On the evening of the sixth month of the fifth year of An-sei era (1858) when I went to see the Tairo, Baron Ii, to inform him of my departure to Kioto on the following day, I told him that as to the appointment of the Shogun’s heir, I had heard it directly from the Shogun himself; but as to the question of foreign affairs, I said that I had embodied my opinion in a poem, and asked him if that were his view. I had the poem written on my pocket paper, and presented it to his consideration. He carefully perused it and said that he approved of it, instructing me at the same time to act up to the spirit of that poem. Now I have the pleasure of appending that poem here as an evidence that the Baron was in favour of opening the country to intercourse with foreign nations. The poem reads: “However numerous and diversified the nations of the earth may be, the GOD who reigns over them all (or, binds them together) can never be more than one. OKUBO ICHI-O.” The Regent himself, like Okubo, with whose poetry he was in sympathy, fell a victim to the assassin’s dagger, as is elsewhere related in detail, and at the time alluded to in the foregoing note the country was so torn by clan dissensions and was so agitated by the continued rivalry of the Jo-I and Kai-koku factions that Ii Kamon-no-kami was prompted to express himself in verse which is elsewhere translated as:— Rent as the wave-beat rocks on Omi’s strand My broken heart, for our beloved land!