In the spring of 1868 the government stepped up its efforts to clamp down on any show of adherence to
the foreign religion. In April an imperial notification confirmed that Christianity remained prohibited as
before, and anti-Christian notice-boards were put up again all over the country.34 From the middle of the
year the deportation of Christians began in earnest, a course of action that did not fail to elicit
representations of protest from the consuls of the treaty powers. The foreign protests did bring temporary
relief, but in the end imprisonment and deportation of Christians resumed on a massive scale.