Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/226

 of the samurai, was the country's best bulwark, and they deemed that to permit the preaching of alien creeds was to forfeit the protection of the gods, who had always guarded Japan. They were not bigoted conservatives: they admitted that a nation's policy must change with the times; but they failed to understand the changes which the Shōgun's policy had undergone—at one moment ordering the feudatories to prepare for the forcible exclusion of foreigners; the next, admitting Americans even to the precincts of Yedo Castle and treating them with deference and courtesy in defiance of the Emperor's expressed wishes. They accused the Yedo Government of bribing high officials in Kyōtō,—a charge which could not be denied. They spoke of the Emperor's having passed seven days in prayer at the shrine of Iwashimizu, and of His Majesty's having finally decided, under the inspiration of the gods, that no new port should be opened, no foreigner allowed to reside in the country, and no Christian place of worship erected; and they declared their conviction that posterity would execrate them as cowards if they did not strike for their country's cause at this crisis of her destiny. It is beyond question that thousands of Japanese samurai entertained similar views; and when it is remembered that the ethical creed of the time sanctioned assassination as a political weapon, that no stigma attached to the assassin, and that