Moreover, Ono is asked to join in and contribute through his art in the “restoration” of Imperial Japan, not only because the businessmen and politicians wield power more that the Emperor, but also because being a “giant amidst the dwarfs” in Asia, Japan has the capacity to compete with and to “forge an empire as powerful and wealthy as those of the British and the French” (Ishiguro, 1986, p. 99). Influenced by and sympathetic to the ideas of Yamagata, a veteran soldier, Ono promises him that he would do whatever he could, hence the writing of the above petition, to which the “authorities responded”, he adds, “not simply with acquiescence, but with an enthusiasm that surprised me” (1986, p. 36).