Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/237

 Shimazu Saburo, former chief of Satsuma, who, though not opposed to foreign intercourse, had been revolted by the wholesale iconoclasm of the time and by the indiscriminate rejection of Japanese customs in favour of foreign. He protested vehemently against what seemed to him a slavish abandonment of the nation's individuality, and, finding his protest fruitless, set himself to preserve, in his own distant province, where the writ of the Yedo Government had never run, the fashions, institutions, and customs which his former colleagues in the Administration were ruthlessly rejecting. Satsuma thus became a centre of conservative influences, among which Saigo and his constantly augmenting band of samurai found a congenial environment.

During four years this breach between the central Government and the southern clan grew constantly wider. The former steadily organised its conscripts, trained them in foreign tactics, and equipped them wholly with foreign arms. The latter adopted the rifle and the drill of Europe, but clung to the sword of the samurai, and engaged ceaselessly in exercises for developing physical power.

Many things happened in that four-year interval; among them a military expedition to, which led Japan to the verge of war with China. The ostensible cause of this complication was the barbarous treatment of castaways from Riukiu by Formosan aborigines. Upon