Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/275

Rh The conversion of Japan's Court and aristocracy to pro-foreign doctrines usually perplexes readers of her annals. They find its methods sudden and its motives obscure. The facts have therefore been set down here with minuteness somewhat disproportionate to the general scheme of these volumes' historical retrospect. Perhaps the most intelligible and comprehensive statement of the change is that whereas, in 1867, the nation's unique impulse was to reject foreign intercourse absolutely and unconditionally, its absorbing purpose in 1867 was to assimilate the material elements of Western civilisation as rapidly and thoroughly as possible. The ultimate bases of the two policies were preservation by isolation and protection by mimicry. But no Japanese of the liberal school admitted any idea of imitation for the sake of safety. He saw only what his country had lost by seclusion, and he thought only of employing every energy to repair the injury she had suffered and to equip her for recovering her due place among the Powers of the world. There remained, it is true, a small party still anchored to the old faith that to admit the foreigner was to welcome a plotter against the Empire's welfare. But to the principal of these conservatives the wholesome medicine of foreign travel was subsequently administered, working an effectual cure. As for the still smaller section, the men who had imagined that if they acquired the foreigner's proficiency in building and navi