the feudatories named were indulging their own caprices in thus defying the Western powers, and how far they sought merely to carry out what they conceived to be their Emperor’s wishes, cannot now be known, but that they were amply warranted by Imperial orders in impeding the entry of aliens is proved by the Emperor Komei having sent a high official of the Court to Yedo with a letter to instruct the Shogun to expel all foreigners. This remarkable despatch conveyed the Emperor’s desire that the Shogun would forthwith proceed to Kioto to take counsel with the court nobles and thereupon despatch orders to the various clans, throughout the empire, to the effect that by dint of all their strength they should combine to thrust out the barbarians and restore tranquillity to the land. Though the Shogun did not go to Kioto just then, it was not through disobedience to his Imperial master’s commands, and it is probable that had not the trouble with the Satsuma procession occurred on the Tokaido, near Tsurumi village (where there is now a railway station), and had not Richardson’s life been forfeited, the Shogun would have felt himself obliged to take measures to enforce the Emperor’s order for the foreigners’ expulsion. That the Emperor Komei was very much in earnest about the matter is to be inferred from the fact that the official charged with the conveyance of the message to the Shogun was accompanied by the Prince of Satsuma, at the imperial desire, and it was when the Satsuma chieftain was returning to his own province after the execution of the Emperor’s instructions to escort his messenger to Yedo that the deplorable affair occurred at Tsurumi, and the Satsuma clan was plunged into direct antagonism with the subjects of foreign powers. The failure on the part of the Shogun to punish it, not from lack of inclination, but from military inability to perform the task, resulted in the bombardment of Kagoshima by the British squadron in the following summer. It deserves mention that, despite their avowed antipathy to the admission of foreigners to their country, the Satsuma clansmen were ready at that early date to avail themselves of Western appliances to the utmost, and on the principle that to retain her position among the nations Japan must adopt all the arts and sciences that would help her to become strong to hold her own, they had bought guns, and ships, of modern type, and proceeded to make the best use of both, as far as their limited experience could serve them, immediately that the British admiral entered the Bay of Kagoshima with his fleet. They did not wait for him to open fire: they took the initiative themselves, and with unquestionable courage and skill. Satsuma has, indeed, from the very beginning of the new regime been prominent in both the army and the navy, and though it must always be a matter of extreme difficulty to draw distinctions where the clansmen were without exception prompt to wield the sword on slight