other ports designated as the emporiums of general foreign trade should be forthwith opened, as well as Yokohama, incurred the censure of the anti-foreign clique and was stabbed to death by “ro-nins” on the 11th of July 1864, he being then in the fifty-fourth year of his age. Of the character of Sakuma Shozan it is impossible to write in terms of too high praise. By his countrymen he is universally esteemed a martyr to the sacred cause of enlightened progress. He was unselfish in the extreme, ever willing to aid others with his learning, a man of lofty ideals, of unrivalled ability to forecast the future and prepare himself, as he strove to prepare others, for its inevitable changes and transformations. His was patriotism of the purest type, for he had everything to lose and absolutely naught to gain by seeking to popularise in Japan the institutions of the West. He was in advance of his age, and shared the fate of many a reformer in other lands. He realised, at a time when it was fatal to entertain views so heretical, that the days of Japan’s complete liberty to choose a course for herself had passed, and that she would be driven to consort with the other nations of the earth if she would avoid the fate which was seen to have overtaken some other Asiatic peoples and potentates. He suffered for his boldness in criticising the then existing order of things, and a perusal of his later poems will serve to indicate the extent to which he was willing that the nation should go forward in its adoption of Western ideas and appliances, for they are eminently inspiring and resolute in tone, encouraging in every line the pursuit of knowledge with the single purpose of providing for the national defence and the retention of the independence of the land for which he prophesied the most brilliant future. Sakuma was the great forerunner of that distinguished band of patriots who, in some cases at the sacrifice of their lives, and always by the whole-souled devotion of their best energies, helped to make Modern Japan. V YOSHIDA TORAJIRO (OTHERWISE SHO-IN)