"The Robinson Crusoe of Nations."

A little more than three hundred years ago the city of Rome was the scene of perhaps the strangest sight which even her streets, trodden by pilgrims from all the corners of the earth, had ever witnessed. Escorted by the cavalry and Swiss Guard, accompanied by the foreign embassies, all the Roman princes and nobility, with the officials of the cardinals and of the Vatican, a company of Japanese ambassadors, themselves of princely birth, were conducted into the presence of the chief pontiff. The vast crowds thronging the streets and filling the windows looked on in almost breathless silence as the strange visitors in their splendidly embroidered robes, wearing in their girdles two swords, the symbols of Japanese nobility, passed onward to the Hall of Audience. Reaching the bridge of St. Angelo, the guns of the Castle joined with those of the Vatican in welcoming the foreigners. Ushered into the presence of the Pope, the Japanese approached the papal throne with their credentials.

Prostrating themselves at the Pope's feet (Gregory XIII.), according to Japanese fashion, they declared (through an interpreter) that they "had come from the extremities of the East to acknowledge in the person of the Pope the Vicar of Jesus Christ; to render obedience to him in the name of the princes of Japan, of whom they were the envoys." "The appearance of the young men," described by the chronicler of the event as "modest and amiable, yet with a conscious sentiment of nobility," together with the great importance of their message, "drew tears and sobs from the greater part of the audience. The Pope himself, agitated, hastened to raise them up and kissed their foreheads." The reading of their letters was followed by a discourse by Father Gonzales, in which occurs a passage which so accurately describes the Japan of to-day that it is worth while quoting some passages, in view of the wonder with which the achievements of the Island Nation are now regarded.

Gonzales says: "Nature has separated Japan from our country by such an extent of land and sea that before the present age there were few people that had any knowledge of it, and even now there are those who find it difficult to believe the account of it.

"It is certain nevertheless, Most Holy Father, that there are several Japanese Islands of vast extent, and on these islands numerous fine cities, the inhabitants of which have a keen intelligence, noble, courageous hearts, obliging dispositions toward that which is good. Those who have known them have decidedly preferred them to all the other peoples of Asia, and it is only their lack of the true religion which prevents them from competing with the nations of Europe," etc.

The message of these first Japanese ambassadors to a foreign court was answered in the affirmative, and the Christian faith among the refined islanders soon numbered its converts by hundreds of thousands.

The extraordinary impression made upon the Church of Rome by this event is indicated by the fact that of the thirty-eight persons admitted to sainthood by Rome between that date and 1863, no less than twenty-six were Japanese; and the occasion of the canonization of some Japanese on the 8th of June, 1862, was the most magnificent function ever celebrated in modern Rome. There were present at this solemnity forty-three cardinals, five patriarchs, five archbishops, one hundred and eighty-six bishops--in all, two hundred and sixty-seven of the highest dignitaries of the Roman Church, who joined in doing honor, not to those who might have been selected from the saintly servants of the Church in the western world, but to the obscure, half-mythical martyrs of far-off Japan. But the strangest of surprises that meet us everywhere in the story of Japan is, that in a little more than three decades a persecution of the Christians, scarcely matched by the Spanish Inquisition, burst forth in Japan, so that in a short time every vestige of the "Western religion," as it was called, was swept from the land, and its symbols held up for popular abhorrence. To prevent the reentrance of the Christian religion into Japan, the ports of the Empire were closely sealed for two hundred and fifty years.

Precisely what caused this revulsion of feeling toward the Christians on the part of the Japanese will perhaps never be clearly explained.

Historians differ; some say that the Jesuits had obtained such power as to be practically in possession, so to speak, of a land and people whose pride it was never to permit the foot of an invader to press its soil. Others attribute a political cause; the Jesuits taking sides in an election between rival candidates for the Shogunate, like a third party in a family quarrel, both turned against them. Whatever the cause, the crowning virtue of the Japanese, their hospitality, went down before the overmastering passion of patriotism, and the Japanese, the kindliest people in the world, became for nearly three centuries noted for their arrogance and exclusiveness.

The first Christian missionary to Japan was Francis Xavier, 1549. He traveled on foot from town to town, making from five hundred to a thousand converts a day. The revulsion of feeling, resulting in the massacre of the Christians, white and native, changed the entire policy of government. The story of the long isolation, which made Japan the fascinating mystery of our childhood, has been only equaled in later years by the story of her new birth, which has made her the marvel of modern history.

Between the years 1584-1854, Japan was called the "Robinson Crusoe of Nations." During that time, "a population of twenty millions at the start, that number nearly doubled before the country was again thrown open, was to subsist solely upon the resources which the Empire itself could supply, with only one-twelfth of its area susceptible of cultivation. Yet the people were to preserve their self-respect, and to live in peace and happiness and contentment with each other. The isolation of Japan brought up the laboring classes, especially the farmers. The wonderful development of agriculture made the arable twelfth of the Empire more than sufficient to support its teeming millions; and the enforced economy of the masses became not only the law but the fashion in the higher ranks of society, which resulted in that simplicity of living, and consequent freedom from superfluous cares, which practically make the Japanese, in the best sense of the word, the happiest and most independent people in the world." The period of exclusion was also one of inclusion. It was deliberately determined, when the world was shut out, that all Japanese were to be shut in. All seaworthy ships were then destroyed; and on pain of life imprisonment or perpetual banishment all natives were forbidden to go to a foreign country. The few who tried to break through this wall of exclusion and inclusion form the basis of many a romance in Japanese literature. (For the history of the Opening of the Ports, see page 325.) Not many months after the Treaty for opening the ports was signed a Japanese poet wrote: