CHAPTER VII
New Government—Clan Feeling in Satsuma—Administrative Changes—Reformers and Reactionaries.
In the spring of the following year (1869), when order was finally restored and the young Mikado had held his first audience of foreign representatives, an attempt was made to give practical effect to the Imperial intentions by establishing a deliberative assembly, to which the name of Kōgisho, or parliament, was given. It consisted of 276 members, one for each clan. Here, again, we are struck by the wide range of progressive opinion in the country, irrespective of party feeling and anti-foreign prejudice, for in a manifesto issued by the ex-Shōgun two months before his resignation he had stated his desire “to listen to the voice of the majority and establish a deliberative assembly, or parliament”—the very word Kōgisho being used.
As might have been foreseen, this first experiment, made in an atmosphere of feudalism, was a failure; but Sir Harry Parkes, then British Minister, describing a debate on the subject of foreign trade which took place, said that the result of the discussion, and its general tone, were creditable to the discernment of this embryo parliament.
The treatment accorded to the adherents of the Tokugawa cause when hostilities finally ceased in the spring of 1869, was marked by a generosity as wise as it was unlooked for. In Japan up to that time little consideration had been shown to the defeated party in civil wars. The defeated side, moreover, in opposing the Imperialists had earned the unfortunate title of rebels (Chōteki), reserved for those who took up arms against the Crown. In this instance moderate counsels prevailed. The territories of the daimiō of Aidzu, the backbone of Tokugawa resistance, and those of another northern chieftain, were confiscated; eighteen other daimiōs were transferred to distant fiefs with smaller revenues; while in a few cases the head of a clan was forced to abdicate in favour of some near relative. Retribution went no further. Later on, when the feudal system was abolished, the same liberality was displayed in the matter of feudal pensions, being especially noticeable in the case of two large sections of the military class, the Hatamoto and the Gokénin, who formed the hereditary personal following of the Tokugawa Shōguns.
The generosity shown by the Government led to much discontent in the military class in many clans. This was notably the case in Satsuma, where there were other grounds for dissatisfaction. The position of the Satsuma clan had always been somewhat different from that of other clans. Its situation at the south-western extremity of the kingdom, far from the seat of authority, had favoured the growth of an independent spirit, and the clan had long been noted for warlike qualities. Though subdued by the military ruler who preceded the Tokugawa Shōguns, and professing fealty to the Tokugawa House, the clan had preserved an appreciable measure of importance and prestige, if not independence, which the Shōguns in question had been careful to respect. The previous head of the clan had before his death in 1859 adopted as his heir his brother’s son, then a child of five years. The affairs of the clan had been to a large extent controlled ever since by this brother, Shimadzu Saburō, a name familiar to foreigners in connection with the outrage which led to the bombardment of Kagoshima; but he was in poor health, and at the time when the new Government was formed the control of clan matters had largely passed into the hands of the elder Saigō, a man of commanding personality, whose daring defiance of the Tokugawa authorities in the stormy days preceding the Restoration had made him a popular hero, and of other influential clansmen. Both Shimadzu and the elder Saigō were thorough conservatives, opposed to all foreign innovations. But there was a strong progressive group in the clan led by such men as Ōkubo and the younger Saigō, who were far from sharing the reactionary tendencies of the older leaders. This division of feeling in the clan was one of the causes of the dissensions in the ministry which arose in 1870, and it had important consequences, which were seen a few years later in the tragic episode of the Satsuma Rebellion.
The first note of discord came from Satsuma. One of the first acts of the new Government had been to transfer the Capital from Kiōto to Yedo, which was renamed Tōkiō, or “Eastern Capital.” The Satsuma troops which had been stationed in Tōkiō as a guard for the Government suddenly petitioned to be released from this service. The ground put forward was that the finances of the clan, which had suffered from the heavy outlay incurred during the civil war, did not permit of this expensive garrison duty. But the real reasons undoubtedly were a feeling of disappointment on the part of a majority of the clansmen at what was regarded as the small share allotted to Satsuma in the new administration, and some jealousy felt by the two leaders who presented the petition towards their younger and more active colleagues, combined with distrust of their enthusiasm for reform.
The garrison was allowed to go home, and the elder Saigō also returned to his province. The moment was critical. The Government could not afford to lose the support of the two most prominent Satsuma leaders, nor, at this early stage in the work of reconstruction which lay before it, to acquiesce in the defection of so powerful an ally. In the following year (1871), therefore, a conciliatory mission, in which Iwakura and Ōkubo were the leading figures, was sent to the offended clan to present in the Mikado’s name a sword of honour at the tomb of Shimadzu’s brother, the late daimiō of Satsuma. The mission was also entrusted with a written message from the Throne to Shimadzu urging him to come forward in support of the Mikado’s Government. By this step clan feeling was appeased for the moment, and Saigō returned to the Capital, and became a member of the Government.
How unstable was the condition of things at that time was illustrated by the changes in the personnel of the Ministry which took place in September of the same year, and the administrative revision which followed within a few months. The effect of the first was to strengthen the progressive element in the administration at the expense of the old feudal aristocracy. The Cabinet, as reorganized, consisted of Sanjō as Prime Minister and Iwakura as Minister for Foreign Affairs; four Councillors of State, Saigō, Kido, Itagaki and Ōkuma, represented the four clans of Satsuma, Chōshiū, Tosa and Hizen, while another Satsuma man, Ōkubo, became Minister of Finance. The effect of the revision of the constitution was to divide the Dajōkwan, or Central Executive, established in the previous year, into three branches, the Sei-in, a sort of Council of State presided over by the Prime Minister; the Sa-in, a Chamber exercising deliberative functions, which before long took the place of the Kōgisho; and the U-in, a subordinate offshoot of the Council of State, which was shortly afterwards merged in that body. These administrative changes had little real significance. Their chief interest lies in the fact that they show how obsessed some enthusiastic reformers were with the idea of deliberative institutions, of parliamentary methods of some kind, being embodied in the framework of the new constitution; and in the further fact that the new chief Ministers of State, under this reorganization, the Daijō Daijin, Sadaijin, and Udajin, borrowed their official titles from the Chambers over which they presided. Sir Francis Adams, describing these changes in his History of Japan mentions that the deliberative Chamber was regarded at the time as “a refuge for political visionaries, who had thus an opportunity of ventilating their theories without doing any harm,” and that “the members of the subordinate executive Chamber (the U-in), who were supposed to meet once a week for the execution of business, never met at all.” He added that he had never been able to learn what the functions of this Chamber were supposed to be, or what its members ever did. The real work of administration was carried on by the small but active group of reformers of the four clans, who were gradually concentrating all authority in their own hands.
The high ministerial offices thus created were filled by Sanjō, Shimadzu and Iwakura. The last-named, the junior in rank of the three, shared with Kido and Ōkubo the main direction of affairs. The other two were mere figure-heads, though their positions at Court and in Satsuma, respectively, gave strength to the Government.
