It is especially noteworthy that the Iwakura Embassy had, even at that early period, been quick to discover traces of the deeply aggressive designs of Russia, and in a memorandum drawn up by Okubo appear the memorable words:—“Russia, always pressing southward, is the chief peril” for Japan. The aim of Japanese statesmanship, from that time forward, became of necessity the safeguarding of the national interests in the adjacent peninsula, and there was a strong party in the Government in favour of going to war there and then in defence of the rights of Japan. But in their travels in Europe the ambassadors had learned enough to convince them that to enter at that stage on a contest with the Colossus of the North would only be disastrous for their country, and the peace advocates, foremost among whom were Prince Iwakura and Okubo Toshimichi, carried the day. Unhappily the stealthy advance of Russia and the question of how to counteract it produced such a divergence of opinion that the newly formed government was torn asunder and the split had consequences for the nation at large which could never have been expected at the time. Among the ministerial advocates of a forward policy at that date were Saigo Takamori and Itagaki Taisuke, who are elsewhere referred to in this volume, and they, in company with Yeto Shimpei and others, resigned office. Viscount Okubo held an important position under the Tokugawa administration in the days of the Shogun Iyesada, who, owing to ill health, appointed a _Tairo_, or Regent, whose duty it became to shoulder the heavy responsibilities of that very troublous period of the national history. The Regent was Ii Kamon-no-kami Naosuke, lord of the fief of Hikoné, near Lake Biwa, who was assassinated by Ro-nins, _lit._: “Wave-men,”—in other words, men who having become masterless were restless and tempest-tossed by political gales, an element often uncontrollable and for whose vagaries no one should be held primarily responsible,—on the 3rd of March 1860, less than two years after he had entered on his onerous task. It was in reference to that, and to the attitude of the Regent towards foreign powers and the treaties which had been made with them that Viscount Okubo, at a later date penned the following note by way of preface to the memoir of Ii Kamon-no-kami Naosuke written by Mr Shimada Saburo. The original note was in classical Chinese, and the translation was made by Mr Shimada,—himself one of Japan’s foremost scholars, a much-travelled man, and member of the Lower House of the Diet, whose contributions to current literature have been numerous. The memorandum by Viscount Okubo serves to indicate, moreover, his own opinion on the advisability of opening the country to foreign intercourse, and which led to his association with other prominent Makers of New Japan. He wrote:—