Japan

by Walter G. Dickson

On the 4th day of the 3d month, Okamoto and Soma, the two principal officers in the late Regent’s service, went to the Gorochiu with the following letter: “Our master, Kamong no kami, went out yesterday to go to the castle to pay his respects. When about half-way between his house and the gate of the castle, several miscreants fell upon him and killed him. We have certain information that these assassins were servants of Mito and Satsuma. Yesterday all the officers say to us, ‘Wait a little.’ But this business cannot wait. We wish to know for what reason these men killed our master. There are, at the present moment, some of these men secreted in the houses of Wakisaka and Hossokawa—two Daimios. We wish to see them, and ascertain from themselves why they killed our master. We desire that these men may be delivered up to us. All the people of Hikonay [the Regent’s territory] wish this, and we trust you will take pity on them and grant their desire.”

To this letter the Gorochiu affixed as answer: “Cannot do so.”

The following letter was addressed to the Shiogoon by the son and servants of the late Regent on the day of the murder. It was written to ascertain whether the law of Japan would be acted upon in their case, by which the territory of any officer who had been assassinated is confiscated. “3d day, 3d month.—Ee Kamong no kami, when going to the castle to-day, and when near the Sakurada gate, was attacked by a number of villains. At the time, so much snow was falling as to make it impossible to see a yard before one. All the servants of Ee are enraged. There were but few Ronins and many servants, and they ought to have overpowered the Ronins. The servants are deeply shamed when they think of Ee nawo massa (the first of the family in the time of Iyeyas). Whatever is to become of us we care not; but the retainers and friends of Ee wish to know whether the house is, according to the old laws of the empire, to be reduced in rank and impoverished, or if it is to be entirely degraded and removed from the territory. We wish to understand clearly.” This was written in the name of the young Ee; and was probably written with the view of preparing to defend themselves and party by an appeal to arms rather than by submission.

The Shiogoon answered to this: “All your father’s territory I restore to you his son.”

Here terminates the native account of the assassination. It gives some insight into the working of the government, and the unscrupulous means to which the highest magnates of the land will resort to attain their ends. From the general tenor of the statements, the extreme hatred of one party in Japan to foreign intercourse is brought out, and the slight which the Emperor considered to have been put upon him by the conclusion of the treaty without his consent and against his expressed opinion.

Assassination is the ultima ratio of the desperation of party weakness. The act implies that the party which has sanctioned it has no one competent to cope with the individual removed, or to fill the place which it has made vacant.

The position of the government upon the death of the Regent was that of helpless inactivity. The sudden removal of the foremost man of the empire was as the removal of the fly-wheel from a piece of complicated machinery. The whole empire stood aghast, expecting and fearing some great political convulsion. The whole country knew who had been the active agents in the deed; and perhaps there were at heart very few who did not feel more or less satisfaction at the blow given to the party which was responsible for, and instrumental in, bringing foreigners into the country; and a civil war or revolution would certainly have followed, had not every one felt that they were, for the first time in their history, face to face with an enemy, fear of whom concentrated all minor feelings, and consolidated them into one great national determination to rid the land of the hated foreigners. This was the one policy which the Emperor demanded of the Shiogoon, which the people looked to the government to effect, and which the lords and military classes burned to carry into execution. Were the foreigners not a mere handful of men, and were such to be allowed to beard and insult the highest personages in the land with perfect impunity? Now, when the head of the party, who was or pretended to be in favor of such a change of the laws, is struck down, if some representative of the national feelings would only arise and lead them on, they would follow to the death in such a glorious cause. But no such leader appeared. Where was Mito, the rival of the late Regent? and why did he not come forward to carry out his own policy at this juncture? The son of the late Regent was too young and inexperienced to claim his father’s office, or to assume the leadership of the party. It was the personal hatred of the two men which had been the moving spring in the daring action of the Regent, and in the underhand plotting of Mito. In all probability the feelings of hostility with which each regarded the foreigner were equally strong. Mito said you must admit foreigners, because you cannot keep them out. He thought we can admit foreigners, and, if we see fit, afterward turn them out. But Mito was disliked by the other Daimios, and his name was not sufficient to rally a strong party, while he[15] and the lately degraded Daimios were now in arrest in their own houses, in territories which had been transferred to the hands of infants. They had thus no opportunity for intriguing, having no common place of meeting out of Yedo, as by law they were prohibited from going to Miako, and could only come to Yedo as Daimios, when called there on duty by the government.

In this crisis the only course for the Cabinet to pursue was to go on quietly, managing the routine of affairs until time should open up some line of action. The Gorochiu, therefore, with Neito at its head, and nominally under Tayass as Regent, continued to carry on the ordinary duties of government.

Events have shown that the Regent was right in his judgment of the men whom he sought to remove from his path as obstacles—Mito, Etsizen, Satsuma, Owarri—as these have all since his death reappeared as leaders of the party opposed to his policy in the Obiroma or council of the Kokushu. Etsizen, afterward known by his retired title Shoongaku, was the first among these magnates who attempted to take a lead in the government of Yedo. He had been removed from his position as Daimio and placed in arrest; but, having subsequently been released, was able to move about and obtain an influence in high places. He obtained from the Emperor a letter [afterward considered a forgery], appointing him and Awa to fill the place of co-regents, under the name of Sosai Shoku or Sodangeite. But the fermentation of revolution had already begun to work, and at such a time the first actors upon the stage seldom play the prominent parts they deem themselves fitted to fill. They generally fail to see the causes of the boiling going on around. Such a man is like an atom in a pot of boiling water, and knows and sees nothing of the fire which is causing all the upturning around him. To even a superficial looker-on at the state of things in Japan, it was evident that such a dual condition of government as that then existing could not long continue to carry on foreign relations. The discord and weakness arising from the permission of an imperium in imperio by the exterritoriality clause was greatly increased by the government attempting to carry on foreign relations without the consent or against the will of the higher power in Miako. The two powers must work harmoniously; and so long as the internal affairs of the empire are the only possible cause of rupture, the weaker, though more exalted, will find it to be its interest to be on good terms with the lower but more powerful, the executive. So soon as the latter begins to act as supreme power toward other nations, it places itself in a wrong position, and foreign nations will not treat with such a pretense. The opposition finds a head in the Emperor, and the only way to avert a rupture is for the lower power to give way and to act only as the representative of the head of the empire. If he fails to see this, he sets himself against the Emperor, who is then supported, not only by his own nobility, but also by those powers with whom he has entered into relations. The party of the Shiogoon deserts him, and his only rôle is to work with and under the Emperor; or, if he refuses to do this, civil war ensues, and he falls.

After the removal of the Gotairo, the Cabinet was able or permitted to carry on the affairs of State. But while everything seemed smooth, smoldering powers were at work preparing for volcanic action. The Kokushu, and especially those who came to Yedo from the west, were becoming very much irritated about the question of foreigners in the country, and foreign ministers in Yedo. The latter assumed a position of superiority to which these lords were quite unaccustomed. They were occupying temples belonging to great families, situated in cemeteries consecrated by the burial of their ancestors and relatives, but now polluted by intruders hateful to the spirits of the country. The foreign merchants were able to beard these princes on the highroad, and to treat with nonchalance dignitaries who looked for the utmost deference, and who were authorized by law to punish at their own hands any real or supposed insolence or insult. On the other hand, they saw trade pushing its way in the country; silk which had been sold for 100 dollars was now bringing 1,000, and Emperor and lord longed to share in such advantages and participate in the profits. The first object which the more powerful of the Kokushu set themselves to accomplish was to break down this intolerable subjection to the Yedo government. This was not difficult to do, as the power of the empire was in the hands of a delicate lad, and the Emperor, through whom the end was brought about, was promised and hoped that the power would revert to him. The agents in this act were Shoongaku, Shimadzu saburo, Choshiu, and a Koongay Ohara—a distant relative and the unexpected successor of a Koongay, and who had spent his early life hanging about the offices of Yedo. After the boy-Shiogoon had been married to Kadsu mia, sister of the Emperor, Shoongaku, who was always full of the most economical if not parsimonious views, reduced the retinue and court of the Shiogoon till it was brought into contempt with the populace. In October, 1862, these potentates produced a letter (forged, as is generally believed) from the Emperor, putting an end to the routine of the Yedo court; and having the power in their own hands, they immediately proclaimed the edict and carried it into execution. The order was to the effect that the higher Daimios were to visit Yedo only once in seven years, and that the wives and families of all the Daimios were to live at their own provincial seats. This removed from Yedo all the luster of the court. At the same time these lords filled up the complement of their design by inducing the Emperor to call most of the higher Daimios who were of their own views to Miako. The Mikado was swayed hither and thither as the one party or the other gained the power in the capital; and so at one time Kanso, the retired lord of Hizen, had the ear of the Emperor in the interest of the Shiogoon, while Choshiu appeared to have taken up arms against his sovereign. But he seems all along to have acted loyally and patriotically in showing an intense hatred to the foreigners who were by force of arms thrusting themselves and their regiments into the country. This act was the great blow which broke up the power and brought to a termination the dynasty of Iyeyas. He had foreseen and made provision for intestine war and revolution, but had not been able to provide for a treaty with foreign nations and an exterritoriality clause.