Sakuma Shōzan had been on house arrest for at least a year now, after attempting to stow himself away on a treacherous black ship. Although the taste in facial hair lived on, his adherence to decency and good manners had failed to percolate through the general public. Reversed it seemed; there were books to spare, but the machines created remained silent. Under a hand scratching his beard, the scholarly inventor had been sifting through countless pages on rangaku studies. In particular, knowledge bestowed from a Dutch enclave in Dejima. While Shozan continues to marvel at the wonders of scientific achievements. It was in actuality something he'd developed into a life's long work in an age of technological progress, as he tapped in several beats on the first telegraph made five years before the gift of such a device given by Commodore Perry.
Some would say his advocation for European learning has earned ire from fellow retainers; he brushed them off and had taken the opportunity to indulge in further work. Others said it was what was needed for the Rising Sun to stand on its feet. The humiliation endured by the Chinese from Western aggression has shown how complacent Nippon became under the isolation of time. Among them, those countless daimyos who thought the best way to solve that problem was by purchasing weapons of rifles, revolvers, and fire that could further divide these lands into chaos. Shōzan and others were apt to foresee the escalation between rival clans by slowly tearing up a wedge between traditional and change.
But at least anyone could afford a moment to enjoy calming silence before the storm.
As he sat on the board of his seat, he thought over how the Bakufu could utilize sea-fearing methods in defense proposed in his "Eight policies for the defense of the sea." And to what extent would his proposition be implemented? Recent translations from the Qing's military records and the "Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms" written by Chinese scholars had Sakuma struck by surprise by the similarities in their ideas in defending against the west. His work had brought auspicious fame amongst the people and was Sensei towards several now growing prominent leaders.
"[It] divides the whole into eighteen parts, outlined in classical and somewhat obscure language. The 1st section enjoins the necessity of taking advantage of barbarian power and inventions, to resist the barbarians and to be on a proper footing with them... The closing chapters direct attention to the superiority of barbarians in their method of circulating news, ship-building, gunnery; filled woodcuts representing things and processes. Amongst barbarians, the English occupy a prominent place."
—The Chinese Repository Volume XIX January–December 1850; p. 135
To his left was Nöel Chomel's encyclopedia containing instructions on making glass, magnets, thermometers, cameras, and telescopes, but sly in comparison for the countless manuscripts that sought to enlighten one's mind to a growing mystery of world beyond. A seismometer lay next towards the dimly light paper lantern calculating seismic data. An invention created by Western hands; to accurately measure the Earth's structure and internal movements, now recently replicated by his own hands. An Elekiter generator displaced lay dormant and unmoving as it were.
Shōzan felt something. A slight tremor? He was about to get up when laying wind on the glass bottle began to tremble. The ground roared into life, crashing furniture cascading down to the floor. Books scattered, dishes breaking, paper lamps falling from its post. He was ready to call out for his servants, then, everything stopped?"
In his peripheral vision, Shōzan laid full eyes on the prototype seismometer, its drum recording ground motion on the pin attached to its weight. He barely even had any time to read through the graphs, examining the data finding another quake seizure. Under normal circumstances, this would have been nothing more than a small fad. However, these last two years have been constant Earth-shattering quakes one after another. As if it wasn't a terrible omen of the gods turning their backs on these lands. He winced, his eyes balling after a long heavy night under constant stress.
Deep down, within his very soul, a grave disaster may once again strike at the very heart of this nation, and one that could very shake at it's very foundations.
Author's notes: For all those wondering why this took me several months to get this chapter up, basically, I just sort of ran into a freakin roadblock along the way. When I actually started this, I didn't really think when I decided to add in actual historical figures that I end up running into major complications. Trying to write an actual person from history is...actually kind of difficult to say the least. It's really kind of hard what that person was like personality wise, and technically there was not a lot of sources other than Wikipedia, so again, I apologize for how long this took.