Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/189

 appear in the northern seas, the Shōgun's officials took heart of grace, and issued orders that any foreign ship coming within range of Japanese guns should be cannonaded.

It has been shown that from the middle of the eighteenth century the literary studies of the nation began to create a strong current of thought opposed to the system of dual government represented by the two courts of Yedo and Kyōtō. Possibly had nothing occurred to furnish signal proof of the system's practical defects, it might have long survived this theoretical disapproval. But the crisis caused by the advent of foreign ships and by the forceful renewal of foreign intercourse afforded a convincing proof of the Shogunate's incapacity to protect the State's supposed interests and to enforce the traditional policy of isolation which the nation had learned to consider absolutely essential to the Empire's integrity.

When confronted by this crisis, the Yedo administration had fallen into a state of great financial embarrassment. In spite of a forced loan of a million ryō levied from the citizens of Osaka, the Shōgun's ministers were obliged, in 1818, to revert to the pernicious expedients of debasing the currency, and arbitrarily readjusting the ratio between gold and silver, which they now fixed at six to one. A sudden and sharp appreciation of commodities, the disappearance of gold from circulation, and general discontent ensued. The