When his feudal chief, at a later date, returned to his own province Sakuma went back also, being no longer in the employ of the Shogun, though of course the clan administration was still conducted in full accord with the prevailing system, under which the Shogun, as the Emperor’s deputy, managed the nation’s secular affairs and controlled its foreign policy. It was not long, however, before Sakuma was again in Yedo, this time occupying himself in teaching Dutch, of which he had acquired a competent knowledge, to a group of pupils whose ideas tended to coincide with his own. It was at this period that he wished to publish a Dutch-Japanese dictionary, but the Shogun’s officials, so strict were still the laws on this point, could not grant the desired permission. And in the fifth year of the Ka-yei era, corresponding to 1852, the year before Commodore Perry made his appearance off the shores of Idzu province, Sakuma sought to issue a handbook on gunnery, but this right was likewise denied him. The work was entirely from his own pen, and it is to be regretted that it has not, so far as is known, been translated. The next year eight American warships arrived at the little bay of Uraga, close to the entrance of the gulf of Yedo, and it was freely stated that they had brought a message to the effect that unless the Japanese were prepared to open their ports to trade with all nations these “black ships” would find their way to Yedo itself and bombard the castle of the Shogun. The prospect filled the minds of the people of the locality with horror. Japan had no naval or military strength to oppose to these invaders. It was mournfully recognised that the coast forts then in existence had no armaments that would enable them for an instant to cope with the powerful guns on board the American ships. Japan had in secluding herself failed to keep pace with the march of progress, and was wholly at the mercy of the powers of the Occident. China had had, as in Japan they well knew, to endure in 1841 the intrusion of foreign troops, and the forcible entry of Western vessels into the waters of the Yang-tse-kiang, and now Japan, though she had secluded herself for centuries from the unwelcome attentions of foreign nations, was destined to undergo, as it seemed, the forcible encroachment on her dominions of Western barbarians with whom she had no sort of sympathy, and whose acquaintance she had absolutely no desire whatever to make.