JAPAN ; 
BY 
D. W. STEVENS 
COUNSELOR OF THE IMPERIAL LEGATION OF JAPAN 
(Extract of Address presented before the Society October 19, 1894*) 
The restoration of 1868 found Japan in a disordered and im- 
poverished condition. The assumption by the Emperor of the 
imperial power and the relegation of the Shogun to private 
station were not the results of a sudden emeute or of a hastily 
planned revolution. The seeds of discontent had been long 
sown—the fruit was long in maturing. Japan had been closed 
to the world for centuries ; but no people can be shut off com- 
pletely from knowledge of the rest of mankind, or from contact 
with the ideas of a progressive age. The government of the 
Shogun was a feudal despotism, a system as complete as any 
that ever existed in the middle ages, surviving apparently un- 
impaired to the last half of the nineteenth century. It was a 
government which had served a good purpose at one time, for 
it had quelled and pacified warring factions and had given the 
nation much needed rest under a wise, if a severe, rule. But 
its day of usefulness was past; those who controlled it saw the 
threatening dawn of a new era, and their wisdom became cunning, 
their severity, tyranny. It may be safely asserted that the 
Shogunate would have fallen in any event, from internal feuds 
and dissensions ; but strangely enough the death blow to its power 
was that event of which we Americans are so justly proud—the 
conclusion of the Perry treaty. It was this dawn of daylight 
from the outer world which showed intelligent Japanese how 
thoroughly out of touch their country and, above all, their form 
of government was with the spirit of the age. It was then that 
the little band of reformers who were chiefly instrumental in 
*The Editors regret that space will not permit the publishing of this 
address in full. 
(193) 
