In 1861, Mr. Heuskin, attached to the American Legation, was murdered. Soon afterwards, one of the Governors (or Under-Secretaries) of Foreign Affairs, {94} Oribeno-no-Kami, who had been especially friendly in his intercourse with the Legations, "died," in the Japanese phrase, "without the effects of medicine." To be more precise, he had committed hara-kiri. In July, 1861, the British Legation at Yedo was attacked at night by a band of swordsmen, who passed the guards and rushed the building. Mr. Oliphant, who had recently been appointed Secretary to the Legation, was severely wounded. One of the guards, a porter, and a groom, and two of the assailants, were killed outright. One of the assailants was severely wounded, to six of the Legation party who were severely wounded and eleven slightly wounded. Such were the beginnings of Western influence in Japan. Sir Rutherford Alcock's voluminous account of his three years' ministry reveals a gallant, honest, kindly gentleman sorely perplexed by the ethical problems involved in the forcible interference of one powerful nation in the affairs of a weaker nation, whose sole ambition was to be let alone. Hampered, on the one hand, by the greed and discourtesy of the European traders, and on the other, by the immitigable duplicity and the furtive and implacable enmity of the Japanese, yet singly determined to do his duty to his Queen and country, Sir Rutherford Alcock honourably fulfilled a task of extreme danger and incredible difficulty. Thenceforward, until the year 1869, the duel between East and West continued with increasing ardour. The whole polity of old Japan was shaken as by the earthquakes which agitate and rend its soil. There were frequent assassinations of the foreign barbarians; the governing classes, which consisted wholly of the military caste, employed every invidious method to restrict trade with Europeans; while the Western nations, on their side, brought their armed strength to bear in the enforcement of treaty rights, which by the same means had originally been wrung from the Tycoon's government. And here it falls to distinguish between the divine prestige of the Mikado, {95} descendant of the sun-goddess, and the temporal administration of the Tycoon, or Shogun. In that dual administration resided a main factor of the extraordinary difficulty of the situation. Both the spiritual and temporal rulers, the Imperial Court and the Bakufu, or Tycoon's Government, were equally inspired by hatred of the foreigner. But whereas the Mikado, dwelling majestically apart, could avoid all contact with the barbarians, the Tycoon was compelled by superior force to negotiate with them. He was thus placed between two fires; on the one side, the Mikado ordered him to expel the foreigner; on the other, the foreigner threatened him with war unless the treaties were carried into execution.