Makers of Japan

by J. Morris

MAKERS OF JAPAN

I
HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN

At the head of the list of Makers of Modern Japan stands by right the name of the illustrious ruler, not merely in virtue of his imperial position, but of the supreme efforts which throughout his reign of thirty-eight years to the present time he has made to raise the status of his country among nations and to confer upon his subjects the blessings of enlightened government. His Majesty Mutsuhito, son of the Emperor Komei, succeeded to the throne of Japan in February 1867, when he was fourteen years and three months old, was crowned on the 13th October 1868, married the Princess Haruko on the 9th February 1869, and has issue a son (the Crown Prince Yoshi-hito) and four daughters, the Princesses Tsune, Kane, Fumi, and Yasu.

The Crown Prince was born on the 31st August 1879, and was installed in this dignity on the Emperor’s birthday, 3rd November 1889, came of age and took his seat in the Upper House, in 1897, married on the 10th of May 1900 the Princess Sadako, daughter of Prince Kujo, and has issue two sons.

The personal name of the sovereign is rarely written or spoken in Japan, it being regarded almost as a discourtesy to allude to the ruler as other than the Ten-shi, the son of the heavens, or more elegantly as the Tenno, the heaven-sent Emperor. The theory of the supernatural origin of the imperial dynasty ceased to have weight with the educated classes long ago, but that in no way lessens the respect and affection which his subjects have for their sovereign. It was at his express command that they divested themselves of every vestige of superstition concerning his traditional semi-divine descent, and when they ascribe to his personal virtues their success in war, as they commonly do, it is but evidence of their conviction that it is an immeasurable benefit to themselves, and ensures success in their undertakings, to have as their monarch one who is in every sense a man to be esteemed for his high sense of honour, his love of truth and justice, and his innate appreciation of the duties devolving upon him as having inherited the proud title of “an Emperor who owns allegiance only to heaven.” There were, in the years which have gone by, some Emperors who sadly failed to realise the necessity of setting a good example to their subjects, in Japan as elsewhere, but the memory of those monarchs is not revered. The present ruler has won throughout his reign the love of his people for the purity of his life, the untiring attention which he bestows on the affairs of his country, the supreme magnanimity he has ever displayed in his treatment of those who by the force of circumstances have been placed in a position of hostility, not to his rule, for that is impossible in Japan, but to his Cabinet, and above all for the readiness that he has invariably evinced in time of national anxiety to enter into his people’s feelings and to subordinate his personal comfort to his paramount duties as an active sovereign. Had it still been the custom for monarchs to head their forces in the field his Majesty Mutsuhito, as all his loyal and dutiful subjects know, would have mounted his charger and led his hosts to battle with as great a zest as did ever one of his predecessors on the throne in the fighting days of old. That happiness being denied him, he sat at his desk in his headquarters at Hiroshima for sixteen hours a day while his troops, for eight months, waged war a decade ago with the Chinese in Manchuria and Shantung.

It may be useful here to explain that the title of Mikado by which his Majesty is perhaps best known to Europeans, although undeniably an appellation of great antiquity and in no degree derogatory, is in little use in Japan itself. Literally it signifies the “honourable gateway” or “entrance,” and though in ancient times the designation, when applied to a ruler who dispensed justice from a seat at the entrance to his pavilion, may have been more or less an appropriate title, it may be also that as years went by the preference of the people for some term that should more definitely convey the idea of the sovereign’s supremely exalted origin, according to then popular belief, led to the gradual adoption, in official documents, of the title of Tenno, and in common conversation of that of Ten-shi, terms which are in general use at the present day. The perpetuation of the term Mikado among foreigners, though almost obsolete among the inhabitants of the Ten-shi’s realms, is on a par with the retention of the name “Japan” as that of the country itself, it being a survival of the “Jipangu” of Marco Polo, who thus alluded to it in writing an account of his travels. Marco Polo’s book was prepared in 1299 at Genoa, and Jipangu was doubtless the traveller’s rendering of the Ji-pên-kwoh of the Chinese, the name by which Japan is known to that nation to-day, and by which Marco Polo heard the island Empire spoken of some 600 years ago. To the Ten-shi’s subjects their land is Ni-hon-koku, or Sun-origin Land, a term that is fairly translated, perhaps, as the Land of Sunrise. Ji-pên-kwoh, in Chinese, has precisely the same meaning, and the three ideographs employed are identical in Chinese and Japanese, the difference being one of pronunciation only. Though the dwellers in Nihon know as a rule by this time what is meant by Japan they always speak of their land as Nihon or Nipon, and though they know to whom strangers allude as the Mikado, they refer to his Majesty as the Ten-shi or Tenno. Nevertheless, the terms in use abroad, though they have less to recommend them on the score of accuracy, either for country or ruler, bid fair to survive for generations.

In Japan there are four Imperial families in which are vested the rights of succession to the throne in case of the failure of the direct line of the sovereign. These families are the Arisugawa, Katsura, Fushimi, and Kanin. The throne has ten times been occupied by a woman, but it was ever an inflexible rule that she should choose a prince-consort from among these four Shinnō, or Imperial families, and the relationship of these families to the throne well illustrates the principle of adoption which prevails throughout Japan in all classes, from the Imperial circle down to the home of the humblest peasant. Adoption there confers all the rights, privileges, and obligations of blood relationship, and it was on this basis that the late Prince Taruhito, who played so important a part in the making of Modern Japan, and is often referred to elsewhere in this volume, came to occupy the position of uncle to the reigning monarch. Prince Taruhito, who for the first three decades of the Meiji era was the Commander-in-chief of the Japanese army, and died towards the close of the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-5, was adopted as a son by the Emperor Ninko, who reigned from 1817 to 1846 (grandfather to the present Emperor), and he thus became a brother of the Emperor Komei, who was the real son of Ninko. The Emperor Komei sat on the throne from 1846 to January 1867, and was succeeded by his only son the reigning Sovereign Mutsuhito. The late Prince Arisugawa was therefore uncle by adoption only of the present Emperor, and curiously enough that is in one sense the relationship which actually exists between the present Prince Arisugawa, who recently visited our shores, and the present Emperor, for the prince is the younger brother by birth of the late Prince Taruhito, who, having no children of his own, adopted his brother as his son and heir. Prince Taruhito having adopted his brother as his son, however, the brother then became the reigning monarch’s cousin, and, as adoption confers absolute rights, it is in the light of cousinship that we must regard the personal relation of Prince Takehito Arisugawa to the occupant of the throne. In reality it is difficult to institute anything like a fair comparison, for in Europe our family relationships do not precisely correspond to those that exist in the Japanese Empire, and any effort at explanation of the actual status attained by the system of adoption, as it prevails there, must fail to convey an accurate idea of the true position. Still it will now be understood, as adoption brings with it full privileges, how Prince Takehito, the prince who served as a midshipman in the British navy, and is generally known as Prince Arisugawa, was for some years the heir-presumptive to the Japanese throne. The Emperor Ninko having left two sons,—though one was his son by adoption,—recourse would have been had to the line of the adopted son had the present occupant of the throne remained without a direct heir. The Crown Prince was not born until 1879, but the direct succession is now, it would seem, amply secured, as he has sons of his own.

The equivalent of “his Majesty” in Japanese is “Hei-ka,” so that the full expression employed in speaking of the monarch is Tenno Hei-ka, but there are additional titles not in general use, as is the case not only in Japan and neighbouring countries but among most European as well as Asiatic States. The same is true of the land over which the Ten-shi rules, for it has borne fully as many names as have at various periods the British Isles, and it was remarked at the time that the Albion and the Shikishima battleships were being built side by side at Blackwall that these vessels carried the ancient names of the countries to which they belonged, for Shikishima is a poetical title,—implying Isles of Prosperity,—for Japan, and is employed there in very much the same way as Albion is with us.