Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

At this juncture Mr. Kojiro Matsukata, the third son of Japan’s great financier, Marquis Matsukata, came into the gallery where we were sitting and offered to take me into the House of Peers. But before I follow him there let me recall another courtesy from this same Japanese friend, which came fifteen years later; and which, by suggesting contrasts with the action of the Diet in 1892, will emphasise in a picturesque way the great and rapid changes which have since then taken place in Japan. On the morning of February 19, 1907, Mr. Matsukata, who is now president of the ship-building company at Kawasaki, near Kobe, showed me over the yards. This plant is situated for the most part on made ground; and it required four years and a half to find firm bottom at an expense of more than yen 1,000,000. The capital of the company is now more than yen 10,000,000. All over the works the din of 9,000 workmen made conversation nearly impossible. But when we had returned to his office, a quiet chat with the host over the inevitable but always grateful cups of tea, elicited these among other interesting incidents. Above the master’s desk hung the photograph of a group which included Admiral Togo; and still higher up, above the photograph, a motto in the Admiral’s own hand-writing, executed on one of his visits to the works—he having been summoned by the Emperor for consultation during the Russo-Japanese war. On my asking for a translation of the motto, I was told that it read simply: “Keep the Peace.” Just two days before the battle of the Sea of Japan, Mr. Matsukata had a telegraphic message from Togo, which came “out of the blue,” so to say, and which read in this significant way: “After a thousand different thoughts, now one fixed purpose.” In the centre of another group-photograph of smaller size, sat the celebrated Russian General, Kuropatkin. This picture was taken on the occasion of his visit to the ship-yards some years before. Mr. Matsukata became at that time well acquainted with Kuropatkin, and described him to me as a kindly and simple-minded gentleman of the type of an English squire. He was very fond of fishing; but like my friend, the Russian General Y——, he appeared to have an almost passionate abhorrence of war. He once said to my host: “Why do you build war ships; why not build only merchant ships; that is much better?” To this it was replied: “Why do you carry your sword? Throw away the sword and I will stop building war ships.” And, indeed, in most modern wars, it is not the men who must do the fighting or the people who must pay the bills, that are chiefly responsible for their initiation; it is the selfish promoters of schemes for the plunder of other nations, the cowardly politicians, and perhaps above all, the unscrupulous press, which are chiefly responsible for the horrors of war. Through all modern history, since men ceased to be frankly barbarian in their treatment of other peoples and races, it has been commercial greed, and its subsidised agents among the makers of laws and of public feeling, which have chiefly been guilty for the waste of treasure and life among civilised peoples.

But let us leave the noise of the Kawasaki Dock Yards, where in 1907 Russian ships were repairing, Chinese gun-boats and torpedo and other boats for Siam were building, and merchant and war ships for the home country were in various stages of new construction or repair; and let us return to the quiet of the House of Peers when I visited it in May of 1892. After a short time spent in one of the retiring rooms, which are assigned according to the rank of the members—Marquis Matsukata being then Premier—we were admitted to the gallery of the Foreign Ambassadors, from which there is a particularly good view of the entire Upper House.

The Japanese House of Peers is composed of four classes of members. These are (1) Princes of the Blood; (2) Peers, such as the Princes and Marquises, who sit by virtue of their right, when they reach the age of twenty-five, and Counts, Viscounts, and Barons, who are elected to represent their own respective classes; (3) men of erudition who are nominated by the Emperor for their distinguished services to the state; and (4) representatives of the highest tax-payers, who are elected from among themselves, and only one from each prefecture. Each of the three inferior orders can return not more than one-fifth of the total number of peers; and the total of the non-titled members must not be greater than that of the titled members. It is thus made obvious that the Japanese House of Peers is essentially an aristocratic body; and yet that it represents all the most important interests of the country in some good degree—whatever may be thought of the proportion of representation assigned to each interest. The care that science and scholarship shall have at least some worthy representation in the national counsels and legislation is well worthy of imitation by the United States. And when to this provision we add the facts, that a Minister of Education takes rank with the other Ministers, that the Professors in the Imperial Universities have court rank by virtue of their services, and that the permanent President of the Imperial Teacher’s Association is a Baron and a member of the House of Peers, we may well begin to doubt whether the recognition accorded to the value of education in relation to the national life, and to the dignity and worth of the teacher’s office, is in this country so superior to that of other nations, after all.

“[THE PICTURESQUE MOAT AND ANCIENT WALL]”

The appearance of the Chamber occupied by the Peers was somewhat more luxurious than that of the Lower House; although it was then, and still is, quite unimposing as compared with buildings used for legislative purposes in this country and in Europe. Indeed, everywhere in Tokyo, the ugly German architecture of the Government buildings contrasts strikingly with [the picturesque moat and ancient walls] of the Imperial grounds. More elaborate decoration, and the platform above which an ascent by a few steps led to the throne from which His Majesty opens Parliament, were the only claims of the Upper Chamber to distinction. The personnel of the members seemed to me on the whole less vigorous than that of the Lower House. This was in part due to the sprinkling of youthful marquises, who, as has already been explained, take their seats by hereditary right at the age of twenty-five. In marked contrast with them was the grim old General T——, a member of the Commission which visited the United States in 1871, who asserted himself by asking a question and then going on to make a speech, in spite of the taunts of two or three of the younger members. The manner of voting in the Upper House was particularly interesting; as the roll was called, each member mounted the platform and deposited either a white or a blue card in a black lacquer box which stood in front of the President of the Chamber.

Here the business of the day was important on account of the precedent which it was likely to establish. A Viscount member had been promoted to a Count, and the question had arisen whether his seat should be declared vacant. The report of the committee which disqualified him from sitting as a Count was voted upon and adopted. Then came up the case of two Counts who were claimants for the same seat. The vote for these rival candidates had stood 30 to 31; but one voter among the majority had been declared disqualified; because, having held a Viscount’s seat, on being promoted to a Count, he had attempted to vote as a Count. All this, while of importance as precedents determining the future constitution of the House of Peers, had not at all the same wide-reaching significance as the signs in the Lower House of the beginnings in Japan of that struggle which is still going on all over the world between the demands of the Central Government for money and the legislative body which votes the appropriations to meet these demands.

It was under very different circumstances that I witnessed a quite dissimilar scene, when in December of 1906 my next visit was paid to the Imperial Diet of Japan. This occasion was the opening of the Diet by the Emperor in person. Now, while my court rank gave me the right to request an official invitation to the ceremony, the nature of the ceremony itself required that all who attended should come in full dress and wearing their decorations, if they were the possessors of decorations at all. It was also required that all visitors should be in their respective waiting-rooms for a full hour before the ceremony began. None might enter the House later than ten o’clock, although His Majesty did not leave the palace until half-past this hour. This waiting, however, gave a not undesirable opportunity to make some new acquaintance, or to have a chat with two or three old friends. But besides the members of the various diplomatic corps and a French Count, who appeared to be a visitor at his nation’s Embassy, there were no other foreigners in the waiting-room to which I was directed on arrival.

During the hour spent in waiting, however, I had a most interesting conversation with Baron R——, an attaché of the German Embassy, who seemed a very clever and sensible young gentleman. The excitement over the recent action of the San Francisco School Board was then at its extreme height; and on discussing with him an “open letter” which I had just published, explaining in behalf of my Japanese friends the relation in which this action, with some of the questions which it raised, stood to our national constitution, I found him thoroughly acquainted with the historical and the political bearings of the whole difficult subject. I could not avoid a regretful sigh over the doubt whether one-half of our own representatives, or even of our foreign service, were so well informed on the nature of our constitution and its history as was this German diplomat. However this may be, certain it is that a higher grade of culture is eminently desirable in both the legislative and diplomatic classes of our public service. In the same connection the Baron gave it as his opinion that Japan had produced in this generation a nobler and more knightly type of individual manhood than can be found in any country in Europe. Such a verdict can, of course, never acquire any higher trustworthiness than an individual’s opinion. But if we ask ourselves, “Where in the world is another city of 45,000 inhabitants to be found, which has produced in this generation six generals who are the equals of Field Marshall Oyama, Admiral Togo, and Generals Oku, Count Nodzu, and the two Saigos?” I imagine the answer would be exceedingly hard to find. Perhaps the truth is, as one of my best informed Japanese friends once quaintly said: “In America you have a few big, bad men, and a good many small good men; but in Japan we have a few big, good men and a good many small bad men.” At any rate, the six “big men,” whose names have just been mentioned, were about fifty years ago living and playing as boys together in an area so small that the houses and yards of their parents, and all the space intervening, might have been covered by a ten-acre lot.

As soon as His Majesty had arrived, all those who had been waiting were conducted to their proper chambers in the gallery of the Peer’s House, where I found myself seated with Japanese only, and between those of a higher rank on the right and of a lower rank on the left. The members of both Houses of the Diet were standing on the floor below;—those from the Lower House on the left and facing the throne, and those from the House of Peers on the right. The former were dressed, with some exceptions, in evening-dress, and the latter in court uniform with gold epaulets on their shoulders. All the spectators in the galleries were in court dress. On the right of the platform, from which steps led up to the throne, stood a group of some fifteen or twenty court officials. At about five minutes past eleven an equal number of such personages came into the Chamber by the opposite door of the platform and arranged themselves so as to form a passage through the midst of them for the Emperor. Not more than five minutes later His Majesty entered, and ascending to the throne, sat down for a moment; but almost immediately rose and received from the hand of Marquis Saionji, the Prime Minister, the address from the throne inscribed on a parchment scroll. This he then read, or rather intoned, in a remarkably clear but soft and musical voice. The entire address occupied not more than three minutes in the reading. After it was finished, Prince Tokugawa, President of the Peers, went up from the floor of the House to the platform, and then to a place before the throne; here he received the scroll from the Emperor’s hand. After which he backed down to the floor again, went directly in front of His Majesty and made a final bow. The Emperor himself immediately descended from the throne and made his exit from the platform by the door at which he had entered, followed by all the courtiers.