Emperor of Japan

by Donald Keene

  The emperor had almost no private side to him. He also had no preferences. There was nothing to choose between his living quarters and those of the aristocracy. If anything, his were simpler. They merely served his needs. When he made a journey, it was never for pleasure but always for the sake of the country. He initiated public works but never because of his own tastes; everything was done because it was necessary for the nation. He did not give permission for public buildings to be erected unless they were needed to receive foreign visitors or for state business. He did not buy things because he wanted them but in order to encourage industry or protect art. He led almost no life apart from his work.35

  Chapter 62

  There were no religious or other ceremonies on the day of Emperor Meiji’s death, but Viscount Fujinami Kototada obtained permission from the empress dowager to measure the late emperor’s height. The emperor had always refused to be measured even when new clothes were made for him. The tailor would cut a suit that was more or less the right size, and the emperor would try it on, saying that one place was too tight or another too loose, and alterations were made without actually taking measurements.1 The emperor’s height, as measured by Fujinami, proved to be 5 shaku 5 sun 4 bun, or about 5 feet, 4 inches.2

  It is not clear why Fujinami asked to measure the emperor. Asukai Masamichi, who believed that Fujinami may have been Meiji’s only friend, wrote that it was thanks to Fujinami that the exact height of the emperor, not found in any other document, is known.3 Descriptions of the emperor generally mentioned that he was tall,4 but his tallness was relative; Itō Hirobumi, Nogi Maresuke, Tōgō Heihachirō, and other prominent figures of the period would probably seem very short by contemporary Japanese standards. The emperor’s weight was not taken at this time, but we know from various accounts that he had been overweight for years and was sensitive on the subject.

  On July 31 the new emperor, empress, and empress dowager went to the room in the palace where Emperor Meiji was lying in state on a platform covered with pure white habutae silk. His body was also enshrouded in a burial garment made of the same kind of silk. Members of the imperial family, including the three young sons of Emperor Taishō, bade farewell to the late emperor, and they were followed by 171 other mourners, members of the nobility, and high-ranking officials who had personally served the late emperor. At eight that evening the ceremony of placing Meiji’s body in the coffin was performed. A decree was issued suspending court activities for five days, during which period criminals would be spared penal servitude, the death penalty and whipping of criminals halted, and singing, dancing, and playing music forbidden.

  On August 1 the late emperor’s coffin was sealed. Even after the five-day ban on music and dancing had been lifted, the inhabitants of the city continued to refrain from making music or indulging in other entertainments. The streets were silent and passersby few.

  On August 6 it was announced that the funeral services would take place from September 13 to 15. Breaking the long tradition of Buddhist rites after the death of an emperor, the observances would be purely Shintō in character, although the lack of precedents would require the invention of suitably “ancient” rituals.5

  It was further announced that the place of interment would be Kojō-san (Old Castle Mountain), south of the city of Kyōto. The selection of this site for the emperor’s tomb was said to have been in keeping with his wishes. Meiji apparently made this decision in April 1903 when he was in Kyōto for the naval Grand Maneuvers and the opening of the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition. One night, while having dinner with the empress, during a conversation about the former capital, he suddenly said that he had decided that after he had lived out his “hundred years,” his tomb should be at Momoyama. The gon no tenji Chigusa Kotoko, who was then waiting on the emperor, was so struck by these words that she wrote them down in her diary. When the emperor’s condition took a serious turn for the worse, the empress, apparently recalling his wish, commanded that the tomb be situated on Momoyama.6

  Momoyama had been the site of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Fushimi Castle. It was a place of exceptional scenic beauty, but during the Tokugawa period, the deserted castle had fallen into ruins and become overgrown. All that was left to show that a castle had once stood on the spot was the name, Old Castle Mountain. Later, the peach trees planted on the site had given the mountain a new name, Momoyama. This name, though euphonic, was judged to be rather mundane for the site of the emperor’s tomb, so it was capped with Fushimi, the name of a nearby village often mentioned in poetry, and the mountain came to be known as Fushimi Momoyama.

  As soon as they learned of the gravity of the emperor’s illness, many people in Tōkyō petitioned the authorities to choose some spot of special purity near their city for his tomb, but their prayers went unanswered. The wish of the late emperor to be buried in Kyōto had the force of an imperial command.7 The creation of the Meiji Shrine in Tōkyō was probably intended to soothe the wounded feelings of the inhabitants.8

  The late emperor’s coffin was moved on August 13 to an arakinomiya (temporary burial hall) where it remained, worshiped daily by the emperor, empress, and empress dowager, as well as many officials, until September 13, when it was placed aboard the imperial hearse. On August 27 the late emperor was officially given his posthumous name, Meiji. This was the first time in either Japan or China that the posthumous name of an emperor had been taken from the nengō. Indeed, the nengō Meiji was so closely linked to the extraordinary events of his reign that no other name seemed suitable.9

  In the meantime, newspapers all over the world carried tributes to the late emperor. Two large volumes of Japanese translations of tributes that had appeared in the foreign press were published a year after the emperor’s death. Needless to say, the comments were uniformly laudatory, regardless of the country where they were published. Some newspapers devoted their accounts mainly to a description of the amazing changes that had occurred in Japan during Meiji’s reign, but the emperor’s personal contribution to this progress was also praised. The British editorials were the most perspicacious, as the following (from the Times) may suggest:

  An opinion prevailed among outsiders that the fainéant tradition of old times was still observed, and that the Emperor did not take any active part in the management of State affairs. It was a notion based on ignorance. Those who were in a position to know bore unanimous witness to his Majesty’s zeal in the discharge of administrative duties. He possessed a remarkable faculty of judging character, and where his confidence had once been given, occasion to recall it never occurred. He possessed also a rarer trait, absolute willingness that others should wear the laurels of success, for he asked of the nation nothing except that it should honour and trust the Throne’s servants, reserving to the Throne only the reverence born of prestige. Thus his own efforts were never obtrusive. But they were none the less earnest.10

  The Globe echoed these sentiments:

  How far the wonderful progress of Japan was due to the personal ability of the late Mikado, and how far to the wisdom and foresight of the statesmen by whom he was surrounded in his early years, it is impossible for Westerners, with their still imperfect knowledge, to estimate with exactitude. But it would probably be accurate to say that but for the personality of the Monarch the statesmen would have been able to accomplish very much less, and to do it much more slowly. Among the qualities attributed to him are the power of judging character—probably the most valuable that a Sovereign can possess; great assiduity in business, as was shown by his invariable attendance at the Conferences preceding the grant of a Constitution; a wonderful memory for detail; great courage, both physical and moral; and complete disregard of his own personal comfort.11

  It is not clear how the journalists who wrote these eulogies gained their knowledge of the emperor’s character. Probably, word was “leaked” to the foreign press by Japanese who were close to the emperor.

  The French editorials for the most part devoted greater attention to the
events of Meiji’s reign than to the emperor himself, but the newspaper Le Correspondant not only presented its own views but quoted comments by Japanese statesmen. The first was by Itō Hirobumi:

  Quelles que puissentêtre les causes qui ont aidé le Japon dans ses progrès et quelque importante qu’ait pu être la part que nous avons eue dans les succès des années, tout cela devient insignifiant quand on le compare avec ce que le pays doità Sa Majesté l’empereur. La volonté impériale a toujoursété l’étoile qui a guidé la nation. Quelle qu’ait puêtre l’oeuvre accomplie par ceux qui, comme moimême, ont essayé de l’aider dans son gouvernement éclairé, il eut été impossible d’obtenir d’aussi remarquables résultats, n’eût été la grande, sage et progressive influence toujours derrière chaque nouvelle mesure de réforme.12

  A second quotation was from Suematsu Kenchō:

  Sa Majesté apporte l’attention la plus soutenueà chaque branche des affaires de l’État. Chaque jour, depuis le matin de bonne heure jusqu’à une heure avancée il s’occupe dans son cabinet des affaires publiques. Il est au courant de ce qui intéresse chaque département, surtout de ce qui toucheà l’armée et à la marine…. Parfois il étonne par sa connaisance d’événements qui se produisent parmi son peuple. Il prend le plus vif intérêt à tout ce qui se passe dans les grands pays du monde, son unique désire étant de prendre des leçons des autres nations.13

  The comment of the French editorialist was astute:

  L’empereur a pu, à certains moments, influencer la politique de ses ministres, car son activité, son intelligence ne sont pas douteuses. Mais son oeuvre principale, et il l’accomplit avec une remarquable sagesse, fut d’être le chef de l’État, le vivant symbole de la vie nationale, du sentiment du pays…. Les grands rois ne sont pas ceux qui, comme Philippe II, veulent diriger eux-mêmes les affaires de l’État, mais ceux qui, ayant mis leur confiance en de grands ministres, les soutiennent de tout le prestige de la royauté.14

  A Belgian newspaper praised Emperor Meiji for having awakened the Japanese people from long slumbers, as if with a magic wand, and compared him with the heroes of ancient Greece.15 A Russian newspaper, after pointing out resemblances between Emperor Meiji and Peter the Great, decided that the two men were fundamentally different. Peter had fought as a soldier, knew navigation, and had even worked as a carpenter, but the mikado had never fought on the battlefield, never built a ship, and never climbed a mast. Peter needed such talents in order to create single-handedly a new Russia, whereas the mikado could do without them. Japan had so many able men that the mikado had only to choose the most capable to assist him.16

  The Chinese newspapers expressed much sorrow over the death of Emperor Meiji. One Chinese newspaper mourned him in these terms:

  Ah, the summit of Fuji is hidden in clouds, darkening the spirits of the ruler; and the waves lapping the shores of Lake Biwa seem to be weeping, mourning the death of a father or a mother. This hero of a generation, the Emperor of Japan, brought a country consisting of [merely] three islands onto the stage of the major Powers of the world, and left behind a land like the dragonfly, a national destiny like the dragon or tiger, and fifty millions of the Yamato people.17

  The writer, unable to contain the grief that swelled in his breast, spoke words of mourning in place of the Chinese people. Looking for a parallel between Meiji’s achievements and those of other illustrious men of world history, he decided that although he could not be compared with the great Chinese of the past, Meiji was superior to Attila, Ogodei (the founder of the Yüan dynasty), and Mohammed because they, being essentially nomadic chieftains, were barbarians and lacked the qualifications of an emperor. It was thanks to the emperor that Japan had defeated Russia in war and secured an alliance with England. The writer mourned the emperor especially because he had brought light to the “yellow men,” no doubt referring to Japan’s leadership among the nations of East Asia in achieving a modern state.18

  This may have been the first time that the Chinese thought of themselves as belonging to the same race as the Japanese. In the past, the Chinese were accustomed to thinking of their country as unique because of its long history and culture. The similarity of the facial features of its people to those of the Japanese had not been thought worthy of comment. The success of Japan under Emperor Meiji in gaining equality with the chief countries of the West, notably by defeating Russia in war, seems to have induced the Chinese to feel a bond with the Japanese as fellow members of the yellow race. But even at this time one Chinese journalist wrote, “The Japanese are brave and gifted at imitation. The country has no indigenous culture.”19 Some writers praised the achievements of Emperor Meiji by criticizing indirectly the self-satisfaction of Chinese who were so sure of the superiority of their own culture to all other cultures that they refused to adopt the new Western learning: “There are more than ten countries, big and small, in the eastern and western regions of the Asian continent. Japan is the only one of them which has maintained its own culture, absorbed the new civilization of the West, and achieved what it can proudly call a constitutional state.”20

  These comments from foreign newspapers, made soon after the death of the emperor, were followed by descriptions of the funeral. The article by the reporter for La Revue (G. de Banzemont) opened by describing the sorrow of the Japanese people on learning of the emperor’s death:

  Mutsu-hito ne fut pas seulement un des plus illustres Empereurs du Japon, mais encore un des plus grands monarques du monde moderne. On se souvient de l’angoisse qui étreignit la nation japonaise lors des premières nouvelles relatives à l’indisposition du souverain. Plusieurs jours durant, la foule éplorée défila sans souci d’une chaleur véritablement torride, sous les fenêtres du palais imperial; à genoux, le front dans la poussière, d’une commune voix, elle implora les dieux. Et dès qu’une lanterne sourde, éclairant la chambre du moribond, annonça que le monarque entrait en agonie, ce fut la plus violente explosion de douleur qu’on puisse imaginer.21

  Many Japanese left accounts of their stunned reactions on learning of the emperor’s death. Even Tokutomi Roka, a novelist who had frequently been critical of the government and had protested the execution of those involved in the grand treason incident, was shocked to think that the reign in which he had been born and lived all his life had come to an end. He recalled,

  When an emperor dies the nengō also changes. I was certainly not unaware of this, but I felt as if the nengō Meiji would last forever. I was born in the tenth month of the first year of Meiji, in the year when the emperor Meiji had his coronation and in the month when he traveled to Tōkyō from Kyōto, in a village some 300 ri from Tōkyō called Ashikita no Minamata in Higo, close to the Satsuma border. I had become accustomed to thinking of the age of Meiji as my own age, and being the same age as Meiji was at once my pride and my shame.

  The death of His Majesty closed the volume of Meiji history. When Meiji became Taishō, I felt as if my own life had been cut off. I felt as if Emperor Meiji had gone off taking with him half my life.

  A gloomy day. The long drawn-out note of the flute a candy-man was blowing on the other side of the rice paddy seemed to penetrate my vitals.22

  Natsume Sōseki related in his diary for July 20 his annoyance that the kawabiraki, the traditional annual festival “opening” of the Sumida River at Ryōgoku, had been called off:

  The emperor hasn’t died yet. There was no need to prohibit the kawabiraki. There must be many poor people who will suffer because of this. The authorities’ lack of common sense is incredible. It seems there’s a great debate raging over whether or not to close the theaters and other entertainments. The emperor’s illness deserves the sympathy of the entire people. But the livelihood of the people, providing it is not directly harmful to the emperor’s health, should be allowed to continue as usual…. If people are forced to suspend their normal business, no matter how reverent and sympathetic they may seem on the surface toward the imperial household, they will certainly feel bitterness
, and this dissatisfaction will build up in their hearts.23

  But even Sōseki, once he learned that the emperor had died, wrote a panegyric.24 He, like virtually everyone else in the entire country, mourned the emperor who had provided unwavering support for the enormous changes that had occurred during his reign. Although Sōseki deplored many of these changes, he realized also that there had been no alternative and that the ugly aspects of modernization had to be endured, if only to maintain the independence and authority of Japan in a world that had become increasingly obtrusive and intolerant of East Asian traditions.

  The funeral service, held on September 13 at the Aoyama parade grounds, was on a lavish scale. The coffin left the arakinomiya and was placed aboard the hearse at seven in the evening. The hearse, roofed in Chinese style like the one used at the funeral of Dowager Empress Eishō, was lacquered black all over and decorated with more than 3,000 metal ornaments, the whole weighing more than three tons. The hearse was drawn by five specially chosen oxen. At eight, when it was already quite dark, the solemn procession began to move slowly from the court entrance, illuminated by lanterns. The procession was headed by the former chief chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanetsune, Chamberlain Hōjō Ujiyasu, and Master of the Horse Fujinami Kototada, dressed in formal robes of mourning and wearing swords; they and other nobles pulled the ropes of the funeral carriage. Two nobles who had personally served the late emperor walked on either side of the carriage, holding aloft torches to illuminate the way. The emperor, the empress, and the empress dowager, who had earlier proceeded to the Double Bridge, were waiting for the funeral cortege. As it passed over the bridge, they bade a last farewell to Emperor Meiji. At that moment the army began to fire salutes of minute guns, and from the distance, the navy responded with minute salutes from warships off Shinagawa. The bells of temples inside and outside the city tolled in unison.25