“The interview at Kioto, had for its result two facts. By the first, the bending of the knee, the temporal sovereign showed that he continued to be the traditional obedient son of the high pontiff of the national religion; but, by the second, that is to say by accepting this act of homage, the theocratic emperor formally recognised the representative of a dynasty sprung from a source alien to the only legitimate one.”
As the art of war is of some importance in Japan, we quote a few details from M. Humbert, on the equipments and the uniforms of the Taïcoon’s soldiers.
“The common soldiers are,” M. Humbert tells us, “inhabitants of the mountains of Akoui. They return to their homes after a short service of two or three years. Their uniform is made of blue cotton stuff, striped with white across the shoulders, and consists of a tight-fitting pair of trousers, and a shirt like that worn by the followers of Garibaldi. They wear cotton socks, leather sandals, and a waist-belt supporting a large sword in a japanned scabbard. Their cartridge-pouch and their bayonet are slung to their right side by a baldric. Their get-up is completed by a pointed hat, sloping at the sides, and made of lacquered cardboard; but they only wear it when on guard or at drill.
“As for the muskets of the Japanese troops, they have all, it is true, percussion-locks, but they vary both in calibre and in make, according to where they happen to come from. I saw four different kinds in the racks of some barracks at Benten, which a Yakounine did me the favour to show me. He showed me first a Dutch sample musket, and then one of an inferior quality manufactured in some workshops that had been started in Yeddo to turn out arms copied from this sample; he then pointed out an American gun; and finally, a Minié rifle, the use of which a young officer was teaching a squad of soldiers in the barrack-yard.”
The dress of the Japanese soldiery is curious in this respect, that it reproduces and preserves the whole military paraphernalia of European feudal times. A helmet, a coat-of-mail, a halberd, and a two-handed sword, such are the equipment of the better class of soldiery.
Fencing is held in high esteem in the Japanese army. The men are very clever at this exercise, which keeps up their vigour and their skill. Even the women practise it. Their weapon is a lance with a bent piece of iron at the end of it. The ladies learn how to use it in a series of regular positions and attitudes. The Japanese Amazons can also skilfully make use of a kind of knife, fastened to the wrist with a long silken string. When they have hurled this weapon at the head of their enemy, they draw it back again by means of the cord. The men also hurl the knife, but without fastening it to their wrist, and in the same way as they practise throwing the knife in Spain.
The Japanese nobles carry very costly weapons. The temper of their sword-blades is matchless, and their sword-hilts and scabbards are enriched with finely chased and engraved metal ornaments. But the chief value of their swords lies in their great age and reputation. In old families, every sword has a history and tradition of its own, whose brilliancy corresponds with the blood it has shed. A maiden sword must not remain so in the hand of its purchaser. Till an opportunity turns up of dyeing it with human blood, its possessor tries its prowess on living animals, or better still, on the corpses of executed criminals. The executioner, having obtained permission, hands him over two or three dead bodies. Our Japanese then proceeds to fasten them to crosses, or on trestles, in a courtyard of his house, and practises cutting, slashing, and thrusting, till he has acquired enough strength and skill to cut a couple of bodies in two at one stroke.
The sword, in Japan, is the classical, the national weapon. Nevertheless, in process of time, it will have to give way to the new improved firearms. In spite of the traditional prestige with which the Japanese nobility still endeavour to surround the former old-fashioned weapon; in spite of the contempt they affect for military innovations; the rifle, the democratic arm of arms, is becoming more and more used in Japan. This weapon will inaugurate a social revolution that will put an end to the feudal system. The rifle will cause an Eastern ’89 in Japan.
We have said that two creeds are followed in Japan, the Buddhist faith and the religion of the Kamis. The latter, with its ancient rites, has been replaced, however, nearly throughout the empire by the former.