These men saw that
their country was falling behind not only the nations of the West, but,
as it seemed to them, even the nations of the East. They felt that
radical changes were necessary in order to reform the awful poverty,
disease, licentiousness, national weakness, decay of bodily powers, and
the creeping paralysis of the Samurai intellect and spirit. How they
were ostracized, persecuted, put under ban, hounded by the spies, thrown
into prison; how they died of starvation or of disease; how they were
beheaded, crucified, or compelled to commit _hara-kiri_; how their books
were purged by the censors, or put under ban or destroyed,[13] and their
maps, writings and plates burned, has not yet been told. It is a story
that, when fully narrated, will make a volume of extraordinary interest.
It is a story which both Christian and human interests challenge some
native author to tell. During all this time, but especially during the
first half of the nineteenth century, there was one steady goal to which
the aspiring student ever kept his faith, and to which his feet tended.
There was one place of pilgrimage, toward which the sons of the morning
moved, and which, despite the spy and the informer and the vigilance of
governors, fed their spirits, and whence they carried the sacred fire,
or bore the seed whose harvest we now see.
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