Emperor of Japan

by Donald Keene

  In his letter of August 14 he wrote,

  If we fail to seize this chance to bring us into war, it will be very difficult to find another. By enticing the Koreans with such a gentle approach we will certainly cause them to furnish us with an opportunity for war. But this plan is doomed to fail if you feel it would be unfortunate for me to die before the war, or if you have any thoughts of temporizing. The only difference is whether [my death comes] before or after the event. I shall be deeply grateful to you, even after death, if you exert yourself now on my behalf with the warm friendship you have always shown me.39

  The repetition of the words “dying” and “death” in the course of these letters has suggested to historians that Saigō longed not so much for a solution to the troubled relations with Korea as for death. In a letter to his uncle Shiihara Yosanji dated June 29, he described the illness from which he had been suffering since the beginning of May. Traditional Japanese medicine had proved completely ineffective, and he had resigned himself to the likelihood that his disease was incurable. The emperor had sent his personal physician and also a German doctor whose treatment had brought temporary relief from pain.40 In Saigō’s letter of August 23 to Itagaki, he used the phrase shi wo miru koto wa ki suru gotoku—“I look on death as a return.” He promised in his letter not to rush into death, but he seemed determined all the same to die in Korea, perhaps because this seemed preferable to a meaningless death from illness.41

  It seems obvious from his letters as well as his remarks delivered at the Court Council that Saigō thought his death in Korea would provide Japan with a plausible cause for war. Some scholars who wish to exonerate Saigō of the charge of warmongering believe, however, that he was really a man of peace who hoped that he would be able to persuade the Koreans to meet the Japanese halfway. His insistence that the Japanese envoy sent to Korea be attired in court robes and not be accompanied by a military guard or warships has been held up as proof of his pacific intentions. But unless his letters to Itagaki deliberately falsified his real beliefs, as one scholar has claimed,42 he undoubtedly hoped for war. His death in Korea not only would make this possible but would bring him the satisfaction of having died for a cause. War in Korea would also provide members of the samurai class, who resented their loss of status and were ready for rebellion, with an identity as Japanese soldiers, fighting against a foreign country. Saigō warned that unless action were taken immediately, an invaluable opportunity would be lost, but surely most people today are thankful he was frustrated in his plans.43

  The emperor returned to Tōkyō on August 31 in order to receive the duke of Genoa, the nephew of the king of Italy, who had arrived in Yokohama a week earlier. On September 9 he granted an audience to Shō Tai, the Ryūkyū king, and on September 12 to General LeGendre. On September 13 Iwakura Tomomi returned to Tōkyō after twenty-one months abroad and visits to twelve countries.

  Iwakura’s return did not put an end to the advocacy of an invasion of Korea. On October 15 the Court Council once again voted to send Saigō to Korea. But opposition to the plan was developing. In his diary entry for September 3, Kido Takayoshi wrote,

  At 4 I went to Prince Sanjō’s where the prince told me, among other things, about Imperial Councilor Saigō’s proposal to send an expedition to Taiwan and to subdue Korea. The government is prepared to decide in favor of the proposal, so I am deeply disturbed. At present our common people are undergoing hardships: they are bewildered by a myriad of new ordinances; and several times since last year they have risen in revolt. The government apparently regards this as a normal condition. To speak of planning for the present, nothing is more urgent than proper management of domestic affairs; and to mention our obligations in foreign affairs, nothing is of greater moment than protection for the people of Karafuto [Sakhalin]…. Why must we harp on speedy punishment of those guilty of “infringing on our national honor”? At this time the proper management of internal administration must have first priority.44

  The conflict of interest between domestic and foreign affairs that Kido mentioned characterized future debates on national policy. For Kido, as for other members of the Iwakura mission, the weakness of Japan, certainly when compared with the major countries of the West, was all too evident, and they were sure this was not a time for Japan to engage in a war with Korea. Because Kido was too ill to attend sessions of the Court Council, Iwakura assumed leadership of the antiwar faction. He realized that he needed the help of Ōkubo Toshimichi to stop Saigō from being sent to Korea, but Ōkubo repeatedly refused appointment as a councillor (sangi), a necessary condition for attending the Court Council. Even Kido, who had had a falling out with Ōkubo during their travels abroad, joined in persuading Ōkubo to accept. Ōkubo finally agreed, on condition that Soejima also be made a councillor.45 This was puzzling: far from being an ally, Soejima was a convinced advocate of the invasion of Korea, but Ōkubo may have hoped that even if an ambassador was sent to Korea, the council would choose Soejima, who would not seek death, rather than Saigō, who would.

  Meiji appointed Ōkubo as a councillor on October 12. On the following day Soejima was similarly appointed. At the Court Council on October 14 Iwakura delivered his views. He contended that of the three problems facing Japan—settling the dispute with Russia over Sakhalin, punishing the Taiwan aborigines, and sending an embassy to Korea—the last was the least urgent. Saigō, disagreeing, argued that the problems of Sakhalin and Taiwan were not urgent but that the Korean question involved the authority of the throne and country and could not be postponed. He concluded by saying that if the Court Council decided Sakhalin was the most urgent problem, he would be willing to go as an envoy to Russia. During the arguments it became clear that four members of the Court Council (Itagaki, Gotō, Soejima, and Etō) sided with Saigō, and three members (Ōkubo, Ōkuma, and Ōki) sided with Iwakura.46

  On October 15 Sanjō Sanetomi announced his support for Saigō. This seemed to mean Saigō would definitely be sent to Korea, but the same night Sanjō wrote to Iwakura confessing that he had changed his mind once again, prompted by anxiety over what Saigō might do. On October 17 Ōkubo announced his intention of resigning, as did Kido, by way of protesting Saigō’s apparent success. Iwakura failed to appear at the Court Council on October 18, alleging illness. The next day, Sanjō had a nervous breakdown, the result of intense strain over deciding the disposition of Saigō’s plan.

  When the emperor learned of Sanjō’s illness, he sent his personal physicians, including two Germans, to treat him. Later that day, he himself visited Sanjō’s house. After leaving, the emperor went to Iwakura’s residence, where he delivered his command that Iwakura replace Sanjō as prime minister. On October 23 Iwakura sent a memorandum to the emperor stating his reasons for opposing the sending of an ambassador to Korea, and he asked for the emperor’s decision. In the memorandum, Iwakura insisted on the necessity of developing Japan’s strength to international levels in order to obtain equal treatment. He pointed out that it had been only four or five years since the Restoration and that this was no time to engage in foreign conflict. Predicting that war with Korea would break out on the day an ambassador arrived, he argued that they should wait until Japan was strong before sending an embassy; otherwise, disaster might follow.47

  On the following day, October 24, the emperor’s decision was received. He supported Iwakura’s recommendations.48With this, the possibility of an invasion of Korea withered away. Saigō and his supporters among the sangi (Etō, Gotō, Itagaki, and Soejima) all resigned because of illness.49 The emperor was greatly distressed. But there would be no war in Korea.50

  Chapter 25

  The turbulent political developments of 1873 tended to overshadow Meiji’s personal life, although it, too, was marked by events of exceptional dramatic interest. In May of that year his gon no tenji (concubine) Hamuro Mitsuko, the daughter of Hamuro Nagatoshi (a former acting major counselor), in her fifth month of pregnancy, underwent the ceremony of putting on the maternity sash. On Ju
ly 1 in preparation for the birth, she moved from the palace to a house belonging to the Imperial Household Ministry. On September 18, 1873, Meiji’s first child, a son, was born. The child was stillborn, and his mother died four days later.1

  On November 2 another gon no tenji, Hashimoto Natsuko, the daughter of Hashimoto Saneakira, put on the maternity sash. She had earlier moved to the house of her brother Saneyana for the birth. No doubt the greatest precautions were exercised before the forthcoming birth, especially in view of the recent death of Hamuro Mitsuko and her baby, but on November 13 Natsuko was seized with extreme uterine pains and her condition rapidly worsened. Iwakura Tomomi, Tokudaiji Sanenori, and other officials, learning of her grave condition, rushed to the scene. After first informing the emperor, they decided to ask the doctors to use artificial means to induce the birth, but despite the doctors’ efforts, the baby, a girl, was stillborn. Hashimoto Natsuko died the next day.

  Meiji was undoubtedly distressed by the loss of his first two children and probably shed tears when he learned that two women on whom he had bestowed his favors, both of the high nobility, had died young; but outwardly he disclosed nothing of his private emotions.

  A disaster of quite a different kind struck the emperor and his family on the night of May 5, 1873. The carelessness of a palace lady in not making sure that some embers were fully extinguished caused a fire to break out in a palace storehouse. Guards attempted to extinguish the blaze, but fanned by a strong wind, it spread from building to building of the old Edo Castle until it had consumed the whole in flames. The emperor and empress escaped without harm, and the most vital treasures (including the imperial regalia) were saved, but many important documents and other possessions were reduced to ashes. The emperor made his temporary residence at the Akasaka Detached Palace, the former residence of the Kishū domain. He lived there for more than ten years until the new palace was completed in 1889.

  Some alterations were essential in order for the temporary palace to serve as both residence and office for the emperor, but he directed that the strictest economy be practiced.2 Members of the court expected that a new palace would be erected as soon as possible in place of the one destroyed in the conflagration, but on May 18 the emperor sent Prime Minister Sanjō Sanetomi a message stating that at a time when many other demands were being made on the national finances, he did not wish the palace to be rebuilt. He declared, “It must not happen that for the sake of Our dwelling, public finances sustain losses and the people are made to suffer.”3 The emperor’s Confucian training had fostered a stoicism that revealed itself in his lifetime dislike of extravagance and ostentation.

  Perhaps the emperor’s greatest pleasure at this time was in taking part in military drills and maneuvers. On April 29, 1873, he led the Household Guards (Konoe-hei) to Shimōsa Province. On that morning at six he set out from the palace on horseback. Bugles were blown, the soldiers of the four Guards battalions presented arms, and the emperor, raising his sword, gave the signal for the march to begin. The march continued for some twenty miles with only brief stops for rest. At the destination, tents were erected where the emperor, along with the officers and men, were to spend the night.

  That night there was a strong wind and rain, and the tents threatened to collapse. The commanding general, Marshal Saigō Takamori, rushed up to the emperor’s tent to make sure that he was safe. The emperor quite calmly replied, “The only thing that bothers me is the rain leaking in.”4 This story, widely reported, was interpreted as an indication of the emperor’s affection for Saigō, an impression that scholars today are happy to confirm. The emperor decided that despite the bad weather, the site was ideally suited for maneuvers and gave it a name befitting its new importance, Narashinohara, or “Maneuver Fields.”

  On June 12 the emperor observed a platoon of Guards soldiers give a demonstration with live ammunition inside the grounds of the temporary palace, the first time guns had been fired within its precincts. When it was proposed that a stand be constructed from which the emperor might observe the maneuvers, he said it would not be necessary, and he sat on a chair under a tree.

  The closest glimpses we have of the young emperor at this time are provided by the official photographs for which he sat on October 1873. These were not his earliest photographs. As we have seen, he was included in the photograph taken in the Yokosuka Navy Yard in November 1871. Again in May 1872, still beardless and wearing traditional court attire, he posed for the photographer Uchida Kuichi.5 The photographs taken on this occasion were intended to be distributed to foreign dignitaries in return for the photographs of monarchs received by the Iwakura mission, but it was officially stated that they were not ready in time for Ōkubo Toshimichi (who had returned briefly from America) to take with him when he went back to Washington. More likely Ōkubo was disappointed that in the photographs, the emperor did not look like the ruler of a modern state and so decided not to present them abroad.6

  The photographs taken on October 8, 1873, are distinctly more modern, showing Meiji in the Western military uniform that would henceforth be his customary attire.7 He sits rather uncomfortably on a Western-style chair, his embroidered cocked hat on the table beside him. His hair (cut in March of that year)8 is parted in the middle, and the moustache and beard familiar from later portraits have begun to make an appearance. His hands are folded on the hilt of a sword. He still looks young, but his expression is severe.9

  The changes in the emperor’s appearance, made in order that he might impress the world as looking like a modern monarch, were echoed by similar (though smaller-scale) changes in the appearance of the empress and empress dowager: in March 1873 they stopped painting false eyebrows on their foreheads and blackening their teeth. Even the old buildings underwent changes: the Gosho, long the hallowed residence of the imperial family in Kyōto, was turned over to the city of Kyōto in February 1873 and, in the following month, was “borrowed” as the site of an exposition. Treasures from the imperial collection, hitherto unseen by the general public, were placed on display for ninety days.

  Many of the new edicts promulgated at this time by the “caretaker government”10 seem to have been intended to display to the world how willing and able the Japanese were to adopt international practices. Japanese were officially permitted to marry foreigners, and the nearly 2,000 “hidden Christians” who had refused to give up their faith were released from imprisonment, ending a long cause of contention between Japan and the West.11

  Such changes aroused bitter opposition and even revolt among the Japanese people, particularly the lower classes, but the first major uprising of 1873 arose from a simple misunderstanding. The proclamation issued in December of the previous year announcing military conscription had used the term ketsuzei, literally “blood tax,” a circumlocution for military service. This was interpreted by the peasants of Hōjō as meaning that their blood would be squeezed from them by way of serving their country. The misunderstanding was intensified by rumors of sightings of white-garmented medical personnel. Before long, more than 3,000 men were rampaging through the countryside by way of expressing their hatred of the measure. Their first target, however, was an eta (outcast) village that they burned to the ground, allegedly because the eta, who had been submissive, were now uppish, encouraged by the new regime. Anger was voiced also over paying taxes for schools, cutting hair in the Western style, and slaughtering cattle. It is evident from the specific grievances that although a misunderstanding over military service was the direct cause of the uprising, it was essentially an expression of resentment of the changes decreed by the government in its efforts to achieve modernization.12

  Another uprising occurred in Hokkaidō, where a reduction in taxes was demanded because of the poor catches of fish. This particular uprising ended with Kuroda Kiyotaka taking personal responsibility and freeing all those who had been arrested. A much larger uprising was staged by the peasants of Fukuoka Prefecture against merchants who were charging exorbitant prices for rice. The droug
ht from which the peasants were suffering was blamed on the merchants’ greed, which was said to have defiled the mountain gods. The uprising, started on June 16, spread in a few days throughout the prefecture, the number of participants allegedly reaching 300,000. The insurgents set fires everywhere, destroyed houses, cut telegraph wires, burned official registers, and killed every official they saw. On June 20 the rebels broke into the cities of Fukuoka and Hakata and on the following day attacked the prefectural office and set it afire. The revolt was finally put down with the help of troops from neighboring prefectures. Although the uprising was directly inspired by hatred of rapacious rice merchants, its scale was so large as to suggest that suppressed discontent over the changes brought about by the new regime had exploded into an unreasoning desire to return to the feudal past.13

  Hundreds of people died in these uprisings, but it is obvious that even larger numbers would have been killed or injured if militants had succeeded in starting a war in Korea. Fortunately the year concluded without any further disturbances. The last entry for 1873 in the chronology, dated December 31, states that the German doctor Theodor Hofmann, employed by the Ministry of Education, had advised the emperor, who had been drinking very heavily this year, to shift from saké to wine and not to drink more than one bottle a night with his meal.14 We may imagine that Meiji was depressed by the loss of his first two children and their mothers, and the conflict between advocates and opponents of the invasion of Korea had probably exhausted him. Drink was the most readily obtained comfort.