Plots and counterplots in Kiōto and Yedo, action and reaction in and between the camp and the throne went on, until, on the 3rd of January, 1868, two days after the opening of Hiogo and Ozaka to trade, the coalition of daimiōs hostile to the Bakafu or Tycoon’s, government, obtained possession of the Mikado’s palace and person. The imperial brocade banner of chastisement was then unfurled, and the “Tycoon” and all who followed him stamped as chō-téki traitors—the most awful name in Japanese history. One of the first acts of the new government, signalizing the new era of Meiji, was to affix the imperial seal to the treaties, and grant audience to the foreign envoys. In the civil war, lasting nearly two years, the skill of the southern clansmen, backed by American rifles and the iron-clad ram, Stonewall, secured victory. Yedo was made the Kiō or national capital, with the prefix of Tō (east), and thenceforward, the camp and the throne were united in Tōkiō, the Mikado’s dwelling place.
All power in the empire having been consolidated in the Mikado’s person in Tōkiō, one of the first results was the assertion of his rule over its outlying portions, especially Yezo, Ogasawara and Riu Kiu islands, the resources of Yezo and the Kuriles included in the term Hokkaido or Northern sea-circuit were developed by colonists, and by a commission aided by Americans eminent in science and skill. Sappōro is the capital city, and Hakodaté the chief port. The thirty-seven islands of Riu Kiu, with their one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants are organized as the Okinawa Ken, one of the prefects of the empire. The deserted palace-enclosure of Shuri, to which in 1853, Perry marched, with his brass bands marines and field-pieces, to return the visit of the regent, is now occupied by battalion of the Mikado’s infantry. The dwellings of the king and his little court now lie in mildew and ruin,[[59]] while the former ruler is a smartly decorated marquis of the empire. Despite China’s claim[[60]] to Riu Kiu, Japan has never relaxed her grasp on this her ancient domain.[[61]] Variously styled “the Southern Islands,” “Long Rope” (Okinawa), “Sleeping Dragon,” “Pendant Tassels,” the “Country which observes Propriety,” or the “Eternal Land” of Japanese mythology, and probably some day to be a renowned winter health-resort, Riu Kiu, whether destined to be the bone of contention and cause of war between the rival great nations claiming it, or to sleep in perpetual afternoon, has ceased to be a political entity. No one will probably ever follow Perry in making a treaty with the once tiny “Kingdom.”
The Ogasawara (Bonin) islands were formally occupied by the civil and military officers of the Mikado in 1875, and the people of various nationalities dwell peaceably under the sun-flag. An American lady-missionary and a passenger in the steamer San Pablo, Mrs. Anna Viele of Albany, spent from January 14th to 31st, 1855, at the Bonin Islands. She found of Savory’s large family three sons and three daughters living. The old flag of stars and stripes given to Savory by Commodore Perry is still in possession of his widow, and is held in great reverence by his children and grandchildren, all of whom profess allegiance to the United States. The boys, as soon as of age, go to Yokohama and are registered in the American consulate. One of the sons bears the name of Matthew Savory, so named by the Commodore himself when there. A grandson having been born a few days before the arrival of the San Pablo, Mrs. Viele was invited to name him. She did so, and Grover Cleveland Savory received as a gift a photograph of the President of the United States. Trees planted by the hand of the Commodore still bear luscious fruit. Though the cattle were long ago “lifted” by passing whalers, the goats are amazingly abundant.[[62]] The island of Hachijō (Fatsizio,) to which, between the years 1597 and 1886, sixteen hundred and six persons, many of them court ladies, nobles, and gentlemen from Kiōto and Yedo, were banished, is also under beneficent rule. The new penal code of Japan, based on the ideas of christendom, has substituted correctional labor,[[63]]—even with the effect of flooding America and Europe with cheap and gaudy trumpery made by convicts under prison contracts,—and Hachijō ceases to stand, in revised maps and charts, as the “place of exile for the grandees of Japan.”
Ancient traditions, vigorously revived in 1874 claimed that Corea was in the same relation to Japan as Yedo or Riu Kiu; or, if not an integral portion of Dai Nihon, Corea was a tributary vassal. A party claiming to represent the “unconquerable spirit of Old Japan,” (Yamatō damashii,) to reverence the Mikado, and to cherish the sword as the living soul of the samurai, demanded in 1875, the invasion of Corea. The question divided the cabinet after the return of the chief members of it from their tour around the world in 1875, and resulted in a rebellion crushed only after the expenditure of much blood and treasure. It was finally determined not to invade but to “open” Corea, even as Japan had been opened to diplomacy and commerce by the United States. Only twelve years after Perry’s second visit to the bay of Yedo, and in the same month, a Japanese squadron of five vessels and eight hundred men under General Kuroda appeared in the Han river, about as far below the Corean capital as Uraga is from Tōkiō. In the details of procedure, and movement of ships, boats and men, the imitation of Perry’s policy was close and transparent.[[64]] Patience, skill and tact, won a “brain-victory,” and a treaty of friendship, trade, and commerce, was signed February 27th, 1876. The penultimate hermit nation had led the last member of the family into the world’s market-place. In this also, Perry’s work followed him.
Two years after this event, a company of Japanese merchants in Yokohama, assembled together of their own accord; and, in their own way celebrated with speech, song and toast, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the arrival of Commodore Perry and the apparation of the “Black ships” at Uraga. The general tenor of the thought of the evening was that the American squadron had proved to Japan, despite occasional and temporary reverses, an argosy of treasures for the perpetual benefit of the nation.
The object-lesson in modern civilization, given by Perry on the sward at Yokohama, is now illustrated on a national scale. Under divine Providence, with unique opportunity, Japan began renascence at a time of the highest development of forces, spiritual mental, material. With Christianity, modern thought, electricity, steam, and the printing-press, the Mikado comes to his empire “at such a time as this.” Since the era of Meiji, or Enlightened Peace, was ushered in, January 26, 1858, the Mikado Mutsŭhito, the 123d sovereign of the imperial line, born twenty-one days before Perry sailed in the Mississippi for Japan, has abolished the feudal system, emancipated four-fifths of his subjects from feudal vassalage and made them possessors of the soil, disarmed a feudal soldiery numbering probably six hundred thousand men trained to arms, reorganized the order of society, established and equipped an army forty thousand strong, and a navy superior in ships and equipments to that of the United States, assured the freedom of conscience, introduced the telegraph, railway, steam-navigation, general postal and saving, and free compulsory public educational systems;[[65]] declared the equality of all men before the law, promised limitation of the imperial prerogative, and the establishment of a national parliament in a. d. 1890.
All this looks like a miracle. “Can a nation be born at once,” a land in one day?
The story of the inward preparation of Nippon for its wondrous flowering in our day, of the development of national force, begun a century before Perry was born, which, with outward impact made not collision, but the unexpected resultant,—New Japan, deserves a volume from the historian, and an epic from the poet. We have touched upon the subject elsewhere.[[66]] Suffice it to say that the Dutch, so long maligned by writers of hostile faith and jealous nationality, to whom Perry in his book fails to do justice, bore an honorable and intelligent part in it.[[67]] Even Perry, Harris and the Americans constitute but one of many trains of influences contributing to the grand result. Perry himself died before that confluence of the streams of tendency, now so clearly visible, had been fully revealed to view. The prayers of Christians, the yearning of humanity, the pressure of commerce, the ambition of diplomacy, from the outside; the longing of patriots, the researches of scholars, the popularization of knowledge, the revival of the indigenous Shintō religion, the awakening of reverence for the Mikado’s person, the heated hatred almost to flame of the Yedo usurpation, the eagerness of students for western science, the fertilizing results of Dutch culture, from the inside; were all tributaries, which Providence made to rise, kept in check, and let loose to meet in flood at the elect moment.
Meanwhile, Japan groans under the yoke imposed upon her by the Treaty Powers in the days of her ignorance. “Extra-territorialty” is her curse. The selfishness and greed of strong nations infringe her just and sovereign rights as an independent nation. In the light of twenty-eight years of experience, treaty-revision is a necessity of righteousness and should be initiated by the United States.[[68]] This was the verdict of Townsend Harris, as declared to the writer, in 1874. This is the written record of the English and American missionaries in their manifesto of April 28th, 1884 at the Ozaka Conference.[[69]] Were Matthew Perry to speak from his grave, his voice would protest against oppression by treaty, and in favor of righteous treatment of Japan, in the spirit of the treaty made and signed by him; to wit:
“There shall be a perfect, permanent, and universal peace, and a sincere and cordial amity, between the United States of America on the one part, and the Empire of Japan on the other, and between their people, respectively, without exception of persons or places.”