Makers of Japan

by J. Morris

The then British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, early in the spring of 1868 despatched Messrs Satow and Willis to express to the newly formed Kioto Government his hope that the time might be deemed opportune for the inauguration of direct relations between the accredited representatives of Western powers and his Imperial Majesty, the Shogun having actually resigned three months or more before. Dr Willis was the medical officer attached to the British Legation, and at a later date took up his residence in Kagoshima, the chief town of Satsuma, where he was physician to the hospital which the clan established, and his services during the stormy days of the Restoration struggle and subsequently when the Satsuma men were nominally in rebellion were invaluable. The British Minister’s messengers were well received and hospitably entertained in Kioto, and were permitted to walk freely in the streets of the ancient capital of the Ten-shi, which was something that no foreigners had ever done before. The anti-foreign feeling was still very strong throughout Japan, as was proved by the wholesale massacre of a French vessel’s boat’s crew at Sakai, near Osaka. An officer and eleven men were killed in all, and the French Minister, M. Roches, made an imperative demand on the Shogun’s government, which at that time (February 1868) was administering the affairs of the country, for the delivery of the bodies of the murdered men within twenty-four hours, a request which it was found practicable as well as politic to comply with. Also a number of Bizen soldiers hailing from that province washed by the Inland Sea, west of Awaji, had in passing through the newly opened port of Hiogo, vented their animosity towards the strangers whom they saw in the streets by running amok among them and firing with their rifles right and left. This crime, like that perpetrated at Sakai, was avenged, for the Government was strong enough to issue orders for the performance of seppuku by the culprits and to insist on execution of the sentences. The Bizen men were marching from Okayama to Osaka at the time when they allowed their anti-foreign ideas to outrun their discretion, the actual order to fire on the foreign residents being given by one Heiki Tatewaki, whose death was decreed by imperial edict and the then Governor of the port, the present Marquis Ito, was directed as his Majesty’s representative, to see the act of seppuku carried out in due form.

THE ARMS MUSEUM AT TOKIO

But there were worse troubles to follow, for when, in the month of March, Sir Harry Parkes went to Kioto on the invitation of the Emperor, to attend, in company with the Ministers of France and Holland, the first imperial audience of the reign of Meiji, he and his retinue were suddenly attacked in a public thoroughfare there, by two outlaws, of the “ro-nin” type already described, and the British representative had personally a very narrow escape. But for the magnificent courage shown by the Japanese officers who had been sent to meet the Emperor’s guest, Goto,—who rode by Sir Harry’s side, and Nakai,—who was immediately in front, with a member of the Legation guard,—both of these Japanese gentlemen having instantly engaged the ro-nins with their swords so effectually that one of the assailants was slain on the spot, and the other taken prisoner, afterwards to be executed, it is probable that Sir Harry would have been killed. The eminent services rendered by Count Goto (as he afterwards became) to his country are elsewhere recorded in this volume. Queen Victoria decorated him, and likewise Mr Nakai, for their gallantry on this occasion, and the Emperor manifested his poignant regret for the outrage when the following month the British Minister was received at Court. The Ten-shi gave practical effect, moreover, to his abhorrence of these crimes by issuing a decree in which it was declared that all persons guilty in the future of murdering foreigners, or of committing any acts of violence towards them, would not only be transgressing the express commands of the Emperor, but would be the direct source of national misfortune, inasmuch as they would be committing the heinous offence of causing the national dignity and reputation for good faith to suffer diminution in the eyes of those Treaty Powers with which his Majesty had declared himself to be on terms of amity and friendship. The effect of such an edict on the minds of people so accustomed to obey their sovereign’s behests as are the Japanese could not be other than salutary, and although there were isolated cases in the years which ensued wherein attacks were made on strangers, the era of opposition to the entry of aliens was by this time practically at an end, and taken in conjunction with the abolition shortly afterwards of those anti-Christian edicts which had been promulgated by his predecessors on the throne it must be admitted that the Emperor speedily gave gracious and convincing evidence of his desire to rule with that justice and liberality towards humanity at large by which he has ever been distinguished throughout an already long reign.

These events have to be recorded in connection with the life of the imperial court at Kioto at a time when the war of the Restoration, as it is termed, was still in progress in the northern portion of the island of Hondo, and in many cases the fighting was of the most desperate character, fortune by no means invariably inclining towards the imperialists. There was a fierce encounter at Utsu-no-miya, a town about sixty miles north of the capital, resulting in a success for the Shogun’s side, their leader having been Otori Keisuke, who, after undergoing a term of imprisonment for his share in prolonging the rebellion, entered the Imperial Government service, and rose to occupy posts of distinction.

In October 1868, his Majesty Mutsuhito was crowned Emperor of Japan in the ancient castle of the Nijo, at Kioto, and it was then that he took the oath to rule constitutionally, which was a purely voluntary act, prompted by an earnest desire to confer upon his people the advantages and blessings of enlightened government. A few weeks later, in the second month of 1869, he wedded the Princess Haruko, the daughter of a Court noble, and during the ensuing spring the Imperial court was wholly transferred to Yedo, that city being renamed Tokio, or Eastern Capital, to distinguish it from Kioto, which bore thenceforward the official title of Saikio, or Western capital. At Tokio his Majesty took up his abode in the Hon-maru, or Inner circle of the former castle of the Tokugawa family, and on the following 6th of September he received Prince Alfred of England in the palace gardens of Fuki-age, adjoining the imperial residence. This was the first occasion in the history of Japan on which the sovereign had ever met a foreign prince, all previous intercourse with strangers having taken place through the medium of the Shoguns. The interview between the Ten-shi and the British prince, afterwards the Duke of Edinburgh, took place in a tiny summer-house in the picturesque grounds of Fuki-age, then of considerable extent and laid out in wholly Japanese style, with its clumps of bamboo, groves of pine, masses of rhododendron, and azalea, rippling brooks, and grassy dells that go to form the delightful pleasaunces in which the heart of every Japanese rejoices. The meeting was of a most cordial character, the Emperor on that occasion wearing the unique old-fashioned head-dress which it was customary from time immemorial for the sovereigns of Japan to don on State occasions. His majesty only once afterwards appeared in public with this peculiar crown, and that was on the day that he opened the railway from Tokio to Yokohama in 1872. He has since worn foreign dress at all State functions.

Late in 1869 the Emperor was joined at Tokio by the young Empress Haruko, who travelled overland by the highroad termed the Tokaido, with an immense retinue, resting on the way at the prescribed honjins or private hotels used by the feudal lords on their former journeys to and from Yedo, when the Shoguns required them to pay periodical visits to the headquarters of the Tokugawa government. The Empress was some weeks on the road from Kioto to Tokio, and as her procession passed through the street of Kanagawa, near Yokohama, the foreign residents took the opportunity to assemble at the wayside and show their respect for the Ten-shi’s consort. They did not catch a glimpse of her features, but they knew that behind the gauze-screened windows of her lacquered palanquin sat the highest lady of the land, perhaps as much interested in her first sight of the strangers from the west as they were with the various elements of the imperial cortege. Though her majesty had heard and read much of the characteristics of the Occidentals, she had never previously seen any of them; in after years, however, her own beneficent impulses in the cause of charity led her to receive on many occasions the wives and daughters of foreign residents and contributed to the establishment of an enduring fame as the strenuous advocate and supporter of all good works.

The Emperor was but little in evidence in the early years of his reign, and it was an event in the history of the nation when the monarch who had been brought up in such strict seclusion was one day seen in the streets of his capital driving in an open carriage to Hama-go-ten, the beach palace in the suburbs of Tokio, in company with his Ministers the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura. On this occasion he had done them the supreme honour of calling for them at their residences and conveying them in his own carriage to a ceremony in which they were both deeply concerned. This was on the 1st of October 1871, and it is difficult to estimate at its true value the extraordinary effect which so graceful an act on the part of the monarch who had only four years before succeeded to a dignity which seemed to impose on him an existence of absolute invisibility to his subjects must have had on those who were witnesses of this vast concession to modernised ideas. Under the old regime the princes would themselves have been hidden from the vulgar gaze by the latticed windows of their sedan chairs, and the sovereign would never have been seen outside his own palace walls.

The next year the first line of railway was completed and the moment was seized by his Majesty’s advisers for a grand ceremony at the port which thirteen years before had been thrown open to foreign trade. A suitable stage had been erected at the Yokohama end of the eighteen miles long railway, over which an experimental train service had been conducted for some weeks previously, and at the appointed hour the Emperor, clad in white silk robes, with a crimson sash, and scarlet trousers, and wearing in place of a crown the antique black coif terminating in an upright lath-like structure which rose some ten inches above his head, came forward in full view of the multitude, which included hundreds of foreign residents and visitors. To the great mass of his subjects, with whom the existence of the sovereign had always been a matter of pious belief rather than of assured reality, this manifestation in the flesh of their revered ruler was beyond measure impressive and gratifying. It unquestionably smoothed the path of the newly formed Central Government, for the advent of his majesty on the scene was proof positive that all which was then being done in the way of innovation upon established usage had the imperial sanction and authority. In Japan this meant a great deal more, owing to the respect for law and order which is admittedly inherent to the Japanese character and disposition, than it by any possibility could have done in lands where less reverence is shown to sovereign attributes. The day was one to be remembered by old and young alike, for it marked beyond all doubt the emancipation of Japan from the thraldom of a feudal system which had held her in check for centuries. The Emperor had set the seal of his approval on projects of reform.

In the same year the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout Japan, and from this period may be said to have been obliterated those discrepancies in dates which had been unavoidable owing to the tendency to resort to the Chinese plan of reckoning time. Down to the year named the day of the month corresponded to the age of the moon, and an intercalary month had to be provided in the calendar every third year. The new year fell usually between mid-January and mid-February, and as dates were given in conformity with the old style of reckoning in some cases and in others the new, it may be that down to 1872 there will here and there be found a difference of a month or so in the recorded dates of events.