Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/244

Rh to carry out nor any real intention of attempting to carry out.

The two most powerful fiefs of Japan at this epoch were Satsuma and Chōshiu. Satsuma, owing to its remote position at the extreme south of the Japanese Empire, had never been brought within the effective sphere of the Yedo Court's administrative control. Chōshiu, though less remote, was somewhat similarly circumstanced, and both had strong hereditary reasons for hostility to the Tokugawa Shogunate, These two clans were permeated with a spirit of unrest and disaffection. There were differences, however. In Chōshiu the anti-foreign feeling dominated the anti-Tokugawa, and the whole clan, lord and vassal alike, were convinced that loyalty to the Throne could not be reconciled with a liberal attitude towards foreign intercourse. In Satsuma the prevailing sentiment was anti-Tokugawa, the "barbarian-expulsion" cry being regarded as a collateral issue only. But as yet the Satsuma samurai had not openly associated themselves with either the anti-foreign or the anti-Tokugawa movement, nor had they given any evidence of the ambition that undoubtedly swayed them, the ambition of occupying a prominent place in a newly organised national polity. On the contrary, their chief, Shimazu Samuro, and his principal advisers maintained a neutral attitude toward the question of foreign intercourse, and were disposed to befriend the Shogunate, though the bulk