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JAPAN'S HISTORY LIBRARY |
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NEW JAPAN1THE KNOCKING AT THE GATES
THE middle of the nineteenth century found Japan in a
state of latent unrest. The carefully devised system of administration so
efficiently practised by the earlier rulers of the
Tokugawa line of Shoguns and by those of the middle period of that family's ascendancy
showed signs of weakness in the decrepit hands of regents who were but pale
shadows of their great predecessors.
Many of the powerful feudal lords, the Daimiyo, practically ignored the behests of the Government
at Yedo. The long peace, following centuries of
internecine warfare, had given opportunity for the revival of learning, and a
new school of political thought had arisen, radiating from Mito, the capital of
the feudal province of Hitachi. Its leading idea was the restoration to power
of the heaven-descended Emperor at Kioto, the study
of ancient Japanese history having convinced its disciples that the rule of the
Shogun was an usurpation. The Chinese classics, and particularly the teachings
of Confucianism, engrossed the minds of many of the learned, bringing home to
them the great principle that the aim of good government is the happiness of
the people, a factor sadly overlooked since the days of the good Emperor Nintoku (313-399 A.D.), whose care was all for the people.
It began to dawn upon earnest thinkers that all was
not well with the bulk of the nation. The military gentry, the Samurai, had
lost, in the long years of peace, the warlike occupation that was the sole
reason for their existence as a privileged class. With no fighting to do, many
of them were tempted to lead lives of luxurious ease, incurring expenditure
beyond the stipends received, in kind, from their feudal lords. As in other
countries, the impoverished members of the upper classes sought financial
assistance from the despised mercantile community, which soon learnt to regard
with animosity and secret contempt the debtors who made full use of their
privileged position, and abated not a jot of their high-born arrogance towards
those who supplied their ever-increasing needs. To add to the general
fermentation caused by this unhealthy state of the body politic, a leaven was
slowly, and at first imperceptibly, germinating that was to cause, within a
surprisingly short time, the greatest revolution in modern history.
Although Japan had spent two centuries and a half in
seclusion since, in 1638, the land was rigorously sealed—save for the narrow
and jealously-guarded gap through which only the Dutch and the Chinese were
allowed to trade—although the subjects of the Emperor were forbidden, under
pain of death, to visit foreign parts, and the laws restricting the tonnage of
ships effectually prevented navigation away from the coasts, Japan was at no
time absolutely impenetrable to echoes from the outer world. The class of hereditary
interpreters, trained for the purpose of communicating the harsh behests of the
Shogun's Government to the despised Dutchmen, closely interned in their narrow
settlement at Deshima, near Nagasaki, and to the
almost equally despised Chinese, had acquired, with the quick intelligence and
persistent inquisitiveness of their race, considerable knowledge of the state
of the countries beyond the seas. Dutch works on subjects of practical utility
to the Shogun's administration, such as military science and the elements of
astronomy and mathematics, necessary for the computation of almanacs and the
calculation of the eclipses, were translated and read by many of the scholarly
classes.
The first principles of European medicine and surgery
had become known to J apanese doctors, who sought
information with avidity from the medical officers attached, at various times,
to the Dutch factory at Deshima. The medical
knowledge thus imparted was looked upon at first with suspicion, the plates
illustrating Dutch medical and surgical works being so much at variance with
the teachings of Chinese medical lore, hitherto blindly followed in Japan, that
they were considered absurd creations of the fantastic Occidental mind. The
native dread of the defilement consequent on contact with a corpse had
prevented dissection, which would have convinced the inquirers of the accuracy
of the Dutch drawings.
Some bolder spirits, fired with scientific zeal,
screwed up their courage to the point of dissecting the corpse of a criminal,
purchased from the executioner, and found, to their amazement, that the various
internal organs were really situated as shown in the plates of the anatomical
works. One can picture the weird scene, the eager faces peering over their
ghastly work by the light of paper lanterns, for it was in the dead of night
that the undaunted investigators braved the superstition of their country.
Their enterprise was well rewarded by the results, for
it established once for all the conviction that, in medical science at least,
the "Barbarians" across the seas possessed useful knowledge as yet
undreamt of by the Japanese. All honour to that small
band of devoted men who, permeated by this idea, persevered in their studies of
Occidental matters in spite of difficulties that might well have dismayed the
stoutest hearts. It should be remembered that, with the exception of the very
few who were appointed to study Dutch, or Chinese, or, later on, Russian or
English, for the purpose of acting as interpreters, Japanese acquired Western
learning in those days at the risk of their lives.
Dutch books were surreptitiously obtained at immense
cost, translated in the face of tremendous difficulties, caused by the absence
of dictionaries, and the translations laboriously copied by hand and circulated
by stealth. One modest hero among these pioneers compiled, after years of
grinding labour, a Dutch-Japanese dictionary. Whilst
poring late one night over its pages, overcome by fatigue, he fell asleep and
let the precious manuscript drop into the or fire-bowl, the only means, at that
time, of warming a Japanese room. The priceless pages were consumed in the
embers. Awakened by the chill air of morning, the student realised his terrible loss, and that very day set about re-writing the whole work from
memory! Small wonder that his nation has accomplished, within our time, the
marvels that have won for it the respectful admiration of the world.
Although the bulk of the Japanese nation remained
profoundly ignorant of, and indifferent to, the affairs of the outer world,
there were undoubtedly some amongst the official and scholarly classes who
obtained, through Dutch channels, considerable and accurate knowledge of foreign
countries. Considering the source of this information, it is only natural that
it should have been presented to them strongly tinged by Dutch opinions, or
rather by the desire of the Hollanders to preserve their monopoly of the trade
between Japan and the Occident. However distorted, the great events of modern
history became known to the governing classes in Japan; the fame of the great
Napoleon reached the shores of the Island Empire.
The wonderful career of that "superman"
seemed to appeal to such of the Japanese as heard of his existence; a book was
even written about him, illustrated, by a native artist, with quaint cuts that
make it one of the most curious productions of the Japanese printing- press.
All this knowledge of the outer world had, however, no effect bn the policy of
strict seclusion; it tended, rather, to strengthen the rulers of Japan in their
resolve to have as little intercourse as possible with the uncanny folk who
inhabited the greater part of our planet—a fact brought home to them by the
study of a terrestrial globe, presented by the Dutch and kept concealed lest
the masses should realise how small their island
empire was in comparison to most of the other states.
From time to time there was a knock at the closed
gates; one of the maritime Powers, Britain, France, Russia, or the United
States, craved admission, only to meet with an absolute refusal, more or less
courteously conveyed. The Shogun's Government continued to congratulate itself
on the success of its hermit policy until a time came when the conduct of the
Russian navigators, exploring the northern Japanese seas, began to convince the
authorities at Yedo that a mere edict of the Shogun
would not eternally suffice to warn off the adventurous high-handed
"Barbarians". This conviction took a long time to grow in the
Japanese official mind. Years were allowed to elapse before any very serious,
notice was taken at Yedo of the urgent appeals of the
northern feudal lords, asking for guidance in the face of the continued visits
of Russian warships to their coasts and islands, sometimes in the guise of
friendly calls, with the humane purpose of repatriating Japanese fishermen who
had been cast away on the shores of Russia in Asia; sometimes of a forcible
nature and amounting virtually to armed raids on Japanese territory.
Whilst the Baku-fu—the "Curtain Government",
as the Shogun's administration was called, from the curtain surrounding the
Shogun's headquarters in camp—was striving to keep the hated foreigners off
Japanese soil by politely-worded notifications in Dutch, English, or French,
darkly threatening "very disagreeable consequences" in case of
opposition, an event took place that produced a deep impression on the
Government at Yedo. The roar of the British guns,
battering down the forts in the Canton River, in 1842, had reached the ears of
the Shogun's advisers, who, much perturbed by this evidence of the might of the
"Hairy Barbarians" prevailing over the forces of the great Chinese
Empire, received the news with the same astonishment that the Occident
displayed, fifty-three years later, when Japan defeated China and, ten years
after that, when she demolished the Russian power in the Far East. They
resolved upon measures to protect the sacred soil of Japan, and issued, in
1842, an appeal to the feudal lords to make provision for the defence of the coast. The response showed the rottenness of
the condition of the feudal system at that time; it was a general plea of
poverty and a request for assistance.
A new trouble was soon to disturb the minds of the
Shogun's advisers, a difficulty far greater than the temporary scare caused by
the appearance of a Russian squadron off Yezo in
1792, or the annoyance arising from Resanoff's attempt to open relations on behalf of the Russian Empire in 1804. They were,
indeed, confronted with a question of the first magnitude, an effort to break
through the barriers of Japanese seclusion far more determined than the
spasmodic attempts of the British frigate Phaeton at Nagasaki in 1808, or those
of Captain Gordon in Yedo Bay in 1818, or of the
expedition of Morrison, fitted out by a firm of American merchants at Macao in
1837. The coming event had long cast its shadow before it, for in 1844 a letter
from King William II of the Netherlands had been received, through the Dutch
factory at Deshima, recommending the Japanese
Government to open the country to foreign intercourse.
It may seem strange that the Dutch monarch should thus
apparently endeavour to open the door to competition,
destroying the profitable monopoly hitherto enjoyed by his subjects. The fact
is that it was becoming every day more clearly apparent that this exclusive
privilege could not be maintained much longer. The development of the whale fishery,
carried on chiefly by Americans in the waters of the Pacific, and the gradual
but unceasing opening up of China to foreign trade, were calling the attention
of the Occident in a marked degree to the Japanese islands. It could only be a
question of time; the Japanese barriers were bound to fall before the
determination of the maritime Powers to obtain free commercial intercourse with
Japan.
There is no evidence that King William's letter would,
by itself, have caused a change of policy at Yedo.
What happened within the next decade rendered a change inevitable. On July
20th, 1848, Commodore Biddle, of the United States Navy, anchored in the Bay of Yedo in the Columbus, ship of the line, with the
Vincennes frigate in company, with the object, according to his instructions,
of ascertaining if relations could be entered into with the Japanese. The
attempt proved fruitless, and Biddle had to set sail from Japanese waters on
July 29th. On the day before his departure from the Bay of Yedo,
two French warships, the frigate Cleopatre,
flying the flag of Admiral Cecille, and a corvette, surveying in Far Eastern
waters, entered the Gulf of Nagasaki, showed the tricolour for the first time in a Japanese harbour and, having
been refused all intercourse with the shore, sailed away within twenty-four
hours.
France seems to have accepted this rebuff in a
philosophic spirit, induced, no doubt, by her political troubles at home at
that time. The United States of North America were not so easily to be put off.
Commander Glyn, in the U.S. sloop-of-war Preble, visited Nagasaki in April,
1849, to take charge of the survivors of a party of fifteen American and
Hawaiian seamen, who had deserted from the American whaler Ladoga, and been
captured by the Japanese at a village on the coast of Yezo;
and of one Ronald McDonald, a young seaman from Astoria, Oregon, who had landed
from an American whaler on one of the islands to the north of Yezo. McDonald seems to have made good use of his quick
intelligence, was well treated, and employed to teach his captors English,
presumably as spoken on the Pacific Slope, with a hereditary Scottish accent.
In more favourable times, he might have eventually
developed into an American Will Adams. As it was, he seems to have greatly
exercised the minds of the Japanese authorities who questioned him by his
startling statements, when asked as to the classification of ranks amongst his
countrymen. His reply that "In America the people is king" might well
astound the officials of the Baku-fu, accustomed to the minutely-graded
hierarchy of officialdom under the despotic rule of the Shogun.
Commander Glyn having, with some difficulty, obtained
the delivery to him of these waifs and strays, he, too, weighed anchor, having
made a considerable impression by his stern attitude and his refusal to put up
with the prevarication and endless delays of the Japanese officials. On May
29th, 1849, five weeks after the sailing of the Preble, Commander Matheson, in
H.M. surveying ship Mariner, anchored off Uraga, in
the Bay of Yedo, and spent two days in surveying the
anchorage, proceeding thereafter to the Bay of Shimoda,
where a week passed, five days thereof being also usefully employed in making a
survey. He managed to land and to visit the fishing villages opposite which he
lay at anchor; but, yielding to the entreaties of the Japanese officials, he
returned on board the Mariner, which sailed away, as unsuccessful as her
predecessor, H.M.S. Samarang—miscalled Saramang by American writers on Japanese history—the
frigate that had visited Nagasaki, in the course of a surveying cruise, in 1845
It became clearly evident that the Japanese Government
had no intention of departing from the uncompromising attitude adopted in their
edict of 1843, forbidding access to their country, even to shipwrecked
Japanese, unless brought home in Dutch or Chinese ships, and prohibiting
surveys of the coast of the empire—a prohibition applying to Japanese subjects
as well as to foreigners. This edict was handed to the Dutch at Deshima, with a request that they should communicate it to
the other foreign nations, this being the first occasion on which the Dutch
were thus employed as a medium of communication with foreign powers. It appears
that the Dutch did not communicate this edict until 1847, and then only to the
Governments of France and of the United States.
The gold rush to California in 1848-9, and the
interest in the Northern Pacific consequently aroused, was, with the
development of the whale fishery in those waters and the greatly increased
trade with China, potent in moving the Government of the United States to a
momentous decision relating to Japan. President Millard Fillmore entrusted
Commodore Matthew C. Perry with the command of an expedition that was to make a
pacific, but determined, attempt to obtain from Japan permission for American
vessels to use one or more Japanese ports for supplies and refit in case of
need, and for purposes of commerce "by sale or barter". Commodore
Perry was also directed to endeavour to obtain
permission for the establishment of a coaling station on one of the islands,
even if only "on some small, uninhabited one", and to negotiate an
arrangement for the protection of distressed American seamen and their
property.
The letter which Perry bore with him as his
credentials, was addressed by President Fillmore "To his Imperial Majesty,
the Emperor of Japan", but was intended, not for the Emperor at Kioto, the real sovereign, but for the Shogun at Yedo, this error being caused by adherence to the usage of
the Jesuit Fathers, the Dutch writers on Japan, and honest Will Adams himself,
all of whom gave to the Shogun the title really belonging only to the monarch
living in sacred seclusion in the ancient capital. Readers of Adams's
delightful letters remember his constant references to his patron, the "Emperour", as he called the great Shogun Iyeyasu.
Having carefully organised his expedition, Commodore Perry sailed on his historic voyage and made Cape Izu about daybreak on July 8th, 1853. He anchored his
squadron of four ships, the steam-frigates Susquehanna, in which he flew his broad
pennant, and Mississippi, and the sloops of war Plymouth and Saratoga, on the
same day in the Bay of Yedo, off the town of Uraga. The news of the arrival of the American "black
ships" spread like wildfire through the vast city of Yedo;
Perry's four vessels were multiplied to forty, his five hundred and sixty men
became thousands, and by the time the rumour reached
the Imperial capital, Kioto, his squadron was
reported to be a fleet of a hundred sail, carrying one hundred thousand
"ugly barbarians", the greatest danger that had threatened the sacred
shores of the "Land of the Gods" since the attempted Mongol invasion
in 1281. Owing to Perry's wise firmness, he succeeded in delivering the
President's letter, on July 14th, 1853, to commissioners appointed by the
Shogun, obtaining an official receipt, which stated that the communication had
been received "in opposition to the law of Japan, in order to avoid the
insult to the Ambassador" that would have been implied in a persistent
refusal to accept the communication anywhere but at Nagasaki, considered
"the proper port for intercourse with foreigners".
It was arranged that Perry should give the Japanese
authorities ample time to prepare a reply to the President's message. He
accordingly left the Bay of Yedo on July 17th, 1853,
and returned on February 13th, 1854. During his absence, Iyeyoshi,
the twelfth Shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, died on August 23th, 1853. His son Iyesada succeeded him, and found his Government in a
chaotic state. There was, indeed, sufficient cause for the perturbation in the
minds of the Shogun's advicers. Did they accede to
the stern Commodore's demands, they would be considered traitors to their
country by every Japanese, with the exception of the very small band of
"Dutch Students", as they were called, who were earnestly striving to
increase their knowledge of the Occident, and already knew enough to make them
fearless advocates, at the risk of their lives, of unrestricted, peaceful,
commercial intercourse with foreign nations. Did the Shogun's Cabinet, on the
other hand, maintain the traditional policy of seclusion, they would have to
face the consequences of a rupture with the United States. What this danger
meant, they well understood, for they knew their utter helplessness against the
mighty engines of warfare of the "lawless and arbitrary barbarians",
as the intruders from across the seas were called in the popular literature of
the day.
To add to their perplexity, the spirit of discontent
prevailing throughout the country took, more and more, the direction of the
Mito school of political thought, tending to recognise the Emperor at Kioto as the sole source of all
authority, and to look upon the Shogun as merely his Majesty's chief executive
officer. The Imperial Court having plainly manifested its determination to
"keep the sacred soil unsullied by the foreigners", it became the
duty of the Shogun, so the Mito scholars and their following argued, to carry
out the Imperial wishes. The Shogun, they said, must again justify the real
meaning of his title, Sei-i-Tai-Shogun,
"Barbarian-Subduing Generalissimo".If he
could not subdue the barbarians, it was evident that he must go, and his office
be abolished, the whole power being restored to the hands of the
Heaven-descended Emperor.
On July 15th, 1853, two days before the departure of
the American ships, the Daimiyo of Mito, a descendant
of the famous Mitsukuni, who had made his Court, at
the end of the seventeenth century, the centre of
Japanese learning and the fountain-head of the great Shinto Revival, addressed
to the Government at Yedo a memorial setting forth
ten reasons against concluding a treaty with the foreigners and in favour of war against them. As this memorial is, in
reality, a profession of faith embodying the views of the anti-foreign party,
it may usefully be here given in full, in the translation by Dr. Nitobé in his excellent work on "The Intercourse
Between the United States and Japan":
1. The annals of our history speak of the
exploits of the great, who planted our banners on alien soil; but never was the
clash of foreign arms heard within the precincts of our holy ground. Let not
our generation be the first to see the disgrace of a barbarian army treading on
the land where our fathers rest.
2. Notwithstanding the strict interdiction of
Christianity, there are those guilty of the heinous crime of professing the
doctrines of this evil sect. If now America be once admitted into our favour, the rise of this faith is a matter of certainty.
3. What! Trade our gold, silver, copper, iron and
sundry useful materials for wool, glass, and similar trashy petty articles!
Even the limited barter of the Dutch factory ought to have been stopped.
4. Many a time recently have Russia and other
countries solicited trade with us, but they were refused. If once America be
permitted the privilege, what excuse is there for not extending the same to
other nations?
5. The policy of the barbarians is first to enter
a country for trade, then to introduce their religion, and afterwards to stir
up strife and contention. Be guided by the experience of our forefathers two
centuries back; despise not the teachings of the Chinese Opium War.
6. The "Dutch Scholars" say that our
people should cross the ocean, go to other countries, and engage in active
trade. This is all very desirable, provided they be as brave and strong as were
their ancestors in olden time; but at present the long-continued peace has
incapacitated them for any such activity.
7. The necessity of caution against the ships now
lying in the harbour—i.e., Perry's squadron—has
brought the valiant Samurai to the capital from distant quarters. Is it wise to
disappoint them?
8. Not only the naval defence of Nagasaki, but all things relating to foreign affairs, have been entrusted to
the two clans of Kuroda and Nabeshima. To hold any
conference with a foreign Power outside of the Port of Nagasaki—as has been
done this time at Uraga—is to encroach upon their
rights and trust. These powerful families will not thankfully accept an
intrusion into their vested authority.
9. The haughty demeanour of the barbarians now at anchorage has provoked even the illiterate populace.
Should nothing be done to show that the Government shares the indignation of
the people, they will lose all fear and respect for it.
10. Peace and prosperity of long duration have
enervated the spirit, rusted the armour, and blunted
the swords of our men. Dulled to ease, when shall they be aroused? Is not the
present the most auspicious moment to quicken their sinews of war? (Sic.)
The Shogun's Government, in its extremity, reported
matters to Kioto, and finding the Imperial Court more
stubborn than ever in its anti-foreign spirit, it decided that the feudal lords
should be consulted, and that preparations be made for national defence, including the casting of cannon from the metal of
all temple bells not in actual use.
President Fillmore's letter was laid before all the
feudal lords, who, almost unanimously, declared against the opening of the
country. The more enlightened amongst them were in favour of the experiment suggested in the letter, that the country be opened
temporarily. They argued that if the experiment were tried for three, five, or
even ten, years, the defences of the country could,
in the meantime, be improved, modern arms could be procured from abroad and the
Samurai trained in their use, so that, did the experiment prove harmful to
Japanese interests, the foreigners might be forcibly expelled and never
permitted to return. All this seemed to point to an unsuccessful issue of
Commodore Perry's mission; but, fortunately for Japan and for the world, wiser
counsel prevailed. The Tai-ro, the Hereditary Regent, Ii-kamon-no-Kami, Lord of Hikone, who governed for the Shogun Iyesada during his minority, was shrewd enough to understand that a rupture with the
Americans, and the inevitably disastrous war that would follow, would at once
put an end to the institution of the Shogunate; on the other hand, he feared
the foreigners might discover the real state of Japanese politics and become
aware of the fact that they were negotiating with a ruler who lacked
treaty-making power, which was really vested solely in the Emperor at Kioto. Whatever the motives that induced the Regent, when
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry reappeared in the Bay of Yedo,
with a squadron increased to seven, and later to ten, ships of war, on February
13th, 1854, he found the Japanese authorities ready to negotiate with him.
After seemingly endless discussions, every minute point being the subject of
hair-splitting wrangles, a treaty was signed on March 31st, opening the port of Shimoda immediately, and that of Hakodate in one
year, to American trade, providing for the care of shipwrecked persons of
either nation, allowing American citizens to move freely within defined limits
round the two Treaty Ports, providing for the establishment of a consulate of
the United States at Shimoda, and including a
"most favoured nation" clause.
Thus was Japan opened after almost complete seclusion
lasting two centuries and a half. The date of the signing of this, the first
formal treaty between Japan and lany Occidental
Power, is memorable as the Birthday of New Japan.
2THE OPENING OF THE GATES
THE door having thus been pushed ajar by the
Americans, other nations were not slow in profiting thereby. Admiral Sir John
Sterling obtained the signature of the first treaty with Great Britain, at
Nagasaki, on October 15th, 1834 ; Admiral Putiatin negotiated a similar one for Russia, signed at Shimoda on February 7th, 1833; and a treaty with the Netherlands was concluded on
January 30th, 1856. All these treaties contained "a most favoured nation" clause; they were more of the nature
of preliminary conventions than regular treaties, still they opened two ports
to the ships of each nation : Shimoda and Hakodate to
the United States, Nagasaki and Hakodate to Britain, and Shimoda and Hakodate to Russia.
The first agreement between Japan and a foreign state
that can be dignified with the full title of a Treaty of Commerce was concluded
on June 19th, 1858, with the United States of America, whose interests were
represented by Townsend Harris, who arrived in Japan, accredited as Diplomatic
Agent and Consul-General, in August, 1856. The year 1858 saw the conclusion of
similar treaties with the Netherlands, Russia, Great Britain, France, and
Portugal, that with Britain being negotiated by Lord Elgin. The whole period
from 1854 to 1859 may be called the period of treaty-making; its history is a
record of a long struggle between weak, distracted Japan, as represented by the
moribund Shogunate—the last years of its existence continually threatened by
the ever-growing, fiercely anti-foreign, Imperialist Party—and the strong,
determined, and fairly united Occidental Powers. In this struggle the weak made
use of the usual weapons of debility: cunning, prevarication and tiresome
procrastination; the strong used many reasonable arguments—this was notably the
case with the spokesmen of the United State—but their was, after all, might. It was consciousness of the superior might of the
foreigners that extorted from the Japanese treaties deeply offensive to their
national pride and in the popular estimation, harmful to their interests. There
is little doubt that these conventions resulted, in the end, to the benefit of
Japan, as the very situation of inferiority in which they placed her did much
to spur the nation onward in its progress, causing it to advance, without
pause, until it had, by its own exertions, lifted itself to a plane where equal
rights could no longer be denied to it and the comity of nations was obliged to
open its ranks to admit New Japan on terms of equality.
The entrance of Japan into active intercourse with
foreign nations was not accomplished without a great strain. The great majority
of the fiercely patriotic Samurai looked upon even the half-hearted compliance
of the Shogun's Government with foreign demands as high treason to the sacred
cause of Japan.
In 1859, Yokohama (strictly speaking, first the neighbouring post-town of Kanagawa), Nagasaki, and Hakodate
became the seats of foreign settlements under foreign consular jurisdiction,
and the first Christian missionaries to enter Japan since Christianity had been
ruthlessly stamped out two and a half centuries ago made their appearance. From
that date until the restoration of the Imperial power in 1868, there was,
especially in the sixties, a sad frequency of terrible outrages on foreigners
These murderous attacks were, no doubt, due in many
cases to provocative conduct on the part of the victims, as when Mr. C. L.
Richardson, an Englishman, paid with his life for his temerity in crossing the
line of march of the men-at-arms of the Lord of Satsuma, near Namamugi, on the great Tokaido road, on September 14th,
1862. But they were frequently the unprovoked acts of fanatical patriots,
thirsting for the blood of the hated foreigners or anxious to involve the
Shogunate in the dire trouble caused by foreign reprisals. The attack on the
British Legation in Yedo on July 5th, 1861, belonged
to the latter class of outrages. The British Minister, Mr. (afterwards Sir)
Rutherford Alcock, was unable to obtain from the
Shogun's Government payment of the indemnity he demanded for this outrage. It
is no wonder the Cabinet at Yedo hesitated to comply
not only with this demand but with the other peremptory requests of foreign
Powers, such as their insistence on the opening of other and more convenient harbours than those designated in the original conventions.
Political assassinations were the order of the day. The death, in 1853, of the
Shogun Iyeyoshi occurred in suspicious circumstances.
His young successor, Iyesada, died in 1859. It seems
very probable that he, like his father before him, was "removed" at
the instigation of the powerful Lord of Mito. This feudal prince was the bitter
enemy of the Shogunate. When Nariakira succeeded his
brother as Lord of Mito, in 1829, the province was torn by dissensions between
the Imperialist faction, the adherents of the Shogunate, and a third party
whose opinions fluctuated and tended towards the views of whatever party
appeared to be gaining the upper hand.
This troubled condition of Mito had led to open revolt
against the Shogun's Government. It was suppressed without much difficulty, but
was, nevertheless, of importance as the first serious rising in arms after
nearly two and a half centuries of profound peace. It had marked Mito, in the
eyes of the Shogunate, as a dangerous, turbulent district; its ruler took no
pains to conceal his hostility to the "usurper" at Yedo, as he and his followers, known as the "Mito
School," considered him.
On the removal of Iyesada,
it became necessary, in accordance with the law, for a prince of the Three Honourable Families (Go-san-ke) to be selected as Shogun. One of them, the Lord Hitotsu-bashi, was a son of Nariakira,
Lord of Mito. Ii Kamon-no-Kami,
the Tairo (Great Elder), or Hereditary Regent, who
had ruled for the minor Iyesada (though a man inferior
in governing capacity to Iyesada's predecessor, the
strong and farseeing Shogun Iyeyoshi), gave many
proofs of shrewdness and determination. He succeeded, by cunning political manoeuvres, in obtaining the appointment as Shogun of the
Lord of Ki-shu, then only twelve years old, thus
ensuring a continuance of the tutelage he had so long exercised. The Lord of
Mito was sentenced to close confinement in his palace, and all the feudal lords
suspected of being his supporters were imprisoned or compelled to abdicate. In
the fulness of his apparent power, the Regent was murdered on March 24th, 1860,
in broad daylight, at the Kuro-mon, or Black Gate, of
the Shogun's castle in Yedo, the assassins being
retainers of the Lord of Mito. Thus terminated the career of a statesman who
was by no means unfavourable to intercourse with
foreign nations, foreseeing that it was inevitable. His successor in the
Regency, Ando Tsu-shima-no-Kami,
narrowly escaped a similar fate. In 1861 he was attacked and severely wounded.
He soon afterwards resigned his office.
During these troubled years, the later 'fifties and
early 'sixties, the land resounded with the cry of —"Expel the
foreigners!"—but it was not to be taken as an indication that the whole
nation was animated by hatred of the strangers. There is abundant proof that
the masses were quite ready to live on terms of cordiality with the intruders
from abroad so long as they respected national customs and etiquette, and
refrained from the overbearing conduct too often indulged in by the
Occidentals with very shady pasts who began to swarm into the treaty ports,
especially into Yokohama, from the Pacific Slope and from the gold diggings in
Australia. Jo-i! often meant, in the mouth of an
ardent Imperialist, not so much an appeal to his fellow-countrymen to
"expel the foreigner" as a hint that it was high time to "expel
the Shogun".
The feeling in favour of the
abolition of his decadent rule, and of the transference of all power to the
Emperor, had grown far beyond the most sanguine anticipations of the small band
of Mito scholars who were responsible for its inception. The spirits of such
men as Kada, who died in 1736; Mabuchi, who died in
1769; and Moto-ori, who lived down to 1801, must
indeed have rejoiced could they have seen how thoroughly the nation had become
impregnated by their teaching, the result of their studies of ancient Japanese
history and of the Shinto cult. Every further step taken by the Shogun's
Government in compliance with foreign demands was looked upon by the
Imperialists as another sign of the utter inability of the authorities at Yedo to preserve the national honour,
that was considered at stake. The treaty with Portugal, in 1858, was followed
by one concluded with Prussia in 1861, by which time the diplomatic
representatives of foreign Powers had already been admitted to Yedo, foreign consuls resided at the Treaty Ports, and the
subjects of their nations were placed under their jurisdiction, as in China and
in the Mohammedan States of the Near East. Foreign trade was developing at a
great rate, the export of many articles causing a sharp rise in prices, adding
greatly to the cost of living, and, consequently, to the anti-foreign spirit of
the indignant Samurai, who made frequent murderous onslaughts on foreigners. To
add to the national feeling of exasperation, came the attempt of Russia to
obtain possession of the island of Tsushima, in 1861, British intervention
being necessary to compel her to desist from her purpose. On July 5th in the
same year occurred the desperate attack on the British Legation. A Japanese
embassy was despatched to the capitals of the Treaty
Powers, with instructions to obtain the postponement of the opening of
additional ports.
This was the first regular mission, properly
accredited, by Japan to foreign Powers; it reached Europe in 1862, but had been
preceded, in 1860, by a visit paid to the United States by three of the
Shogun's officials, with a staff of seventy-three persons. The Shogun's
war-steamer, Kan-rin-Maru, of 250 tons, built for him
by the Dutch, and manned by a Japanese crew of seventy, had crossed the Pacific
in forty days to San Francisco, to herald the approach of the three
"ambassadors". She was the first Japanese warship to visit a foreign
port, and it is characteristic of those days of the infancy of Japan's Navy
that her officers and crew looked upon the unusually severe gales they
encountered as being the normal atmospheric conditions to be met with on the
ocean, and weathered the continual storms with perfect equanimity, spending
their few hours of leisure in playing go, the national game of chequers.
The Japanese mission of 1862, by bringing forward
every possible argument to explain why the Shogun's Government found itself
unable to fulfil the conditions previously agreed to, succeeded in obtaining
from the Powers the postponement of the opening of additional ports, promising,
on the other hand, that the obstacles still put in the way of trade at the
ports already opened would be removed.
The visit of this embassy to Europe and America was
fraught with most important consequences, deeply affecting the policy of Japan.
Not only did its members, whose intelligence, courtesy, and refinement won
golden opinions in every capital they visited, realise by the evidence of their own eyes the futility of resistance to the armaments
of the Occident, but they began to see foreigners in quite a new light. The
friendliness of their reception convinced them that the foreigners had been
grossly maligned; those whom they had been taught to look upon as coarse
barbarians, animated by sordid motives, they found to be cultured folk inspired
by the best intentions towards Japan.
Whilst the ambassadors of the Shogun were thus being
converted, by actual experience, to more friendly feelings towards foreigners,
the hot-headed patriots at home were becoming daily more infuriated at the
presence in their midst of the men from across the sea. On June 26th, 1862, a
party of them again made a desperate attack on the British Legation in Yedo, at that time located in the Temple of To-zen-ji, where the charge d'affaires,
Lieutenant-Colonel Neale, had once more taken up his quarters, after residing
for some time at Yokohama. In spite of the protection supposed to be given by
the numerous men-at-arms, on duty day and night, furnished by the Shogun's
Government, the fanatics succeeded in entering the Legation and in killing two
of the British marines belonging to the guard supplied by the fleet. The
evident insecurity of Yedo induced Colonel Neale to
return to Yokohama, and the British Government exacted an indemnity of $50,000
for the families of the two victims. Whilst the negotiations in connection with
the reparation for this dastardly outrage were in progress, the Richardson
incident occurred, that has been already referred to. Richardson's answer to
one of his English companions, who attempted to dissuade him from riding past
the litter in which Shimazu Saburo, father, uncle by
adoption, and guardian of the young Lord of Satsuma, was being carried, without
dismounting or saluting : "Let me alone. I have lived fourteen years in
China, and know how to manage these people!" supplies the explanation of
the foolhardy conduct that cost him his life and led to the severe wounding of
the other two Englishmen—the lady with them had a miraculous escape.
Charles L. Richardson had become accustomed, during
his long residence as merchant at Shanghai, to look upon "natives"
with contempt. Unable to appreciate the difference between the submissive,
down-trodden Chinese coolies and the proud, fierce Japanese Samurai, marching,
fully armed, as an escort to their feudal lord, he undoubtedly brought upon
himself the terrible fate that was shortly to lead to the first act of war by
Britain against Japan. Colonel Neale having wisely restrained the incensed
foreign community from violent courses, a demand was presented, in regular
form, to the Shogun's Government for the arrest and punishment of the man who
had killed Richardson, and for payment of "blood-money" to the extent
of $500,000 from the Shogun's Government, and an additional sum from the Daimiyo of Satsuma. This feudal lord proving unwilling to
comply with the demand for the surrender of his man-at-arms, and for the
payment of an indemnity, Admiral Kuper appeared
before Kagoshima on August 11th, 1863, and, negotiations being fruitless,
proceeded to action. Three steamers, recently purchased by Satsuma as the
nucleus of its navy, were captured and burnt, the shore batteries were
dismantled by the fire of the squadron, and the prosperous town of Kagoshima,
which had at the time a population of about 180,000, was almost entirely laid
in ashes.
This bombardment, which took place on August 15th,
1863, served to bring the rulers of Satsuma to reason, and ought to have
convinced any people less stiffnecked than the
Japanese aristocracy of that time that the foreigners were in grim earnest, and
dangerous to tackle. It was Britain alone that in this case taught the lesson.
A year hardly elapsed, and it was repeated on another coast by an international
squadron. Another powerful feudal prince, the Lord of Cho-shu,
or Nagato, whose forts commanded the Strait of Shimonoseki, the narrow western
entrance to the Inland Sea, displayed his loyalty to the Emperor, and his devotion
to the ultra-patriotic, anti-foreign Court Party at Kioto,
by causing his batteries to fire upon several vessels, merchantmen and
warships, passing through the strait. These outrages took place in June and
July, 1863, and were promptly avenged by America and France. The United States
warship Wyoming sank one of Choshu's ships, exploded
the boiler of another, and did some other damage in an action with the
swaggering prince's squadron and batteries on July 16th, 1863, in retaliation
for the firing, on the 25th of the previous month, at the American merchant
steamship Pembroke—an insult to the Stars and Stripes, but nothing more, for
the Cho-shu gunners were on that day unskilful, and the Pembroke was not hit. On July 20th,
1863, four days after the punitive visit of the Wyoming, the frigate Semiramis
and the gunboat Tancrede, both flying the tricolour of France, the frigate also bearing the flag of
Admiral Jaures, appeared in the strait to administer punishment for the shots
fired, on July 8th, at the French despatch-boat Kien-chang as she lay at anchor.
The Cho-shu artillery would
seem to have been practising assiduously since their
"wide" firing at the Pembroke, for they hulled the small French
warship seven times, and inflicted serious damage.
Admiral Jaurés returned
these shots with compound interest, for the Semiramis and Tancrede not only destroyed the offending battery, but actually landed an armed force on
the sacred soil of Japan. The landing party of 180 seamen and 70 soldiers had a
sharp brush with the troops of Cho-shu, and
re-embarked after completing the damage begun by their ships' guns.
Another blow had been struck at the gates of Old
Japan, and had set them quivering; Japanese warriors had been defeated on their
native soil by a handful of the hated foreigners. The fact of the successful
landing impressed the men of Cho-shu more than the
wreckage caused by the French ships' shot and shell; more than the stout reply
made by the sixteen guns of the Netherlands corvette Medusa, when, on July
11th, she had to run the gauntlet under the concentrated fire of the
Shimonoseki forts and of Cho-shu's recently acquired
warships. Through the action of the Lord of Satsuma, Japan had become embroiled
with Great Britain; the Lord of Cho-shu had set his
country at loggerheads with no less than three Powers—the United States,
France, and the Netherlands—all at the same time. It is highly probable that
the ruler of Cho-shu thus achieved one of his
principal aims, the creating of trouble for the Government of the Shogun; for
his artillery officers, well versed, through translations of Dutch manuals, in
the art of gunnery, must have known that they could not long withstand the
forces the navies of the outraged Powers would, sooner or later array against
the defences of the strait.
Time after time, in Eastern politics, attacks on
foreigners are deliberately planned by those opposed to the Government for the
time being, for the purpose of involving it in difficulties that will bring it
into contempt and hasten its fall. In the case of the Shimonoseki outrages, the
Shogun's Government was soon held in a vice by the offended Powers, Great
Britain having joined their diplomatic action, although she had suffered
neither damage nor insult from Cho-shu, but inspired
by the necessity for showing Japan that the Powers were as one in their
determination to ensure the observance of treaties. The Baku-fu wriggled and
struggled; but the vice held tight, and after endless negotiations the Powers
informed the Shogun that they would undertake what he seemed powerless to
effect; they would chastise Cho-shu and open the
straits to the ships of all nations. In the first week of September, 1864, an
international squadron, consisting of nine British warships—conveying, besides
their usual complement of Royal Marines, a battalion of that splendid
force—three French and four Netherlands ships of war, and a steamship chartered
by the United States to represent their Navy, at that time busily wo oung engaged in the Civil War at home, appeared in the
Strait of Shimonoseki under ViceAdmiral Sir Augustus Kuper, in H.M.S. Euryalus.
The most interesting step in the attempts to settle the matter without
bloodshed was the self-imposed mission of conciliation undertaken by two young
Cho-shu clansmen who had recently visited England by
stealth. Hearing in London of the proposed coercive measures to be adopted
against their lord, they had hurried back to Japan, loyally to warn that prince
of the danger he would incur by opposing the might of the Occident, and
especially of Britain, whose power had been revealed in a thousand ways to
their wondering eyes and quick intelligence. Their noble mission proved
abortive; the Lord of Cho-shu stiffened his neck and
declared he could not disregard the orders issued to him repeatedly by the
Sacred Emperor, and once by the Shogun. The very fact of the young men
appearing before their lord on this peace-making errand caused thorn to be
looked upon, at the time, as renegades, dazzled and corrupted by the allurement
of strange cities—above all, of London. The ultra-patriotic Samurai of Cho-shu did not know Gower Street, where the young men had
dwelt!
Whatever contempt they incurred in 1864, later years
were to see them laden with well-deserved honours and
famous beyond the borders of that New Japan they have so powerfully helped to
make. The elder of the two was Inouyé Bunta, the other Ito Shunsuké.
They are now known the world over as the Marquis Inouyé Kaworu and Prince Ito Hirobumi.
All attempts at a settlement by diplomatic means having failed, Vice-Admiral
Sir Augustus Kuper's guns, and those of the other
Powers co-operating, spoke out the ultima ratio of the irritated Occident. From
September 5th to the 8th, 1864, all means of offence or defence possessed at Shimonoseki by the Lord of Cho-shu were
destroyed, his numerous guns removed by the international fleet, and a number
of his warriors killed, some of them during a short, but brisk, engagement on
shore. The recalcitrant Lord of Cho-shu made complete
submission to the Powers, and the Shogun's Government agreed to pay an
indemnity of three million dollars. A notable fact in connection with this fine
imposed on the nation is that the United States, nineteen years later, in 1883,
returned to Japan their share of the indemnity, amounting to $705,000.
3THE REAL CREATORS OF NEW JAPAN
THE drastic punishment inflicted by the Powers had
far-reaching consequences; both the leading clans, Satsuma and Cho-shu, had now become convinced, by bitter experience,
of the futility of opposition, with the means at their disposal, to the
determination of the Powers to maintain their treaty rights,
guaranteeing free intercourse, within certain limits, with the people
of Japan. These diplomatic instruments may well have seemed to them mere
waste (taper, lacking the sanction of the Emperor, whose importance as the
heaven-sent incarnation of the national spirit loomed greater
in their eyes day by day, in proportion as that of the Shogun
dwindled. The latter appeared to the hot-headed Samurai of the great
Southern and South-western clans a crafty huckster trafficking with the
national honour and shamefully submitting
to foreign dictation, thus belying the very nature of his ancient
office, that of “ Barbarian-compelling Commander-in-Chief ” (Sei-i-Tai Shogun).
The position of the powerful clan of Cho-shu at this period was characteristic of the chaotic
state into which Japanese politics had rapidly drifted after the
first contact with the masterful Occident had torn the ship of state
from her ancient moorings. In 1863, 011 September goth, the retainers
of the Lord of Cho-shu furnished the guard of
one. of the gates of the Imperial Palace at Kioto.
They had hatched a plot, in conjunction with seven Court Nobles (Kuge), to obtain possession of the Emperor’s person,
in pursuance of the traditional policy that dictated such an extreme
step whenever his Imperial Majesty appeared, in the opinion of
the conspirators, to be in the hands of wicked or incompetent
advisers—in this case the Shogun and his Cabinet. To secure
the Emperor’s person had been the means, time after time in days of
yore, of “saving the empire” to the satisfaction of
the discontented party, his captors being transformed, in one moment,
from “rebels against the Imperial Court ” (Cho-teki)
into loyal guardians of the throne. The Cho-shu plot
was, however, frustrated by the vigilance of the Shogun’s
spies swarming about the Imperial Court, which, on being informed of
its danger, closed the grounds of the palace to the a u k a Cho-shu men. They retired to their province, accompanied
by seven sympathisers amongst the Court
Nobles, two of whom, Iwakura and Sawa, were, later on, to play important parts in
the re-organisation of the empire. For
the time being, the Shogun’s influence at the Emperor’s Court was
paramount, but the resolute men of Cho-shu were
not easily turned from their purpose. They mustered in large numbers,
their ranks increased by many Ro-nin (literally,
“wave-men”)— Samurai who. for one reason or another, had become det
ached from their clans, desperate, adventurous swashbucklers, most of
them.
With great energy, the councillors of the Lord of Cho-shu set about the organisation of this crowd of undisciplined
warriors, and took full advantage of such notions of European drill
and tactics as they possessed. Amongst other military innovations,
they startled and shocked the old-fashioned Samurai by arming and
drilling many of the peasant class, men hitherto considered unworthy of
the honour of bearing arms. These were enrolled
in the irregular troops, or Ki-hei-tai. The Cho-shu army, thus reinforced, advanced on Kioto, and, on August 20th, 1864, made a
desperate attempt to seize the palace and the person of the Emperor.
Severe fighting took place in the streets of the
sacred capital, resulting in the defeat of the Cho-shu men, who once more retired within their own borders, this time
branded as rebels by Imperial Proclamation, rebels who had desecrated
the Holy City with bloodshed for several days and caused a large part of it to
be destroyed by a conflagration occurring during the conflict. They
had lost many of their stoutest warriors, some killed in action with
the troops of Etchu, Echizen, Hikone —all
clans supporting the Shogun and, at the critical moment of the fighting,
with the men of Satsuma, recently opponents of the Yedo Government, but, for the nonce, adversaries of
Cho-shu for reasons of clan rivalry ; others
dead by their own act, having committed suicide by hara-kiri when they saw
themselves defeated. Some had been taken prisoners by the Satsuma
men, and seem to have given their captors such good and sufficient reasons
for their desperate attempt to free the Emperor from the influence of the
Shogun that they were treated with great consideration and ultimately sent
home with gifts—a notable departure from the custom of Old Japan, by
which their lives would have been forfeit.
Cho-shu appreciated
Satsuma’s clemency and generosity ; the seeds were sown of
that co-operation between the two great clans which developed later
into the powerful combination known to the Japanese as Sats-cho-to, from the initial
syllables of the names of the three clans Satsuma, Cho-shu and Tosa, a combination
that may with truth be said to have made New Japan. Later still, it
contracted to Sats-cho (pronounced Sat-cho), and to this day the majority of those
who rule, especially in the highest positions, and of those who lead
Japan’s gallant sailors and soldiers, are clansmen of Satsuma or of
Clio-shu, the warlike Satsuma men predominating
in the armed forces, especially in the Navy, whilst the keen-witted
men of Cho-shu are found in every branch of the
Civil administration, and had, in the person of Prince Ito, a
representative whose wise advice was sought in every crisis.
The reconciliation of these two great clans, after
their conflict in the streets of Kioto in 1864,
bore fruit in the next year, when Satsuma refused to join in the
expeditions organised by the Baku-fu, acting
under Imperial orders, for the chastisement of the Cho-shu “ rebels.” These expeditions made but little and
were finally abandoned headway, when Saigo Kichinosuke, better known as Saigo Takamori, the great Satsuma leader, arranged a
definite treaty of amity between his clan and Cho-shu,
the real bond of union between them being their common resolve to overthrowthe Shogunate and to restore the Emperor to
his proper position as real head of the State, as in days of yore. Once these
two powerful clans had joined hands, the fate of the Baku-fu was
sealed. Subsequent events proved that the Daimiyo,
principally Northern and Eastern ones, who sided with the Shogun,
were no match for the coalition of the feudal states of the South
and South-west. As in the early years of the seventeenth century, the
East and the North were arrayed against the West and the South, but
this time the South and the West were to be victorious.
The momentary triumph of the Shogun’s influence at the
Imperial Court, at the time of the repulse of the Cho-shu men in the fighting at Kioto, was the last glow
of the setting sun of Tokugawa rule. Its opponents—nominally the great Daimiyo of the Southern and Western clans,
really the intensely energetic, clever Samurai who held office as
assistants to the Councillors (or Elders) at
their courts— had made up their minds to put an end to a supremacy
they hated and despised, and to restore the political condition
of the empire to what it had been prior to Yoritomo’s appointment
as Shogun in 1192—an absolute monarchy with the whole power
concentrated in the person of the Holy Emperor, the sovereign descended “
in unbroken line ” from the gods.
A few, probably very few, of these men had a wider and
grander purpose in view than the mere desire to put the clock
of history back six and a half centuries by reverting to the system
of the period that seemed to the majority of them Japan’s Golden Age.
These few, to be found chiefly amongst the Dutch Scholars and the
very small number of Japanese who had, by that time, travelled
abroad, dreamt of a Japan transported, not back into the thirteenth
century, but onward into the latter half of the nineteenth, a
Japan transformed not only in its political system and its armaments,
but in every phase of the nation’s life, a Japan that was to take its
place amongst the powers of the world regenerated and rejuvenated by
the adaptation to its needs of all that was best in the knowledge of the
Occident.
But a handful, most of them young and in subordinate
positions, these men were the real creators of New Japan. With
indomitable courage—many of them paid for their temerity with their lives—they
succeeded, in the course of a few years, in leavening the whole body of the
Samurai, the gentry of the nation, with a great portion of their
reforming ideas ; but in 1865 theirs was still a small voice crying
in the wilderness, whereas the demand for the abolition of the
Shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor’s pristine power —only
the first step in their movement—was a growing clamour in the land, opposed only by those who were bound to the Tokugawa dynasty by
tics of blood or of interests.
That this clamour was
accompanied by howls of “Out with the Foreigners!” was no fault of
these few earnest reformers; it was an almost unavoidable circumstance of
the campaign against the Shogunate, accused of truckling to the “Barbarians,”
and of thereby disgracing the nation and offending against the Emperor’s
majesty. That it was used as a convenient weapon for this campaign—a
weapon highly popular, no doubt, with the violently
anti-foreign majority of the Samurai of that time— but nothing more,
is shown by the fact of its being so quickly abandoned as soon as it
became evident that the Shogunate was doomed. It was but natural
that the majority of those advisers, Imperial princes, nobles, and
others, whose opinions were put forth as the expression of
the Imperial will, were bitterly anti-foreign. The whole fabric of
the Court at Kioto was based on the assumption
of its sanctity, a holiness that would not tolerate pollution by contact
with the Outer Barbarians; but the Court was absolutely without means
to carry into effect its edict for the expulsion of foreigners,
issued, in the Emperor’s name, to the Shogun early in June, 1863.
This edict, issued after an audience the Shogun had of
the Emperor—for the Shogun had taken to visiting Kioto,
a custom that had lapsed for two hundred and thirty years —
actually fixed a day for the expulsion, June 25th, 1863; but
that day came and passed and the foreigners remained, in danger of their
harried lives and under conditions that resembled a state of siege, yet
without any actual force being used to remove them in a body. The Yedo officials duly communicated the order of
expulsion to the foreign representatives, but the whole affair was
farcical, for “ nobody seemed a penny the worse,”
In subsequent rescripts in 1864, the Emperor was made
to say that he appreciated the difficulties in the way, and deprecated
rash haste in the execution of the Law of Punishment and Warning (the
old edicts which closed Japan). The Shogun, in his reply of March
21st, 1864, promised to act with prudence, whilst never losing sight
of the ultimate object, the “ revival of the great Law of Punishment
and Warning.” But he had his tongue in his cheek, for he knew full
well, and so, by this time, did the Imperial Court, that the foreigners
would not be dislodged, even were Japan’s strength tenfold what it
was then. In the same year, 1864, the feelings of the Samurai were
harrowed by a new desecration of their sacred .soil, which was now defiled by
the presence thereon of a foreign garrison. Two companies of British
infantry, detached from the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Foot (now the
Lancashire Fusiliers) were summoned from Hong Kong and quartered,
with the consent of the bewildered Baku-fu, in barracks in the European
settlement at Yokohama, to the great contentment of the Occidental
community. They were joined, later on, by a French force, and the
uniforms of both were for years notable features in the streets of the
rapidly rising international seaport. The more thoughtful amongst the
warrior class turned the unwelcome presence of the foreign soldiers to
good account by watching their drill intently, thus learning many a
useful lesson. The townspeople took very kindly to the foreign
soldiers in their midst ; indeed, throughout the sad years of the
’sixties, with their constantly-recurring tale of murders and
murderous assaults perpetuated on foreigners by Samurai, especially by
fanatical Ronin, the common people of Japan were, on the whole, on very
good terms with the “ Barbarians,” whom they looked upon as quaint,
eccentric beings, whose curious habits were a source of endless
interest and amusement.
The lower orders secretly chuckled at the flagrant
impertinence, according to Japanese notions of etiquette, shown
by foreigners in their dealings with the two-sworded gentry who had so long lorded it over their inferiors with arrogance
and, at times, with downright brutality. The day was fast approaching
when the Samurai would no longer swagger along the streets, carefully
avoided by people of lesser degree lest a jostle, albeit unintentional, might
be resented by a sweeping and generally fatal cut of the terrible
long sword. The old order was about to change, giving place to
conditions new and strange ; for the ferment amongst the clansmen,
the trepidation amongst the adherents of the Tokugawa, and the confusion
and intrigues at the Imperial Court, were daily growing, so that signs and
portents of the coming fall of the Shogunate became evident even to
the foreign representatives, usually enshrouded in the thick
mist of the Yedo Government's prevarications and
subterfuges. The diplomatist began to realise that
the Emperor at Kioto, the sacred
Mikado, was the ruler with whom they must join issue if the
treaties they had extorted from the Shogun were to have any
real value. Foremost among the representatives of the Powers
was Sir Harry Parkes, who was her Britannic Majesty’s Envoy to
Japan from 1865 to 1883—a man of strong character and much
energy. He succeeded Sir Rutherford Al-cock, who had been the
British representative since the first establishment of permanent diplomatic
relations in 1859. Sir Rutherford Alcock (then
Mr.) had been in England, partly on leave of absence, partly tofurnish
explanations to the Foreign Office, from March 1862 to March 1864,
during the greater part of which tune he had been very efficiently
replaced by Lieut.-Colonel Edward St. John Neale, Chargé d’Affaires.
Sir Harry Parkes may truly be said to have been, if
not one of the creators of New Japan, at least one of its
earliest tutors; his wise advice, often very forcibly expressed, was
of the greatest advantage to the regeneration and reorganisation of the empire. Even his threats, for he was one of the school
of Palmerston and an exponent of the gunboat policy,” were of great benefit
in curbing the arrogance and restraining
the extravagances of some of the makers of New Japan in
the first flush of their triumph. His advice was freely
given to Japan’s states-men, who generally grumbled at it as
an unwarrantable interference and ended by acting on it.
The Emperor of Japan has probably never heard “straighter
talk” about his country than the earnest words
addressed to him by Sir Harry Parkes at his audience before
going home on leave in May, 1871, alter six years of constant
work and responsibility at his post; it is doubtful if anyone
has ever spoken so plainly in his Imperial Majesty's presence.
Whilst the Japanese hated Sir Harry for what they
considered his bullying manner, and because they found it was
useless to attempt to hoodwink him, they respected his strength of
character, his devotion to duty, and his singleness of purpose. Many
of the wisest amongst them are now willing to admit that he was a true
friend of Japan, and proved himself so at a most critical period. Sir
Harry Parkes, soon after his arrival in Japan, set about the
achievement of a diplomatic victory rendered absolutely necessary if
the treaties were to be aught but waste paper. As Sir Rutherford Alcock and his foreign colleagues had foreseen in
the previous year (1864), the sanction of the Emperor must
be obtained before these agreements could be considered really valid by
the people of Japan. In November, 1865, the Shogun being then in residence
at his castle at Osaka whence he visited Kioto to
confer with the Imperial Court, Sir Harry Parkes and the representatives
of France, of the United States of America, and of the Netherlands, appeared
before Hiogo—now virtually one city with
the flourishing port of Kobe—with a squadron of five British
warships, three French, and one Dutch, a force calculated
to stimulate reflection on the part of the Imperial Court. After
negotiations, less protracted than usual, perhaps on account of the
presence of the international squadron, the subject having been hotly debated
in an assembly of leading councillors summoned at Kioto, the Emperor, on November 23rd, gave his
sanction in the following laconic rescript, addressed to the Shogun :
“ The Imperial consent is given to the treaties, and you will, therefore,
undertake the necessary arrangements in connection therewith.” It afterwards
transpired that the Shogun had induced the Emperor to consent by promising
that the port of Hiogo would never be opened to
foreigners, whose presence so near the Imperial Court was dreaded by
the monarch. His anti-foreign feeling was undoubtedly strong, and he gave
his sanction with great reluctance, little knowing the worthlessness of
the Shogun’s pledged word as to the port of Hiogo,
now amalgamated with Kobe as one of the great trading ports of the
world.
On September 19th, 1866, the Shogun Iyemochi died at Osaka, in rather suspicious circumstances,
which recall the fact that other Shoguns had departed this life in times of
political crisis, succumbing rapidly to mysterious ailments. For
some months Iyemochi had been a prey to
continual anxiety. The army, consisting of his own “drilled”
troops and contingents supplied by various clans, which he
had sent to chastise rebellious
Cho-shu, had been unable to
enter Cho-shu territory in any strength. The men of
Cho-shu were well drilled, armed chiefly
with Occidental weapons, and lightly equipped; they simply “ danced
round” the Shogun’s warriors, who fought with the old national arms,
sword and spear, and wore surcoats over armour,
as in the palmy days of chivalry. The victory they gained over the Baku-fu’s forces, pursuing them to Hiroshima, in Gei-shu, shortly before the Shogun’s demise, was yet
another object-lesson to the Samurai of Old Japan, teaching them the superiority
of Western arms and drill over the weapons, the armour,
and the methods of what was rapidly becoming the ancient past. Satsuma, be it
noted, had taken no part in the campaign; loyal to its new friendship, it had
protested against the expedition, and had refused to furnish a contingent to
the Baku-fu’s army. Iyemochi had, nearly a year before his death, petitioned the Emperor to be allowed to
resign and hand over his office to Hitotsu-bashi, the
clever seventh son of Naria-kira, Lord of Mito, who
had been adopted into the Hitotsu-bashi family in his
boyhood, and was, in the early ’sixties, a power in Japanese politics. The
Emperor refused to accept Iyemochi’s resignatio ; but in October, 1866, a month after the
Shogun’s death, appointed Hitotsu-bashi—then in his
thirtieth year—to the high office, making him head of the Tokugawa family,
under the name of Tokugawa Kei-ki. He was clever and accomplished, but he had a
hopeless task before him when he became the -fifteenth Shogun of the Tokugawa
line, and the thirty-eighth, and last, holder of the office. His exchequer,
drained by his predecessors and by the heavy blood-money exacted by foreign
Powers, was almost bankrupt owing to the expenditure incurred in the expedition
against Cho-shu. The failure of that “punitive”
expedition had made the Shogunate ridiculous, and in Japan, as in France,
“ridicule kills.” The feudal lords, all over the country, who were not closely
related to the Tokugawa, began to snap their fingers at the decaying power. One
of the first acts of Kei-ki’s government was, however, one that would have done honour to a more firmly established rule. In May,
1866, the old law forbidding Japanese to leave their country—death being the
penalty—was repealed. A month later, on June 25,1866, the Baku-fu concluded
conventions with Great Britain, France, the United States of America, and the
Netherlands, granting improved facilities for commerce, revising the Customs
Tariff, permitting Japanese to serve in foreign merchant vessels, providing for
the establishment of a mint, and for the lighting and buoying of the approaches
to all treaty ports
3.-WAR WITH CHINA. THE RESTORATION OF THE MIKADO AND THE GREAT EMANCIPATION.
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