The Great Mutiny in India (1857-1859), in addition to the Taiping Rebellion in China (1851-1864) and the Meiji Restoration in Japan (1868), was one of the largest nationalist movements in Asia. Zozan Sakuma in the Edo era, who studied Western sciences through Dutch, was in touch with current problems in foreign countries. In 1842 after the Opium War in China, he formulated eight policies for coastal defense and later, in 1853 he observed an American fleet visiting Japan and framed ten policies of urgent necessity. Both were submitted to the Tokugawa Shogunate. During the Taiping Rebellion, he asserted that it might influence Japan and that some British were participating in it. But after the occupation of Peking by the allied forces of Britain and France, he insisted that Japan should guard against British invasion and he further mentioned that every country in the world except Japan, at that time, was subject to constant civil rebellion. Townsend Harris, the American consul in Japan, assumed his post after the opening of Japan. In 1857 he claimed that he would deal wisely with a visit of the British fleet to Japan. This was a ploy to open trade with America. Zozan judged, however, that as a big war had arisen in Bengal, Britain would not be able to afford to send her fleet. He informed the Matsusiro clan of this only 24 days after the Indian uprising. When Harris demanded the commencement of trade and the establishment of a residence for the American minister in 1858, Zozan saw it as a strategy to colonize Japan, that is, it could be a means to warn of British invasion and to urge the signing of a treaty with America. His belief arose because Harris mentioned only the incident in China and did not reveal the Great Mutiny. This was also clearly shown by Harris' false reply saying, the Great Mutiny was over. In that year British and French ships visited the sea near Edo. Zozan had apprehensions that a visit of the British ships might be an attempt to compensate, in Japan, for the loss in the Great Mutiny. In 1857 Zozan regarded the Great Mutiny as a discord not only between the British colonial policy and the Indian people, but also as one which existed between Britain and Russia. Thus based on Harris' attitudes, Zozan became absolutely convinced of the substance and importance of the Great Mutiny, and sufficiently appreciated the serious damage Britain sustained from it. He therefore considered it in relation to the opening of Japan by America, and informed the Shogunate, his clan, acquaintances, and disciples of its serious influence on Japan. Zozan's knowledge of the state of affairs in foreign countries was acquired from a borrowed copy of the Dutch current report, and by collecting the information from his disciples in Nagasaki. On the basis of this data, he could pass rapid and precise judgement upon the Great Mutiny. Zozan, in order to formulate a culture which differed from China and the West, desired a harmonious unification of Eastern spiritual culture and Western material civilization. His words 'oriental spirit' included an element of the same spiritual value found in the Indian nationalist movement. Zozan was a man who carefully observed the progress of the nationalist movements in Asia, deepened his thought, and endeavoured to practice and diffuse it. He, himself, lived in the Meiji Restoration.
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