The long-pending dispute between Russia and Japan concerning the boundary in Saghalien was settled in 1875 by a treaty(335) which exchanged the Japanese claims in Saghalien for the Kurile islands (Chishima). An unexpected attack by the Koreans upon a Japanese steamer asking coal and provisions awakened an intense excitement in Japan. An expedition after the pattern of Commodore Perry’s, under the command of General Kuroda Kiyotaka, was despatched in January, 1876, to come to an understanding with the Koreans. The negotiations were entirely successful, and a treaty(336) of amity and commerce was concluded, and thus another of the secluded kingdoms of the East had been brought into the comity of nations. Then outbreaks of this kind in Saga, in Higo, in Akizuki, and in Chōshū occurred, but they were all put down without difficulty or delay. The promptness with which the government dealt with these factions boded no good to the reactionary movements that were ready to break out in other places. Although the Satsuma clan had taken the most prominent part in the destruction of the shōgunate and in the restoration of an imperial government, there was in it a greater amount of conservatism and opposition to modern innovations than was to be found elsewhere. Indeed, the clan had split into two distinct parties, the one aiding in all the reforms and changes which the government was attempting to carry out, the other holding resolutely to the old feudal traditions which they saw endangered by the present attitude of the emperor’s counsellors. The latter party had for its leaders Shimazu Saburō and Saigō Takamori, both of whom had played conspicuous parts in the recent history of their country. The government had tried to conciliate these two influential men and to secure their co-operation in the administration. But both had retired from Tōkyō, and declined longer to share the responsibility of a course which they could not approve. Saigō, who was the idol of the _samurai_, after his retirement established near Kagoshima a military school, where the young men of that class were drilled in the duties of the army. Branch schools on the same model were also carried on in several other places in the province. In all it was said that not less than 20,000 young _samurai_ were receiving a training in these dangerous schools. They were filled with the most violent antipathy to the government and were with difficulty restrained, even by their leaders, from outbreaks in sympathy with the uprisings which elsewhere were taking place.