Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/186



URING all these years, from the early part of the seventeenth century until the last quarter of the eighteenth, vague conceptions of Occidental civilisation and Occidental sciences had been filtrating into the country through the narrow door of Dutch trade in Nagasaki. The study of medicine chiefly contributed to indicate how wide the interval between the civilisations of the West and the East had grown since the beginning of Japan's policy of isolation. To prosecute such a study with any measure of success despite the difficulties presenting themselves, showed significant earnestness in the pursuit of knowledge. Everything had to be done in secret, since discovery signified the severest punishment. In truth, the indomitable energy of a few obscure students who procured a rare volume from the Deshima factory at almost incredible cost, and, without the aid of an instructor or a dictionary, taught themselves the language in which it was written, is a story of reality stranger than fiction. But the movement had nothing of a national