great changes in men's ideas. These were the bombardments of Kagoshima
and of Shimonosheki, the first on August 11, 1863, the second on
September 5, 1864. I shall not dwell here on the injustice of these
barbarous and heathenish acts of the so-called civilized and Christian
nations; for I am not writing a political pamphlet. But impartially
let us note the great effects of these bombardments.

I. These conflicts showed on a grand but sad scale the weakness of the
Daimios, even the most powerful of them, and, on the other hand, the
power of the foreigners and their rifled cannon and steamers. The
following Japanese memorandum expresses this point: "Satsuma's eyes
were opened since the fight of Kagoshima, and affairs appeared to him
in a new light; he changed in favor of foreigners, and thought now of
making his country powerful and completing his armaments."[8]

The Emperor also wrote in a rather pathetic tone to the Shogun
touching the relative strength of the Japanese and the foreigners: "I
held a council the other day with my military nobility (Daimios and
nobles), but unfortunately inured to the habits of peace, which for
more than two hundred years has existed in our country, we are unable
to exclude and subdue our foreign enemies by the forcible means of
war....

"If we compare our Japanese ships of war and cannon to those of the
barbarians, we feel certain that they are not sufficient to inflict
terror upon the foreign barbarians, and are also insufficient to make
the splendor of Japan shine in foreign countries. I should think
that we only should make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the
barbarians."[9]