Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/558

548 The Osaka demonstration won for the powers two of their three demands without their yielding a penny of the indemnity. The refusal to open Hiogo and Osaka was a small loss, for these cities would be opened in any case on January 1, 1868. The tariff was revised by the Yedo Convention of June 25, 1866, and remained in force until the treaties of 1894, in spite of all the Japanese efforts for revision after 1872. But the most important of the concessions was the Mikado's ratification of the treaties. It was a great pity that this fundamental act was coupled with a tariff revision for the benefit of the commercial powers.

With the Mikado's sanction of the treaties of 1858–1861, it no longer became the patriotic duty of loyal Japanese to strive for the expulsion and extermination of the foreigners. For the first time in seven years, foreign affairs were divorced from domestic politics. On the one hand, all Japanese were free to take advantage of the material and moral contributions of the West, and on the other the treaty powers were freed from a dangerous dependence upon the Shogunate. Up to this time, as Alcock so often pointed out, the Shogun was the strong support of the treaties, and with his power their maintenance was inextricably involved. But with the Mikado's sanction, the foreign treaties had behind them the rapidly increasing prestige of the Emperor. Hence the supporters of the imperial house realized, as Satsuma had realized in 1863 and Choshiu in 1864, that it was eminently advisable to be pro-Mikado and pro-foreign at the same time, to use foreign materials to beat down the Shogunate, whereas up to this time the Shogunate had largely profited through foreign intercourse. This good understanding with the imperial court made it easy, in 1868, when the Shogun had resigned, and civil war broke out, for the treaty powers to open direct relations with the restored Mikado. If the ratification had not taken place in 1865, or at some time before the civil war, it is quite possible to believe that some, if not all of the treaty powers, would have at once gone to the aid of the Shogunate forces—as the French minister actually proposed—and thus become involved in a terrible civil war between the supporters of the Mikado and those of the Shogun. As it was, a measure of suspicion lingered for some years,