Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

The concluding of the Treaty did not allay the excitement of the country over the intrusion of foreigners, or discourage the party of the majority which favoured the policy of either risking all in an immediate appeal to arms, or of continuing the effort to put off the evil day by a policy of prevarication and temporising. Less than a fortnight after its signing, the Shōgun became suddenly ill, and four days later he died. Two days before his death, the three English ships had anchored at Shinagawa, a suburb of the capital of the Shōgunate; while the Russians had invaded the city of Yedo itself and established themselves in one of its Buddhist temples. Everything was now in confusion. The influence of the party for exclusion—forceful, if necessary—was now greatly strengthened among the Imperial Councillors at Kyoto; and intrigues for the deposition of the Tairō and even for his assassination went on apace. A serious and wide-spreading rebellion was threatened. The resort of the Baron of Hikoné to force in order to crush or restrain his enemies served, as a natural and inevitable result, to combine them all in the determination to effect his overthrow—a result which his opponents suggested he should forestall by committing harakiri, after acknowledging his mistakes; and which his friends urged him to prevent by resigning his office at Tairō.

Since Ii Kamon-no-Kami was not the man to retreat in either of these two cowardly ways, he was destined to perish by assassination. On March 25, 1860, one of the five annual festivals at which the princes and barons of the land were in duty bound to present themselves at the Shōgun’s Castle to offer congratulations, the procession of the Tairō left his mansion at “half-past the fifth watch,” or 9 o’clock A. M. Near the “Cherry-Field” gate of the castle, they were attacked by eighteen armed men, who were all, except one, former retainers of the Mito Clan, whose princes had been the most powerful enemy of Baron Ii, but who had resigned from the clan, and become ronin, or “wave-men,” in order not to involve in their crime the lord of the clan. The suddenness of the attack, and the fact that the defenders were impeded by the covered swords and flowing rain-coats which the weather had made necessary, gave the attacking party a temporary advantage. Baron Ii was stabbed several times through the sides of his palanquin, so that when dragged out for further wounding and decapitation, he was already dead. Thus perished the man who signed the treaty with Townsend Harris, fifty years ago, in the forty-sixth year of his age.

The motives of the two parties—that of the majority who favoured exclusion and that of the minority who saw the opening of the country to be inevitable—can best be made clear by stating them in the language of each, as they were proclaimed officially to the Japanese of that day. Fortunately, we are able to do this. So bitter was the feeling against their feudal lord, even after his death, that it seemed necessary, in order to prevent complete ruin from falling upon the whole Clan of Hikoné, that all his official papers and records should be burned. But Viscount Ōkubo, at no inconsiderable danger to himself, managed “to save the precious documents”; for, said he, “There will be nothing to prove the sincerity and unmixed fidelity of Lord Naosuké, if the papers be destroyed. Whatever may come I dare not destroy them.”

From one of these papers we quote the following sentences which show why Baron Ii as Tairō signed, on his own responsibility, this detested treaty with the hated and dreaded foreigners. “The question of foreign intercourse,” it says, “is pregnant with serious consequences. The reason why the treaty was concluded with the United States was because of the case requiring an immediate answer. The English and French Squadrons, after their victory over China, were very soon expected to our coasts; and the necessity of holding conferences with different nations at the same time might cause confusion from which little else than war could be expected. These foreigners are no longer to be despised. The art of navigation, their steam-vessels and their military and naval preparations have found full development in their hands. A war with them might result in temporary victories on our part; but when our country should come to be surrounded by their combined navies, the whole land would be involved in consequences which are clearly visible in China’s experience.... Trying this policy for ten or twelve years, and making full preparation for protection of the country during that period, we can then determine whether to close up or open the country to foreign trade and residence.... If it were only one nation with which we had to deal, it would be much easier; but several nations, coming at this time with their advanced arts, it is entirely impossible to refuse their requests to open intercourse with our country. The tendency of the times makes exclusion an entire impossibility.”

But the assassins, on their part, before entering on their bloody deed, had drawn up a paper which, as signed by seventeen, or all except one of their number, they wished to have go down to posterity in justification of their course. They, too, all met death either on the spot, or subsequently by public execution, for their crime of assassination. “While fully aware,” says this manifesto, “of the necessity of some change in policy since the coming of the Americans to Uraga, it is entirely against the interest of the country and a shame to the sacred dignity of the land, to open commercial relations, to admit foreigners into the castle, to conclude a treaty, to abolish the established custom of trampling on the picture of Christ, to permit foreigners to build places of worship of their evil religion, Christianity, and to allow three Foreign Ministers to reside in the land. Under the excuse of keeping the peace, too much compromise has been made at the sacrifice of national honour. Too much fear has been shown in regard to the foreigners’ threatening.”

This remarkable paper then goes on to charge the Tairō, Baron Ii, with being responsible for so dishonourable an act of compromise. He has assumed “unbridled power”; he has proved himself “an unpardonable enemy of his nation,” a “wicked rebel.” “Therefore we have consecrated ourselves to be the instruments of Heaven to punish this wicked man; we have assumed on ourselves the duty of putting an end to a serious evil by killing this atrocious autocrat.” The assassins then go on to swear before Heaven and earth, gods and men, that their act was motived by loyalty to the Emperor, and by the hope to see the national glory manifested in the expulsion of foreigners from the land.

At this distance of half a century, and considering the spirit of the former age, we need not judge between Naosuké and his murderers as regards the sincerity of their patriotism. But as to which of the two parties followed the path of wisdom, there can be no manner of doubt. Both Japan and its foreign invaders still owe a great debt of gratitude and a tribute of wisdom, to Baron Ii Kamon-no-Kami. While over all our clouded judgment hangs serene the truth of the autograph of four Chinese characters with which, years afterwards, the Imperial Prince Kitashirakawa honoured the book written to vindicate the Tairō: “Heaven’s ordination baffles the human.”

How the memory of its former feudal lord is cherished in Hikoné, and how his spirit still survives and in some sort dominates its citizens, I had occasion to know during two days of early February, 1907. The little city, headed by Mr. Tanaka, the steward of the present Count Ii, by letter and then by a personal visit from the Christian pastor, Mr. Sonoda, had urgently invited us to visit them, with the promise that we should see the castle and other reminders of its former feudal lord. I, on my part, was to speak to them on education and morality, the two subjects about which the serious people of Japan are just now most eager to hear. The same gentleman who had been the medium of the invitation, was to be our escort from Kyoto to Hikoné. But on the way, although the wind was piercing and light snow was falling, we saw again the familiar objects of interest about the lower end of Lake Biwa;—Miidera Temple, with its relics of the legendary giant Benkei, such as the bell which he carried part way up the hill and then dropped and cracked, and the huge kettle out of which he ate his rice; then the wonderful pine-tree at Karasaki, the sail down the lake and under the bridge of Seta; and, finally, the sights of Ishiyama.

At a tea-house near the station here we were met by Mr. Tanaka, who had come by train to extend the welcome of the city and who emphasised this welcome by referring to the interest which we, as Americans, in common with all our countrymen, must feel in the place that had been the residence of the great Tairō. For had not he “influenced the Shōgunate to open the country to the United States, and lost his life for his advanced views?”

As the train conveyed us into the uplands, the snow began to fall more heavily until it lay nearly a foot deep upon the plain and wooded hill, crowned with its castle, of the ancient feudal town. Just as the setting sun was making the mountains and the clouds aglow with a rose colour, as warm and rich as anything to be seen in Switzerland, we reached the station of Hikoné, and were at once taken into its waiting-room to receive and return greetings of some thirty of the principal citizens who had come out to welcome the city’s guests. On account of the deep snow it was a jinrikisha ride of nearly half an hour to the place where we were to be lodged—the Raku-raku-tei, just beside the castle-moat, under its hill, and almost in the lake itself. Here a beautiful but purely Japanese house, which was built by the lord of the castle as a villa, stands in one of the finest gardens of all Japan.