I. THE TREATIES AND THEIR NEGOTIATORS.
Commodore Perry's expedition, 1853-54—Townsend Harris—Count Poutiatine—Lord Elgin—The treaties of 1858—The solidarity of Western Powers—The practical attitude of the Japanese—Their yielding to circumstances—The condition of the country—The character of the people—Nagasaki—The Dutch—Their two hundred years' imprisonment.
A mystery hung over the island empire, which had been sealed against foreign intercourse for two hundred years, and its mere seclusion, apart from the weird romance that gilded such fragments of its history as were known, invested the efforts to reopen the country with a romantic charm. It was in Japan that Lord Elgin achieved the real diplomatic success of his life, in the briefest possible time, at the least possible cost, and with the most far-reaching consequences; for undoubtedly he hastened the entry of the Land of the Rising Sun into the family of nations.
The poetical side of the mission was done ample justice to by Laurence Oliphant in his 'Narrative,' by Captain Sherard Osborn in the pages of 'Blackwood,' and elsewhere. The prosaic side and the practical issues of this rediscovery of an old world were not so clearly apprehended by them or by any other contemporary writer. The Powers of Europe and America had long been watching for opportunities to effect an opening in the barrier, but all tentatives proved in vain until force was resorted to. This was first done by the United States, whence a naval squadron under Commodore Perry appeared off the coast in 1853, repeating the visit, on a still more imposing scale, in 1854. The apparition deeply impressed the minds of the Japanese Government and people, who, Lafcadio Hearn tells us, speak to this day of the "black ships," birds of omen foreshadowing events for which it behoved them to prepare themselves. Black, indeed, they were, grim of aspect, huge in bulk, and looming larger than they really were, with their high sides, great paddle-boxes, and "smoke-stacks." The ships were armed with a few guns of such calibre and power as had not till then been placed on any floating battery. Jonathan is never second-best in naval artillery. Commodore Perry with his three black ships, the steamers Powhattan, Susquehanna, and Mississippi, and his squadron of sailing-vessels, opened the door of Japan—not very wide, it is true, yet so that it could never again be closed. The rudimentary treaty he made was little more than a covenant to supply wood and water to needy ships and to be merciful to their crews. A similar treaty was made by the English Admiral Stirling in 1854, and it included the "most-favoured-nation" clause, only excepting from its application the privileges enjoyed by China and Holland.
To carry the work forward to a more practical stage a man of affairs was required, and he was found in the person of Townsend Harris, who was accredited to Japan under the title of Consul-General for the United States. Mr Harris had been nearly two years in the country when Lord Elgin, with his modest escort, arrived and made his acquaintance. With infinite patience Mr Harris had been prosecuting his negotiations, against wind and current, it would seem, until a propitious gale wafted his venture into port. The black ships had gone, but another fleet more numerous was assembled on the neighbouring coast, whence their fame had reached the secluded empire. Riding on the shoulders of the Anglo-French exploits in China, and not obscurely hinting at the prospect of the allies shortly visiting Japan, Mr Harris induced his Japanese friends to "hurry up" with his treaty, that it might not only serve as a model of moderation for the other Powers when they also should come to negotiate, but provide in advance friendly mediation between them and Japan. Lord Elgin justified the forewarnings of Mr Harris by appearing in the Bay of Yedo within a few weeks after the signature of the American treaty.
How much both Mr Harris's treaty and the one which Lord Elgin was about to sign owed to the previous Russian negotiations cannot be estimated. Admiral Count Poutiatine concluded a treaty in 1855, and improved it in 1857, on the basis of Sir James Stirling's opening the ports of Nagasaki, Hakodate, and Shimoda for ship's supplies, with sundry minor privileges. When Lord Elgin reached the Bay of Yedo in August 1858 he found Count Poutiatine already there with a frigate and a gunboat.
BAY OF YEDO.
Walker & Cockerell sc.
This convergence of the great Powers of the world upon a single object, that of breaking down the seclusion of Japan, was clearly recognised, and its proximate effect weighed, by the Japanese statesmen of the day. Too wise to oppose an uncompromising resistance to the pressure, they employed their skill more profitably in deflecting its course. In accordance with this policy, Lord Elgin's demand, backed as it was by the prestige of his recent achievements in China, was promptly conceded, and within the short space of fourteen days from his arrival in the bay a treaty was concluded of the same tenor as the American, of which Lord Elgin had obtained a copy from Mr Harris, who also lent him the invaluable services of his Dutch interpreter, Mr Heusken. By the two treaties three of the chief ports of the empire were opened to foreign trade within one year, and two more at later dates. In some respects the English was an advance on the American treaty. By the latter the import tariff had been reduced from the old Dutch rate of 35 per cent to a general rate of 5 per cent ad valorem. The British treaty specifically provided that cotton and woollen manufactured goods should be included in the class of merchandise paying 5 per cent. The immunities of extra-territoriality were unreservedly conceded, and were only rescinded by the revised treaties, the first of which was made with Great Britain in 1894, coming into force in July 1899.
One general remark applies to all treaties made between foreign powers and China or Japan, that the interests of each separate Power were safeguarded by the virtual solidarity which existed among them, through the operation of that convenient diplomatic save-all, the "most-favoured-nation" clause. This comprehensive provision inserted in the treaties secured for all the Powers the advantages gained by any one of their number. Faith in this ultimate protection may have led occasionally to slipshod negotiations. There might even be a temptation in some cases to seek special credit for moderation, with the foreknowledge that the exactions of any of the Powers would inure to the benefit of all. Lord Elgin wrote the simple truth when he said that, "as regards all these important commercial privileges, I have to fight the battles of the Western trading nations single-handed." This feature had been particularly noticeable in the negotiations in China, where it was so well understood that the English treaty would be the common standard that it mattered little that the signature of some of the others was hurried forward so as to take priority of the British in point of date. The treaty which Lord Elgin negotiated with Japan was destined to occupy the same ruling position as the treaty with China, and therefore it devolved upon him to make provision for all manner of contingencies which no experience could enable him to foresee. Considering that these treaties were drawn up with so little knowledge of the circumstances of the country and of the future exigencies of trade, the fact that they have stood the test of forty years' experience redounds greatly to the credit of the negotiants.
LORD ELGIN.
Lord Elgin had to learn what a Daimio was from Count Poutiatine, who probably had but just acquired the knowledge himself. It is strange at the present day to read the solemn preamble, "Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and his Majesty the Tycoon of Japan." "It was not till some time later that it was discovered that there was a still higher power than the Shôgun," said Earl Russell in 1865. The imperfect knowledge, however, attests the general soundness of the principles adopted.
It must be admitted that on the Japanese side, also, nothing seemed wanting to render the treaty a workable instrument. The Japanese negotiators were animated by a more practical spirit than any Chinese diplomatist with whom foreigners had had dealings. There was no idea in their minds of blind obstruction; they were bent, if not upon efficient working, at least on the minimising of friction and risk. And though it is probable, indeed quite certain, that no treaty whatever could have been made without substantial force in the background, intelligently apprehended by the Japanese Government, yet, that being conceded, it was clearly their object to make the best of the position in which they actually found themselves. Under no other circumstances could treaties so complete in detail and so effective for their purpose have been concluded.
To judge of the acts of the pioneers of foreign intercourse, or to form a just opinion of the conditions under which the treaties came into force, it would be necessary for the critic to regard the whole surroundings as a painter does his subject, not representing what he knows or may afterwards discover to be there, but considering only what actually meets his eye. This, of course, is next to impossible in the case of Japan, where the transformation resulting from the contact with foreigners was so rapid and so kaleidoscopic, and while foreign knowledge of things Japanese has increased at so marvellous a rate, that only a series of mutoscopic photographs could have preserved the sequence. Opinions were at first, and for some time after, unduly affected by the preconception of a certain analogy between China and Japan founded on geographical propinquity, and in a measure on language: this bias influenced the first influx of foreigners in 1859, who were largely drawn from the commercial ports of China. Yet those who had been habituated to the manners and customs of the Chinese were at once struck, not by the similarities, but by the violent contrasts, which the two peoples presented. These visitants had left behind them filth and squalor; they met cleanliness and tidiness of an extreme type. They left behind vagueness of thought, slovenliness of action; and they encountered pedantic precision. They left behind indifference and stolidity, with ignorance cherished as a proud possession; and they encountered a keen and intelligent appetite for knowledge. These features met the stranger before even his ship had cast anchor, or he had set foot on shore. He soon perceived, also, that existence was carried on under an elaborate prescription which left but a narrow margin to spontaneous action, and such a minute supervision that a sparrow could hardly cross the road without being noted by the official guardians of the peace; that every function, whether of official or private life, was under the undisputed control of the same vigilant organisation.[1] On entering the narrow waters approaching the harbour of Nagasaki, he would pass under forts where through a telescope he could see guns and gunners' quarters all spick and span. If there happened to be another vessel approaching from seaward, he would know it by the booming of two guns from the outermost fort, the signal being taken up and passed on by those inland, and so all the way to Yedo. This, he learned, was the mode of announcing to the capital the appearance of any foreign craft off the coast. On entering the inner harbour he would see boats full of men who looked like women, pushing off to his ship; and then a posse of officers, each armed with two sharp swords, would come on board. They, by means of a very imperfect interpreter, would at once ply the master with questions on every conceivable subject, as if he were competing in an examination in universal knowledge. The tedious catechism, with its admixture of seeming frivolity, would have been exasperating but for the imperturbable suavity of the catechists. Every answer was promptly, yet deliberately, committed to writing. Such was, and is, the custom of the race.
Nagasaki being still, in the first half of 1859, the gate of Japan, and the only sample of the country known to foreigners, the bright welcome with which it greeted the new arrivals was of happy augury. It was there, also, that the first observations of the ways of Japanese commerce were made, for Nagasaki had carried on trade with China and with Holland for two hundred years,—a trade which was conducted on the one side by officials of the Government, who fixed the prices of the commodities exchanged, and which was all but strangled by monopoly. The restricted annual "turn-over" must have required a high percentage of profit to support the Dutch factory, and the privilege of trading on so petty a scale seemed to be dearly bought by the perpetual imprisonment of the agents. The unfortunate Dutchmen were confined, with their whole establishment of warehouses, residences, &c., within an area of less than three acres of reclaimed foreshore called Deshima, thus described by Sir Rutherford Alcock in 'The Capital of the Tycoon':—
A low fan-shaped strip of land, dammed out from the waters of the bay, the handle being towards the shore and truncated. One large wide street, with two-storeyed houses on each side, built in European style, gives an air of great tidiness; but they look with large hollow eyes into each other's interiors in a dismal sort of way, as if they had been so engaged for six generations at least, and were quite weary of the view.... But the view from the Dutch commissioner's residence, with its quaint Japanese garden and its fine sweep down the bay, is very charming.... There flitted before me a vision of the solitary chiefs of the factory in long succession taking up their present station in long rotation and looking forward upon the fair bay with which their sight alone may be gladdened. How often must the occupants of this lone post have strained their eyes looking in vain for the solitary ship bringing tidings from Europe and home!
The imprisonment of the Dutch was aggravated by many degrading conditions imposed by the Japanese Government. Their position bore some analogy to that of the English and other foreigners in Canton previous to 1839. In both cases the Europeans endured indignities at the hands of Asiatics for the sake of profit, but beyond that point it is the differences rather than the resemblances which are significant. The humiliation of the Dutch in the island of Deshima was indeed unmitigated so far as it went, but it was neither capricious nor spiteful. Once the yoke was peacefully adjusted, what remained of life to the Dutchman was made as agreeable to him as to a cockatoo in a cage. His jailors had no particular animus against him; they had a purpose of their own to serve in keeping open, through the foreigners, a channel of communication with the West, and they had as valid reasons of State for tethering him as one may have for tying up his ox or his ass. These purposes once served, however, the Japanese did not revel in harshness or cruelty.[2] With the Chinese it was otherwise. They also had a political object in restricting the barbarians, only they were never satisfied with its attainment, but continued heaping up insults on their victims to the utmost limits of their submissiveness.
The petty trade which the new-comers were able to do at Nagasaki was, in the beginning, managed through the existing agency of the Dutch, from whom, however, there was nothing useful to be learned, much indeed to be unlearned; and in a few months it was the Dutch themselves who had to go to school to the interlopers. As commerce had been kept entirely in the hands of the Government officials, there had been no opportunity for the rise of any mercantile class among the natives: that was to be a product of the new era.