Emperor of Japan

by Donald Keene

  Although Nishimura had been chosen as a lecturer to the emperor because of his special knowledge of Western institutions, he was harsh in his appraisal of foreigners. Extraterritoriality had been considered for years as the most hateful manifestation of Western feelings of superiority to Japan, but Nishimura felt it was of only minor significance compared with the sacrifices Japan would be obliged to make in exchange for ending extraterritoriality. Ironically, the British, far from considering that the Japanese were victims, were astonished that the Germans were willing to yield so much to Japan in return for so little!44

  On October 3, increasingly concerned over the situation, the emperor sent an official to ask Kuroda to meet with Itō and decide whether to push ahead with treaty revision. Kuroda was determined to carry out the revision, regardless of how many obstacles there might be, but Itō, who had previously supported it, had lost the courage to carry it through. Alleging illness, he refused to see anyone.45 Sasaki Takayuki, long one of the emperor’s trusted advisers, reported that opposition to treaty revision was growing every day. He foresaw great turbulence if the emperor did not deliver a decision, but the emperor preferred to wait until the negotiations with Britain had been concluded. He was also waiting for a decision to emerge from the deliberations of Itō, Kuroda, and Ōkuma.

  A meeting of delegates from all parties was held in the presence of the emperor, but it ended in a stalemate, with neither side willing to change its viewpoint. The participants, despairing of reaching a solution, repeatedly appealed to the emperor to pass judgment, but he seemed reluctant to act without a concrete proposal from Itō. Both sides attempted to win Yamagata’s support, but he only counseled delay.

  On October 18 Ōkuma was seriously wounded by a “patriot.” That day, as he was leaving court to return to his house, a man leaped out and threw a bomb at his carriage. Ōkuma was badly wounded. Dr. Baelz, who was summoned to treat him, concluded that there was no choice but to amputate Ōkuma’s leg above the knee. Baelz added, “Ōkuma, who with much labour and skill had at length achieved what the Japanese had almost universally and for so long had been desiring, was now decried as an enemy of his country, as one who would hand it over to foreigners. Much nonsensical talk of this kind has culminated in the abominable attempt to assassinate him. A few days ago Count Ito, president of the Council of State, resigned. He is an artful dodger!”46

  Ōkuma eventually recovered from the wound and the loss of his leg, but treaty revision was doomed, at least for the time being. Baelz wrote in anger, “To listen to the Japanese talking about it or to read Japanese newspapers, one would suppose that it is the foreigners who have been trying to effect revision, and have wanted to force it upon the Japanese! … A year hence they will see things more clearly, and will probably want revision once more.”47

  Kuroda said he was willing to accept full responsibility for the failure of the treaty revision and tendered his resignation to the emperor. He favored Yamagata as his successor, but Sanjō Sanetomi, a safe but hardly dynamic figure, was appointed instead as a kind of interim prime minister until Yamagata was ready to take the position. Ōkuma resigned as foreign minister. The struggle to revise the unequal treaties was over, at least for the time being.

  Chapter 41

  On New Year’s Day of 1890, the emperor, now in his thirty-ninth year, once again failed to worship the four directions. It was given out that he was ill, but we may suspect that having spent many hours listening to debates about the constitution and other matters of vital concern, the emperor was not so much ill as bored with his formal duties. But even though he sometimes neglected rituals, he devoted himself to his work this year with greater enthusiasm than ever before, hardly taking a day of rest. On July 17 Tokudaiji Sanetsune, the chief chamberlain, noted in his diary that regardless of the weather—even when it was broiling hot—the emperor went every day to his office to make decisions on state affairs and, not showing the least sign of ennui, devoted himself to studying plans for the government.1

  The observance of protocol had come to be fairly time-consuming. Not only was there a steady stream of foreign visitors who had to be received with repetitions of set expressions of greeting or farewell, but as the result of the court’s eagerness to associate itself with foreign royalty, the emperor had to send messages of congratulations whenever a child was born to the royal families of Europe. A much more tedious obligation was the necessity of going into mourning whenever word was received of the death of a foreign monarch or other member of royalty. In Europe this obligation was intelligible in terms of the blood and marital relations that joined most of the royal houses, but the death on January 8 of Empress Augusta, the consort of Wilhelm I, although it could not have meant much to Emperor Meiji, plunged the Japanese court into mourning for twenty-one days. On January 20 the death of the duke of Aosta necessitated another six days of mourning. Deaths among the emperor’s “cousins” were so frequent that regulations governing the appropriate periods of mourning had to be drawn up. The various foreign countries were divided into major (Russia, England, Germany, China, and Italy) and minor (Holland, Spain, Belgium, Hawaii, Sweden, Portugal, and so on) The deaths of the sovereigns, consorts, and crown princes of major nations required twenty-one days of mourning, but the deaths of the royalty of minor countries might require no more than three days of mourning.2

  Closer at hand, the emperor’s worries about the crown prince’s health continued. Although Sono Sachiko gave birth in February to the emperor’s seventh daughter, the health of Yoshihito, his son and heir, was a source of unending concern.

  Another concern of the emperor was the plight of the former high-ranking nobles, many of whom had been reduced to penury. One solution was to appoint them as Shintō priests, but this often proved unsatisfactory. The most eloquent member of the imperial family, Prince Asahiko, tried the patience of the emperor with repeated pleas for special treatment for his class. When the emperor visited Kyōto in April, he felt so sorry for the impoverished nobles that he presented them with 10,000 yen.3

  These matters directly affected the emperor and were important to him, but his main interest had shifted to politics, especially to the forthcoming general election, scheduled for July 1. This would be an event without precedent in Asia. Revision of the foreign treaties, a matter of such bitter dispute in the preceding year, had certainly not been forgotten, but time went by with little progress being made. On January 29 the new foreign minister, Aoki Shūzō (1844–1914), who had been appointed on December 24 of the previous year, presented for the emperor’s approval a memorandum on treaty revision to be sent to the foreign countries with which Japan had concluded treaties. The minister of the imperial household, Hijikata Hisamoto, expressed his conviction that unless the emperor himself was roused into action in support of this new plan, it would be impossible to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. Action by the emperor would also be essential in order to win the heartfelt support of the people.

  Deeply concerned, the emperor consulted with Itō Hirobumi and Sasaki Takayuki. Sasaki, a long-time adviser, insisted that the cabinet was the appropriate agency for dealing with the matter. This might not be true of other countries, he said, but the national polity (kokutai) and the respect offered by the Japanese people to the gods distinguished Japan from the nations of Europe and America. The emperor, by way of criticizing those officials who claimed to speak for the entire Japanese people, commented that there was a great gap between what persons in the cabinet or in the upper classes thought and what ordinary people thought. His skepticism impressed even the highly conservative Sasaki, who wept with emotion.4

  The emperor continued to consult with Itō about the Diet’s future work. His questions show a new acuity: “What would happen if the Diet failed to pass a bill, even though it was absolutely essential to the administration?” Itō replied that nothing could be done without parliamentary consent and that in such a case, members of the cabinet would have to exert every effort to obtain
this consent. The emperor asked next what would be done if the House of Peers and the House of Representatives disagreed or if differences in the views of the Diet and the cabinet could not be resolved. Itō replied that in such instances the Privy Council would have to play a major role.5

  The emperor’s questions, though not profound, revealed that he had become seriously interested in politics. This was true also of the cabinet members. Previously, attendance at cabinet meetings had been casual, as the emperor had complained, but now the ministers had to attend all meetings without fail; those who were physically unable to attend had to notify the others in advance. When bills proposed by a particular minister were being discussed, he would be expected to have copies of his explanations of the contents and to point out salient features to the ministers present. These changes, it was hoped, would contribute to the efficiency of the cabinet meetings.6 For the first time, gatherings of the high-ranking officers of the state seemed to be professional, rather than occasions for cronies or rivals to exchange banter and divide up political spoils. Itō’s studies of parliamentary procedures had begun to bear fruit.

  On February 8 Aoki sent a memorandum to the countries with which Japan had concluded treaties, stating that equality would be the necessary condition of any future treaties. With the convening of the Diet and the implementation of the constitution, it seemed evident that the concessions that had been proposed by earlier ministers of foreign affairs in the hopes of securing revisions to the treaties were no longer appropriate. Now that it possessed a legislative body and a constitution, Japan should no longer be considered to lag behind the advanced nations of the West. Aoki specified four changes to the concessions that had been proposed by Inoue Kaoru and Ōkuma Shigenobu: (1) the promise to appoint judges of foreign extraction to the high court was rescinded; (2) the agreement concerning the organization and publication of a survey of the Japanese laws was canceled; (3) the agreement giving foreigners the right to own property was retracted; and (4) some restrictions relating to the agreement granting foreigners the same rights as Japanese would be applied.7 Aoki added that although he recognized that certain rights accorded to foreign countries thirty years earlier could not be swept away in a day, the new Japan would not tolerate anything harmful to the interests of its people or its dignity as a sovereign state.

  It was hardly likely that the European nations (especially Great Britain) would accept these unilaterally decreed changes, but the outcry against proposed treaty revisions during the previous year had made it imperative to produce a new basis for negotiations. The matter of treaty revision could not simply be ignored. The emperor had conveyed to Motoda Nagazane his unhappiness over the failure of the previous year’s negotiations, and Motoda had brought this to the attention of the Privy Council. But little, if any, progress could be made through diplomatic channels; instead, the Japanese set about reforming their legal system in order to deny the European nations grounds for apprehension over what their nationals might suffer under primitive or unwritten laws.

  On March 18 it was decided that the courts should be reorganized, the first of many changes this year. On the twenty-seventh of the month, the civil code was promulgated, the fruit of long preparation. As far back as 1876, a committee had been appointed to draft a code, which was completed in 1878. The government, still not satisfied, had sent men abroad to examine legislative and political theory in the hopes of producing a better code of law. In 1880 Gustave Boissonade was hired by the Ministry of Justice to prepare a code, which was elaborated and eventually translated in 1886. Other modifications were made, but despite efforts to hasten its completion, the code was not approved by the Genrōin and the Privy Council until this time.8 Codes of civil suits and mercantile law were also promulgated. These developments should have reassured foreigners that Japanese justice would not be arbitrary or corrupt, but they showed no signs of willingness to satisfy the Japanese desire for equality.9

  The emperor’s reactions to these changes in the legal system were not recorded. Perhaps his mind was already preoccupied with thoughts of the Grand Maneuvers he was to observe in Aichi Prefecture. He left by train for Nagoya on March 28 and, after numerous rest stops along the way, arrived at five that afternoon. The city greeted the emperor with boundless enthusiasm and joy. The sincerity of the welcome was emphasized by fireworks that rose into the sky, red lanterns that glowed along the streets, and evergreen arches erected over the course he followed. The emperor’s journey to Nagoya does not figure among his junkō, presumably because its purpose was to observe maneuvers and not to acquaint the emperor with the lives of his people; but it contributed no less than a junkō to enhancing the emperor’s popularity.

  The maneuvers took the form of a mock war between the East Army (Japan) and the West Army (the invaders). The West Army was able, thanks to its powerful fleet, to control the sea, and it successfully landed troops on various islands and coastal districts. The East Army’s mission was to defend Tōkyō Bay from attack by West Army units approaching from various directions. The maneuvers were hampered by driving rain that began to fall on March 30 and continued to fall steadily through the whole of the thirty-first. The emperor braved the wind and rain, seeming not to notice the extreme muddiness of the roads.

  The “fighting” at first seemed to favor the East Army, but the invading West Army, under such capable officers as Nogi Maresuke, held its own, perhaps disappointing the emperor, who probably hoped that the invaders would be repulsed. After five days of combat on land and sea, the maneuvers were halted, but not before anecdotes had accumulated describing how, for example, the emperor ate lunch at an elementary school, drinking tea from a cup made for the pupils’ use, and using a classroom desk for his table.10

  The empress joined the emperor in Nagoya, and they traveled together to Kyōto. The railway line between Tōkyō and Kyōto had been completed in October 1889, making travel far more convenient than ever before. When they arrived that evening at the Gosho, they discovered that the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, stirring nostalgic thoughts in the emperor, who still considered Kyōto to be his “old home.” He composed this poem:

  furusato no When I came and saw

  hana no sakari wo The cherry-trees in full bloom

  kite mireba In my old village.

  naku uguisu no How nostalgic I was made

  koe mo natsukashi. By the voice of the song-thrush.11

  Hardly had they arrived than they went to pay their respects at the tomb of Emperor Kōmei. Later, the empress visited a school for the blind and deaf, and the emperor, a middle school where he observed calisthenics and military drill. On April 9, at the earnest request of the governors of Kyōto and Shiga Prefectures, the emperor and empress visited the recently completed aqueduct, bringing water from Lake Biwa to Kyōto.12

  On April 15 Arthur, duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria, and his wife, Louise Marguérite, arrived in Tōkyō for a visit. Luckily for them, the emperor and empress were in Kyōto and thus spared the necessity of entertaining these important visitors. They did not hurry their return to the capital. The emperor, who feared he had been neglecting the navy, left Kyōto on the eighteenth to observe a naval review at Kure. He later visited the chief naval stations, at Kure and Sasebo. The empress traveled instead to Nara, visiting the principal Shintō shrines in the city and the surrounding countryside. They did not return to Tōkyō until May 6.

  In the meantime, the duke and duchess had been amusing themselves with riding in jinrikishas, buying curios, and admiring the cherry blossoms. Mary Fraser, the wife of the British minister, wrote,

  The Duchess, indeed, is an ardent sightseer, and seems to have only one dread; namely, that she should miss some interesting experience which the ordinary traveler would ferret out for himself. Before the party arrived, word was sent that they wishes to travel quite unofficially so as to have all possible freedom for sight-seeing.13

  The emperor did not return to Tōkyō until two days before the duk
e and duchess sailed for Vancouver on May 8. On the morning of their departure, Prince Komatsu arrived at the British legation, where the royal couple were residing, bringing gifts from the emperor and empress. Japanese often startled foreigners by arriving for a visit with excessive punctuality, a tradition that has lingered. Mrs. Fraser recalled, “Prince Komatsu came, without warning, at a quarter to nine, and neither the Duke nor the Duchess was quite prepared for such an early pleasure.”14

  The visit of the duke and duchess of Connaught passed without incident and without unnecessary fuss, suggesting new maturity in dealing with distinguished foreign visitors. Soon after their departure, Yamagata Aritomo, the new prime minister, made significant changes in his cabinet that indicated a new era in Japanese politics had arrived. The changes had begun some months earlier with Yamagata’s decision to place at the head of the Metropolitan Police Force someone who was not from Satsuma. For years the police had been dominated by Satsuma, and many abuses of power had resulted from this unvarying control. Yamagata, determined to change the situation before the convening of the first Diet, appointed Tanaka Mitsuaki from Tosa as the superintendent general in December 1889.