The Making of Modern Japan / An Account of the Progress of Japan from Pre-feudal Days to Constitutional Government & the Position of a Great Power, With Chapters on Religion, the Complex Family System, Education, &c.

by John Harington Gubbins

Hostility to foreigners at this time, however, was a feeling common to most Japanese, even Shōgunate officials being no exception to the rule. Writers on Japan mention as one cause which served to increase this feeling the drain of gold from Japan, which began as early as the operations of the first Portuguese traders. Another—adduced by the Japanese Government itself—was the great rise in prices which followed upon the opening of Treaty ports. Sir Rutherford Alcock, in the Capital of the Tycoon, adds a third—the memory of the troubles connected with the Christian persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of the serious alarm then entertained by the Japanese authorities at the undisguised pretensions of the Pope. The understanding regarding the Treaty question arrived at by the Regent with the Court did little to check the growth of anti-foreign feeling, for the Court continued its intrigues as before, and the Regent’s death, in the spring of 1860 at the hands of assassins instigated by the ex-Prince of Mito, provided a further opportunity. The effects of the fierce anti-foreign crusade upon which it then embarked were seen in the murder of the Secretary of the American Legation, in the successive attacks made on the British Legation, and in other violent acts by which foreigners were not the only sufferers. Yielding to the pressure of public opinion, the Government itself became almost openly hostile. Placed in this difficult position, the representatives of the Treaty Powers found both dignity and safety compromised. What, they might well ask, was to be gained by protests to the Japanese authorities in regard to acts with which the latter’s sympathy was barely concealed, of which they not infrequently gave warning themselves, but against which they were unable, or unwilling, to afford protection? Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany and Holland should in 1862 have retired temporarily from the capital to Yokohama—an example not followed by the American representative; nor that the British Legation on its return, at the Japanese Government’s request, four weeks later, should have been immediately attacked in spite of a formal guarantee of protection. In respect of this attack, in the course of which two sentries were murdered, an indemnity was afterwards paid. Matters were further aggravated by the murder in September of the same year (1862) of Mr. Richardson, a British subject, on the high road near Yokohama by the bodyguard of a Satsuma noble, Shimadzu Saburō, who was on his way back to Kiōto from the Shōgun’s Court in Yedo. A formal apology for this outrage was demanded by the British, together with the payment of an indemnity.

The growing power of the Court and the anti-foreign party, for the two were one, showed itself also in its behaviour to the Shōgunate after the Regent’s death.

The adherents of the ex-Prince of Mito—who survived his adversary by only a few months—held up their heads again, while the late Regent’s friends were, in their turn, dismissed from office, fined, imprisoned or banished. Nor did the Shōgun’s marriage to the Mikado’s sister in the spring of 1862 materially improve the relations between Kiōto and Yedo, or moderate the high-handed attitude of the Court. In the summer of the same year the Shōgun was peremptorily summoned to Kiōto, which had not seen a Shōgun for two hundred and fifty years, to confer with the Court regarding the expulsion of foreigners; Prince Kéiki, the unsuccessful candidate for the office of Shōgun in 1858, was made Regent, and appointed guardian to his rival on that occasion, the young Shōgun Iyémochi, in the place of a nearer and older relative; while the ex-Prince of Échizen, one of the late Regent’s enemies, was made President of the Council of State. That nothing should be wanting to indicate its displeasure at the position taken up by the Shōgunate in regard to foreign affairs, the Court went so far as to order the Shōgun’s consort, who in accordance with custom had, on her marriage, assumed the title usual in those circumstances, to revert to her previous designation of princess. Other signs of the times, showing not only the anti-foreign spirit of the Court, but its determination to strike at the root of Tokugawa authority, could be noted in such incidents as the relaxation of the conditions of the residence of feudal nobles in Yedo, and the release of the hostages formerly exacted for their good conduct whilst in their fiefs; the solemn fixing at a Council of princes, attended by the Shōgun and his guardians, of a date for the cessation of all foreign intercourse; the revival of the State processions of the Mikado to shrines, which had been discontinued at the beginning of the Tokugawa rule; and the residence for long periods at Kiōto of feudal nobles, in defiance of the Tokugawa regulation which forbade them even to visit the Capital without permission—a step which showed that they were not afraid of its being known that they sided openly with the Court against the Shōgunate. The same spirit accounted for the attempt to associate the Shōgun and his Regent-guardian with the taking of a religious oath to expel foreigners, and, finally, for the fact that while so much that was incompatible with friendly relations with Treaty Powers was taking place, a mission sent to those very powers was engaged in persuading them to consent to the postponement for five years of the dates fixed for the opening of certain ports and places to foreign trade and residence. This consent was given, and was recorded, in so far as Great Britain was concerned, in the London Protocol of June 6th, 1862.

The communication to the foreign representatives of the decision to close the country duly took place on the 24th June, as arranged. But nothing came of it. The foreign governments refused to take the matter seriously, merely intimating that steps would be taken to protect foreign interests, and five months later the Shōgunate asked for the return of the Note.

Sir Rutherford Alcock in the course of a lengthy review of the situation, in which he seems to have foreseen clearly that the reopening of the country would eventually lead to civil war, came, though unwillingly, to the conclusion that foreign governments, if they wished to ensure the observance of the treaties, must be prepared to use force, and make reprisals; in fact, that opposition to foreign intercourse would not cease until the nation should, by drastic measures, have been persuaded of the ability of foreign Powers to make their Treaty rights respected. The effect of the reprisals made by the British Government in the Richardson case, in the course of which the town of Kagoshima was bombarded, and partly destroyed, besides the exaction of an indemnity, went some way to prove the correctness of this view. Its truth was further demonstrated when a second and graver incident occurred. This was the firing upon foreign vessels in the Straits of Shimonoséki by Chōshiū forts on June 24th, 1863. The date on which the outrage occurred was that fixed at the Council of feudal nobles, attended by the Shōgun and the Regent, his guardian, in Kiōto for the opening of negotiations with the foreign representatives for the closing of the country. It was also that on which, in accordance with the decision then taken, a communication had been made to them by the Council of State. The coincidence of dates gave a more serious aspect to the affair, though the complicity of the Shōgunate was never whole-hearted. In this case, also, it became necessary to take the drastic measures which to the British Minister in question had seemed to be inevitable sooner or later. Neither the first reprisals, however, instituted at once by the French and American naval authorities, nor the lengthy negotiations with the Japanese Government which followed, were of any effect in obtaining redress. For more than a year the straits remained closed to navigation. Eventually joint operations against the hostile forts conducted in August, 1864, by a combined squadron of the four Powers immediately concerned, accomplished the desired result. The forts were attacked and destroyed, an undertaking that they should be left in a dismantled condition was extorted, and an indemnity of $3,000,000 exacted. The lessons thus administered lost none of their force from the fact that the clans punished were the two most powerful, and those in which hostility to foreigners was perhaps most openly displayed. Both this and the Kagoshima indemnity were paid by the Yedo Government, and not by the offending clans. Were further proof needed of the strange condition of affairs at this time in Japan it is supplied by the fact that in both cases the drastic measures taken resulted in the establishment of quite amicable relations with the clans in question. This unlooked-for result points to the existence, both in the nation at large, and in individual clans, of a small minority which did not share the prevailing hostility to foreigners.

Towards the end of 1863 the British and French Governments came to the conclusion that the unsettled state of things in Japan, and the anti-foreign feeling, which showed no signs of decreasing, made it advisable to station troops in Yokohama for the protection of foreign interests. Accordingly contingents of British and French troops were landed, and established in quarters on shore, by arrangement with the Japanese authorities. Their presence served admirably the purpose intended; no collision or friction occurred between these garrisons and the Japanese, and in 1875, when their presence was no longer needed, they were withdrawn.

The Shōgun had been very reluctant to comply with the Imperial summons to Kiōto. His ministers had endeavoured to arrange for the visit to be limited to ten days. Once there, however, he was detained on various pretexts until June in the following year, by which time the Court had already embarked on its anti-foreign policy, and the Shimonoséki incident had occurred. His return to Yedo was the signal for the outbreak of further bickering between the Court and the Shōgunate, which revealed the same disposition on both sides to shut the eyes to facts, and change position with startling inconsistency. Ignoring its recent co-operation with the Imperial Court and feudal nobles in the anti-foreign policy initiated at the Capital, the fixing of a date for the expulsion of the foreigner, and the communication of its decision to the foreign representatives, the Shōgunate presented a memorial to the Throne pointing out how unfavourable was the present moment for pushing matters to extremity in the matter of foreign intercourse. The Court, for its part, while testifying its pleasure at the revival of the ancient practice of visits to the Capital, rebuked the Shōgun for not keeping the Throne more fully informed of his movements, for having gone back to Yedo in a steamer, and for his unsatisfactory behaviour in regard to foreign relations. Further indications of the general confusion of ideas and vacillation of purpose which characterized the proceedings of persons in authority appear in the expulsion of Chōshiū clansmen from Kiōto as a mark of the Court’s strong disapproval of the action of the Chōshiū clan in the Shimonoséki affair, as well as in the startling pronouncement made by the Échizen clan—whose chief’s enforced abdication has already been mentioned—in favour of foreign intercourse, and of the “new Christian religion,” and condemning alike both the policy pursued by the Court, and that of the Shōgunate.

That a definite rupture of foreign relations did not take place at this juncture was due to the promptness of the Shōgunate to repudiate its own acts and to the patience and good-humour of foreign governments; possibly also to the division of opinion in the country itself, where the centre of authority was beginning to shift, though the process was still incomplete. In its place there occurred the first threatenings, the beginnings, in fact, of the civil war which an attentive observer had prophesied. Conscious of the Government’s weakness, while piqued by the Court’s inconsistency, the Chōshiū clan brought matters to an issue in the summer of 1864 by making a sudden raid on Kiōto with the object of abducting the Mikado and raising the Imperial standard. The attempt was defeated; nor did the clan fare better in its efforts to repel the invasion of its territory by the Government forces. The resistance offered was soon overcome. Early in the following year (1865) the rebellion was suppressed, the severity of the terms imposed on the clan exciting widespread dissatisfaction. When, shortly afterwards, the same clan again rebelled, owing, it is said, to the excessive character of the punishment imposed, it was perceived that the success of the Tokugawa troops on the previous occasion was due, not to the Shōgunate’s military strength, but to the co-operation of other clans—notably that of Satsuma—in the punitive measures directed against the rebels. On this latter occasion the support of the other clans was withheld, with the result that the second campaign, though conducted under the eye of the Shōgun, who made Kiōto his headquarters for the purpose, was a complete failure. By the end of the year 1866 a compromise, designed to save the faces of both parties, had been effected. Hostilities then ceased. In the course of the negotiations by which this conclusion was reached the weakness of the Shōgunate was still further exposed. The prominent part taken by rōnin, both in the raid on the Capital and in the subsequent proceedings of the clan, as well as the incapacity of the feudal prince and his son, came also to light, together with the fact that the affairs of the fief were controlled by clan retainers, who were divided into two mutually hostile factions, each of which in turn gained the ascendancy.

The ignominy of defeat at the hands of a rebellious clan, added to a bankrupt exchequer, not to speak of the acceptance of a compromise which in itself was a confession of impotence, hastened the crumbling away of what was left of Tokugawa prestige. Fresh energy, at the same time, was instilled into the Court party. The situation became increasingly troubled and confused. While the Imperialists, as they now came to be called, clamoured more loudly than ever for the expulsion of foreigners, the ministers of the young Shōgun—soon to be succeeded very unwillingly by his cousin and guardian, the regent Prince Kéiki—busied themselves with explanations to the Court on the subject of the treaties, and to the foreign representatives on the political situation and the bearing of the Court.

In the meantime, in the summer of 1865, while the Chōshiū imbroglio was at its height, Sir Harry Parkes had arrived in Japan as British Minister. Soon after his arrival his attention had been drawn to the anomalous position of the Shōgun (or Tycoon), who was not the Sovereign of Japan, as described in the treaties, to the difficult situation created by the revival of Imperial pretensions, and to the encouragement afforded to the anti-foreign party by the fact that the Mikado had not yet given his formal sanction to the treaties of 1858, though they had been ratified by the Shōgun’s Government. The foreign representatives, who had already received instructions from their Governments to ask for a modification of the tariff of import and export duties annexed to the treaties of 1858, decided to press both questions together and, at the same time, to communicate to the Shōgunate, on behalf of their Governments, an offer to remit two-thirds of the Shimonoséki indemnity in return for (1) the immediate opening of the port of Hiogo and the city of Ōsaka, and (2) the revision of the Customs tariff on a basis of 5 per cent ad valorem. Accordingly, in November, 1865, a combined squadron visited Ōsaka for that purpose.