Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/237

 here. The point deserving emphasis is that, prior to the abolition of feudalism in the Meiji era and the re-commencement of foreign intercourse, there had been no evidences of the existence of patriotism among the Japanese people, and that the event which evoked the sentiment was well calculated to produce such an effect. In the sixteenth century, when object-lessons in the nature and quality of Occidental civilisation were first submitted for Japanese inspection by the Portuguese and the Dutch, no marked superiority could be claimed for the foreign systems. On the contrary, the strangers presented themselves in the guise of truculent, law-despising, covetous, and uncultured adventurers, their minds degraded by the pursuit of gain, which the bushi held in traditional contempt, and their manners disfigured by a lack of the courtesies and conventionalities so scrupulously observed in Japan; whereas the appliances and contrivances of their civilisation were very little better than those of the Japanese, and the æsthetic side of their nature was apparently quite undeveloped. But when, after an interval of more than two centuries, they appeared once more upon the scene, everything had changed. The locomotive, the steamship, the telegraph, the man-of-war, the rifle, the machinery of manufacture—all these and many other striking features were absolutely novel. The display dazzled the Japanese completely, and stirred them to such a