War of Words

by McDonald, Hamish

  The crowd surged into the garden of the house. Police drew their swords and started serious, deadly cuts and thrusts to the heads and bodies of the demonstrators. Bottles of kerosene smashed into outbuildings and the next door residence, which turned out to be the Tokyo house of the head priest at the Ise shrine. Soon several buildings were ablaze.

  Soldiers arrived from the Imperial Guard regiment and formed a line around the houses with bayonets fixed on their rifles. The crowd shouted ‘Army, banzai!’ The throng began to break up, some clusters heading towards Shimbashi and some up to Kyobashi and Kanda.

  Charles walked into the darkening city. At Shimbashi Station, a crowd lifted a police box from its mooring on a pavement, carried it onto the railway tracks and set it alight. Charles wandered through a city lit by fires reflected in smoke. There was an occasional pop of gunfire now in the distance. Police stations and boxes were burning everywhere, along with some Christian churches.

  Charles saw one well-dressed man, wearing a panama hat, walking accidentally and obliviously across a police line. Called to halt, he panicked and started running. A policeman slashed at him and he fell. His body was still there when Charles passed back that way. His own dreamlike walk through this nightmarish scene was suddenly interrupted.

  ‘Well what have we got here?’ asked a voice. Charles looked around. Several tough-looking men with red eyes and slurred speech had turned away from a burning building and encircled him.

  ‘A Russian spy maybe,’ asked one of them, a man in a labourer’s short jacket and tight leggings. ‘I’ve seen him before, up at that Russian bishop’s place. He is a dirty Russian spy all right.’ A push from behind jarred Charles between the shoulder blades and sent him face forward towards the man. As he fell, a kick landed in his side. Charles curled into a ball as best he could while the painful blows rained on his back, trying to protect his head and face, waiting for the knife thrust.

  Gyatte gyatte hara gyatte haraso gyatte Bodiso waka (Buddha will keep from harm all who invoke his name) – the mantra taught long ago by Mr Mishima – went through Charles’ mind.

  Then he heard shouts of educated voices, and more people pressing in. He looked up and the attackers were walking resentfully away. Around him were a group of men dressed in kimono and wearing hats. Their apparent leader, a tall man with a straggly beard, long hair and haggard eyes, looked at Charles with an amused expression.

  ‘I think you’d better come along with us, my little foreign agent,’ he said.

  Chapter 6

  SAMURAI AT LARGE

  Reading press reports of problems in contemporary Sino-Japanese relations, be they political or economic, the first thing one tends to think of is the truly horrific decades of the 1930s and 1940s. It is well to occasionally remember that better times prevailed at the turn of the last century – not so as to forget those harsher times but as a basis for establishing firmer ground from which to move forward.

  — Joshua Fogel, www.japanfocus.org, 23 November 2007

  Tokyo 1905–07

  Charles and his rescuers started moving off towards Hibiya again. They bustled along, avoiding intersections where the police could be seen by the glint of lights and fires on their swords. Their bearded leader started singing, or rather chanting, a snatch of verse that Charles was to hear many times over the coming months:

  For thirty years of struggle / Have I pursued this dream / A single night or hundred years for me / Are both a single dream. / The future of this life of mine is like / The hope to see the moon tonight.

  They walked on, through the scenes of vandalism and violence. Small groups of men were carrying away wounded friends. In some places, bands of shopkeepers armed with sticks and clubs were guarding their premises.

  The bearded man soon introduced himself as Miyazaki Tōten, and told Charles a bit about his life and his group. They were, he said rather proudly, the ‘China ronin’, the masterless samurai now dedicated to revolution on the Chinese mainland. ‘For decades we have been struggling against the domination of the white man over the yellow man, against those who want to turn us into pseudo-white men inside our yellow skins,’ he said. ‘Now we find a yellow man inside a white skin!’

  Miyazaki was indeed a samurai, from an impoverished family down in Kyushu, the youngest of many children. An older brother, whose example he revered, had died for the old ways in the Satsuma rebellion of 1877. Miyazaki had a wife and two small children in his home village of Arao, whom he saw only sporadically. The rest of his time was spent mainly in Tokyo and Yokohama, where he’d come to pursue his education, in the circles of the restless young intellectuals and political activists drawn to intrigue in Korea and Manchuria. He’d been involved in a scheme to settle Japanese in Siam and thereby tighten links between the two remaining kingdoms of Asia. He’d nearly died of cholera before the plan was abandoned. Then Miyazaki had found his pole star, in the exiled Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. Sun had come to Japan after being freed from the Chinese legation in London, to which he had been abducted by agents of the Tsungli Yamen, the Imperial Chinese foreign ministry, as a prelude to his forced return to China and inevitable execution.

  For much of the time since, Sun had lived in Tokyo, under the name Nakayama Sho, initially registered as the servant of a Japanese activist’s household until the lifting of the treaty-port restrictions when he could settle more openly in Yokohama. Miyazaki had been a partner in Sun’s various schemes, travelling to Hong Kong and Canton to help bring the Chinese secret societies into a network of revolt against the Manchu court. He had sworn their oaths and shared cups of pigeon’s blood to seal the brotherhood. In 1900 an uprising in Canton had developed surprising momentum before a lack of arms and encirclement by Imperial forces brought it to a bloody end. An attempt to smuggle arms to the Aguinaldo rebels in the Philippines, fighting against the new American rule, ended when the elderly ship bought by Sun foundered in a typhoon. British authorities had thrown Miyazaki into jail in Singapore, then banned him from visiting there or Hong Kong again.

  When Charles met Miyazaki, Sun had just returned to Japan from one of his fund-raising and speech-making trips around the Chinatowns of the United States. He was greeted at the Yokohama wharf by hundreds of Chinese students in Japan to learn the lessons of modernisation. Three weeks earlier, the students had held a huge meeting at the Fuji restaurant in Kojimachi, close to the foreign legations. The hundreds unable to get in had milled around in the streets.

  Much of this detail Charles picked up later, but as they walked Miyazaki spoke with great enthusiasm about Sun Yat-sen. ‘We have found a true hero, one who will be the instrument of heaven’s will,’ he said. ‘Now we must show a determination that will be unshakeable for a hundred centuries! We have endured many failures; we have been cheated many times by unscrupulous people; I have plunged my wife and children into poverty because of my struggle. But if China once revives and bases itself upon its true morality, then India will rise, Siam and Annam too will revive, and the Philippines and Egypt will be saved.’

  They were walking, it turned out, to an inn called the Taiyokan, not far beyond the scenes of the riot. Miyazaki was greeted by the landlord and servants as an old friend and ushered to a large room where the half-dozen in the group sprawled on the tatami-mats. The servants brought in trays with sake flasks, which they emptied with great gusto and toasts to revolution, while Miyazaki burst into song.

  From talking to another of the ronin, Suenaga Setsu, Charles learnt that Miyazaki’s fortunes had recently improved. For a long while, he had lived on occasional loans and donations to the revolutionary cause by prosperous businessmen, and sometimes, by sympathetic women seduced by him. He had run up fabulous arrears at several inns and geisha houses. Quite often his little band had resorted to the ‘Sixteenth Bank’, by pledging spare items of clothing at the pawn-broker.

  Two years before, Miyazaki had seemed close to despair and made
a quixotic gesture to leave the ranks of the gentlemen, shishi and ronin, and take to the low life. He had gone round to a popular storytellers’ theatre, the Happotei, and asked a well-known exponent of naniwabushi, a popular form of narrative ballads, to make him his student. As much as Miyazaki had a fine voice and endless capacity for recital and monologue, he was unsuccessful in this new career. To the relief of his shishi friends, he had returned to the old life.

  Over the proceeding few weeks, Miyazaki’s fortunes had looked up. Sun Yat-sen was attracting more financial support, and Miyazaki was the intermediary in starting a partnership that ultimately was to contribute to the successful overthrow of the Manchu dynasty six years later.

  What that was, Charles didn’t discover just then. Suenaga slumped against the wall, and fell into a deep sleep. The singing and talk was tapering off. Some of the other ronin went out the back of the inn to relieve themselves, and Charles followed. When he came back, Miyazaki was curled up on the floor, snoring softly. Charles looked behind a sliding door, pulled out a thin mattress, and went to sleep in a corner.

  He woke early and waited for the bedraggled revolutionaries to come to life. ‘Stay with us, little foreign agent,’ they appealed to Charles. ‘This is not over yet. We’re going to the Mitsui Club,’ Suenaga explained. ‘You are going to see an encounter of American capitalism with the Japanese spirit!’

  It turned out to be exactly that. On the way, Suenaga told Charles about the reason behind Miyazaki’s lift in spirits, after swearing him to secrecy. He and Sun Yat-sen had been instrumental in organising a merger between a promising Chinese revolutionary who had recently come to Japan, Huang Hsing, and the boss of the Black Dragon Society, Uchida Ryohei. The new revolutionary body would be known as the Tongmenghui or United League. Miyazaki signed up members on the spot, and made them swear an oath of loyalty putting their lives in the hands of the movement. A few weeks earlier, at the house of a wealthy Diet member and mine owner, the Tongmenghui had held its first formal meeting.

  Now at the Mitsui Club they were going to see Uchida himself give a demonstration of his famous skills at jujitsu in honour of a visiting American millionaire, the railway baron Edward H. Harriman. Uchida had invited Miyazaki and friends as part of his Black Dragon Society, and they were hustled into the back row of the audience. Uchida, a trim man in his mid-thirties, was indeed a spectacularly skilful martial artist, with a strong aggressive spirit that emerged even in this polite setting. What Harriman, an elderly Westerner with a big moustache, made of it, or the diplomats from the American legation, would emerge later. If the boss of the Black Dragon Society and a leader of the Anti-Russian Comrades was ready to entertain Americans only a day after the Hibiya outburst, it was clear that wiser heads than the street mobs did not hold the Portsmouth Treaty against Teddy Roosevelt or his nation. On the other hand, there would be no special reward. Harriman was not going to get the Russian railroad in South Manchuria at any price, for all the big war loans his New York financier friends had arranged for Japan.

  For Charles, still aged only 17, all the ramifications of this were things he pieced together over coming years, from conversations and reading. At the time it was heady enough to see and be introduced to figures like Uchida whose daring escapades on the Asian mainland got a cautious mention in the press from time to time.

  When they emerged into the street later that afternoon the rioting had picked up again, turning against churches and tramcars. The newspaper extra editions said police had found a stack of kerosene tins near the Nikolai church. Martial law had been declared, and more troops were coming to join the Imperial Guards already out on the streets. Miyazaki and Suenaga suggested that Charles should head home, and invited him to keep in contact. They escorted him to a tramway that was still operating. He went as far as he could in the direction of Waseda, and then walked back to the boarding house. Heavy rain the next day helped douse the last sparks of rioting.

  *

  Another academic year got under way for Charles at the university. Miyazaki and his group kept to their word, calling him out of his lodgings whenever they came up to the area to see one of their main patrons, the politician Inukai Tsuyoshi, who kept a close and friendly interest with reformers and revolutionaries in Asia, especially Sun. His big house was close to Waseda. Though Charles was not invited in to the meetings with him, Miyazaki would often stop for a snack and some sake in one of the local tea houses and tell him about upcoming events.

  Frequently Charles would head down to the hot-bed of Chinese activism in Kanda, where several universities and numerous private colleges had drawn thousands of students from the mainland – so much so that maids in the boarding houses, counter-staff in the bookshops and waiters in cafés there had begun using phrases of Chinese. He went to hear Sun Yat-sen speak at one large meeting. A Chinese student gave him an interpretation of his words, which seemed aimed at stirring up a kind of angry nationalism. If the Chinese freed themselves, all the peoples of Asia would be strengthened against the Western exploiters. Charles found the sentiment as heady as did the other students, forgetting for the moment his own white skin and his own family’s role in helping devour the supine Asia. To wild applause Sun Yat-sen declaimed:

  It is already three hundred years since the barbarian Manchus seized power … They made it their first object to keep the populace stupid and their officials made it their purpose to wring out the people’s sweat and blood. It is because of the perpetuation of this longstanding injustice that the country has come to such a lamentable state today, in which our fertile valleys and lovely mountains are being seized by foreign power … We are like a piece of meat on the butcher’s block, the ravenous tiger who devours it will grow so strong he will dominate the world … We need men of moral principles to stand against this, then all heaven will help our cause … For the sake of the Chinese masses, for the sake of all the yellow races of Asia, and all humanity … the way to help the four hundred million of China’s masses, the way to wipe out the insults that have been heaped on the yellow peoples of Asia, the way to protect and restore the way of humanity through the universe – all this can be done only by helping our country’s revolution …

  At the same time, back in his routine at Waseda, Charles felt the tugs of Japan’s immense pride at the victory over the Russians. He kept up his kendo training at the gymnasium and drilled proudly with the university cadets on the parade ground and rifle range.

  Newspapers and politicians came round to the government’s side on the Portsmouth agreement, and when the emperor ratified the treaty the Anti-Russian Comrades dissolved themselves. A British fleet sailed into Yokohama and the angry protests in Hibiya Park were replaced by bunting, Union Jack and Rising Sun flags, as well as tents serving free beer to British and Japanese sailors. By late afternoon, the riot was confined to drunken jack-tars careering around in rickshaws with giggling girls on their knees.

  Admiral Togo made his formal return to see the emperor, after reporting to the Imperial ancestors at the Ise shrine. Huge crowds gathered at Shimbashi Station to welcome him as he passed through a triumphal arch made of timber and plaster of Paris. The next day he guided the emperor out to his flagship to watch 200 Japanese, British and captured Russian warships steam past.

  A relative of the British king, Prince Arthur of Connaught, came out to present Emperor Mutsuhito, the Meiji, with the Order of the Garter, the first time it was bestowed on any foreign dignitary.

  That there were some subversive and disrespectful minds still out among the Japanese was shown when one of the events staged for the English prince, a concert at the Ueno Musical Academy, was disrupted by a series of calls on the new telephones to government offices, schools, embassies and hospitals. The callers, posing as officials from the Meteorological Office, warned of an imminent earthquake. Prince Arthur was hustled out of the concert hall along with the rest of the audience and people were camped out in the open all over Tokyo
. Yet, for the nation as a whole, the flattery from the English and the pomp of victory overcame the doubts about Japan’s foreign friends and the other concerns of rising prices and taxes.

  Charles’ adoptive cousin Na-a-chan, now almost grown up and known as Naka-san, had become a nurse in a hospital looking after the soldiers lingering with wounds and sickness from the war. Chika was even more firmly convinced of the moral superiority of the Japanese. ‘See, Hach-san, how by limiting our greed and contributing our small shares to his majesty the emperor, we have come through this great test and shown our true worth to the world,’ she would say, before returning to the familiar homily about giving way to one’s weaknesses and ending up on a path to poverty and crime.

  To his fellow students at Waseda and to Chika and his other relatives in Yokohama, Charles was striving to be a dutiful and loyal subject of the emperor. To his new friends in the Tongmenghui and among the China ronin, he had became a fellow revolutionary.

  In his mind, and no doubt in the minds of Miyazaki and others, there was no contradiction in that. But official disapproval was becoming more obvious and diplomatic protests by the Chinese legation were getting more attention in the foreign ministry.

  The Japanese government was enjoying its new status as a ‘first-rate’ power and its high standing among the Western powers. It was also alarmed by Sun Yat-sen’s talk of revolution and republicanism, not only because it might encourage anti-monarchical sentiment in Japan too, but because a successful revolution might unleash a very powerful modernisation in China and produce an Asian rival. They preferred to back the reformers emerging in Peking who sought constitutional reform within the Imperial state.