Makers of Japan

by J. Morris

In the year 1867 the prince of Tosa, Yamanouchi, sent Goto Shojiro to Kioto with a letter addressed to the Shogun which he was to deliver personally, and the tenour of this document is stated to have been a strong appeal to Prince Tokugawa Keiki to resign his functions as head of the Bakufu and co-operate in the establishment of an imperial government. The text of the document is quoted in the Kin-sei Shi-riaku, an “Abridged History of Modern Times,” and it amounted to a respectfully worded invitation to take into consideration the existing conditions in the empire and make choice of a line of action which would tend to the restoration of peace and harmony within the nation’s borders and the elevation of the country to a position of importance among the powers of the world. Its keynote was the absolute necessity of doing away with the feudal system which had existed for six centuries under the domination of the Shoguns of the Tokugawa family and their predecessors.

The Shogun received the prince of Tosa’s letter in a most friendly spirit, and promised to consider the matter, continuing to call Goto into consultation at the Nijo castle as before. To what degree his Highness was influenced by the letter it would of course be impossible to judge, but it is certain that at the close of the autumn of that year he had formed the resolution to abdicate definitely his position, though he did not actually quit Kioto until January 1868.

When the new Government was set up at Kioto in 1868 Goto became a Ko-Mon, or adviser to the So-sai, like his friends Kido and Komatsu, and in this position was able to exert considerable influence, as the So-sai, to whom the three ardent reformers acted in the capacity of private counsellors, possessed the confidence of the sovereign, and procured or refused the imperial assent to the proposals of the other heads of departments in the Ministry as then constituted. Subsequently, when the administration was remodelled on a foreign plan, and Prince Sanjo became Prime Minister, Goto still occupied his position of responsibility, more especially connected with the Foreign branch, and he was so engaged when, in March 1868, the various representatives of foreign powers went by appointment to Kioto to pay their respects to the present Emperor, who had a few weeks previously taken in hand the reins of government on the resignation of the Shogun. The British and Dutch ministers left Kobé, then a newly opened port for foreign trade, on the 18th March, accompanied by Ito Shunsuke (now Marquis), who was the Governor of Kobé, and Sir Harry Parkes was to have been received with the other envoys on the 23rd of the month, but for a dastardly attack made upon him and his escort when passing along the streets of the then Japanese capital. The British Minister had been lodged during his short stay in Kioto at a temple in a northern suburb, and he left it at the appointed hour to go to the Dairi (palace) where the interview with the Emperor was to take place. Sir Harry’s mounted escort was leading the way, the inspector riding in front with Mr Nakai Kozo, likewise a Government official, and a Satsuma samurai, when suddenly, at a street corner, a band of Japanese swordsmen sprang out from their hiding-place and began slashing right and left. Sir Harry was riding immediately in rear of his mounted guards, with Goto Shojiro at his side. The attack was so sudden that the escort had no time to use their lances, and the thoroughfare, moreover, was very narrow. The present British Minister in China, Sir Ernest Satow, rode on Sir Harry Parkes’ right, and behind marched a detachment of the Ninth Regiment from the British camp at Yokohama. The desperate character of the attack will be understood by the fact that the British representative was by no means inadequately protected, to judge from previous experience, and though murderous assaults on foreigners were unhappily not infrequent at this period,—the result of political ferment rather than of personal animosity to the strangers,—there was no particular reason to expect any attack on this occasion.

Nakai Kozo at once leaped from his horse and engaged one of the assailants, but having the bad luck to stumble when parrying a stroke of his antagonist he received a severe cut on the head. After their first onslaught some of the swordsmen took to their heels, but two of the number remained cutting at the escort all down the line, and so quick had been their movements that Sir Harry and Goto only heard the scuffle as their horses turned the corner. Goto, instantly dismounting, rushed to the front, and was able to rescue Nakai, but his assailant straightway made for Sir Harry Parkes, whose Japanese groom received the blow, and at the same time Mr Satow’s horse was badly cut. The would-be assassin fell momentarily forward by the impetuosity of his own attack, and Goto at that instant delivered a stroke which severed the ruffian’s head from his shoulders before he could recover his equilibrium. The other man ran off to a back yard where he was captured, after receiving many wounds. The activity displayed by the assailants is best to be realised from the mischief they wrought in a few minutes. Out of eleven men forming Sir Harry’s own escort nine were severely wounded, as was also one man of the Ninth Regiment, and a groom and four horses were more or less badly cut with the terrible two-handed swords that the assailants wielded with such deadly precision.

Goto afterwards said that the Japanese were proud of having had a man like Sir Harry Parkes to defend, for he was quite calm throughout and betrayed not the slightest fear despite the suddenness of the attack. As soon as the affair was over, and it was of very brief duration, the Minister gave the order to return to the temple which he was lodging in, only a quarter of a mile away, and the visit to the Dairi was of necessity postponed. By good fortune Dr Willis of the Legation and two naval surgeons from the British fleet had followed on foot with the intention of going as far as the palace gates, and they were able to stanch the open wounds of the men of the escort.

The immediate result of this outrage by partisans of the Jo-I or “Expulsion of the Foreigners” faction was a proclamation by the Emperor to the effect that attacks of the kind were infamous and detestable, and that a samurai guilty of a like offence in future would be first degraded and then decapitated as a malefactor by the common executioner, the head of the criminal to be exposed to public gaze for a prescribed period. And this proclamation had a wonderful effect, for it not only placed upon record the plain fact that deeds of such a character were abhorrent to the young ruler of the empire, but the punishment entailed by the indulgence in a crime of this kind was to the samurai of so terrible a nature, in respect of the degradation,—not the forfeiture of his own life—that there were subsequent to the issue of the imperial edict hardly any cases of assault on foreigners, and the antipathy to the Kai-koku policy, which favoured the entry of the strangers, gradually diminished with the lapse of time.

On the third day of the third moon,—at that time the old-fashioned mode of reckoning derived from China centuries before was in vogue,—the British minister again set out for the Dairi, and this time the journey was accomplished without mishap, his reception by the Emperor being of the most cordial kind. His Majesty expressed personally his horror of the proceedings which had debarred him from previously receiving the representative of Queen Victoria, and Sir Harry had every reason to be gratified by the evident concern manifested by the sovereign. The day was according to the old calendar a most auspicious one, being the Girls’ Festival or Sekku and the 26th of April by Western reckoning. The Gregorian calendar was adopted in Japan in 1872.

Queen Victoria sent richly mounted swords to Goto and Nakai, bearing the inscription in each case—“From Victoria, Queen of England, in remembrance of the 23rd of March 1868.” As no more appropriate gift to a samurai of Japan than a fine sword could have been imagined, the recipients of these tokens of their prowess were individually delighted, and Count Goto of to-day, who is the son of Goto Shojiro, prizes the weapon in recollection of the skilful swordsmanship which enabled his father to save the British Minister’s life. That the combat was of the most determined character, in which assailants and defenders put forth all their strength and skill may be judged from the account given afterwards of the affair by Mr Nakai Kozo, who was for many years on the staff of the Foreign Office and a most witty and charming companion. “I was only able to see out of one eye, owing to the blood flowing from my wound in the head, but I kept on hacking away at the fellow in front of me, and at last saw that I had cut his head off, which I showed to Sir Harry to let him know that at least one of his assailants was duly accounted for.”

Like Kido, Inouye, and Itagaki, and other “Makers of Japan,” Count Goto was active in the field during the war of the Restoration, which lasted throughout 1868, with more or less intensity, and into the spring of 1869, and made his mark in numberless hotly-contested engagements. Saigo Takamori, as Chief of General Staff to the Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, reached the suburbs of Tokio in April of the year 1868, and the battle of Uyeno was practically the last of the war, but fighting went on in the north for many months after.