Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/242

Rh the Yedo Court. The continuous monopoly of administrative power during nearly three centuries by a small section of the nation had naturally educated the former feeling; and as for the latter, it was entertained partly by men disgusted with the feeble, vacillating methods of the Shogunate in recent times, and partly by men who had been driven from office or otherwise punished in connection with the vicissitudes of the era and with the Yedo Court's frequent changes of policy. On the whole, the enemies of the Shogunate were much more numerous and influential than the enemies of foreign intercourse, though both united in the "barbarian expelling" clamour,—these from sentiment, those from expediency.

Murderous attacks upon foreigners now became frequent; a party of samurai proceeded to Yokohama and threatened with death any Japanese merchant doing business with aliens, and a doctrine was propounded in Kyōtō that the Shōgun's title—Sei-i, or "barbarian expelling"—pointed plainly to the expulsion of foreigners, and convicted him of failure of duty in admitting them to any part of Japan. It need scarcely be said that the title had no such significance. Devised originally with reference to the subjugation of the uncivilised aborigines of Japan, it had never been applied to foreigners, and could not possibly have been applied to them, seeing that its first bestowal had long antedated the