“I should probably have hesitated,” says Sir Rutherford in his preface, “had it not seemed important to furnish materials for a right judgment in matters of national concern connected with Japan, and our relations there, while it might yet be time to avert, by the intelligent appreciation of our true situation, grievous disappointment, as well as increased complications and calamities. A free expression of opinion in matters of public interest is not to be lightly adventured upon, however, and in many cases those holding office are altogether precluded from such action. At the same time, much mischief is often done by undue reticence in matters which must, in a country like ours, be the subject of public discussion. It so happened that I was relieved from any difficulty on this head by the publication in extenso of the greater number of my despatches, which were printed and laid before Parliament. And not only was the necessity for silence obviated by such publication in this country, but a similar course was followed at Washington in respect of the despatches of my colleague, the American Minister, during the same period. As in each of these series there is a very unreserved expression of opinion as to the political situation of the country, the action of the Japanese authorities, the views entertained by colleagues, and the conduct of the foreign communities, the decision of the respective Governments of both countries to make the despatches public, and this so freely as to leave little of a confidential character unprinted, effectually removed all the impediments which might otherwise have existed.”
The general reader must not suppose, however, that because politics engage a large share of the work before us, he will, on that account, find it dull. Japan is probably the only country in the world in which diplomacy becomes a pursuit of thrilling excitement. Sometimes it leads to some curious discovery, and reveals to us some part of the political machinery in the government of the country heretofore unsuspected and unknown. Sometimes it furnishes amusing illustrations of the Japanese mode of diplomatic fencing; at others, it involves a frightful tragedy or a quaint official ceremony. Without these details to illustrate each phase through which our political relations have passed, we should never have been able to realise the difficulties with which our officials in those remote regions have to contend, or the nature of the opposition persistently offered by the Japanese Government.
The task of permanently installing for the first time a legation in a city of upwards of two millions of people having been safely accomplished, Mr Alcock entered upon his first diplomatic struggle, the point of which was merely to fix a day for the purpose of exchanging the ratifications of Lord Elgin’s Treaty. The discussion preliminary to this formality occupied no less than seven days. At last the details are arranged, and it is decided that the Treaty is to be carried in procession through the city, under a canopy ornamented with flags and evergreens, surrounded by a guard of marines, and followed by fifty blue-jackets; Captain Hand, with a large number of his officers in uniform and on horseback, following immediately after the four petty officers carrying the Treaty. We can well imagine the effect which so novel a procession was likely to produce upon the inhabitants of Yedo. When the formalities were accomplished, “signals, arranged by the Japanese in advance (by fans from street to street) conveyed the news to the Sampson with telegraphic speed in a minute and a half, a distance of six miles.” So our Minister hoists his flag, and settles himself down in solitary grandeur, to pass his life of exile in solving the difficult problem of reconciling the civilisation he represents with that which surrounds him, but which the jealousy of the Government will not permit him to investigate. This does not, however, prevent our author from entering upon lengthy and interesting philosophical disquisitions upon the many moral, social, and political questions which must, under such circumstances, present themselves to a thoughtful mind. He has not been six weeks so employed when he is suddenly roused from his speculations by a tragical event which occurs at Yokuhama. As this is the first of a series of exciting incidents, we will give our readers an epitome of those which occurred during three years, and the particulars of which are detailed at length in various parts of the book:—
“A Russian officer, with a sailor and a steward, were suddenly set upon in the principal street by some armed Japanese, and hewn down with the most ghastly wounds that could be inflicted. The sailor was cleft through his skull to the nostrils—half the scalp sliced down, and one arm nearly severed from the shoulder through the joint. The officer was equally mangled, his lungs protruding from a sabre-gash across the body; the thighs and legs deeply gashed.”
In the succeeding tragedies the wounds are invariably of the above savage nature, but we will not always inflict upon our readers a full description of the horrible details.
Two months after this the servant of the French Consul is cut to pieces in the street—cause unknown. By way of varying the excitement, the Tycoon’s palace is burnt down about the same time, and the Japanese Ministers propose to stop all business in consequence. This is of course not considered a legitimate way of evading disagreeable questions. Diplomatic difficulties continue to be discussed, and the greater part of the settlement of Yokuhama is burnt down:—
“While yet occupied by these events, we were startled by another of more immediate and personal import. It was near midnight; Mr Eusden, the Japanese secretary, was standing by my side, when the longest and most violent shock of an earthquake yet experienced since our arrival brought every one to his feet with a sudden impulse to fly from under the shaking roof. It began at first very gently, but rapidly increased in the violence of the vibrations until the earth seemed to rock under our feet, and to be heaved up by some mighty explosive powder in the caldrons beneath.”
The nerves of our author scarcely recover from the shock of the earthquake when they receive another of a different description. A hasty step is heard outside his room, and “Captain Marten, of H.M.S. Roebuck, threw back the sliding-panel. ‘Come quickly; your linguist is being carried in badly wounded.’ My heart misgave me that his death-knell had struck.” Of course it had; they seldom miss their stroke in Japan. “The point” (of the sword) “had entered at his back and came out above the right breast; and, thus buried in his body, the assassin left it, and disappeared as stealthily as he came.” While discussing this matter, in dashes the whole French Legation—the French Consul-General at the head: “‘Nous voici! nous venons vous demander de l’hospitalité—l’incendie nous a atteint.’ Then follows Monsieur l’Abbé in a dressing-gown—a glass thermometer in one hand, and a breviary in the other; then the Chancellor in slippers, with a revolver and a bonnet de nuit.” What with an assassination in one Legation and a fire in another on the same night, our diplomatists have their hands full. Our author, however, seems to have passed a few nights in comparative tranquillity after this, before he is again roused at four o’clock in the morning by the arrival of an express from Kanagawa with the news that about eight o’clock in the evening two Dutch captains had been slain in the main street of Yokuhama—“a repetition, in all its leading circumstances and unprovoked barbarity, of the assassination perpetrated on the Russians.” After this, beyond a few bad earthquakes, nothing happens for a month or so, “when, on my return from a visit to Kanagawa, the first news that greeted me as I entered the Legation was of so startling and incredible a character that I hesitated to believe what was told me. The Gotairo or Regent was said to have been assassinated in broad daylight on his way to the palace, and this, too, in the very midst of a large retinue of his retainers!” The account, which our author gives at length, of this occurrence, and of the causes which led to it, is most characteristic: we have only space for the result:—
“Eight of the assailants were unaccounted for when all was over, and many of the retinue were stretched on the ground, wounded and dying, by the side of those who had made the murderous onslaught. The remnant of the Regent’s people, released from their deadly struggle, turned to the norimon to see how it had fared with their master in the brief interval, to find only a headless trunk: the bleeding trophy carried away was supposed to have been the head of the Gotairo himself, hacked off on the spot. But, strangest of all these startling incidents, it is further related that two heads were found missing, and that which was in the fugitive’s hand was only a lure to the pursuing party, while the true trophy had been secreted on the person of another, and was thus successfully carried off, though the decoy paid the penalty of his life.”
The head of the Regent is said to have been got safely out of Yedo, and presented to the Prince, who was his enemy, and who spat upon it with maledictions. It was reported afterwards to have been exposed in the public execution-ground of the spiritual capital, with a placard over it, on which was the following inscription: “This is the head of a traitor, who has violated the most sacred laws of Japan—those which forbid the admission of foreigners into the country.” After this, with the exception of a “murderous onslaught made by a drunken Yaconin on an English merchant at Hakodadi,” there is another lull, varied only by putting the Legations in a state of defence. They “were filled with Japanese troops, field-pieces were placed in the courtyards of the several Legations, and the ministers were urgently requested to abstain from going outside!” A month passes, and life is absolutely becoming monotonous, from the absence of the usual stimulant in the shape either of a fire, a murder, or a good earthquake, when there suddenly appeared, “as we were sitting down to dinner one evening, the Abbé Gérard, pale and agitated, bringing with him, in a norimon, M. de Bellecourt’s Italian servant, who had been attacked, while quietly standing at the gate of the French Legation, by two Samourai (daimios’ retainers) passing at the moment, and by one of whom he had been severely wounded.”