Emperor of Japan

by Donald Keene

  Japan’s relations with Korea had been strained early in the Meiji era. On being informed that the shogunate (with which it had enjoyed good relations) had been overthrown,37 the Korean government was reluctant to enter into relations with the imperial government.38 Then the Japanese government, trying to break the impasse, decided in 1869 to relieve Sō Shigemasa, the former daimyo of Tsushima, of his post as negotiator between the two countries and to carry on its own negotiations. Two members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were sent to Korea in March 1870 to inform the Koreans of the change, but the Koreans’ only response was that the Japanese message could not be received. The offended envoys returned to Japan where they urged an invasion of Korea (seikan).

  A Japanese mission sent in October of the same year had no more success. The three envoys asked to meet with local officials, but they were refused. The Koreans said that for 300 years Tsushima had served as the intermediary between the two countries. Why should this tradition be broken now? If the Japanese wished to strengthen the ties between the two countries, the only way was to conform to the old usages. The Japanese were once again rebuffed.

  The next mission sent from Tōkyō arrived in Pusan in February 1872. The hundo, the officer who dealt with the Japanese, declined to meet members of the mission, alleging illness, and not until April did Sagara Masaki, the chief of the mission, succeed in delivering to the acting hundo letters with which he had been entrusted as well as his own statement on the purpose of the mission. In June the hundo visited the Japanese station and said that Sagara would receive an answer after his statement had been discussed, but he could not promise when this would be. Sagara and the other Japanese, annoyed by the vagueness of the message and the likelihood of wasting time waiting for a reply, broke the rules by leaving the Wakan and going directly to the provincial headquarters. The commandant not only refused to meet the Japanese but severely rebuked them for having left the trading station and entered a forbidden area.39

  The Japanese had no choice but to withdraw to the Wakan. Members of the mission returned to Japan in order to inform Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi of the situation. On September 12 Soejima, who had decided that for reasons of both history and prestige, the trading post should be maintained, presented to the shōin a series of proposals that were approved by the Court Council and the emperor on September 20. The first article conveyed Soejima’s belief that the Wakan should be maintained as Japan’s outpost in Korea.40

  On September 30 the assistant foreign minister, Hanabusa Yoshimoto (1842–1917), sailed for Korea in order to implement Soejima’s proposals. His most important task was to replace the officials at the Sōryō Wakan, vassals of the Tsushima domain, with Foreign Ministry officials, and to place the post under the ministry’s direct control. The Wakan would no longer serve as a trading station for the Tsushima domain, and accounts between the domain and the Korean government would have to be cleared. Once again negotiations dragged on, ostensibly because the Koreans were waiting for the former hundo to resume office. Finally on December 10 the Koreans announced their refusal to accept either the wares that Hanabusa had brought with him (by way of settling accounts) or his officials.

  The irritation of the Japanese was compounded by their impression that the Koreans, unlike themselves, had refused to adopt a policy of bummei kaika (culture and enlightenment), that they were hopelessly behind the times. Korea was still closed to the West, and the Koreans appeared to the Japanese very much as the Japanese had appeared to Europeans, giving rise to an attitude of contempt for Korean backwardness that contrasted sharply with the earlier respect for Korea as the transmitter of Chinese culture.41

  The Ryūkyū kingdom, another neighboring country, also began to feel the threat of Japan’s newly emerging authority. The status of this country had long been ambiguous. In 1186 the shogunate had given the founder of the house of Satsuma the title of jitō (manor lord) of Okinawa and the other eleven islands of the “south seas.” Internal warfare among the three kingdoms of Okinawa, at a time when warfare in Japan prevented the Shimazu family from sending help to Okinawa, led one of the kings to send a mission to the Ming court in 1372, asking Chinese help in unifying the country; he also asked to become a feudatory. The Chinese agreed and gave the country the new name of Ryūkyū This change in relations with China did not end the long-standing tributary relationship with Japan: in 1441 the shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori confirmed Shimazu Tadakuni in his rule over the Ryūkyū kingdom. During the Tokugawa period, Ryūkyū remained more or less a possession of the Shimazu family, although it maintained relations with China.

  In February 1872 the counselor of Kagoshima Prefecture sent two officials to Ryūkyū acknowledging mistakes made in the past in administering the islands and expressing hopes for improved relations. The Ryūkyū king, Shō Tai (1843–1901), agreed. In the meantime, Treasury Minister Inoue Kaoru decided that the status of the Ryūkyū kingdom should be clarified. Kagoshima officials resident in Okinawa were ordered to convey the Japanese government’s disappointment that the king had not visited the court to congratulate the emperor on the resumption of his personal rule. The king was urged to send a mission to Tōkyō immediately.42

  Shō Tai, bowing to this command, sent three dignitaries who reached Tōkyō on October 5. On October 16 the mission had an audience with the emperor accompanied by his chief ministers. The ambassador read a memorial addressed by the Ryūkyū king to the emperor in which he voiced the joy that the Restoration had given him, though he came from a distant island. The emperor, in reply, expressed satisfaction that Ryūkyū, which for many years had been a tributary of Satsuma, had demonstrated its loyalty to the throne. The emperor thereupon issued a proclamation bestowing on the king the title of Ryūkyū han-ō (domain king) and according him a place in the ranks of the Japanese nobility. Gifts (including textiles, three hunting guns, a saddle, and a pair of cloisonné vases) were given to the king and his consort.43

  It is strange that the king should have received the title of han-ō, even though the han (domains) had been abolished. This could only have been a temporary expedient intended to place the Ryūkyū kingdom firmly under Japan’s authority. The ultimate aim, not achieved until 1879, was to incorporate the kingdom into the Japanese Empire.

  One final event of the fifth year of the Meiji era requires notice—the adoption of the solar calendar. On December 10 the ceremony of changing the calendar was performed preparatory to adopting the solar in place of the lunar calendar. At ten that morning, after worshiping the Great Shrine of Ise from afar, the emperor announced that the third day of the twelfth month would be January 1, 1873. The emperor reported this change to the spirits of his ancestors. Later he went to the Shōin where he handed to Sanjō Sanetomi a rescript explaining why the solar calendar was to be used.

  First the emperor mentioned the inconvenience of the lunar calendar, which required the insertion every two or three years of an intercalary month in order to match the solar year. The solar calendar was far more accurate, requiring only one extra day every four years; it would not err by even a single day for 7,000 years. The emperor had decided to adopt the solar calendar because of its superior accuracy.44

  The emperor did not mention in this rescript what may have been the chief reason for adopting the solar calendar. Ever since the ninth month of the previous year, Japanese governmental offices had followed the practice of paying salaries monthly. If the lunar calendar were followed, it would become necessary to pay salaries thirteen times every time a year had an intercalary month—obviously undesirable to the government.

  Some Japanese felt that they had lost a valuable segment of their lives when the day following the third of the twelfth month became January 1, but although the lunar calendar was no longer officially recognized, its use persisted for some years, especially for religious ceremonies. In most respects, however, Japan was now living within the same temporal frame as the advanced nations of the West.

  Chapter 24

  The
New Year celebrations on the first day of the sixth year of Meiji’s reign were in some respects unprecedented. First of all, the beginning of the year was according to the solar, rather than the lunar, calendar. This meant that poets greeting the New Year would not be able to follow the tradition of mentioning haze in the mountains, warm breezes, the melting of ice in the rivulets, and the other signs of the new season; January 1 was much too cold to look for harbingers of spring. Emperor Meiji, whose earlier New Year poems had contained such observations as “the wind blowing along the shore is mild” and “the blowing breezes are balmy” and “the spring breezes that soften the landscapes with each passing day,” this year composed a poem devoid of natural imagery.

  There were other departures from tradition in the festivities. This was the first New Year’s Day on which senior foreign employees of the government were permitted to pay their respects to the emperor. On January 10 another precedent was established when wives of foreign diplomats were permitted to accompany their husbands to the palace in order to offer New Year’s greetings to the emperor and empress.1

  On January 7 the emperor and empress attended together the inaugural lectures of the new year, including one delivered by Motoda Nagazane on the opening chapter of the Great Learning. A new schedule of studies had been prepared for the emperor. Each month apart from six days of rest, he would attend twelve lectures on Japanese history and another twelve on Saikoku risshihen (Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help); this year an attempt was made to balance traditional Eastern learning with Western practical guidance. Modern readers may find it strange that Smiles’s popular book was chosen to represent the West, rather than a major historical or philosophical work, but at this point the Japanese sought from the West not wisdom but know-how. In addition to the lectures, the emperor would have three sessions of poetry composition each month, and he was expected to study German every day except on his six days of rest. He would also practice calligraphy and study Japanese grammar.2

  On January 10 military conscription, decided on toward the end of 1872, was officially promulgated. Men who had reached their twentieth year and were in good physical condition would be conscripted into the army and navy. On January 22 it was decreed that Buddhist nuns might let their hair grow out, eat meat, marry, or return to the laity. On February 1 the emperor, dressed in Western attire, rode a horse fitted with Western trappings. On February 8 new postal rates were put into effect that set a fixed rate for the delivery of letters to any part of Japan, regardless of the distance. On February 12 the first industrial company, for the manufacture of Western-style paper, was established. On March 14 it was decided to end Buddhist ceremonies in the palace, replacing them with Shintō observances. The funerary tablets of the successive emperors and the images of Buddha that had been enshrined in the palace would all be moved to the Sennyū-ji in Kyōto.

  This series of events typifies the rapidly changing times, each event affecting many people in their worldly and religious activities and each prefiguring larger changes, but it was less because of these and other internal developments than because of the evolving relations with foreign countries that 1873 ranks as one of the memorable years of Japanese history.

  The first major event relating to foreign relations was the issuance on February 27 of an imperial edict commanding the foreign minister, Soejima Taneomi, to proceed to China as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary. His mission was to exchange documents relating to the ratification of the treaty of friendship recently concluded between the two countries and to present a message of congratulations from Emperor Meiji to the Chinese emperor on his assumption of personal rule and his marriage.3

  Soejima had another, more important task, assigned by an imperial order dated March 9, 1873: to discuss with the Chinese the punishment of the Taiwan aborigines who in 1871 had killed fifty-four shipwrecked Okinawans.4 Behind this expression of the emperor’s concern for his subjects was the implicit assertion (which, it was anticipated, the Chinese would be reluctant to accept) that the Okinawans were Japanese subjects. In the preceding year, as we have seen, the king of the Ryūkyū Islands had been granted the title of domain king, and Soejima officially informed foreign representatives in Tōkyō that Japan had assumed full responsibility for the islands; but the Chinese had not yielded their suzerainty. The emperor’s message also indirectly challenged the Chinese claim of exercising sovereignty over the entire island of Taiwan, which they could prove only by punishing the guilty aborigines.5

  The plan for sending an embassy to China had originated in October 1872 during discussions among Soejima, the American minister Charles De Long, and the American general Charles LeGendre, who, as American consul in Amoy (a port facing the Taiwan Strait), was well acquainted with the problem of the aborigines. Fortunately for Soejima, LeGendre happened to visit Yokohama on his way back to the United States. When consulted, he expressed the opinion that Japan could easily occupy Taiwan with 2,000 men and offered maps and photographs of the island. Soejima, delighted by the prospect of expanding Japanese territory, said there would be no problem in raising an army of 10,000 men, but first it would be necessary to sound out the Chinese government. He intended to present the Chinese with a difficult choice. If they insisted that they had sovereignty over the entire island, they would be obliged not only to punish the aborigines but also to compensate the families of the murdered Okinawans. But if they disclaimed responsibility for the aborigines’ behavior, this would give the Japanese ample excuse to invade Taiwan.6

  On March 9, along with his command, the emperor gave his photograph to Soejima, a high mark of favor. On March 12 Soejima, accompanied by Le-Gendre (who had by this time resigned from the United States diplomatic service and taken a position with the Japanese Foreign Ministry) and by two interpreters,7 boarded the warship Ryūjō (the former Stonewall Jackson), which sailed that day from Yokohama, escorted by the Tsukuba, a corvette. The decision to send Soejima to China aboard the most powerful warship of the small Japanese navy was clearly intended to impress the Chinese.8 It was the first time Japanese warships had been sent abroad.9

  Soejima was particularly well qualified to serve as an ambassador to China. His calligraphy was the finest of any official of the Meiji government, and he was adept at composing poems in Chinese. This artistic ability—combined with an excellent knowledge of Chinese history, philosophy, and customs—would serve him in good stead when dealing with Chinese officials. His mission as an ambassador benefited also from the gratitude expressed by the Chinese government for his action in freeing the 232 Chinese laborers who had been held as slaves aboard the Maria Luz.

  On the way to China, the Ryūjō and the Tsukuba called at Kagoshima, where Soejima took advantage of the opportunity to visit Saigō Takamori.10 A second stop was made at Nagasaki. When the ships reached Shanghai on March 31, Soejima was invited to a banquet by the Russian grand duke Alexis, whom he had entertained in Japan the previous November. On April 8 the ships sailed from Shanghai to Tientsin but, because of navigational problems, did not arrive until April 20. Two days later Soejima visited the office of Li Hung-chang, the viceroy of Chihli Province, who thanked him profusely for rescuing the Chinese aboard the Maria Luz. Soejima exchanged with Li the documents of the treaty of friendship and trade ratified in the previous year. However, General Le-Gendre, who was present at this reception, wrote that Li Hung-chang treated Soejima “coldly” and that “with me he was most rude.” When LeGendre was introduced to Li, he asked who LeGendre was and, when informed, replied, “We have made treaties before this one, and we did not find the need for foreigners to advise us; what reason is there for it now?”11 Li also criticized the Western dress of members of Soejima’s embassy, to which Soejima replied:

  If, Your Excellency, the dress of foreigners is not beautiful, it is quite useful, especially on board our men-of-war which are also of foreign style. With our ancient costume our men could not have thought of working in the rigging or at the guns. But since we have changed our dres
s, we get along very well, so well in fact, that in the ironclad and the corvette which we have brought with us to China there is not a single foreigner.12

  This was Soejima’s first taste of the arrogance of Chinese officials, but he turned Li’s criticism to Japan’s advantage by contrasting its modern ways with the unbending conservatism of the Chinese.13 On the following day Soejima had a more cordial meeting with Li at which Sino-Japanese relations were discussed at length. Soejima made full use of his command of Chinese classical literature to criticize the contemptuous and condescending attitude displayed by the Chinese toward foreign countries, saying that it did not accord with the teachings of the sages of ancient times. His criticism seems to have struck home: Li subsequently wrote a letter to a subordinate noting that Japan had grown strong ever since adopting the policy of Westernization and that China was now lagging behind.

  Soejima left Tientsin on May 5 and arrived in Peking two days later. He discovered on his arrival that “for over a hundred days,” the ministers from the various foreign countries had been engaged in a confrontation with the Chinese court on the matter of how they were to present their compliments to the emperor. They insisted that the Chinese court follow the custom elsewhere of the emperor’s receiving the foreign dignitaries standing, but the court wished these dignitaries to follow Chinese custom and kneel before the seated emperor. Neither side seemed willing to yield. The Chinese, ever since the time of Emperor K’ang Hsi in the seventeenth century, when Manchu rule was at its height, had demanded that Europeans prostrate themselves before the emperor. Needless to say, Europeans found kneeling distasteful. In response to the complaints of the Russian envoy, K’ang Hsi replied that while the Russians were in China, they must follow Chinese customs. In return, if a Chinese envoy went to Russia, he would obey Russian customs. The Russian finally yielded. On the day he presented himself before the emperor, he was compelled to kneel in the rain while the emperor sat haughtily ensconced on his throne, protected from the rain by a roof. The Russian had no choice but to execute the required three bows followed by nine kneelings.14