Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/134

 that it imposed being practically neglected. Japan drew freely upon China and Korea for whatever contributions they could make to her literary, religious, and artistic equipments, but at the same time she allowed her subjects to pursue toward both countries a course of lawless violence that must have speedily involved her in war had either the Koreans or the Chinese seen any hope of engaging her successfully. There was no hope, however. She beat back their armadas; she carried fire and sword into their territories without even the semblance of a national effort; she imprisoned their envoys; she showed her total fearlessness of them in a hundred ways. But she never opposed the comings and goings of their peoples to and from her own territories. There was no isolation on her side.

Such was the state of affairs when (1542) the first Europeans came to Japan.

Christianity and foreign commerce presented themselves, hand in hand, and there is no doubt that the marked success which the former achieved at first was due, in large part, to the favour with which the latter was regarded as a means of furnishing wealth and novel weapons of war to the feudal chieftains in their combats and armed rivalries. The alien creed was, in fact, drawn from the outset into the vortex of Japanese politics, and by an evil chance its early patrons, though powerful at the moment, were destined soon to be stripped of their possessions and their