Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/34

 displayed, are dear to the Japanese. The act of Nishino Buntaro appealed strongly to their sense of the picturesque. An educated youth, who had hitherto led an unobtrusive, decorous, and law-abiding life, without political friends, without resources other than those possessed by the humblest subject, made his way into the residence of a prominent Minister of State at a moment when the inmates were all on the alert, when the whole city was en fête, when the streets were crowded with soldiers and policemen, and, in obedience to an instinct of reverential patriotism, struck down the great man with the weapon of a common scullion, within sight of armed guards and at the very moment when the Minister, dressed in full uniform, his breast glittering with orders, was about to take a leading place in the Imperial Palace among a body of statesmen associated for a purpose that was destined to make them famous as long as their country had a history. It is scarcely possible to imagine a more striking contrast between instrument and achievement. What did this object lesson teach to the average Japanese? Not that assassination is admirable or bloodshed praiseworthy, but that weakness, insignificance, and friendlessness constitute no effective barriers to signal success if they be retrieved by daring, resolution, and self-reliance. It is to be endowed with a measure of the spirit of Nishino, Masakado, and Kumasaka that the Japanese prays when he worships at the tomb of