Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/550

540 tions, and the method of collection, made it the most notable of all punitive demands upon a non-European state.

The growth of these demands paralleled the rise of the antiforeign opposition and furnished arguments against the greedy and insulting foreigners. The maximum demands, in the Richardson case, came, moreover, at a most inopportune time.

The opposition to the Shogunate, using the unpopularity of its foreign policy as an issue, had rapidly increased. Kyoto, formerly neglected by the feudal lords, now teemed with daimyos under the leadership of powerful western feudatories, the daimyo of Choshiu, and the father of the daimyo of Satsuma. The result of their agitation was the sending of a mission to Yedo to demand, in the Mikado's name, the closing of Kanagawa (Yokohama)—offering Shimoda again in exchange—and to secure the Shogun's consent to one of three proposals, that he go up to Kyoto to consult with the court concerning the expulsion of the foreigners, that he appoint five of the anti-foreign maritime daimyos to act as regents (tairo), or that he appoint Hitotsubashi, the recent Mito candidate for the Shogunate, as guardian, and the ex-daimyo of Echizen as tairo. The Shogun decided to accept the first and last of the three demands. This has been deemed by some to be the beginning of the end of the Shogunate. Never before had a Shogun been ordered to present himself at the Mikado's court. Not since 1634 had a Shogun visited Kyoto, and then Iemitsu paid his respects to the Mikado as an act of grace and not of duty. The Englishman, Richardson, was assassinated by members of the train of the Satsuma chieftain, who had been the escort of the imperial envoy to Yedo.

For almost a year the Shogun put off this humiliating visit to Kyoto, thus increasing the indignation among the hostile courtiers and feudatories. Just when it could be no longer delayed the British demands for reparation for the Richardson murder arrived and were withheld for twenty-three days by, the chargé, pending the arrival of the British fleet. When the demands were presented, on April 6, the Shogun was on his way to Kyoto.

Thus the crushing British demands played into the hands of the anti-foreign party at the great conference at Kyoto. The enormous amount demanded of the Shogun for the murder of a foreigner who had given, from the Japanese point of view, cause for punishment,