Kuroda, making Commodore Perry’s tactics his own, disposed his fleet in the most imposing array, made his transports look like men-of-war, by painting port-holes on them, kept up an incredible amount of fuss, movement, and bustle, and on the 10th landed a dazzling array of marines, sailors, and officers in full uniform, who paraded two miles to the treaty-house, on Kang-wa Island, where two high commissioners from Seoul, Ji Shinken and In Jiahō, aged respectively sixty-five and fifty, awaited him.
One day was devoted to ceremony, and three to negotiation. A written apology for the Kang-wa affair was offered by the Coreans, and the details of the treaty settled, the chief difficulties being the titles to be used.[1] Ten days for consultation at the capital were then asked for and granted, at the end of which time, the two commissioners returned, declaring the impossibility of obtaining the royal signature. The Japanese at once embarked on their ships in disgust. They returned only after satisfactory assurances; and on February 27th the treaty, in which Chō-sen was recognized as an independent nation, was signed and attested. The Japanese then made presents, mostly of western manufacture, and after being feasted, returned March 1st. Mr. Inouyé Bunda then proceeded to Europe, visiting, on his way, the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, at which also, it is said, were one or more Corean visitors.
The first Corean Embassy, which since the twelfth century had been accredited to the mikado’s court, sailed in May, 1876, from Fusan in a Japanese steamer, landing at Yokohama May 29th, at 8 A.M. Two Neptune-like braves with the symbols of power—huge iron [[424]]tridents—led the procession, in which was a band of twenty performers on metal horns, conch-shells, flutes, whistles, cymbals, and drums. Effeminate-looking pages bore the treaty documents. The chief envoy rode on a platform covered with tiger-skins, and resting on the shoulders of eight men, while a servant bore the umbrella of state over his head, and four minor officers walked at his side. The remainder of the suite rode in jin-riki-shas, and the Japanese military and civil escort completed the display. They breakfasted at the town hall, and by railroad and steam-cars reached Tōkiō. At the station, the contrast between the old and the new was startling. The Japanese stood “with all the outward signs of the Civilization that is coming in.” “On the other side, were all the representatives of the Barbarism that is going out.” On the following day, the Coreans visited the Foreign Office, and on June 1st, the envoy, though of inferior rank, had audience of the mikado. For three weeks the Japanese amused, enlightened, and startled their guests by showing them their war ships, arsenals, artillery, torpedoes, schools, buildings, factories, and offices equipped with steam and electricity—the ripened fruit of the seed planted by Perry in 1854. All attempts of foreigners to hold any communication with them, were firmly rejected by the Coreans, who started homeward June 28th. The official diary, or report by the ambassador of this visit to Japan, was afterward published in Seoul. It is a colorless narrative carefully bleached of all views and opinions, evidently satisfying the scrutiny even of enemies at court.
During the autumn of this year, 1876, and later on, in following years, the British war-vessels, Sylvia and Swinger, were engaged in surveying portions of the coast of Kiung-sang province. Captain H. C. Saint John, who commanded the Sylvia, and had touched near Fusan in 1855—long enough to see a native bastinadoed simply for selling a chicken to a foreigner—now found more hospitable treatment. His adventures are narrated in his chatty book, “The Wild Coasts of Nipon.” An English vessel, the Barbara Taylor, having been wrecked on Corean shores, an attaché of the British Legation in Tōkiō was sent to Fusan to thank the authorities for their kind treatment of the crew.
The Japanese found it was not wise to hasten in taking advantage of their new liberties granted by treaty. Near Fusan, are thousands of graves of natives killed in the invasion of 1592–97, over which the Coreans hold an annual memorial celebration. Hitherto the Japanese had been rigorously kept within their [[425]]guarded enclosure. Going out to witness the celebration, they were met with a shower of stones, and found the road blockaded. After a small riot in which many words and missiles were exchanged, matters were righted, but the temper of the people showed that, as in old Japan, it would be long before ignorant hermits, and not over-gentle foreigners could live quietly together.
Saigo, of Satsuma, dissatisfied with the peaceful results of Kuroda’s mission, and the “brain victory” over the Coreans, organized, during 1877, “The Satsuma Rebellion,” to crush which cost Japan twenty thousand lives, $50,000,000, and seven months of mighty effort, the story of which has been so well told in the lamented A. H. Mounsey’s perspicuous monograph. Yet out of this struggle, with which Corea manifested no sympathy, the nation emerged with old elements of disturbance eliminated, and with a broader outlook to the future. A more vigorous policy with Chō-sen was at once inaugurated.
Under the new treaty, Fusan (Corean, Pu-san) soon became a bustling place of trade, with a population of two thousand, many of whom, however, were poor people from Tsushima. Among the public buildings were those of the Consulate, Chamber of Commerce, Bank, Mitsu Bishi (Three Diamonds) Steamship Company, and a hospital, under care of Dr. Yano, in which, up to 1882, four thousand Coreans and many Japanese have been treated. A Japanese and Corean newspaper, Chō-sen Shimpo, restaurants, places of amusements of various grades of morality, and a variety of establishments for turning wits and industry into money, have been established. The decayed gentry of Japan, starting in business with the capital obtained by commuting their hereditary pensions, found it difficult to compete with the trained merchants of Tōkiō and Ozaka. Great trouble from the lock of a gold and silver currency has been experienced, as only the copper and iron sapeks, or ‘cash,’ are in circulation. In Corean political economy to let gold go out of the country is to sell the kingdom; and so many rogues have attempted the sale of brass or gilt nuggets that an assaying office at the consulate has been provided. The government of Tōkiō has urged upon that of Seoul the adoption of a circulating medium based on the precious metals; and, perhaps, Corean coins may yet be struck at the superb mint at Ozaka. While gold in dust and nuggets has been exported for centuries, rumor credits the vaults at Seoul with being full of Japanese gold koban, the [[426]]mountains to be well packed with auriferous quartz, and the rivers to run with golden sands.
Among the callers, with diplomatic powers, from the outside world in 1881, each eager and ambitious to be the first in wresting the coveted prize of a treaty, were two British captains of men-of-war, who arrived on May 21st and 28th; a French naval officer, June 16th, who sailed away after a rebuff June 18th; while at Gensan, June 7th, the British man-of-war, Pegasus, came, and saw, but did not conquer.
After six years of mutual contact at Fusan, the Coreans, though finding the Japanese as troublesome as the latter discovered foreigners to be after their own ports were opened, have, with much experience learned, settled down to endure them, for the sake of a trade which undoubtedly enriches the country. The Coreans buy cotton goods, tin-plate, glass, dyes, tools, and machinery, clocks, watches, petroleum, flour, lacquer-work, iron, hollow-ware, and foreign knick-knacks. A good sign of a desire for personal improvement is a demand for bath-tubs. Soap will probably come next.
The exports are gold dust, silver, ox hides and bones, beche-de-mer, fish, rice, raw silk, fans, cotton, and bamboo paper, ginseng, furs of many kinds, tobacco, shells for inlaying, dried fish, timber, beans and peas, hemp, jute, various plants yielding paper-stock, peony-bark, gall-nuts, varnishes and oils, and a variety of other vegetable substances having a universal commercial value.