible routes to Vladivostok through the Tsugaru Strait between Nippon and Yezo, through the Strait of La Perouse north of Yezo, or through the Straits of Tsushima the first was ruled out as too difficult of navigation; the second, because it would involve coaling off the coast of Japan. Tsushima remained.
And not so efficient were the other ships of similar design, the Soya, built in America, Tone and Tsugaru. The veteran Japanese navy was supplemented with 52 destroyers and 15 submarines, all built since the war with Russia, and a number of heavier vessels. Among the latter were the first-class battleships Kashima and Katori, completed in 1906, and displacing 16,400 tons.
There had arrived at Hakodate, the northernmost of the then open Japanese ports, on the island of Yezo and Strait of Tsugaru, a mysterious bark, without name or papers, peopled only by Chinese of the coolie class, and bearing evident marks of foul play.
In a shrine at Suzuka-yama in Ise, to which point the insurgents pushed southward before Tamuramaro took the field, there used to be preserved a box, obviously of foreign construction, said to have been left there by the "Eastern Barbarians;" and in the Tsugaru district of the modern Mutsu province, relics exist of an extensive fortress presenting features not Japanese, which is conjectured to have been the basis of the Tatar invaders.
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