of instruction for the protection of Shanghai. The organisation, moreover, of the internal government of the British community at Shanghai gave him no little trouble, and he found himself obliged to put a check upon the ambitious designs of the English municipal council.
In the course of a visit to the ports which he had opened on the Yang-tsze he received from Earl Russell (under date 27 March) the appointment of minister to Japan. He now left the consular and entered upon the higher duties of the diplomatic service, of which he had already acquired some experience in Siam.
Parkes arrived at Nagasaki on 24 June 1865, and landed at Yokohama on 18 July. He was immediately confronted with a grave difficulty—how to obtain the ratification by the mikado of the 1858 treaties. The political condition of Japan at this epoch was confused and divided. Of the daimios, or feudal chiefs, some supported the shogun (tycoon), who had long absorbed the executive functions of sovereignty, and who favoured the extension of foreign relations; while others, who in the end proved the more powerful, supported the mikado, whose secluded life and bounded ideas were understood to encourage a policy of diplomatic exclusion, if not the absolute expulsion of foreigners from Japan. Parkes at once grasped the situation. The Choshiu struggle, which first engaged his attention, revealed to him the waning influence of the shogun; and while negotiating terms for the opening of the ports of Hiogo and Osaka to foreign trade, he conceived the bold policy of going to Osaka with the other foreign representatives, and urging, through the shogun, the ratification of the treaties by the mikado himself. Parkes's energy and firmness, supported by the presence of the allied fleet, carried the day; the treaties were ratified by the mikado on 24 Nov., and thus before the new minister had been six months in Japan ‘he had won the most signal victory British diplomacy has ever gained in the Far East’ (Dickins, in Life of Parkes, ii. 44). The next three years were a period of anarchy and civil war in Japan. The great daimios were determined to get rid of the shogun, and the revolt of the western chiefs was followed by the coup d'état of 3 Jan. 1868, when the shogunate was formally abolished, and Satsuma and other western daimios obtained the direction of the authority of the mikado. Keiki, the last of the shoguns, did not submit without a struggle; but a defeat at Fushimi ended in his flight, and the new government was rapidly organised. The mikado was induced to emerge from his old seclusion, and even to receive the foreign ministers in personal audience on 23 March 1868. On this occasion, while proceeding to the court at Kioto, Parkes, who had already been attacked by a two-sworded Japanese in 1866, and had run considerable risk in suppressing a wild irruption of armed men of Bizen during the civil war, was furiously assaulted by several Japanese swordsmen, who wounded twelve of his escort before they were cut down. The minister himself, though hotly pursuing his assailants, was fortunately untouched. The Japanese government made every reparation in its power, and it was evident that the assault was prompted by mere fanatical hatred of foreigners in general, and had no particular reference to Englishmen or to the British envoy. Parkes's first audience of the mikado was postponed by this accident till 22 May, when he formally presented his credentials to the now fully recognised sovereign of Japan.
Thenceforward, at least up to 1872, Parkes was identified with every forward movement of Japan towards unification and assimilation to western civilisation. How wide and deep his influence was with the Japanese government cannot be stated in detail so long as his despatches remain buried in the archives at the foreign office. Out of eighteen years of diplomatic work as minister to Japan, the continuous despatches of only about eighteen months have been published. Among other matters, he took an active part in helping the Japanese to place their currency and finance on a better footing, advised them in the complicated ichibu question, got a mint founded (where Lady Parkes in 1870 struck the first Japanese coin ever issued by modern machinery), and assisted the government in the capitalisation of the samurai pensions. He was urgent, as early as 1870, for the introduction of railways; and, as doyen of the corps diplomatique, it fell to him to congratulate the mikado on the opening of the Hiogo line in February 1877, nine years after he had seen the port of Hiogo (Kobé) opened to foreign trade. He also initiated the system of lighthouses round Japan in 1870. To other nations his mediation was often valuable, and the Austrian government expressed its gratitude for his aid in their treaty of 1869. Among the delicate negotiations of his first period of residence in Japan, the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869 involved nice questions of state receptions and other formalities, all of which were settled to the satisfaction of both courts. Shortly after entertaining the prince, Parkes was waylaid by two fanatics, and cut at with a sword; but the
