“If my dynasty perishes in consequence of civil wars, this is a disgrace which falls only on me: but if only an inch of our territory were to fall into foreign hands, the whole nation would have cause to be ashamed.”
Under the Tokugawa regime the influence of the military caste was predominant, and the samurai ranked next to the nobles, but all samurai were not of equal rank, for the spearmen were of higher grade than the men who fought with firearms, and the mounted man ranked above his comrade who fought on foot. Among the retainers of the barons a hatamoto, as he was termed, was a person who had command of as many, in some cases, as thirty foot-soldiers, and held a position akin to that of captain in the modern army. Hatamoto signified “under the flag,” each company having its own distinctive banner inscribed with its number and place of origin. The hatamochi was the actual standard-bearer from Hata, a banner, and Mochi, to hold. The ashi-garu (lit.: light of foot) was the lowest rank of samurai of the feudal times, and the man who carried a gun was less entitled to respect, according to that rigid code of honour which was so jealously guarded by the knighthood of Japan, than the man who met his enemy with the sword,—foot to foot, and hand to hand. It was doubtless to be ascribed to a survival of this feeling that in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 the followers of Marshal Saigo were ever anxious to come to close quarters with their foes, and often threw away their rifles in order the better to wield their treasured swords. The warrior trained in the old school had nothing but contempt for the method of fighting which enabled a man to hurl missiles at an enemy from a comparatively safe distance. The samurai’s principles led him to challenge his adversary to mortal combat in the open field, but were averse to anything which might be construed as seeking an undue advantage. With the military caste uppermost, and the farmers ranking next in order of precedence, then the artisans, and lastly the tradesmen or traffickers in wares of whatever description, with a lower class still of genuine outcasts, distinguished as Eta (the tanners) or Hi-nin (not men) the people of Japan led a more or less contented life of seclusion from the outer world until the arrival on their coasts of Commodore Perry’s ships in 1853, though it would be wrong to imagine that there had not arisen in the land in all those years a spirit of inquiry concerning the mode of life which prevailed among other nations. On the contrary, and more particularly towards the end of the Tokugawa epoch, thoughtful men had come to the front with proposals for enlightened government, earnestly advocating the adoption of some system that should be more in accord with what was dimly conceived to be the age of progress that had dawned in the other hemisphere, vague reports of which had reached the hidden East through various channels.
It was while Iyeyasu virtually ruled Japan, and before his son Hidetada had been invested with the Shogunal authority, that a shipwrecked English mariner, Will Adams of Rotherhithe, won his way to favour by his abilities, mainly in the direction of shipbuilding, and attained to high rank in the service of the Shogunate. The East India Company, a few years later (June, 1613), established a depot at Hirado, in Spex Straits, not far from Nagasaki, where the Dutchmen had been earlier in the field. Adams learned that some of his countrymen were resident at Hirado, and journeyed thither overland at the Shogun Iyeyasu’s command to see them. He found the little colony in charge of Captain John Saris, whose diary has afforded much information concerning the mode of life of the pioneers of British trade in their remote settlement in the then little-known “Zipangu” of Portuguese navigators, and Adams himself left some few written traces of his remarkable career which have been carefully preserved, and are of the utmost value as throwing light on the manners of that period when the feudal system was in full force. On retiring nominally from the control of affairs in favour of Hidetada, in 1605, Iyeyasu had taken up his abode at Shidzuoka, then called Sumpu, and thither Adams brought Saris to have audience of the great Chieftain, by special desire. Captain Saris had been made the bearer of a letter from King James I. of England to the Emperor (Shogun) of Japan, which was delivered in due course at Shidzuoka. The English sovereign had expressed his desire that commercial relations should be established between Britain and Japan. Saris and Adams saw both Iyeyasu and Hidetada, and the project was well received. A charter was granted, in pursuance of which the English were to enjoy as much freedom of trade as the Dutchmen then in Nagasaki, the document comprising eight clauses, and constituting the first “Anglo-Japanese Agreement” of history. Unhappily the venture of the East India Company, in whose favour the charter was given, did not turn out so satisfactorily from a monetary point of view as could have been wished, and eventually the factory that had been established at Hirado, was closed, and the British withdrew, not again to seek commercial privileges until 1856. Saris placed Captain Cocks in charge of the Hirado depot and returned to London to report to the East India Company the success of his mission, and Cocks remained until the withdrawal from Hirado in 1623.
Adams never returned to his own country, and died in his own house at Hemi village, where his grave, with that of his Japanese wife, is to be seen on the hill above the modern naval station of Yokosuka, a few miles south of Yokohama, in the Gulf of Tokio. He had taught his friends at Yedo the art of building ships on the Occidental model, and it is recorded that many of his vessels were employed in over-sea trade to the Philippines, Siam, Cochin China, and Mexico. But the law of 1621 prohibiting the use of decked ocean-going craft brought about a return to the ancient form of junk with a single mast. The construction of decked sailing boats has only of late years been revived in connection with the fisheries of Yeso and the quest of the seal and sea-otter, off the Kuriles archipelago. After the East India Company closed its factory at Hirado trade was still further restricted, and in obedience to an edict of 1641, the Dutch were finally confined to the islet of Deshima, in Nagasaki harbour, and all other foreigners were ordered to quit the country. Saris had long before returned home,—Adams had been dead for years,—and little or nothing occurred for two centuries to remind the Western world of the existence of the far-off Japanese Empire.
Throughout this interval the feudal system flourished and the Shogunate was at the zenith of its power. Every daimio nominally owned allegiance to the Ten-shi’s deputy at Yedo, but there had been murmurings against the feudal rule long before the American ships made their appearance at the entrance to the Bay of Yedo in 1853. A few men, more daring than their fellows, had been bold enough to write and speak openly of their desire to see the ancient order of things re-established and of their hope that the Ten-shi would again in person regulate the affairs of his dominions. In most cases the would-be reformers had for their temerity lost their heads. But the leaven that they had introduced had begun to work, and when the Shogun Iyesada made the treaties with the Western nations under which Japan was reopened to foreign trade and intercourse the real basis of the opposition which he encountered, and which outlasted his own lifetime and that of his successor in the office of Shogun, was an antagonism to the Shogunate itself, and not to the strangers who sought to develop commerce with the Empire. Thus it came about that the truly progressive clans,—Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa, and Hizen,—all of which had in some form or other availed themselves of foreign inventions in the form of rifles and other implements of warfare, or of steamships and gunboats and armaments, with the object, as it would seem, of strengthening their own positions, were to be found ranged under the banner of Jo-I, or “Expulsion of the Alien,” when with more candour their slogan might have been “Down with the Shogunate.” The Tokugawa side, on the other hand, was in favour of the resumption of foreign relations and maintained the advisability of pursuing the policy of kai-koku—i.e. opening the country—which Iyesada had initiated. Neither side was in actual fact antagonistic to foreigners, and no sooner had the Jo-I party attained its purpose in overthrowing those who had espoused the cause of the Shogun, than it at once adopted an attitude towards aliens which was in effect a complete ratification of the policy that had been adhered to by the Government of Yedo. The Sat-cho alliance to “expel the stranger” entered into between Satsuma and Choshiu at the end of 1861, or early in 1862,—a couple of years before the present Marquis Ito and his comrade Inouye Bunda, now Count Inouye, stole away to England,—was mainly designed to embarrass the Shogunate, and was by no means so reactionary as it at first appeared to be.
When Perry dropped anchor at Uraga it was the Shogun Iyeyoshi who sat on the Viceregal throne in Yedo, but he shortly afterwards died, and was buried in the cemetery attached to Zozoji temple in Shiba, where five other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred, and when Perry came for the promised answer to the American President’s letter the Shogun Iyesada was in power. But soon afterwards his health failed him to the degree that he found it expedient to appoint a Regent in the person of the Go Tai-Ro (lit.: Honoured Great Elder)—i.e. Prime Minister of State under the Tokugawa Government—an office which was filled by the baron Naosuke Ii Kamon-no-kami, between whom and the feudal chieftain of Mito there were great differences of opinion in regard to the wisdom of the Kai-koku policy. For reasons which were never very clearly comprehended, Nari-aki, the senior lord of Mito, was all his life bitterly opposed to the influx of foreigners, and when in 1860 the Regent was assassinated at the Sakurada Gate of Yedo castle the crime was perpetrated by men who had once been retainers of the Mito family, but had voluntarily severed their connection therewith in order that the responsibility for the murder that they were resolved to commit should not be laid at the door of their lord. They banded themselves together as Ro-nins, or “Wave-men,” casting themselves as it were on the billows of adventure, and caring nothing whither they might drift in the political currents of the hour. Other Ro-nins made a midnight attack in 1861 on the then recently-established British Legation at Takanawa, a southern suburb of Yedo, and these were afterwards proved to have belonged previously to the Mito clan. The daimio Nari-aki died in 1862, and it was felt that one source of uneasiness had been removed from the path of those who were totally averse to the suggested expulsion of the subjects of foreign powers and repudiation of the compacts which had been entered into. But the assassinated Regent had had other enemies in the political world, for his appointment had never been favourably received by the Jo-I party (in reality the advocates of the restoration of direct imperial rule, and who only used Jo-I as a convenient battle-cry) and when, in 1858, the Shogun Iyesada died and his place was taken by the youthful Iyemochi, at that time only twelve years old, and the Regency of Ii Kamon no Kami was continued, the antagonism between the rival factions—one nominally pro-foreign and the other nominally anti-foreign, but neither of them seriously concerned with the foreigner so much as with the abrogation or retention of the feudal system,—grew more fierce and deep-seated than ever. The Mito clan, notwithstanding that its old prince Nari-aki had been violently anti-foreign, had in a general way given its support to the Shogun, but even in Mito dissensions arose, and the clansmen were divided among themselves. In proportion as these internal quarrels arose in the Shogun’s party its influence in the State declined and that of the party of the Mikado, as it was termed, gained strength. It must be understood that the reference here is not to the now-reigning Emperor but to his father, who occupied the throne until the year 1867. An imperial ordinance promulgated in 1862 abolished the old law made in the days of Iyeyasu whereby the feudal lords were obliged to spend half their time at the capital, and this repeal of a statute on which the Shogunate had relied for the preservation of its ascendency over the clans hastened, no doubt, the downfall of its authority. It was further weakened, it may be supposed, by the internecine strife that arose from the rivalries of the three branches of the Tokugawa house, for when Iyesada died it had been the ardent desire of the Mito prince to place his son Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu,—otherwise Tokugawa Keiki,—on the viceregal throne at Yedo, a wish that was thwarted by the Regent Ii Kamon no kami. The reason that Nari-aki’s son bore two names was that in the year 1848, when he was only eleven years old, he had been adopted into the family of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa family, which branch bore the surname of Hitotsubashi, while his other name could be read as either Keiki or Yoshinobu, the Chinese characters by which it was written being readable according to the Kan-On, or Chinese sounds as Keiki, while the Japanese equivalents of the same symbols are Yoshinobu. To the candidature of Nari-aki’s son the Regent would not agree, and carried his point in favour of Kikuchiyo, a prince of the Kishiu branch of the Tokugawa family, who took the name on his accession of Iyemochi. This prince was the thirteenth child of the XIth Shogun, and a cousin of the deceased Iyesada. The regent’s power at this period was equal to the effort of compelling Nari-aki to confine himself to his Yedo mansion, in a forced retirement which was tantamount to imprisonment, and similar steps were taken in regard to the princes of Owari, Hizen, Tosa, and Uwajima, who were opposed to the Regent’s policy. Tokugawa Keiki was forbidden to show himself at Yedo castle, and was ordered to remain in strict seclusion within his own abode.
Meanwhile the Emperor Komei, at Kioto, was being urged by the feudal lords of Tosa, Hizen, Sendai, Uwajima, and other provinces to abrogate the treaties which the Regent had made, to close the ports, and expel all strangers from the land, but Ii Kamon no kami was too strong for them to succeed in overthrowing him, and it will be understood that the representations of the Ministers of foreign powers already accredited to Japan in virtue of the treaties must all have tended to confirm the Regent in his resolution to abide by the terms of the compacts which he had entered into. This was in effect the situation in March 1860, when the ro-nins at the Sakurada Gate in Yedo put an end to the life of the Regent, and affairs were left in greater uncertainty than ever.
The baron Ii Kamon-no-kami Naosuke is considered to have been a genuinely patriotic statesman, one, moreover, who was able to realise the necessities of the hour and gifted with tact and resolution to carry his point. His persistence in the policy of kai-koku procured for him the undisguised antagonism of a very powerful faction, but he remained unshaken in his determination to adhere to the arrangements that had been entered into with foreign powers. The assassins responsible for his death had carried on their persons, as was customary with ro-nins bent on some notable deed, written declarations setting forth their motives, and declaring it to be their belief that the admission of aliens to the country spelt speedy ruin. His intimate friend, Baron Matsudaira of Yada, had sought to dissuade him from paying his customary visits to the Shogun, who dwelt within the inner moat of the castle, and in urging his request had even endeavoured to hold the Regent back by grasping the sleeve of his robe, a scrap of the material being torn away in the effort, so vehement were Matsudaira’s representations of the impending danger. That was on the 21st of February, a fortnight before the murder was actually perpetrated, so that Ii Kamon-no-kami was perfectly conscious of the risk he ran in continuing to perform his daily duty at the castle. His own residence was just outside the second moat, and he had only quitted it a few minutes when, at nine o’clock on the morning of the third of the third month (April 5th according to the Gregorian calendar), he received several sword-thrusts as he sat in his palanquin, and died immediately. The day was one on which his enemies were sure that he would be passing that way early, as it was one of the great annual festivals (Sekku) when the princes and barons invariably went to the palace to pay their respects and offer the congratulations appropriate to the season. Their retinues included numerous swordsmen, and their processions were characterised by a pomp almost unimaginable to-day, with scores of trusty henchmen, their lords’ crests prominently displayed on their helmets and their banners and insignia borne aloft, marching on either side the palanquin to guard their chief. The Regent’s cortege was at the Sakurada Gate when the attack was delivered, and the falling snow had led the retainers to keep their sword-hilts covered, so that there was a fatal delay in encountering the ro-nins, who, moreover, were disguised as peasants, and wore rain-coats to conceal their weapons. Eight of the Regent’s men were killed, and three of the ro-nins were slain on the spot, eight more being brought to execution at a later date. The whole thing was the work of but a few minutes, and the band no doubt had a confederate who was skilled in heraldry watching at the gate, ready to announce the baron’s approach, and able to distinguish his procession by the device on the banners which some of his retinue bore.
The Regent was forty-five years old at the time of his death, having been born in 1815, the fourteenth son of the baron Naonaka. The Ii family is a very old one, an ancestor having aided in the subjugation of the rebels, so termed,—presumably the Ainus,—in the island of Yeso, between A.D. 987 and 1011, when the Emperor Ichijo was on the throne. The name Ii is taken from the spot not far from Hamana inlet, in Totomi province, called Ii-dani, or the valley of Ii, whereat the first baron built a castle in the eighth century. But having been appointed protector of the city of Kioto, one of the baron’s ancestors had removed to Hikoné, on Lake Biwa, to be nearer his charge, and thus it came about that Ii Kamon-no-kami was Lord of Hikoné at the period when he became Regent, and dwelt at the Hikoné Yashiki in Yedo. The baron Ii bequeathed to the nation a couplet illustrative of his real patriotism, a quality which even those who were opposed to his policy never failed to recognise as part of his noble nature. It runs:—
“Omi no mi kishi utsu nami no iku tabi mo,