by Donald Keene
Soejima was indignant that the Chinese, not recognizing the altered circumstances of the nineteenth century, still acted as if China were the Middle Kingdom—the center of the world—and required foreign diplomats to humiliate themselves in accordance with precedents established at the court of K’ang Hsi. He did not mention in his memoirs that a similar question had arisen at the Japanese court not long before. In April 1872 the British acting minister, R. G. Watson, arrived in Tōkyō and requested an audience with the emperor in order to present his credentials. Expressing the hope that the traditional manner of receiving foreigners at the Japanese court would be changed, he asked that the emperor, following the general custom in the West, receive diplomats standing, as a mark of mutual respect, instead of receiving them while seated on his gyokuza. Soejima, then foreign minister, “strongly and emphatically” refused the request, saying that when diplomats visited a foreign country, they should follow the customs of that country—precisely the attitude of the Chinese court that so annoyed Soejima. He informed the British acting minister that as long as he insisted that the emperor stand during the reception, he would not be permitted to appear before the emperor.15 Watson left without a word.
Some time later the Russian envoy to Japan, Evgenii K. Biutsov, then engaged in negotiations over the fate of Sakhalin, requested an audience with the emperor. He informed Soejima that he left it to the emperor to decide whether to receive him standing or sitting. Soejima, pleased with this conciliatory attitude, arranged an audience. On this occasion Meiji, to everyone’s surprise, received the Russian standing. When the British minister learned of this, he felt embarrassed over his earlier inflexibility and requested an audience, saying this time that it did not matter in which manner the emperor received him. He was granted an audience, at which Meiji again stood to receive the foreign envoy. This was his own decision. He apparently wished to demonstrate that he was willing to accept international standards of etiquette, provided that foreign envoys ceased to demand that he conform to their ways. It is said that the incident made Watson a staunch friend of Japan.16
Despite the attitude he had displayed in Japan, Soejima was as reluctant as the Europeans to comply with the Chinese custom of requiring those who had an audience with the emperor to kowtow. He was sure that his country was more advanced than China and that it was no longer necessary for the Japanese to approach the Chinese court with awe and trepidation.
When Soejima met with Chinese officials of the Office for Foreign Affairs on May 24, his first question was why a busy man like himself had been kept waiting so long for an audience with the emperor. An official explained that it was because of Prince Kung’s illness. (Illness was recognized in China, as elsewhere in East Asia, as an unanswerable excuse for not meeting visitors.) He mentioned also that the Chinese government was studying the plan for the audience ceremony that had been submitted by the European and American envoys. Soejima demanded why the Chinese thought it necessary to consider the opinions of foreigners concerning a Chinese ceremony, contrasting this with the practice in Japan: “We decide how the foreign envoys are to be received and wait for their arrival; the envoys may therefore be received by the emperor as early as the day after their arrival. We do not tolerate any interference or disagreement on their part, and thus we make clear our imperial authority.”17
Soejima took out a folding fan on which he had written in classical Chinese a brief statement of his views on how the emperor should receive foreign envoys. He used Confucian terms to evoke the relationship between the head of a state and visiting envoys: it should be that of friends, and sincerity and mutual respect should govern audiences. Soejima stated that the ceremony should conform to the standards of etiquette of the envoy’s country, rather than those of the receiving court. This contention was precisely the opposite of the attitude he had displayed in Japan.
Throughout his conversation with the Chinese officials, Soejima quoted the Chinese classics to confirm his views. For example, in berating the Chinese for their contemptuous attitude toward foreigners, he quoted the teaching of the duke of Chou: “Even barbarians are people; if you treat them as barbarians they will be just that, but if you treat them as true gentlemen they will indeed become true gentlemen.” He poured scorn on the Chinese for not relying (as he did) on their ancient wisdom.18
On June 1 Prince Kung, who seems to have recovered, visited Soejima. Seeking to establish a difference between a Japanese who was familiar with the Chinese classics and ignorant Europeans, Prince Kung said he was sure that Soejima would not object to bowing before the emperor in the prescribed manner. Soejima was enraged and replied that it was beneath his dignity as a representative of Emperor Meiji to grovel before the Chinese emperor. The next day the Office of Foreign Affairs announced its approval of the proposal made by the Western envoys to substitute five bows for the traditional kowtow. Soejima composed a letter of reply stating that he had no intention of complying with the new plan. If he had to bow before the emperor, he expected the emperor to bow back. LeGendre urged Soejima not to send the letter, fearing that it would only make the Chinese more obstinate, but Soejima insisted, predicting that the very extremity of his statements would prove effective.19
The negotiations continued. Soejima was determined to be received by the Chinese emperor as an equal (in his capacity as Meiji’s ambassador); he also expected to be received ahead of any of the Western diplomats whose rank was only that of minister. Although he was initially opposed on these two points by both the Chinese and the Western ministers, in the end he was victorious. He was accorded the honor due to his superior rank and was even congratulated by the Europeans; and he was consequently received before any of the other envoys at a private ceremony by the emperor.
Soejima still had not touched on what was ostensibly the main business that had brought him to China—the punishment of the Taiwan aborigines. On June 21 he sent Yanagihara Sakimitsu (1850–1894), the first secretary of the embassy, and the interpreter Tei Nagayasu to the Office of Foreign Affairs to discuss the aborigines and China’s relations with Korea. His attention at this time to Korea suggests that he was already thinking of punishing the Koreans for their discourteous treatment of Japanese envoys.
During the discussion on Taiwan, Yanagihara insisted that the Chinese had shown they were unable to control the aborigines. He pointed out that in the past the island had belonged to Japan, later to the Netherlands, and still later to Coxinga. The Chinese had never occupied more than half, and their rule did not extend to the aborigines in the eastern part of the island who two years earlier had murdered shipwrecked Japanese. The Japanese intended to send a punitive expedition against the aborigines, but because the part of Taiwan where the aborigines lived was adjacent to Chinese territory, the Japanese had thought it advisable to inform the Chinese of their intentions.
The Chinese replied that they had heard of some Ryūkyū subjects being murdered, but not of any Japanese. The survivors of the attack by the aborigines had been rescued by Chinese officials and returned to their country, the Ryūkyū Islands. Yanagihara objected, saying that ever since “middle antiquity” the islands had belonged to Satsuma and that the Okinawans, being Japanese subjects, were entitled to the protection of the Japanese government.20
During the ensuing discussion, the Chinese admitted that their political rule did not extend to every part of Taiwan and that the “wild natives” (as opposed to the “mature natives” who had accepted Chinese rule) were not under their control. This statement was used to justify the Japanese attack in April 1874 on the aboriginal areas of Taiwan.
With respect to Korea, Yanagihara was informed that although the king of Korea received investiture from the emperor of China, the internal administration of the country and questions of war and peace remained in the hands of the Koreans. This admission served to assure Soejima that the Chinese would not intervene if the Japanese attacked Korea.
Soejima concluded his mission with an audience with the emperor.21
He did not kneel but bowed three times. When his audience was completed, the ministers of Russia, Britain, the United States, France, and the Netherlands were received in a group. Although their credentials had been issued nearly twenty years earlier, only now were they able to present them, largely thanks to Soejima.
After the ceremonies had ended, the various foreign envoys were invited to a formal banquet in keeping with the Chinese custom, but it was so hot that day that the Western ministers had privately agreed to decline the invitation. When Soejima was asked if he also intended to decline the meal, he replied (being familiar with Chinese etiquette), “Certainly not. I gladly accept.” This produced a favorable impression on the Chinese princes and officials, who contrasted Soejima’s courtesy with the insulting behavior of the envoys of the Western countries who had declined the emperor’s invitation. This incident did not, however, cause the Europeans to turn against Soejima. Before Soejima left Peking, the British minister, Sir Thomas Wade, called on him to express the thanks of all the foreign diplomats for solving the problem of how the emperor would receive them, a matter that had impeded communication for many years.22
The Chinese also expressed their gratitude for his efforts. When Soejima’s ship left Taku (the port of Tientsin), he was given a twenty-one-gun salute, the first time the Chinese had ever fired guns from their forts in honor of a foreigner.23 Moreover, during Soejima’s brief stay in Tientsin on the journey back to Japan, Li Hung-chang visited him at his inn, even though this meant breaking his period of mourning for his deceased brother. The two men spent several hours in conversation. Li also favored him with a letter in which he praised Soejima’s conduct of the Maria Luz affair and urged that their two countries, both situated in the East, join in perpetual friendship.24
Soejima returned to Japan in triumph, confident that Japan could now expand its territory to Korea and Taiwan. He was given a hero’s welcome at each of the stops made in Japan before reaching Yokohama. His joy in returning to Japan is suggested by a poem in Chinese he wrote at Nagasaki:
No sooner am I in Japan than the air is fragrant;
The mountains and rivers are lovely, nature is true.
It brings back to mind the days I spent in Peking;
Sand filled the air, swallowing up human beings.25
On July 27 he had an audience with the emperor during which he offered him the text of the treaty he had concluded with China and the gifts from the Chinese court.
In the meanwhile, relations between Japan and Korea had steadily deteriorated because of Japanese anger over the high-handed manner with which their attempts to open trade and diplomatic relations with Korea had been rebuffed. The de facto ruler of Korea, the taewon’gun,26 was determined to prevent the opening of his country to the West and was suspicious of the changes that had occurred in Japan. He insisted that relations between the two countries be in accordance with the precedents established during the previous 300 years.
A crisis occurred in July when members of the magistrate’s office that dealt with the Wakan discovered that some Japanese merchants who did not belong to the Tsushima domain had been slipping in and out. The Koreans expressed their strong disapproval by erecting a sign27 at the gates of the Wakan denouncing this violation of the custom of 300 years. They also expressed dismay over the changed appearance of these Japanese—men who cut their hair in Western style and wore Western clothes—and declared that such men did not deserve to be called Japanese. They insisted that the traditional manner of trade between the two countries, with members of the Tsushima domain serving as the intermediaries, was immutable. Persons from the other Japanese islands were not permitted to engage in this trade, and the arrival at the Wakan of such persons indicated that Japan had become a country without laws. The Japanese at the Wakan were directed to communicate this rebuke to their superiors so that nothing would happen that they would later regret.28
Scholars have persuasively argued that the message was not intended to insult Japanese in general but referred specifically to the illegal activities of Japanese merchants who had arrived at the Wakan intending to do business outside the traditional framework of Korean–Japanese trade.29 However, this was not how the Japanese of the time interpreted the message. The apparent insult to Japanese honor, especially the term “a country without laws” (muhō no kuni), created a furor throughout Japan and precipitated calls for punishing Korea. When informed of this latest development, the emperor was extremely upset and commanded Sanjō Sanetomi to dispose of the Korean incident.30
Sanjō’s report to the cabinet recounted all the irritating encounters that had taken place between Japanese and Koreans. In 1871 when the government sent an envoy to Pusan with letters informing the Koreans of haihan chiken and asking for meetings with officials to discuss the possible effect of this change on the relations between the two countries, he had no success in meeting the hundo, the Korean officer who dealt with the Japanese at the Wakan. On no fewer than twenty occasions, the hundo claimed to be too ill to see the Japanese. Later, the hundo went to the capital and reported when he returned that an answer to the Japanese request for a meeting would not be forthcoming until an official decision had been reached. When the Japanese asked how long it would take to reach such a decision, they were informed it would be six to ten years.31 Most recent was the incident of the offensive signs put up at the entrance to the Wakan.
Sanjō predicted there was no telling to what humiliations Japanese might be subjected in the future. The Japanese had tried ever since the Restoration to enjoy friendly, neighborly relations with Korea, only to meet with insults. A small number of army and navy units—whose numbers could be reinforced if necessary—should be sent to protect the Japanese living in Korea. Sanjō concluded by asking the council to approve his proposal.
Saigō Takamori was the first to respond. He opposed sending troops, sure that such action would arouse the fears and suspicions of the Koreans, who would take it as a sign that Japan intended to swallow up Korea. This was not Japan’s intention, and to prove this, an ambassador plenipotentiary should be sent to enlighten them. If they refused to listen and insulted the envoy, their guilt would be apparent to all the world, and they should then be attacked. He concluded by proposing himself as the emissary.32
Saigō’s proposal was supported by most of the leading men in the government, although some key figures were abroad or unable to attend the Court Council’s sessions.33 At this point Sanjō Sanetomi, as was his wont, began to waver. He proposed telegraphing Iwakura to return at once to participate in the discussions, but Saigō sent Sanjō a letter on August 3 urging him to be firm in carrying out the Court Council’s decision. On August 16, not having received a response, Saigō went to see Sanjō and spoke his mind in stronger language. He said that if Sanjō waited for Iwakura’s return, he would miss a valuable opportunity for action. He was absolutely certain that when the Japanese envoy arrived in Korea, he would be killed; only then would it be appropriate to send an army to punish the crime. He added that there were signs of discontent even in Japan that might result in disorder; it would be desirable to turn the point of accumulated wrath outward and, in so doing, display Japanese prestige abroad.34
Realizing that it was useless attempting to dissuade Saigō, Sanjō called a session of the Court Council on August 17 at which it was decided to send an envoy to Korea in the manner Saigō had proposed. The only opposition came from Kuroda Kiyotaka, who claimed that settling the dispute with the Russians over Sakhalin was more urgent, and he also offered himself as a substitute for Saigō.35
At the beginning of August the emperor and empress left Tōkyō for Miyanoshita in order to escape the oppressive summer heat. In the light of the emperor’s future reluctance to leave the capital for any private reason, this was an unusual concession to human frailty. The emperor enjoyed the surroundings and the food, especially the fish caught in the rivers (he did not like saltwater fish) and the freshly dug taros.36 But this was an inconvenient time for h
im to be away from the capital. During the negotiations that followed, it was necessary for members of the government who wished to consult the emperor to travel what was then a considerable distance. On August 19 Sanjō went to Miyanoshita and remained until the twenty-third, visiting the emperor each day. Even though the Court Council had voted to send Saigō to Korea, Sanjō still wavered, hoping that Iwakura would return in time to give his opinions. The contents of his discussions with the emperor are not known, but in the end the emperor commanded the council to wait until Iwakura’s return before deciding whether to send Saigō to Korea. The decision should be reached only after thoughtful deliberation and should then be reported to him. Sanjō hurried back to Tōkyō and communicated the emperor’s wishes to Saigō.
It is impossible to say whether the command to wait for Iwakura’s return originated with Meiji himself or if Sanjō persuaded the emperor in the course of his visits. If this was indeed the emperor’s decision, it was his most important political action to date. War with Korea, though ardently desired by many Japanese at this time, would have been a disaster for both countries. Quite apart from the moral issues and the terrible suffering that an invasion would have inflicted on the Korean people, it was by no means certain that the Japanese had sufficient military strength to secure a quick victory. A war might have been costly to both sides.37
Saigō wrote ten letters to Itagaki between July 29 and August 17. In the first, he opposed the plan, favored by Itagaki, to send troops to Korea without further delay. He argued that troops were needed to protect Japan from Russian incursions in the north, and war with Korea without sufficient provocation would alienate world opinion. He was sure that it would be far preferable to send an envoy first. The first letter concludes, “If it is decided to send an envoy officially, I feel sure that he will be murdered. I therefore beseech you to send me. I cannot claim to make as splendid an envoy as Soejima, but if it is a question of dying, that, I assure you, I am prepared to do.”38