ABSTRACT
Two decades of copying what seemed like everything western had already passed and joyaku kaisei (revision of the unequal treaties) became one of the major issues for intellectuals of the late 1880s in Japan. Negotiations with the western powers were held by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, but in vain. Inoue Kaoru (1835-1915), one of the Ministers, proposed to offer the establishment of mixed courts, whereby a certain number of foreign judges would sit on the Japanese bench, and was further willing to make concessions on what the Japanese called naichi zakkyo (mixed residence), which would open the whole country for foreigners to reside, to own property, and to carryon trade in the interior.1 The second generation of Meiji denounced these proposals as spiritless concessions to the western countries.
