The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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Title: The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: Alexander Michie
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Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation, capitalization, diacritics and spelling
in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical
errors have been corrected.
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text.
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THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA
CHAP. XXIII.: Tsze-kung asked, saying, "Is there one word which may
serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not
RECIPROCITY such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do
to others."
[Illustration: Signature
J. Thomson, photo.
Walker & Cockerell, ph. sc.]
THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA
DURING THE VICTORIAN ERA
AS ILLUSTRATED IN
THE CAREER OF
SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK, K.C.B., D.C.L.
MANY YEARS CONSUL AND MINISTER IN
CHINA AND JAPAN
BY
ALEXANDER MICHIE
AUTHOR OF
'THE SIBERIAN OVERLAND ROUTE,' 'MISSIONARIES
IN CHINA,' ETC.
VOL. II.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCC
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAP. PAGE
XIX. JAPAN--
I. THE TREATIES AND THEIR NEGOTIATORS 1
II. THE OPERATION OF THE TREATIES 12
III. ASSASSINATION PERIOD, 1860-61 34
IV. NEGOTIATIONS AND RENEWED ASSASSINATIONS,
1862-64 44
V. THE TYCOON'S DILEMMA 60
VI. THE CRISIS 75
VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW JAPAN 92
VIII. THE DIPLOMATIC BODY--TSUSHIMA 104
IX. TRADE AND TRADERS 115
XX. SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK IN PEKING, 1865-1869--
I. THE BRITISH LEGATION 130
II. FOREIGN LIFE IN PEKING 138
III. THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS UNDER THE PEKING CONVENTION 156
IV. EMIGRATION 168
V. KOREA 175
XXI. THE REVISION OF THE TREATY--
I. PREPARATION 180
II. THE BURLINGAME MISSION 192
III. CHINESE OUTRAGES--YANGCHOW AND FORMOSA 198
IV. REVISION NEGOTIATIONS AND CONCLUSION 210
XXII. MISSIONARY PROBLEM--TIENTSIN MASSACRE OF 1870 223
XXIII. THE EXPANSION OF INTERCOURSE--
I. RUSSIA AND FRANCE ADVANCING 250
II. JAPAN AGGRESSIVE 255
III. KOREA OPENED 256
IV. THE FIRST IMPERIAL AUDIENCE--SUCCESSION OF
KWANGHSU 260
XXIV. THE MURDER OF MR MARGARY, 1875--CHEFOO CONVENTION,
1876--RATIFICATION, 1885--
I. THE MURDER OF MR MARGARY, 1875 265
II. CHEFOO CONVENTION, 1876 275
III. THE RATIFICATION, 1885 282
XXV. A CHAIN OF INCIDENTS--
I. DISPUTE WITH RUSSIA RE KULDJA 290
II. KOREAN IMBROGLIO, 1882-85 293
III. THE PORT HAMILTON EPISODE, 1885-87 303
IV. TIBET 305
V. THE CRUISE OF THE SEVENTH PRINCE, 1886 312
VI. THE EMPEROR ASSUMES THE GOVERNMENT, 1889 318
VII. THE VISIT OF THE CZAREVITCH, 1891 321
XXVI. THE TONGKING QUARREL 324
XXVII. THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE OF CHRISTIANS 336
XXVIII. BRITISH SERVICES: DIPLOMATIC, CONSULAR, AND
JUDICIAL 353
XXIX. CHINA AND HER RULERS 368
XXX. CHINA'S AWAKENING 388
XXXI. THE COLLAPSE 403
XXXII. THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE FAR EAST 417
XXXIII. THE OUTCOME--
I. THE SITUATION IN PEKING 435
II. THE CHRONIC CAUSE 440
III. IMMEDIATE PROVOCATION 447
IV. THE DYNASTIC FACTOR 455
V. THE CHINESE OUTBREAK 461
VI. THE CRUX 464
XXXIV. SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK'S LATER YEARS 476
INDEX 490
ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE SECOND VOLUME.
PAGE
SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK _Frontispiece_
LORD ELGIN 6
PRINCE KUNG 134
WÊNSIANG 136
MANCHU (TARTAR) WOMEN 138
MANCHU WOMEN 140
CHINESE WOMEN 142
CHINESE STREET SCENE DURING RAINY SEASON 144
LI HUNG-CHANG AT THE AGE OF FIFTY 184
RUINS OF FRENCH CATHEDRAL AT TIENTSIN, BURNED
JUNE 20, 1870 240
PEI-T'ANG CATHEDRAL IN PEKING, PURCHASED BY CHINESE
GOVERNMENT 340
MINISTERS OF THE YAMÊN OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: H.E. SHÊN
KUEI-FÊN; H.E. TUNG HSÜN; H.E. MAO CHANG-TSI 416
MAPS.
BAY OF YEDO 4
MAP OF EASTERN ASIA _At end_
In the contents under Chapter XIX. the date of Commodore Perry's
expedition is by a misprint given as 1883-84 instead of 1853-54.
THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA.
CHAPTER XIX.
JAPAN.
I. THE TREATIES AND THEIR NEGOTIATORS.
Commodore Perry's expedition, 1853-54--Townsend Harris--Count
Poutiatine--Lord Elgin--The treaties of 1858--The solidarity of
Western Powers--The practical attitude of the Japanese--Their
yielding to circumstances--The condition of the country--The
character of the people--Nagasaki--The Dutch--Their two hundred
years' imprisonment.
A mystery hung over the island empire, which had been sealed against
foreign intercourse for two hundred years, and its mere seclusion, apart
from the weird romance that gilded such fragments of its history as were
known, invested the efforts to reopen the country with a romantic charm.
It was in Japan that Lord Elgin achieved the real diplomatic success of
his life, in the briefest possible time, at the least possible cost, and
with the most far-reaching consequences; for undoubtedly he hastened the
entry of the Land of the Rising Sun into the family of nations.
The poetical side of the mission was done ample justice to by Laurence
Oliphant in his 'Narrative,' by Captain Sherard Osborn in the pages of
'Blackwood,' and elsewhere. The prosaic side and the practical issues of
this rediscovery of an old world were not so clearly apprehended by them
or by any other contemporary writer. The Powers of Europe and America had
long been watching for opportunities to effect an opening in the barrier,
but all tentatives proved in vain until force was resorted to. This was
first done by the United States, whence a naval squadron under Commodore
Perry appeared off the coast in 1853, repeating the visit, on a still more
imposing scale, in 1854. The apparition deeply impressed the minds of
the Japanese Government and people, who, Lafcadio Hearn tells us, speak
to this day of the "black ships," birds of omen foreshadowing events for
which it behoved them to prepare themselves. Black, indeed, they were,
grim of aspect, huge in bulk, and looming larger than they really were,
with their high sides, great paddle-boxes, and "smoke-stacks." The ships
were armed with a few guns of such calibre and power as had not till
then been placed on any floating battery. Jonathan is never second-best
in naval artillery. Commodore Perry with his three black ships, the
steamers Powhattan, Susquehanna, and Mississippi, and his squadron of
sailing-vessels, opened the door of Japan--not very wide, it is true, yet
so that it could never again be closed. The rudimentary treaty he made was
little more than a covenant to supply wood and water to needy ships and
to be merciful to their crews. A similar treaty was made by the English
Admiral Stirling in 1854, and it included the "most-favoured-nation"
clause, only excepting from its application the privileges enjoyed by
China and Holland.
To carry the work forward to a more practical stage a man of affairs was
required, and he was found in the person of Townsend Harris, who was
accredited to Japan under the title of Consul-General for the United
States. Mr Harris had been nearly two years in the country when Lord
Elgin, with his modest escort, arrived and made his acquaintance. With
infinite patience Mr Harris had been prosecuting his negotiations,
against wind and current, it would seem, until a propitious gale wafted
his venture into port. The black ships had gone, but another fleet more
numerous was assembled on the neighbouring coast, whence their fame had
reached the secluded empire. Riding on the shoulders of the Anglo-French
exploits in China, and not obscurely hinting at the prospect of the allies
shortly visiting Japan, Mr Harris induced his Japanese friends to "hurry
up" with his treaty, that it might not only serve as a model of moderation
for the other Powers when they also should come to negotiate, but provide
in advance friendly mediation between them and Japan. Lord Elgin justified
the forewarnings of Mr Harris by appearing in the Bay of Yedo within a
few weeks after the signature of the American treaty.
How much both Mr Harris's treaty and the one which Lord Elgin was about
to sign owed to the previous Russian negotiations cannot be estimated.
Admiral Count Poutiatine concluded a treaty in 1855, and improved it in
1857, on the basis of Sir James Stirling's opening the ports of Nagasaki,
Hakodate, and Shimoda for ship's supplies, with sundry minor privileges.
When Lord Elgin reached the Bay of Yedo in August 1858 he found Count
Poutiatine already there with a frigate and a gunboat.
[Illustration: BAY OF YEDO.
_Walker & Cockerell sc._]
This convergence of the great Powers of the world upon a single object,
that of breaking down the seclusion of Japan, was clearly recognised, and
its proximate effect weighed, by the Japanese statesmen of the day. Too
wise to oppose an uncompromising resistance to the pressure, they employed
their skill more profitably in deflecting its course. In accordance with
this policy, Lord Elgin's demand, backed as it was by the prestige of
his recent achievements in China, was promptly conceded, and within the
short space of fourteen days from his arrival in the bay a treaty was
concluded of the same tenor as the American, of which Lord Elgin had
obtained a copy from Mr Harris, who also lent him the invaluable services
of his Dutch interpreter, Mr Heusken. By the two treaties three of the
chief ports of the empire were opened to foreign trade within one year,
and two more at later dates. In some respects the English was an advance
on the American treaty. By the latter the import tariff had been reduced
from the old Dutch rate of 35 per cent to a general rate of 5 per cent _ad
valorem_. The British treaty specifically provided that cotton and woollen
manufactured goods should be included in the class of merchandise paying
5 per cent. The immunities of extra-territoriality were unreservedly
conceded, and were only rescinded by the revised treaties, the first of
which was made with Great Britain in 1894, coming into force in July 1899.
One general remark applies to all treaties made between foreign powers and
China or Japan, that the interests of each separate Power were safeguarded
by the virtual solidarity which existed among them, through the operation
of that convenient diplomatic save-all, the "most-favoured-nation" clause.
This comprehensive provision inserted in the treaties secured for all the
Powers the advantages gained by any one of their number. Faith in this
ultimate protection may have led occasionally to slipshod negotiations.
There might even be a temptation in some cases to seek special credit
for moderation, with the foreknowledge that the exactions of any of the
Powers would inure to the benefit of all. Lord Elgin wrote the simple
truth when he said that, "as regards all these important commercial
privileges, I have to fight the battles of the Western trading nations
single-handed." This feature had been particularly noticeable in the
negotiations in China, where it was so well understood that the English
treaty would be the common standard that it mattered little that the
signature of some of the others was hurried forward so as to take priority
of the British in point of date. The treaty which Lord Elgin negotiated
with Japan was destined to occupy the same ruling position as the treaty
with China, and therefore it devolved upon him to make provision for all
manner of contingencies which no experience could enable him to foresee.
Considering that these treaties were drawn up with so little knowledge of
the circumstances of the country and of the future exigencies of trade,
the fact that they have stood the test of forty years' experience redounds
greatly to the credit of the negotiants.
[Illustration: LORD ELGIN.]
Lord Elgin had to learn what a Daimio was from Count Poutiatine, who
probably had but just acquired the knowledge himself. It is strange at the
present day to read the solemn preamble, "Her Majesty the Queen of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and his Majesty the Tycoon
of Japan." "It was not till some time later that it was discovered that
there was a still higher power than the Shôgun," said Earl Russell in
1865. The imperfect knowledge, however, attests the general soundness of
the principles adopted.
It must be admitted that on the Japanese side, also, nothing seemed
wanting to render the treaty a workable instrument. The Japanese
negotiators were animated by a more practical spirit than any Chinese
diplomatist with whom foreigners had had dealings. There was no idea in
their minds of blind obstruction; they were bent, if not upon efficient
working, at least on the minimising of friction and risk. And though it
is probable, indeed quite certain, that no treaty whatever could have
been made without substantial force in the background, intelligently
apprehended by the Japanese Government, yet, that being conceded, it
was clearly their object to make the best of the position in which they
actually found themselves. Under no other circumstances could treaties so
complete in detail and so effective for their purpose have been concluded.
To judge of the acts of the pioneers of foreign intercourse, or to form a
just opinion of the conditions under which the treaties came into force,
it would be necessary for the critic to regard the whole surroundings
as a painter does his subject, not representing what he knows or may
afterwards discover to be there, but considering only what actually meets
his eye. This, of course, is next to impossible in the case of Japan,
where the transformation resulting from the contact with foreigners was
so rapid and so kaleidoscopic, and while foreign knowledge of things
Japanese has increased at so marvellous a rate, that only a series of
mutoscopic photographs could have preserved the sequence. Opinions were
at first, and for some time after, unduly affected by the preconception
of a certain analogy between China and Japan founded on geographical
propinquity, and in a measure on language: this bias influenced the first
influx of foreigners in 1859, who were largely drawn from the commercial
ports of China. Yet those who had been habituated to the manners and
customs of the Chinese were at once struck, not by the similarities,
but by the violent contrasts, which the two peoples presented. These
visitants had left behind them filth and squalor; they met cleanliness
and tidiness of an extreme type. They left behind vagueness of thought,
slovenliness of action; and they encountered pedantic precision. They
left behind indifference and stolidity, with ignorance cherished as a
proud possession; and they encountered a keen and intelligent appetite
for knowledge. These features met the stranger before even his ship had
cast anchor, or he had set foot on shore. He soon perceived, also, that
existence was carried on under an elaborate prescription which left but
a narrow margin to spontaneous action, and such a minute supervision
that a sparrow could hardly cross the road without being noted by the
official guardians of the peace; that every function, whether of official
or private life, was under the undisputed control of the same vigilant
organisation.[1] On entering the narrow waters approaching the harbour
of Nagasaki, he would pass under forts where through a telescope he could
see guns and gunners' quarters all spick and span. If there happened to be
another vessel approaching from seaward, he would know it by the booming
of two guns from the outermost fort, the signal being taken up and passed
on by those inland, and so all the way to Yedo. This, he learned, was
the mode of announcing to the capital the appearance of any foreign craft
off the coast. On entering the inner harbour he would see boats full of
men who looked like women, pushing off to his ship; and then a posse of
officers, each armed with two sharp swords, would come on board. They,
by means of a very imperfect interpreter, would at once ply the master
with questions on every conceivable subject, as if he were competing in
an examination in universal knowledge. The tedious catechism, with its
admixture of seeming frivolity, would have been exasperating but for the
imperturbable suavity of the catechists. Every answer was promptly, yet
deliberately, committed to writing. Such was, and is, the custom of the
race.
Nagasaki being still, in the first half of 1859, the gate of Japan,
and the only sample of the country known to foreigners, the bright
welcome with which it greeted the new arrivals was of happy augury. It
was there, also, that the first observations of the ways of Japanese
commerce were made, for Nagasaki had carried on trade with China and
with Holland for two hundred years,--a trade which was conducted on the
one side by officials of the Government, who fixed the prices of the
commodities exchanged, and which was all but strangled by monopoly. The
restricted annual "turn-over" must have required a high percentage of
profit to support the Dutch factory, and the privilege of trading on so
petty a scale seemed to be dearly bought by the perpetual imprisonment
of the agents. The unfortunate Dutchmen were confined, with their whole
establishment of warehouses, residences, &c., within an area of less than
three acres of reclaimed foreshore called Deshima, thus described by Sir
Rutherford Alcock in 'The Capital of the Tycoon':--
A low fan-shaped strip of land, dammed out from the waters of
the bay, the handle being towards the shore and truncated. One
large wide street, with two-storeyed houses on each side, built in
European style, gives an air of great tidiness; but they look with
large hollow eyes into each other's interiors in a dismal sort of
way, as if they had been so engaged for six generations at least,
and were quite weary of the view.... But the view from the Dutch
commissioner's residence, with its quaint Japanese garden and
its fine sweep down the bay, is very charming.... There flitted
before me a vision of the solitary chiefs of the factory in long
succession taking up their present station in long rotation and
looking forward upon the fair bay with which their sight alone
may be gladdened. How often must the occupants of this lone post
have strained their eyes looking in vain for the solitary ship
bringing tidings from Europe and home!
The imprisonment of the Dutch was aggravated by many degrading conditions
imposed by the Japanese Government. Their position bore some analogy to
that of the English and other foreigners in Canton previous to 1839. In
both cases the Europeans endured indignities at the hands of Asiatics for
the sake of profit, but beyond that point it is the differences rather
than the resemblances which are significant. The humiliation of the Dutch
in the island of Deshima was indeed unmitigated so far as it went, but
it was neither capricious nor spiteful. Once the yoke was peacefully
adjusted, what remained of life to the Dutchman was made as agreeable
to him as to a cockatoo in a cage. His jailors had no particular animus
against him; they had a purpose of their own to serve in keeping open,
through the foreigners, a channel of communication with the West, and
they had as valid reasons of State for tethering him as one may have
for tying up his ox or his ass. These purposes once served, however, the
Japanese did not revel in harshness or cruelty.[2] With the Chinese it was
otherwise. They also had a political object in restricting the barbarians,
only they were never satisfied with its attainment, but continued heaping
up insults on their victims to the utmost limits of their submissiveness.
The petty trade which the new-comers were able to do at Nagasaki was,
in the beginning, managed through the existing agency of the Dutch, from
whom, however, there was nothing useful to be learned, much indeed to be
unlearned; and in a few months it was the Dutch themselves who had to go
to school to the interlopers. As commerce had been kept entirely in the
hands of the Government officials, there had been no opportunity for the
rise of any mercantile class among the natives: that was to be a product
of the new era.
II. THE OPERATION OF THE TREATIES.
Japanese preparations for trade at Yokohama--Mr Alcock's arrival
as consul-general--Assumes the rank of Minister--The situation
as he found it--The establishment of diplomatic intercourse
at the capital--The location of the foreign settlement--The
currency--The low value of gold--Its rapid exportation--Friction
caused by conditions of exchange--Efforts of Mr Alcock to set
matters right--Report by Secretary of H.B.M. Treasury--Japanese
double standard, gold and copper--Japanese courage in meeting
difficulties--The Daimios' coinage--Beginnings of trade--Amenities
of residence--The charm of the people--The two Japans, official
and non-official--Complete despotism and complete submission.
The treaties of 1858 took their proper effect at the two ports of Hakodate
and Kanagawa; but the former being remote from any centre of population,
and its trading resources so obviously limited, it attracted little
attention in commercial circles. It was in the more southerly port that
the new foreign interests became concentrated; and it was so near the
capital--only seventeen miles distant--that the political and commercial
currents soon acted and reacted on each other with direct, and sometimes
violent, effect. To Kanagawa, therefore, the merchants of all nations
gathered in anticipation of the official opening of the port on the 1st
of July 1859.
We say "Kanagawa," to follow the official nomenclature, but in reality
the adventurers who came there to seek their fortunes did not land at
that place, but three miles away from it, at an obscure village called
Yokohama. There the Japanese Government had decided should be the
future settlement for foreigners, and they had made costly preparations,
according to their lights, for the accommodation of the strangers. Roads
were marked out, a certain number of wooden bungalows had been run up,
a few shops had been opened in the quarter which was designed for native
occupation, a custom-house was built, with warehouses attached, and stone
landing-places had been constructed for boats and lighters. The area thus
marked out for the native and foreign business quarter was a narrow strip
along the sea-shore, having in its flank and rear an immense lagoon, or,
as it was called, "the swamp," intersected by boat channels, where punting
after wildfowl provided amusement for idle foreigners. Being an inlet
of the bay, the swamp made a peninsula of Yokohama, which had just been
connected with the _tokaido_, the great trunk road between the capital
of the Tycoon and that of the Mikado, by a new causeway and several good
bridges, admitting of boat traffic between the swamp and the sea.
In the middle of the swamp, in rear of Yokohama, was a reclaimed portion
whereon was erected an extensive range of buildings connected by a
causeway with the dry land of the settlement. From its balconies there
waved pendants of cotton cloth bearing the legend, "This place is designed
for the amusement of foreigners," a class of amusement of which there has
never been any lack in Japan.
Such were some of the outward and visible preparations made by the
Japanese Government, on its own initiative, for the reception of the
foreigners under the new treaties,--preparations which surprised and
somewhat disconcerted the representatives of the Western Governments when
they arrived on the eve of the opening of the port.
Mr Alcock, who had recently returned to his post as consul at Canton,
was chosen as the first representative of Great Britain in Japan, with
the rank of consul-general. As this rank placed the representative of the
leading Power in an inferior position to his colleagues, and consequently
derogated from the influence he could exercise on the Japanese, Mr Alcock
took it upon himself to assume the title of Plenipotentiary, placing his
resignation in the hands of his Government in case they should disavow
his action. At the same time he recommended that the future British
representative should bear the title of Minister Resident. So far from
disavowing his action, the Government appointed him Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary, a higher rank than that suggested by him,
and he was authorised to at once assume the title, although so unusual
a proceeding as the transfer of a consular official to the diplomatic
service involved considerable delay while the needful formalities were
being arranged. The appointment, however, was coupled with the conditions
that the step should not be made a precedent, and that it should confer
no claim to future diplomatic employment in the countries of the West.
Mr Alcock was conveyed from China in one of her Majesty's ships,
arriving at the port of Nagasaki in June 1859. There he found a fleet
of foreign merchantmen already in the harbour, and some fifteen British
subjects resident on shore, under the ægis of the old Dutch conventions
supplemented by more recent enactments. Mr Alcock remained some days,
and having made arrangements for the carrying on of trade under the new
treaties, left a consul in charge of British interests and proceeded to
Yedo, where he arrived on June 26.
It is a date to be remembered as that of the practical initiation of
diplomatic intercourse with the ruling Power in Japan. The difference
between a mission to negotiate treaties and one to carry them into effect
is thus set forth by Sir Rutherford Alcock in the preface to his valuable
work, 'The Capital of the Tycoon,' in terms the simple truth of which must
commend itself to every candid reader:--
The Ambassadors Extraordinary had only to extort certain
privileges on paper; it was the business of the resident Ministers
to make of these paper-concessions realities--practical, everyday
realities. As this was the very thing the rulers of the country
had determined to prevent, it cannot be matter of wonder that
there was not, and never could be, any real accord, whatever
the outward professions of good faith and amity. Hence also it
naturally followed that, although the original negotiators were
received with smiles, and their path was strewn with flowers,
their successors had only the poisoned chalice held to their lips,
thorns in their path, and the scowl of the two-sworded braves and
Samurai to welcome them whenever they ventured to leave their
gates--while the assassin haunted their steps, and broke their
rest in the still hours of the night with fell intent to massacre.
To say the situation was novel is to say little. The forces at work in the
Japanese state economy were either unknown to, or, what was perhaps even
worse, misunderstood by, foreign Powers. The lurid history of previous
intercourse, followed by rigid exclusion for two centuries, would have
sufficed to establish one factor in the problem, the iron resolution of
the Japanese rulers. With such men neutrality or indifference was out
of the question, while there was nothing as yet to indicate what was
henceforth to be the ruling motive of Japanese policy. Both parties were
embarking on an unknown voyage, and the avoidance of shipwreck depended
in a very large measure on the character of those who had to discover for
themselves the winds and currents, the rocks and shoals, through which
they had to steer. The leadership among the foreign Powers was tacitly
assigned to Great Britain, and it was a born leader who was commissioned
to represent her. Mr Alcock had had fifteen years' experience of Asiatic
relations, during which time he had proved himself the possessor of those
qualities which were now in special request. These were indomitable
energy, earnestness of purpose much beyond the common run of official
service, fearlessness of responsibility, and alertness to grasp the
nettle danger in order to avert greater evils, and a spirit which would
neither shirk nor postpone an unpleasant duty nor tolerate lukewarmness
nor dilatoriness in others. He was fifty years old--matured in character
and experience, while yet in the prime of his intellectual vigour.
Mr Alcock arrived in Yedo Bay in time to arrange for the opening of trade
at the appointed date, July 1.
Nagasaki to Yedo! Two centuries lie between these points, so
near on the map, but so far and completely separated by the
determined policy of the Japanese rulers. A policy of isolation so
effectually carried out that no foreigner, though he might under
the Dutch flag gain access to Nagasaki, could force or find his
way to the capital.
Steaming up the Bay of Yedo, and leaving Kanagawa unvisited, Mr Alcock
anchored as close to the capital as the depth of water would allow, and
at once informed the Foreign Minister that he had come to stay. This was
done advisedly, as he has explained, to obviate all discussion as to
his place of residence, for he knew that efforts had been made--_more
Sinico_--through Lord Elgin to induce her Majesty's Government to
postpone the residence in Yedo for a couple of years, and to keep their
representative at a distance. His first object was to obtain a suitable
residence for himself and the Legation staff, in which assistance was
cheerfully rendered by the Government officials, as soon as they saw he
was resolved to remain in the capital. Diplomatic intercourse became thus
an established fact.
The opening of the trading-port did not prove quite so simple, for the
consul-general found he had been forestalled in the choice of a site
for the merchants' residence, which the Government had, as we have seen,
prepared at great expense some three miles away from Kanagawa, the port
named in the treaty. Interpreting this hurried action of the Japanese
as covering the ulterior design of segregating the foreigners from the
natives by thrusting them to a distance from the trunk road which led
through Kanagawa, of keeping them in a kind of imprisonment like the Dutch
at Deshima, and of retaining the power to stop their supplies, whether of
the materials of trade or of sustenance, Mr Alcock warmly contested the
action of the Government. In the end he extorted from them the concession
of a commercial site at Kanagawa itself, which, however, was never taken
up. Events proved too strong for the consul-general, for the merchants
of all nations as they arrived settled in Yokohama, where there was deep
water for shipping and every convenience for business. And it soon began
also to be felt that there was an element of safety in this foreign
settlement being removed from the great imperial road along which armed
processions were continually passing to and from the capital. Within a
year the controversy had died a natural death, and Yokohama speaks for
itself.
The second obstacle to the free course of trade was a more deep-rooted
one, being nothing less than that chronic bugbear of commerce and finance,
the currency. There was no circulating medium in Japan in the least
degree adequate for the service of international commerce. The trade in
miniature that had been carried on in Nagasaki had been a simple exchange
of commodities without the intervention of the precious metals. Mr Consul
Winchester says that neither in the Dutch nor in the Chinese factories
was a Japanese coin ever seen. But the commerce inaugurated in 1859
could brook no such limitations, while the extent of its requirements
was of course absolutely unknown to the negotiators of the treaties.
In this state of doubt and ignorance on both sides it seemed that the
best temporary provision that the circumstances admitted of was for the
Tycoon's Government to undertake, after twelve months, to make all foreign
money current in Japan at its natural value, and that until the expiration
of that period Japanese coin should be supplied in exchange for foreign,
weight for weight. Yet it was a monstrous stipulation to insert in any
international treaty, and could never, in fact, be enforced.
The amazing laxity in this respect with which the treaties of 1858 were
drawn opened the door to unfathomed abuses in the matter of currency.
The coin which was in the minds of the American and English negotiators
was what was then current on the coast of China, the dollar, or more
specifically the Mexican dollar. Yet, as was afterwards pointed out by
Mr G. Arbuthnot, Secretary to her Majesty's Treasury, no provision was
made in the treaties expressly for exchanging that, but only British and
American money. In his opinion the Tycoon's Government might have refused
altogether to receive the Mexican dollar, which was the only coin tendered
to them, and thus the currency clause in the treaty would have been a dead
letter from the first. But since they did not know the weakness of the
ground which the foreigners had chosen, they had to fight out the question
under all the disadvantages of a false position.
By the treaty provisions, then, as interpreted by both sides, the foreign
merchants who chose to import specie were to be supplied in exchange with
current coin of the realm whereby they could purchase the produce of the
country without awaiting the slow and uncertain realisation of imported
merchandise. But the Japanese, apart from any question of good faith,
had vastly under-estimated the demand which this agreement was to make on
their mintage resources. They could only supply tens where thousands were
required, and in consequence of their scarcity native silver coins were
soon run up to a high premium. These coins were needed not alone for the
purchase of produce, but for the more lucrative investment in the gold
coinage of the country; for an extraordinary anomaly presented itself to
the foreign traders in the relative value of silver and gold in Japan. The
ratio between the two metals throughout the commercial world was at that
time about fifteen to one, but in Japan, owing partly to the fact that
the silver _ichibu_ was a token coin, and yet interchangeable, weight for
weight, with foreign silver coins, the ratio in the market was reduced to
five to one. Nothing could better show how completely the country had been
isolated than this simple phenomenon. Since the seclusion of Japan no such
opportunity of profit without risk had ever tempted merchant adventurers
outside the dreams of romance.[3] It could not be the intention of the
treaty-makers to deprive Japan of her gold, yet the exportation of it
was not only not prohibited, it was expressly sanctioned by treaty, the
export of copper coins alone being forbidden; and once the conduit was
opened no power could arrest the flow from the higher to the lower level.
The currency question presented many intricacies and anomalies against
which the foreign representatives struggled in the dark, but the ratio of
gold to silver was the ruling factor which underlay the whole problem,
and until every _koban_ was exported, or the relative value of gold and
silver had been assimilated to that of the outer world, there could be no
settlement of the currency question in Japan.
In the mean time the friction caused by the unsatisfied demands of the
traders was considerable; it became in time ludicrous. There was a daily
exchange held at the custom-house, and various arbitrary systems of
distribution were adopted by the officials there. The discovery that a
kind of manhood suffrage was recognised, and that an employee received
as much as his employer, led to applications being made in the names of
servants and even of fictitious persons, to each of whom an allotment
was granted. Again, the discovery that allotments were also made _pro
rata_ according to the amount applied for led to the applications being
sent in for ever larger and larger sums until billions and quintillions
were reached. By such devices, no doubt, some of the applicants may have
gained a momentary advantage over their neighbours, but at no time did
the merchants receive a sufficiency of Japanese coin to carry on the most
restricted business. At one time, about a year after the opening, it was
estimated that there was in the hands of foreign merchants one million
and a half of dollars which were not exchangeable, and were a "drug in
the market."
Their wants were, however, partially supplied in another manner. For among
the anomalies of the place and period one must be mentioned which had a
quite peculiar bearing on the supply of currency for commercial purposes.
The precious coin, which was doled out homœopathically to merchants, was
supplied to foreign officials in liberal measure. Every minister, consul,
and assistant; every admiral, captain, and lieutenant; every paymaster,
for himself and for the service of his ship, received his quota of
Japanese money on a scale graduated according to rank. The amount put in
circulation by these means was given by Mr Winchester as $2,000,000 per
annum. The recipients, whether directly or through agents, were able to
sell their surpluses to the merchants, of course at a handsome profit, and
no doubt abuses grew out of what was in its original intention a simple
measure of justice to salaried officers. The practice was condemned by
Mr Arbuthnot, and was discontinued by order of the Foreign Office in
1864, on the initiative of the Prussian Government, whose agent in Japan
had voluntarily renounced the privilege. But, oddly enough, the official
exchange was resumed by request of the Japanese Government, and continued
for several years longer, until, in fact, foreign and native coin had
found their common level.
Trade certainly suffered much in the beginning from the incongruous state
of the currency, which was greatly more complicated than we have attempted
to outline. Even after the year of probation foreign coins were neither
received by traders at their value nor exchangeable in accordance with
the treaties. Whether the Government was at the bottom of the obstruction
or was overruled by circumstances beyond its control was uncertain, but
the British consul-general made masterful exertions to set the matter
right. Currency reform, however, has baffled so many generations of expert
economists that, even assuming the goodwill of the native Government,
an alien official new to the country must have found it difficult to
accomplish much, with the time and means at his disposal. Earl Russell
in 1862 "declined to pronounce on so large and intricate a question," and
would not even discuss it with the Japanese envoys.
Japanese currency formed the subject of four elaborate reports by the
Secretary to her Majesty's Treasury, extending over twelve months, from
December 1862 to December 1863, drawn up after personal conference
with Sir Rutherford Alcock and on information derived from various
other sources, especially from a series of very able papers by Consul
Winchester. In each of these reports Mr Arbuthnot remarks on the paucity
of data, and in each he qualifies the deductions of the preceding one. Had
the series been still further extended, it is even doubtful if finality
of judgment would have been reached; for in his third report he says, "The
whole question, both as regards the condition of the currency and the real
intentions of the Japanese Government, is involved in so much obscurity
that no sound judgment can yet be formed on the subject" (May 1863).
It would be a mere weariness to the reader to attempt to elucidate a
problem which an expert student found perplexing, but a few salient
points brought out in Mr Arbuthnot's review may repay citation, as
illustrative of the general state of relations beyond the immediate
question of the currency. "We found," he says, "the Japanese with a
carefully devised system of coinage, presenting indeed anomalies, when
regarded from a European point of view, but apparently well adapted to
their domestic wants; and their coins were found on assay in London to be
well manufactured." The Chinese had no such system, and the evolution of
a metallic currency entitled to such high praise, in a country from which
the rest of the world had been long shut off, is one of the most striking
evidences of the high originating faculty of the Japanese.
As to the stipulation in the treaties that foreign coin should be current
in Japan on a par with native, weight for weight (not a word said about
purity), it was not only preposterous and absolutely unworkable, but
it was imposed by the ignorance of the foreign negotiators against the
superior knowledge of the Japanese; for it is remarkable that in the
negotiations carried on by the Americans in 1854 the Japanese took up the
impregnable ground that "American coin was only bullion to them." Force
alone--or the fear of it--drove them from that position in 1858, and in
yielding to the unreasoning pressure of the subsequent negotiators the
Japanese probably consoled themselves with their resources of secret
evasion to save them from the worst consequences of the obligation--a
characteristic of the whole treaty-making campaign.
It appeared to Mr Arbuthnot that the Japanese had a double
standard--itself "a contradiction in terms"--gold and copper; silver
occupying the position of a token currency between the two, at a highly
artificial value, strictly governed by law. The fact was exemplified in
many ways. Art objects in silver contained more metal than the coin paid
for them, the work of the artificer thrown into the bargain. Gold and
copper, on the other hand, bore about the same relationship to each other
as prevailed in other countries. It was silver alone that was maintained
at a conventional level three times above its value in the outer world.
And the philosophy of this is explained by Mr Winchester, who tells us
that, whereas the supply of gold and copper was in many hands, the sources
of the supply of silver were in the exclusive control of the Tycoon's
Government, which derived great advantage from maintaining the silver
coinage at a high fictitious level.
The efforts of the Japanese to readjust the currency to meet the demands
of the treaty were naturally first directed to silver, which was recoined
and revalued, but confusion was worse confounded by all these attempts.
Eventually the gold _koban_, worth intrinsically 18s. 4d. sterling, or 4
_bus_ of the intrinsic value of 1s. 4d., was reduced to a sterling value
of 5s. 6d., but was still rated at 4 _bus_, while the copper coinage was
disestablished and iron substituted of no intrinsic value. "I am aware of
no other example," says Mr Arbuthnot, "of so sudden and violent a rending
of the monetary regulations of a country; certainly of none which has been
produced by the interference of foreigners."
The effect of these inquiries by the Treasury was to discourage further
interference by foreign Governments, to trust much to that great solvent
of anomalies, the silent operation of commerce; while the only complete
remedy was recognised as the establishment of a mint under European
regulations.
The problem was still further complicated by the separate coinage of
the Daimios. Their _nibukin_, as a general rule, passed only at first in
their own provinces, but gradually they filtered down to the open ports,
and at one time considerable embarrassment arose from the mixture of the
coinage thus caused. In 1871-72 the Imperial Government, then just come to
supreme power, took the matter up with the thoroughness they showed in all
their doings. They gave secret notice to the foreign Ministers of their
intention to call in all princes' _nibukin_, and thereupon issued an order
that during one week these coins should be brought into the custom-houses
at the treaty ports, where they would be fastened up in sealed packets
of $100 value, and notified that coins so stamped within the week would
be accepted by the Government as legal tender, but that thereafter their
use would be prohibited. Now, as the Daimios' money stood at about 90 per
cent discount at the time, the fact that some of the foreign officials who
had access to this confidential information were also merchants created
immediate speculation, with the result that within a fortnight these
silver-gilt _nibukin_ rose from 90 per cent discount to 2 or 3 per cent
premium, the officially sealed packets being a most convenient form for
the payment of duties.
The alacrity with which the Government applied heroic remedies to a
disastrous predicament was typical of the energy of the Japanese, which
has been displayed since in wider fields. They do not sit down and bemoan
their troubles, but at once arm themselves against them.
When to the inherent difficulties common to currency problems
generally were superadded the complexities of the monetary system of a
non-commercial and long-secluded country, surprise should be felt that the
regulation of the circulating medium in Japan was accomplished so soon,
rather than that it took so many years to arrive at the solution. The
Tycoon's Government did not live long enough to settle the currency, but
left the problem as a legacy to the Restoration. A good many years elapsed
before the Mikado's Government succeeded in evolving order out of chaos.
In the mean time, in spite of many drawbacks, trade was making headway
in other directions besides the exportation of gold, and quaint indeed
were the beginnings of it. The staple products happened to be the same
in Japan as in China, tea and silk, and they soon began to be regularly
brought down to Yokohama for sale. But business was at first on such
a lilliputian scale, and was introduced in so dainty a manner, that to
merchants accustomed to the large transactions of China the whole affair
wore something of the air of comic opera, or as if children were playing
at being merchants. This impression was strengthened by the aspect of
the fragile wooden structures with their sliding doors and windows, but
without sitting accommodation, wherein business was transacted, which to
those habituated to the massive, if inelegant, buildings of Hongkong and
Shanghai irresistibly suggested the idea of a doll's house. The Chinese
methods also were inverted. Instead of sending samples of substantial
quantities, such as a thousand chests of tea or fifty bales of silk, and
the owner or his broker coming to chaffer in the silk-room or the tea-room
of the foreign merchant, the latter had to go the round of the Japanese
shops to find out what they had got. Early every morning the leading
merchants might be seen booted to the thighs--for the rain was frequent
and the roads unmade--trudging up and down the Japanese bazaar to see
what novelties had come to hand. The more zealous would sometimes make a
second round in the afternoon, in case there might be some late as well
as early worms to be picked up. The bodily fatigue and consumption of time
involved in this process would have rendered a large business impossible.
There were as yet no Japanese merchants properly so called, and their
endless parley resembled more the tenacious higgling of peasants than
the negotiations of men of business. Moreover, the native dealers seemed
scarcely conscious of any law which should hold them to a bargain in the
event of a more acceptable offer turning up.
Conclusions unfavourable to Japanese commercial morality have been
drawn from some of those early--and later--experiences; but commercial
like other kinds of specialised morality has necessarily something of a
professional character. The _akindo_, or merchant, was a sort of pariah
in Japan, his social status being inferior to those of the peasant and
the handicraftsman. His sense of honour was not, therefore, sustained by
tradition or stimulated by _esprit de corps_. There being no mercantile
body in Japan, there was no mercantile code, at least none applicable
to international trade, and those unwritten laws without which large
commerce is impossible had not yet been called into being. Contrasts
between the two neighbouring nations have just been mentioned very much
to the advantage of the Japanese; but in matters of commerce, it must be
conceded, the advantage lay entirely with the Chinese, a nation of traders
from their birth.
In the sale of lacquer ware and objects of art the Japanese were much
more at home than in dealing in raw products of foreign manufactures,
and the treasures which were in the early days exposed in the shops of
Yokohama would make a modern dealer sigh for opportunities which are
no more. Speaking roundly, it would have been safe to buy the stock
indiscriminately at the sellers' own prices, when fortune would have
awaited the investor as surely as if he had bought up the gold coinage
at the ratio of 5 to 1. The same remark would apply to such of the raw
produce of Japan as had been in large demand in China; and conversely
the rule applied also to selected articles of foreign manufacture,
which the Japanese were satisfied to buy at a price mid-way between
the high level of the Dutch monopoly and the low level of what would
remunerate the free importer. Therefore the sudden inroad of open trade
on a market artificially confined resulted in profitable trading while
a new equilibrium was being found; but such prosperity was in its nature
evanescent.
Irrespective of the material aims which attracted foreign residents to
Japan, the life itself presented several novel and interesting features.
Nothing could have been pleasanter than the social relations which
sprang up between the foreign communities and the unofficial natives.
The strangers were received everywhere with open arms, and the residence
among a smiling people (excluding altogether the meretricious allurements
of the country, which have also not been without their influence) and
amid enchanting scenery was found to add a new pleasure to existence.
Here again we must resort for illustration to a comparison with China,
where strangers at the best were sullenly tolerated, where one might live
a lifetime without entering a house, or seeing a respectable woman, or
making a friend save on a business footing. The Japanese of Yokohama and
Kanagawa, as well as in the surrounding villages and temples, never failed
in courtesy and hospitality to passers-by, and were eager for conversation
with foreigners. A useful smattering of the language was soon acquired
under the stimulus of a quick-witted and sympathetic people alert to jump
at the meaning and patient to help the novice to find his words. The women
of the household were always charming, and if their domestic conversation
sometimes startled the stranger by its freedom, there was neither malice
nor any such impropriety as leaves an evil odour in its trail. Friendships
were formed, not deep perhaps, but genuine as far as they went, and
certainly not the less sincere on the Japanese than on the foreign side.
The intelligence also of the common people enhanced both the pleasure and
the value of friendly intercourse with them: apt as they were to receive,
they were no less ready to impart, information. Their appreciation of
their country--its beauties, history, traditions, and folk-lore--was
conscious and unrestrained, indeed it amounted to a passion. This afforded
endless subject for talk. Everything save the politics of the day might
be freely discussed, and though the first-arrived foreigners came poorly
prepared to assimilate so much that was novel, they could not help
carrying away a good deal from their frequent confabulations. The native
guide-books formed a reservoir of suggestive topics: surprisingly minute
they were, noting every gem of scenery or point of interest, with the
legends of history, romance, or mythology attaching to them. So accurate
were these itineraries that with their contents well studied foreigners
might make excursions inland lasting several days without the aid of guide
or the necessity of inquiring the way.
It need not, of course, be said that the mutual intelligence of Japanese
and foreigners did not penetrate below the surface of every-day phenomena.
Of their festivals, their pilgrimages, their votive offerings to temples
and shrines, their ancestral worship, and their whole relation to the
Unseen--call it religion, superstition, or idolatry--the strangers had
no comprehension. Although its outward symbols were passing constantly
under their eyes, esoteric Japan was to them a sealed book, as the mental
processes of the Oriental always are to the Occidental, whose imagination
is cramped by the syllogism, and whose faith languishes for demonstration.
There was, however, ample outside the region of mysticism, outside the
concerns of trade, and equally apart from political questions, to nourish
the best relations between Japanese and foreigners.
The impressions of the British Minister on his journeys of relaxation
are by no means the least interesting portion of his important work,
'The Capital of the Tycoon.' Having shaken off the official incubus, and
breathing the free air of the country, the intercourse with the common
people in which he was able to indulge was fruitful of reflections of
a brighter hue than any that were prompted by his strenuous life in the
capital. He observes:--
They are really a kindly people when not perverted by their rulers
and prompted to hostility.... I had begun to forget I was in
Japan, so much goodwill was shown.... There may be a good deal
of tyranny and oppression, but the people show no marks of it....
The feudal lord is everything and the lower and labouring classes
nothing. Yet what do we see? Peace, plenty, apparent content, and
a country more perfectly and carefully cultivated and kept, with
more ornamental timber everywhere, than can be matched even in
England.... The material prosperity of a population estimated at
thirty millions, which has made a garden of Eden of this volcanic
soil, and had grown in numbers and in wealth by unaided native
industry.
Such were the observations made during a few days' rest at the mineral
springs of Atami, and they coincided exactly with the opinions formed
by those whose daily intercourse lay with these same common people, in
which term, of course, were included such town populations as foreigners
had acquaintance with. A contemporary writer, Nagasaki, 1859, remarked:
"The Government of Japan is the most absolute despotism in the world,
and perfectly successful.... For the present it is consistent with great
prosperity and contentment on the part of the people, but it seems to me
it is only their exclusive policy that has kept it so."
The great, industrious, prosperous masses of Japan, enjoying the gifts of
the gods with thankful hearts, and drinking the cup of life as presented
to them without any acidulating scruples, seemed to be happiest of all in
this, that they were not burdened with the dignity of wearing swords. The
storms that convulsed the upper regions passed over their humble heads
without interrupting the cast of a fishing-net or hindering by a day
the gathering of their harvest. How different the life of the nobles and
their following! their humanity dominated by an elaborate and intolerable
ceremonial, settling their quarrels at the sword's point, and ever on the
alert for bloody intrigue.[4]
For there were two Japans, that of the people and that of the ruling
class, separated by an impassable gulf. "The very existence of the
plebeian seems unrecognised by the patrician in his lordly progress,"
wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock. "And for that very reason there may be more
real liberty among the mass of the people than we imagine."
The members of the official class were distinguished by carrying in
their girdle two heavy swords with a razor's edge, one long, one short.
The functionaries of the custom-house, with whom alone the foreign lay
community had contact, also wore swords as part of their official uniform,
which they placed with delicate ceremony on a rack in front of them
as they sat on their mats at the receipt of custom,--for there were no
chairs, and the habitual posture was squatting on the hams and heels. To
the aristocratic caste the Japanese people were as absolutely submissive
as if every two-sworded man wielded the power of life and death, which,
so far as the common people were concerned, was not far from the simple
truth.[5] The only great concourses of armed men which the foreign
residents were in the way of seeing were the Daimio processions, which,
hundreds, sometimes thousands strong, were constantly travelling along
the highroad; and in the long town of Kanagawa they could observe the
people prostrated by the sides of the road with heads abased while the
great man with his scowling retainers passed. Residents in Yedo--that is,
the _personnel_ of the foreign Legations--had less agreeable experience
of these feudal swordsmen, who, living in idleness during their prince's
sojourn in the capital, were quick in quarrel, especially in their cups,
and far from agreeable to meet in the streets.
III. ASSASSINATION PERIOD, 1860-61.
Storms begin--Russians murdered at Kanagawa--Two Dutchmen
in Yokohama--Prince regent assassinated--Servant of French
Minister attacked--Mr Heusken, secretary to American Legation,
murdered--Ministers withdraw to Yokohama--And return to
Yedo--First murderous attack on British Legation, 1861--Mr
Oliphant wounded--Attempt on a Japanese Minister--The causes
of these outrages--Partly anti-foreign feeling--Foreign
treaties imposed by force on Tycoon never received sanction of
emperor--Hence universal hostility to foreigners--Internecine
jealousy--Mr Alcock makes ascent of Fujiyama--Against the wish of
Japanese Ministers--Makes a second overland journey from Nagasaki
to Yedo--Sullen attitude of Daimios.
The ports had not been many months opened when storms began to disturb the
political sky, and the idyllic charm of the new life became tempered by
assassination. The why and the wherefore of these outrages was imperfectly
understood at the time, though it has since been copiously expounded.
The uncertainty as to the moving cause or causes rendered precautions
difficult, and the only safe resource was a watchful eye and the nimble
revolver.
Much bad feeling had been displayed towards the foreign diplomatic staff
in Yedo, and assaults had been frequent, but nothing of a tragic nature
had occurred until the arrival of a Russian squadron of ten ships, with
Count Mouravieff-Amurski on board. He landed in August 1859 with an escort
of 300 men in Yedo, where he was safe; but an officer and two men at
Kanagawa, buying provisions, were cut to pieces by armed Japanese. This
was what Sir Rutherford Alcock designated as "first blood." The next was
the assassination of a native linguist employed in the British Legation.
Early in 1860 two Dutch shipmasters, one over sixty years of age, were
hacked to pieces in Yokohama. Next the prince regent himself was, within
the precincts of the castle, set upon by an armed band of retainers of the
Prince of Mito and killed, his head being carried off to assure the said
prince of the accomplishment of an act of long-meditated revenge.
Before the end of the year 1860 the Italian servant of the French Minister
had to defend himself at the entrance of the Legation from the murderous
attack of a couple of two-sworded men; and the year 1861 was ushered in
by the assassination of Mr Heusken, secretary to the American Legation,
on his way from the Prussian Minister, whom he had been assisting in the
negotiation of his treaty. This crime filled the cup for the time being.
The Government proved itself unable or unwilling to protect the diplomatic
body from their bloodthirsty assailants, and three out of the four foreign
representatives--the Dutch minister not being at the time resident in
Yedo--made a protest to the Tycoon's Government, struck their flags, and
withdrew to Yokohama. The American Minister alone remained in Yedo. Soon
the Prussian and Dutch returned thither, leaving only the British and
French representatives in Yokohama, where they remained until specially
invited back to the capital under conditions which they had demanded of
the Government.
The following summer witnessed the most desperate attempt of all to
exterminate the inmates of at least one of the Legations. Mr Alcock had
just returned from a long, venturesome, dangerous, but most fruitful
journey overland from south to north--from Nagasaki to Yedo--which
included a sea passage through the Inland Sea, when an assault was made
on the Legation at midnight on 4th July 1861. The Tycoon's guard of 150
men are charitably credited with having been asleep, for they opposed no
obstacle to the entrance of a band of men who cut an opening through a
substantial bamboo stockade at the outer gate, and on their way thence
to the apartments of the Legation staff, a distance of some three hundred
yards, killed, at intervals, four men, some of whom defended themselves,
and a barking dog. The scene is fully and graphically described in 'The
Capital of the Tycoon.' The central object of the attack seems to have
been the Minister himself, who however escaped unhurt, while two members
of the Legation were wounded,--Laurence Oliphant, who had recently come
out as secretary of Legation, having a very severe sword-cut in the arm
and another in the neck. Being more than common tall, Mr Oliphant's head
was saved by the intervention of a low beam, in which a deep sword-cut
was found. If that brilliant writer had seen Yedo rose-tinted in 1858,
he had now at least a chance of judging it in a greyer light. The guard
did not put in an appearance until after the assailants had been beaten
off from, or at least baffled in, their attempt on that portion of the
temple buildings which was occupied by the Minister, and a fierce struggle
ensued in the precincts, in which two of the assailants were killed and
one badly wounded, while twelve of the guard were wounded and one of the
Tycoon's bodyguard killed. The details of Japanese sword-play are not
pleasant matters to dwell upon, but a few words from Mr Alcock's notes
of the tragedy will suffice to give an idea of the manner in which these
massacres were carried out. "I have seen many a battlefield," he says,
"but of sabre wounds I never saw any so horrible. One man had his skull
shorn clean through from the back and half the head sliced off to the
spine, while his limbs only hung together by shreds." "There is probably
not in all the annals of our diplomacy an example of such a bloodthirsty
and deliberate plot to massacre a whole Legation."
This is a sufficiently full list of the outrages of what may be called
the Yedo period, to distinguish it from a subsequent chapter of history
which was opened in connection with the new port in the Inland Sea, but
which is beyond the range of the present work.
The only conclusions to be drawn from these occurrences, and those yet to
be related, were--(1) that either the Tycoon's Government itself or some
powerful faction was in deadly opposition to the admission of foreigners
into the country, and (2) that the Tycoon's Government was either unable
or unwilling to protect the persons of foreigners either within the
capital or out of it; (3) that certain great Daimios were concerned
in these murderous outrages. The Prince of Mito's men assassinated the
regent, and were most probably the assailants of the British Legation,
while the Prince of Satsuma's retainers killed Richardson. Another great
Daimio, whose forts commanded the western gate of the Inland Sea, put
himself a year later in a state of war with all the foreign nations.
The motives of these powerful feudatories were not free from ambiguity,
for they might be animated by a _bonâ fide_ desire to expel the
foreigners, or they might be plotting to embroil the Government with the
Western Powers. It was evident that the authority of the Tycoon over the
great Daimios was far from absolute, and that at any rate he dared not
enforce it in defence of the hated foreigners.[6] Thus the Legations were
left to the mercy of a ferocity which has known no parallel. The midnight
attempt on the British Legation on July 4, 1861, typified the whole
situation. The inmates were ignorant whence the several attacks on them
came, the imperial and Daimio's guard were asserted to have slept through
the crucial stage of the assault, and the provoking cause of the attempt
to exterminate the English was unknown. In such a maze of occult forces
it was almost as difficult to adopt precautions as against earthquakes.
What lay at the root of all these troubles, according to the deliberate
opinion of Mr Alcock, was that the foreign treaties had been forced on the
Government against its will and in violation of the fundamental laws of
the empire. He says the treaties were not sanctioned by the Mikado, and
that therefore the opposition of the Daimios was on strictly legitimate
lines. Also that the law of the seventeenth century which made it a
capital offence for a foreigner to land in Japan had not been repealed.
The Tycoon's Ministers had been scared into signing even Commodore Perry's
almost platonic treaty; for though that officer had strict orders to
use no force, he did not impart this information to the Japanese, and
they could not otherwise interpret the naval demonstration than as an
intimation that the ship's guns would support the commodore's demands. The
case of Mr Harris's treaty of 1858 was even clearer. It had been drawn up,
but the signature postponed _sine die_ until the great nobles should have
been gained over, and Mr Harris retired to his retreat at Shimoda to wait
events. The news of the forcing of the Peiho forts by the Anglo-French
squadron and the imposing of a treaty on the Emperor of China was conveyed
express to Mr Harris by the steam frigate Mississippi. Another vessel,
the Powhattan, arrived fortuitously at the same time, in which Mr Harris
proceeded to Kanagawa, where commissioners were sent down at once to meet
him, and in three days the treaty was signed. Of course the Allies who
had forced the door of China, having no quarrel whatever with Japan, had
no more thought of coercing that country than the United States had in
1853 and 1854; but it was perhaps scarcely conceivable to the oriental
mind that any nation should deny itself the exercise of a power it
consciously possessed. Naturally, therefore, the Japanese were predisposed
to believe in the aggressive purposes of the invaders of China. No less
natural was it that subsequent evidence of the self-imposed limitation of
their pressure on China should lead the Tycoon's advisers to deplore the
panic-haste with which they had been hustled into making treaties against
the will of the great council of the Empire. In the interval between the
signing and the execution of the treaties the Government had time for
reflection on all that: the malcontent majority of Daimios had also time
to consider what resistance they could offer to innovations which they
detested.
The reactionary policy that had set in was also clearly shown in the
obstacles thrown in the way of the negotiation of the Prussian treaty.
Count Eulenberg had been six months at work, and as his treaty was but a
copy of those already signed there was no reason in the thing itself for
the obstruction. But Prussia was not then a nation from which there was
much to be feared at such a distance, and therefore the true disposition
of the Japanese Government had free play.
The Tycoonate itself was a perpetual cause of jealousy among the three
great families, one of which was Mito, who had themselves pretensions
to the honour; and the combination of their private grievances with a
quasi-patriotic and probably sincere hatred of foreign intruders raised
a storm against the Tycoon with which his advisers found it hard to cope.
The Government being committed to the protection of foreigners, massacres
of the latter offered a ready means of gratifying the double passion of
hatred of them and of the Tycoon.
But although the foreign representatives and the Tycoon were thus to an
unknown extent the objects of a common enmity, it was yet impossible for
them to make common cause, for they were not in harmony. The Government
would willingly have got rid of the treaties or reduced them to a dead
letter. The foreign Ministers, on the other hand, had no choice but to
insist on the fulfilment of the engagements into which the Government had
entered. Not for them to count the cost, the difficulties, or the danger:
relaxation of their demands would have aggravated all three. So there was
nothing for it but the "rigour of the game."
The British Minister held decided views on the importance of keeping alive
all rights and privileges by exercising them. China would have taught
him, if the knowledge did not come by nature, the value of the modern
principle of "effective occupation" as the only valid sanction of an
abstract title. The treaties of 1858 conferred upon the representatives
of Foreign Powers the right of travelling throughout Japan. The Tycoon's
Government desired to restrict or nullify the privilege, no doubt for
reasons quite sufficient from their point of view. Mr Alcock on his part
saw good reasons for opposing this tendency from the outset. Consequently,
as a first experiment, he organised a journey by the _tokaido_ to the
"matchless" mountain, Fujiyama, distant about eighty miles from the
capital. Every effort was made by the Government officials to dissuade
him from the undertaking; dangers natural and supernatural were conjured
up, a more convenient season was recommended. At length their pleas
for the abandonment or delay of the expedition having been exhausted
without any effect on the resolution of the Minister, the officials
became helpful in the preparations and most careful to provide for the
success of the journey. The party--eight Europeans in all with a large
native contingent--set out on September 4, 1860, rather late in the year
for the ascent, which was, nevertheless, successfully accomplished, and
for the first time the foot of the stranger trod the sacred summit, the
object of constant religious pilgrimages. The whole journey, including a
detour to the hot springs of Atami, occupied one month: it was fruitful
in first-hand information, and replete with agreeable experiences.
A more important journey was undertaken eight months later, on the
occasion of a return voyage from China and Hongkong, whither the Minister
had gone on certain legal business. Being at Nagasaki, Mr Alcock arranged
to travel in the company of Mr de Wit, the head of the Dutch mission,
across the island of Kiusiu, then by junk up the Inland Sea to Hiogo,
thence by the highroad to Yedo. The proposal met with the same kind of
opposition from the Japanese authorities as the going to Fujiyama the
previous year had done: the dangers of the journey were depicted in strong
colours, and the unsettled state of the country was alleged as a cogent
reason why a foreigner should not trust himself on the highroad. When
these arguments proved unavailing, and the journey was finally resolved
upon, the authorities endeavoured to minimise both its pleasure and its
usefulness by an attempt to extort from the two Ministers an undertaking
in writing never to go in advance of the escort or to leave the highroad.
The plea for the latter restriction was that the road alone was under
imperial control, the land on either side belonging to the Daimios. The
feudatories on their part took effective measures to enforce the condition
by supplying guards through their respective domains, who blocked up every
byway, and in the towns and villages where the party rested screened off
the side streets even from view by means of large curtains stretched on
high poles, emblazoned with the Prince's arms. When the party landed
at Hiogo to resume the journey by the _tokaido_, they were met by a
"Governor" of Foreign Affairs, sent expressly from Yedo to warn the
foreign Ministers once more of the dangers of the road, and to persuade
them to complete their journey by sea. This had become such a stereotyped
formula that the two diplomats paid no attention to the warning, though
they had some reason afterwards to think that on this single occasion
the cry of wolf was genuine; for the assassins who attacked the English
Legation on the night of the return of the party to Yedo were said to have
tracked the foreigners the whole way from Hiogo.
These two interesting and--the second one especially--arduous journeys,
each of one month's duration, settled the question of the right of the
foreign representatives to travel through the length and breadth of Japan.
They also afforded much insight into the state of the country and the
real feeling of the general population. But they were only interludes
in the drama of sensational diplomacy, which had now to be resumed with
redoubled energy. The Legations had been two years located in Yedo, and no
progress whatever had been made towards establishing a state of security
for foreign life. Matters were, indeed, going from bad to worse. One point
had been gained after the murder of the American secretary in January--the
Government had formally assumed the responsibility for the protection of
the foreigners. Moreover, strong guards of the Tycoon's men were posted
in the different Legations; but, as we have seen, they added nothing to
the sense of security. The demonstration of the inadequacy of all these
precautions left the conditions of foreign life in the capital in worse
plight than ever. The attack on the British Legation therefore called for
a fresh review of the position.
IV. NEGOTIATIONS AND RENEWED ASSASSINATIONS, 1862-64.
British and French guards brought to Yedo--Marks a new
era--Decided position of British Government--Concessions asked
by Japanese, refused by Mr Alcock, granted by Earl Russell to
Japanese envoys--Retrogression--Position of foreign Ministers
assimilating to that of the Dutch at Deshima--Mr Alcock's
departure for Europe, 1862--Bad effects of Lord Russell's
concessions to Japanese--Encouraged them to make fresh
demands--The building of a British Legation in Yedo--_Chargé
d'affaires_ resides mostly in Yokohama--Colonel Neale's
account of the system of guarding the Legation--Midnight
attack on the guards--British sentries murdered--Suspicious
behaviour of Government--British guard increased--Admiral
Hope's opinion--Attack on an English riding party and murder
of Mr Richardson on highroad--Admiral Hope's proposal to "nip
assassination in the bud."
The question now, therefore, entered on a new phase. Since reliance on
the Government afforded no sense of security, the foreigners must abandon
the position or find some more effective protection, not to supersede,
but to supplement, that which was afforded by the Government. There was
fortunately a British despatch vessel, the Ringdove, at the moment at
Yokohama, to the commander of which Mr Alcock appealed for a guard of
marines and bluejackets. These arrived the next day, twenty-five all
told, with Captain Craigie himself at their head, and they were happily
accompanied by a detachment of fifteen men from the French transport
Dordogne, brought up by the French Minister, Mons. de Bellecourt,
always a staunch supporter of his British colleague. That gentleman,
on hearing the tragic news at Yokohama, where he had been staying,
returned promptly to his post with this most welcome reinforcement for
the defence of the Legations. This simple proceeding marked the beginning
of a new era in the foreign relations with Japan--the era in which the
Powers represented there took the law into their own hands, with highly
important consequences to Japan and to the world. The British naval guard
was reinforced within a few months by a mounted escort of twelve men
drawn from the force then in China. This step was strongly objected to
by the Tycoon's Ministers, but the answer was complete: the Government's
acknowledged incompetence had forced this measure of self-defence on the
Legations. The position taken up by Mr Alcock was confirmed in the most
explicit manner by Earl Russell a year later, who thus addressed the
Japanese envoys in London:--
Her Majesty's Government will not agree to any proposal which
may be made by the Ministers of the Tycoon having for its object
to preclude the representatives of the Queen in Japan from
maintaining a cavalry escort for the protection of her Majesty's
servants in that country. The Tycoon cannot ensure the safety of
the British officers within the precincts of the capital and its
immediate neighbourhood; and even if the Tycoon were to engage to
do so, it is notorious that he would not have the power to fulfil
his engagement.
This plain speaking defined the status of "old" Japan, and gave the clue
to the remarkable train of events which followed.
Much anxiety and many sinister rumours, but no serious outrages,
disturbed the peace of the Legations and the general foreign community
during the remainder of the year 1861. Mr Oliphant was sent home in
consequence of his wounds, and the occasion was taken advantage of to
have certain private conferences with the Japanese Foreign Ministers, at
which that gentleman assisted, when the "past, present, and future" were
confidentially discussed. Mr Oliphant, thus thoroughly "posted," was able
personally to explain the state of affairs to her Majesty's Ministers,
which greatly assisted them in forming their decisions. He was also the
bearer of an autograph letter from the Tycoon to her Majesty the Queen.
The Japanese Government had long been pressing the foreign representatives
for the relaxation of some of the articles in the treaties, which were
not to come into operation until a subsequent date. These provided for
the opening of Yedo for general residence on 1st January 1862, and for
the opening of the trading ports of Hiogo, Osaka, and Ní-í-gata on 1st
January 1863. The Tycoon's Government was most anxious to postpone all
these privileges to an indefinite period, nominally seven years, and as
the foreign Ministers in Yedo had no such authority--Mr Alcock had been
instructed to grant "no concessions without equivalents"--the Government
prepared to despatch special envoys to the five Courts of Europe with
which they had treaties. A similar mission to the United States the
previous year had been so well received as to encourage the second effort.
The principle involved in the Japanese plea was precisely the same as that
which had kept Canton closed for so many years, notwithstanding the treaty
provision opening it; but there was this difference of fact between the
two cases, that whereas the danger apprehended and alleged by the Japanese
was probably real, that which had been put forward by the Chinese was
false, and manufactured by the authorities themselves.
The Japanese were now in full retrogression, and every point they might
gain was certain to become a new fulcrum for forcing more and more
concessions from the foreign Powers. This was proved in many kinds of
ways. For example, the restrictions placed on the foreign envoys, by
which they were kept as prisoners in their Legations, and were attended
in their walks abroad by officious guards who prevented them from seeing
more than could be helped, and forbade intercourse with the people, were
almost tantamount to those formerly imposed on the Dutch in Deshima.
Mr Oliphant frankly speaks of his "jailors." Then repression, and yet
more repression--as much repression, in fact, as the foreigners could
be brought to endure--was the unvarying rule. Even when they were
themselves seeking favours, and had therefore every inducement to show
their liberal side to the foreign Minister, the rule of repression was
rigorously maintained. Mr Alcock relates how this determination prevented
him from presenting the Queen's reply to the Tycoon's letter. First,
the audience was delayed on frivolous grounds; then the ceremonial was
varied. Among other things it was proposed to place the envoy at double
the distance from the Tycoon which had been observed on a previous
occasion. Being anxious to take his leave, to present his _locum tenens_,
and to deliver the Queen's autograph, Mr Alcock waived these innovations
under protest--"being reluctant at the last moment to stand upon a point
of mere etiquette"; but "having found my desire was strong not to raise
difficulties on any minor points, it had been resolved [by the Japanese]
to profit by the circumstance to gain some further advantages derogatory
to the position of the British Minister," and so after everything had been
arranged according to their own wishes the Court officials returned the
following day to say they had made a mistake, and that, in fact, sundry
further restrictions must be observed. This was too much, and the Minister
quitted the capital without his audience, March 1862.
The same tactics were observed by the envoys in Europe. When the mission
reached London and had laid their case before the same Foreign Secretary
who had instructed the Minister in Japan to "make no concessions without
equivalents," he at once conceded the whole of the Japanese demands
unconditionally, for the nominal conditions were merely that the rest of
the treaty should stand. A detailed memorandum of the agreement was drawn
up and formally signed by Earl Russell and the three Japanese envoys on
June 6, 1862. Having succeeded beyond all expectation in their demands,
the Japanese envoys evidently concluded that the Foreign Office was of
plastic substance, and within two days they had formulated a list of nine
further concessions which they desired to discuss. This, however, was
too much for Lord Russell's patience, and as the envoys had "completed
their business and taken their leave," he declined to enter on any fresh
questions.
The effect of Lord Russell's concessions could not be otherwise than
detrimental, the only open question being whether his insistence on
opening the ports on the agreed dates would have been a greater or a
lesser evil. Mr Alcock points out the family likeness between the Japanese
pleas for suspension of treaty rights and those with which we had so long
been familiar in China. "The time," he says, allowed to the authorities
of Canton to "soothe the people and prepare the way" was deliberately
used by them to "create the very difficulties which they alleged already
to exist, and make it each year more and more impossible to admit the
foreigners,"--a comment on the Japanese proposal which leaves little doubt
as to his opinion of that transaction. Yet there were cogent reasons for
the course actually adopted, if the premisses be granted that the ports
could only be opened by force, and that England would have been left
alone to employ the necessary force. The most that can be said, then,
for the concessions to the Japanese is that they represented the choice
of evils. No one was benefited by them. They did not help the Tycoon or
avert the catastrophe to his dynasty. They did not lessen the friction,
or the danger to foreign life and interests, or interrupt the long
series of assassinations of foreigners in Japan; nor did they obviate the
necessity of using force in that country, to avoid which was the principal
inducement to her Majesty's Government to violate its own principle. The
analogy with China was, in fact, complete; the old lesson was once more
driven home, that there is no safety in doing wrong. As Sir Rutherford
Alcock puts it, "To retrograde safely and with dignity is often more
difficult for nations and their governments than to advance."
During the year 1861 an important improvement was inaugurated in
respect to the housing of the foreign Legations. Hitherto they had been
accommodated in temples neither suited to Western modes of living nor, as
had been proved, adapted for defence. Independent sites were now allotted
on a commanding ridge within the city, where the respective Ministers
might have buildings erected on their own plans. These were promptly put
in hand, and soon after Mr Alcock was able to bring his first arduous
campaign--a term applicable in its double sense--to a close. Having
brought the various business of the Legation into a state convenient for
transfer to new hands, he left Yedo in March 1862, a few days before the
arrival of the future _chargé d'affaires_, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward St
John Neale. The Minister was accompanied to England by Moriyama, the chief
interpreter to the Japanese Foreign Office, who was charged with special
instructions to the three envoys then in England.
From the time that Colonel Neale took charge of the British Legation
events chased each other rapidly. While the new buildings were in progress
the _chargé d'affaires_ divided his time between Yedo and Yokohama, and
while in the capital continued to reside in the temple called To-zen-ji,
where the Legation had been located from the beginning. The inner
buildings were guarded by the mounted escort and by the naval contingent,
which had been renewed as one British warship took the place of another
during the year. In the outer enclosure there was a guard of 500 Japanese,
the retainers of a certain Daimio who was intrusted by the Tycoon with
the protection of the Legation.
In order to understand what follows, it is necessary to give Colonel
Neale's account of the arrangements which were in force for the protection
of the British Legation:--
I found on my arrival that the usual precautions had been taken by
the authorities, and which consisted in placing numerous guards,
entirely surrounding this residence, in detached wooden huts: the
number of these guards, according to the Japanese return which I
obtained, amounted to no less than 535 men, partly of the Tycoon's
bodyguard, but chiefly composed of the retainers of a Daimio named
Matsudaira Temba no Kami, who had been chosen and charged by the
Government with the protection of this Legation.
Small parties of these men came down at short intervals during
the night to the very doors of this residence, and remained for a
short time with our own sentries, leaving behind them one man at
each post to aid in challenging persons approaching and demanding
the parole, which was in the Japanese language, and issued at
sunset each evening.
These dispositions were uninterruptedly observed up to the evening
of the 26th June. At midnight on that day the several British
sentinels were at their post, and challenging with vigilance the
Japanese guards, who, in parties of two or three, descended from
the heights overhanging this building at the back for the purpose
of relieving their men.
What took place at midnight on the 26th June may also be best described
in Colonel Neale's own language:--
At half an hour after midnight the British sentry posted at the
door adjoining my bedroom challenged some approaching object in my
hearing, and received in answer the right parole; but the sentry
sharply challenged again in an anxious and eager manner, as if
some circumstance excited his suspicion, after which he walked
three or four steps towards the object approaching. I rose in
bed to hear the result, and in an instant the deadened sound of
a rapid succession of heavy blows and cuts reached my ears, given
in less than two minutes, and at every one of which followed a cry
of anguish from the unfortunate sentry. Silence succeeded for the
moment, and was followed by the beating of drums from the heights
and the gathering of Japanese guards with their red lanterns....
The assassin having left the sentry at my door, went on towards
the corner of the residence occupied by the guard, a distance
of twenty paces, where he met Corporal Crimp, R.M., coming alone
on his rounds to visit the sentry at my door. A conflict appears
instantly to have taken place between them: a revolver-shot was
heard about the moment the guard was turning out, but nothing
further.
The corporal was found dead with sixteen sword and lance wounds: the
sentry had nine sword-wounds--"every cut had severed the member it was
aimed at"; but he survived long enough to tell of the instant desertion
of the Japanese sentry who was posted with him.
This attack was marked by several distinguishing features:--
1. The assassins belonged to the Legation guard, or were their comrades;
the only weapon found on the ground was a lance of the precise pattern of
those of the Daimio's guard, which was twelve feet long, and, according to
Colonel Neale, no man carrying such a weapon could have passed the strong
barricade or crawled through the brushwood: presumably, therefore, the
lance was supplied from the armoury within the Legation. According to the
Japanese Ministers, there was but a single assassin. In their anxiety to
maintain their contention that the wounds were all inflicted by the same
man, the Ministers explained to Colonel Neale a little of the science of
Japanese sword-play. "They have attained the climax of dexterity. The
sword is always carried at the side, and adepts in the use of it wound
the moment it is drawn." The fatal stroke, upwards, is given in the act of
drawing. Hence, placing the hand on the hilt is equivalent to presenting
a cocked revolver, and if the assailant is not disabled in the act it
is too late for defence. One only, being wounded by a pistol-bullet and
having committed suicide, was found, and though they could not help
admitting that the man was a retainer of the Daimio who supplied the
guard, the Ministers yet drew a vain distinction between him and the men
actually on duty. It could not, however, be denied that he, or they, were
allowed free ingress and egress through hundreds of men carefully posted
as described by Colonel Neale, and already alert and sounding the alarm,
or that the huts of the Japanese were within 150 feet of the spot where
two Englishmen were murdered, and while the assassin (or assassins) was
inflicting sixteen wounds on one victim and nine on the other.
2. The intended attack was publicly known beforehand: for several days
the Japanese servants had refused to remain in the Legation overnight,
absenting themselves against orders. The Government also were aware of
the plot, and of the day when it was to be put in execution, which was
on the recurrence of a festival, and, according to the Japanese calendar,
the anniversary of the attack in 1861. The actual day having passed, one
of the Governors of Foreign Affairs was deputed by the Council to call
and congratulate Colonel Neale on his escape. Colonel Neale remarked that
he had no reason for anxiety. The Governor smiled and took leave. But
the "ides of March ... had not gone," In the darkness of that very night
the attack was made. Colonel Neale, recounting the circumstances to the
Council of Foreign Affairs, asked why the Governor had not warned him of
what was impending, instead of congratulating him on his supposed escape;
but "the Gorogiu, to my great surprise, replied that I was quite right in
my observations, and they regretted they had not thought of warning me."
3. The Japanese Ministers treated the whole matter with apparent
indifference, months having elapsed before any information was
communicated to the British Minister respecting either the cause of the
attack or the execution of justice on the instigators, and then it was
only such information as had been common property for two months. All that
the Japanese Ministers had to say by way of explanation to the foreign
envoys was that the attack proceeded from the unsettled state of public
feeling and from the Japanese nation clinging to the old _régime_; but
that they, the Ministers, hoped gradually to modify this national feeling
so that the foreigners might live in the country without apprehension,
&c. But in the meantime? Well, they "had given strict orders to increase
the protection." Tragicomedy could not well go further. Evidently matters
must soon reach a climax.
As the first outward and visible consequence of the assassination of
the two marines, an infantry guard of twenty-five men from the 67th
Regiment was sent over from China in addition to the naval guard and the
cavalry escort; and thus another step was taken towards the _dénoûment_
of the plot. Then the word "retribution" was revived in the diplomatic
correspondence, after having been launched by the Foreign Office in
1861 but arrested _in transitu_, so that it did not reach the Japanese
authorities. It was Admiral Hope, a man who never shrank from speaking
his mind or backing his opinion, who put the case in a pointed form
to the British Admiralty. "Deeply as I should lament the adoption of
hostile measures against the Japanese," he wrote on August 28, "after
the best consideration I have been able to give to the subject I
cannot avoid the conclusion that it is absolutely necessary to nip this
assassination-system in the bud; and that not to take effectual measures
for doing so now will be merely to postpone the evil day to a future, but
not far distant, occasion."
If further impetus had been wanting to develop this idea, the Japanese
lost no time in supplying it; for the next assassination which has left a
dark blood-stain on the annals of the time was perpetrated on the highroad
between Yedo and Kanagawa on September 14, 1862.
The victims were a party of three gentlemen and one lady from Yokohama who
had crossed the bay in a boat to Kanagawa, where their horses awaited them
on the _tokaido_. This broad road not being macadamised made an agreeable
riding-course, and it was beautified with lines of old trees, one section
in particular near where the tragedy occurred being known as "The Avenue."
The party proceeded from Kanagawa towards Yedo, not intending to go
farther than Kawasaki, which was the limit of authorised excursions in
that direction. On the way they met the _cortège_ of a Daimio, the first
indication of which was several _norimono_ (the heavy palanquin in which
the nobles of Japan travel) with armed attendants, forming an irregular
train with considerable intervals between. When passing these _norimono_
the foreigners walked their horses. In the intervals where the road was
clear they cantered, and this mode of alternate progression continued
for three or four miles. Then a regular procession was met, preceded
by about a hundred men marching in single file on either side of the
road. The foreign party thereupon proceeded at a foot's pace, keeping
close to the left side, until they reached "the main body, which was
then occupying the whole breadth of the road." The English party halted
on approaching the main body, according to one of the survivors; but
according to another, they were stopped "when they had got about twelve
men deep in the procession," by "a man of large stature[7] issuing from
the main body," who, swinging his sword with both hands, cut at the two
leading foreigners, Mr Richardson and Mrs Borrodaile, as their horses
were being turned round, and then rushed on the other two. Whereupon the
advance-guard, who had been described as marching in single file, closed
in upon the retreating riders. They were all able by the speed of their
horses to get clear of their assailants; but Mr Richardson was so terribly
hacked that after going some distance he fell from his horse, dying, or,
as his companions thought, dead. He lived, however, until the Daimio's
procession reached the spot, when several of his retainers proceeded to
butcher and mutilate the dying man in the most shocking manner. It speaks
well for all three gentlemen that Mrs Borrodaile escaped substantially
unhurt, though a sword-stroke aimed at her head cut away her hat as she
stooped to avoid the blow. She saw Mr Richardson fall, and her two wounded
companions, unable to render help, urged her to ride on. She miraculously
arrived at Yokohama, bespattered with blood and in a state of very natural
agitation. Mr Clarke and Mr Marshall, exhausted by their wounds, managed
to reach Kanagawa, where they were properly cared for at the American
consulate.
This tragedy made a more vivid impression on the world at large than
previous ones had done, for several reasons. The cumulative effect of so
many cold-blooded massacres was beginning to tell, and the Japanese cup
was nearly full. There was a lady in the case who galloped seven miles
for dear life, her horse falling twice under her. The chief victim was a
fine specimen of a young Englishman, and very popular. The crime touched
the general foreign community in Japan in a special manner, since the
party belonged to, or were the guests of, Yokohama, where there were also
newspapers and press correspondents to make literature of the event.
Some friction was created between the foreign community and the British
representative by the ghastly circumstances of this murder. The community,
seeing their own comrades slaughtered without mercy, were incensed,
and called for vengeance, which they deemed to be within reach, for the
Daimio's retinue were sleeping at Hodogaya, a station but a few miles
off. There was force enough afloat and on shore to effect the capture of
the murderers red-handed, and the residents called for this to be done.
Reasons of policy and expediency influenced Colonel Neale in a contrary
sense, in which he was fully supported by the Foreign Office when the
reports reached England.
The Richardson murder, like that at the British Legation, had its
special characteristics, though of a different order. The outrage was
unpremeditated; the Government was not implicated: it was a fortuitous
collision between the spirit and traditions of two opposed civilisations.
The deed might be construed as the natural punishment of a breach of good
manners--for Japanese etiquette, of which the party seemed to have been
ignorant, required them to dismount--or, as the spontaneous expression
of feudal Japan's deep hatred of the foreigner, concentrated in the
act of a single moment. There was no need on this occasion to hazard
guesses as to the responsible author of the crime, or to keep up a long
train of make-believe negotiations. The _cortège_ belonged to the Prince
of Satsuma, and was escorting his father, Shimadso Saburo, who went
afterwards to the Mikado and said he had been grossly insulted by the
foreigners on the road, and had ordered them to be cut down.[8]
The problem was thus reduced to its simplest expression. The circumstances
supplied precisely what was wanting to give shape and point to Admiral
Hope's proposal to "nip this assassination-system in the bud"; and a month
after the event he followed up his previous despatch to the Admiralty by
a detailed scheme of reprisals, with the amount and precise distribution
of the force required to give effect to it. And he concludes his despatch
appropriately with the remark, that "should it be found necessary to use
measures of coercion especially against Satsuma, ... the position and
confirmation of his principality render him peculiarly open to attack."
There were now two reclamations on the Japanese Government--redress for
the murder of the two marines at the Legation in June, and for the killing
and wounding of the Richardson party in September. The British _chargé
d'affaires_ pressed both demands, without committing himself to specific
threats until the mind of her Majesty's Government should be known. Lord
Russell's instructions were sent on 24th December 1862, and would reach
Japan some time in February. They were peremptory as to the use of force
in case of need, whether against the Government or the Prince of Satsuma.
V. THE TYCOON'S DILEMMA.
Strife of parties in Japan--Impotence of Tycoon--His prospective
overthrow--Orders issued by Mikado to drive foreigners out of
Japan--Prevarications of Tycoon--Plots and counterplots--French
and English troops in Yokohama--Compensation paid for the
Richardson murder, but assassin not yet brought to justice--Demand
made on Prince of Satsuma--Bombardment of his castle by
Admiral Kuper--Happy results--Offensive attitude of Prince of
Nagato--Firing on foreign ships of war--Sir R. Alcock's return
from furlough--Publication of his book 'The Capital of the
Tycoon'--His exposition of the political status of parties in
Japan--Dubious attitude of Tycoon--And Mikado--Utmost limit of
concession to Japanese pleas of weakness reached.
During the interval that elapsed between the tragedy of September 1862
and the expiation of the crime, revelations of a startling character were
made respecting the strife which was raging among the various parties
in the State--the Tycoon, the Mikado, the great Daimios, and the lesser
Daimios, who followed the Tycoon and the Mikado respectively. These
revelations, however, though they lit up as by lurid lightning-flashes
some corners of the landscape, left the whole in a fog more treacherous
than total darkness. The foreign officials who were called upon to act in
the midst of it confessed themselves unable to unravel the mystery that
surrounded them, nor is it any part of our task to make such an attempt.
It was the chaos which preceded order, a period when the elemental forces
were in the melting-pot, a phase of foreshortened evolution such as had
never till then been dreamed of. However trying such an ordeal was to
the foreign agents who had to go through it, the stress upon them was
as nothing compared to that which lay upon the principalities and powers
of the country itself during the agony of their national birth-throes--a
circumstance which has to be borne in mind when judging of the behaviour
of the Japanese Government in that trying time; for truly the defence of
their proceedings stood much in need of extenuating circumstances.
We have seen that the British Government had already confessed its
belief that the Tycoon's Government was incompetent to maintain order
where foreigners were concerned. Yet until that Government itself should
plead incompetence, foreign States could only hold it wholly accountable
for all that was done affecting their interests. But the Tycoon's
Government fought tooth and nail against such admission, resorting
to every subterfuge to maintain their status, while yet evading the
responsibilities of the position. The success of this ambiguous policy
required that the foreign representatives should be kept in ignorance
of the relations which subsisted between the different parties in the
Japanese State. Hence secrecy and misdirection governed their diplomatic
intercourse. The treaties themselves having been tainted from their
origin with deception, every stage of their execution was marked by
dissimulation, which came gradually to light as the pressure from within
and from without caused now one corner, now another, of the curtain to be
raised.
The Tycoon was between the upper and the nether millstone,--foreigners
pressing him for fulfilment of his obligations, while a power greater
than his own was demanding the complete repudiation, or at least the
substantial curtailment, of all these obligations. The straits he was
put to to keep up his two faces were pitiable and desperate, for he had
to make the Mikado and the Daimios believe he was as much opposed to the
foreigners as they were, while to foreigners he was professing loyalty
and throwing the blame of the reaction on the hostile Daimios. Instigated
by them, the Mikado had fully asserted his authority, and the Tycoon was
no longer able to pose as the sovereign ruler of Japan. The allocation of
a site for the foreign Legations on Gotenyama, a popular pleasure-ground
in Yedo, was attacked, and the Tycoon ordered to rescind the grant, which
he endeavoured to do by proposing the substitution of another site. This
being refused by the British _chargé d'affaires_, the Japanese sentry on
the buildings under construction was assassinated, and soon after the
whole building was blown up and burned.[9] So ambiguous had become the
attitude of the Tycoon, that Colonel Neale was in doubt whether this
conflagration pleased or displeased the Yedo Government. (Six months
later the buildings occupied by the United States Legation were likewise
destroyed by fire.) The hostile Daimios, in the name of the Mikado, were,
in fact, putting strong pressure on the Tycoon, while those Daimios who
had favoured the treaties had been punished by confiscation of their
revenues. The Tycoon's position was fast becoming untenable, and in the
last extremity his advisers decided to take the foreign representatives
for the first time into their confidence.
In January 1863 a Governor of Foreign Affairs informed Colonel Neale
that the Mikado was angry because he had not been consulted about the
treaties, either before or after the signing of them; and that his
Majesty had ordered the Tycoon repeatedly to drive foreigners out of
the country. "But," replied the British _chargé d'affaires_, "that is
wholly inconsistent with what the Gorogiu previously told Sir Rutherford
Alcock." "Quite so," rejoined the Governor; "only what the Ministers told
Sir Rutherford Alcock was false." "But if one member of the Gorogiu can
thus give the other the lie, what security have we that some successor
of yours will not equally disavow what you say? so that at one time
we have the Mikado reported as friendly and at another as hostile to
foreign treaties and trade, and we shall never know which to believe."
This not very promising beginning of "confidences" was quickly followed
by singular confessions and proposals--part of the system of "frauds,
stratagems, and deceptions practised by the Tycoon's Government," as
Colonel Neale characterises them. The Tycoon's Government was ordered to
communicate officially to the foreign representatives the mandate of the
Mikado to drive out foreigners and close the ports. In obedience to this
order a Governor of Foreign Affairs, in announcing the fact to the French
Minister, softened its effect by explaining that this was carrying out the
Mikado's orders "officially"; but "ce n'est là qu'un stratagème nécessaire
pour tromper le peuple japonnais." In developing his plan of campaign the
Governor laid bare to the French Minister the intention of the Tycoon to
deceive the Mikado by pretending to share his views about foreigners; he
was in like manner to deceive the Daimios. Ogasawara, the Minister who was
responsible for carrying out the edict against foreigners, being "un homme
très capable," would find a means of avoiding the execution; he would
himself go to Kioto and make the Mikado listen to reason; if he refused,
then he would pick a quarrel and employ force against the sovereign. In
that case would the foreign Powers assist the Tycoon? All this, however,
must be kept from Hitotsubashi, the First Minister of the Tycoon, "whose
views were as yet uncertain whether to carry out the expulsive orders from
Kioto or not. Ogasawara had formed the plan to declare himself the enemy
of foreigners in order to deceive the high officers even of the Tycoon who
might not be favourable to his scheme; but everything was to be done to
"save Japan." Finally, Ogasawara was to come the day following himself to
interview the foreign Ministers at Yokohama, but not a word of all this
would he utter "for fear of indiscretions." He would only speak briefly
to the point of the notification of the Mikado's order of expulsion. And
if the foreign Ministers would be good enough to frame their reply to that
message in such severe terms as would make an impression on the agitators
in Kioto and Yedo, it would assist the patriotic schemes of this bustling
statesman. So everybody in Japan from the highest to the lowest was to
be bamboozled--even one's own colleagues in the Tycoon's service--and the
only people with whom faith was to be kept were the detested foreigners,
as represented by the Ministers of England and France! Well might Colonel
Neale recoil in disgust from such a brewage of "fraud, stratagem, and
deception." The Tycoon's officers had in all this one definite object
in view, which was to induce the foreign squadrons then menacing Yedo to
transfer themselves to Osaka and Hiogo and menace some one in that part of
the empire. And, curiously enough, the presence of the French troops which
had recently arrived in Yokohama was not only tolerated by the Tycoon,
but they were to serve him as a lever whereby the astute Ogasawara was
to work on the feelings of the Mikado, by representing to his sovereign
the indignation of the foreign Governments and the difficulty of giving
effect to an order for general expulsion, which would include a body of
well-armed troops.
For while such comedies were being enacted at Yokohama the Tycoon himself
was at Kioto under the friendly surveillance of the Mikado and his
faithful Daimios, and it was a reasonable enough calculation that the
vicinity of foreign fleets might tend to moderate the counsels of these
recalcitrants, to ease the tension between the contending factions, and
lighten the burden of the Tycoon.
Meantime the pressure of the British demands for redress of the two
grievances was met by evasions and delays until the ultimatum stage was
reached in June 1863. The pecuniary indemnity charged on the Tycoon,
amounting to £110,000, was then paid under circumstances so peculiar as
to be worth recounting as affording further insight into the agitations
of the period. After exhaustive negotiations, leading to an ultimatum,
an agreement was made whereby the Government was to pay the amount
demanded by seven instalments, commencing 18th June 1863. On the 17th
June Ogasawara, third member of the Gorogiu, wrote a curt note to say
the money could not be paid owing to an "unforeseen circumstance," and
postponing payment till 22nd June. On the 19th the same Minister wrote
to Colonel Neale that he intended to have left Yedo for Yokohama for an
interview, but was prevented by sudden illness. This was followed by an
intimation from the Government that no payment whatever would be made.
Diplomatic relations were thereupon broken off by the British _chargé
d'affaires_, and the conduct of affairs was placed in the hands of the
admiral. This brought about the interview with the French Minister above
alluded to, when the Japanese emissaries promised to pay at once the whole
amount due under the agreement with Colonel Neale, and the specie was
actually conveyed in four cartloads to the British Legation on 24th June.
The only explanation given of this strange shuffle was that the numerous
enemies of the Tycoon and of foreigners were on the watch, and threatened
terrible consequences if any money should be paid to the foreigners. That
difficulty, however, had been surmounted by the resourceful Japanese
Machiavel issuing strict orders that the payment should be kept a dead
secret from all except the Governors of Foreign Affairs themselves,--the
four cartloads of silver, drawn each by a dozen or two of men, grunting
laboriously at the task, from the Japanese custom-house to the British
Legation, remaining for this purpose conveniently invisible to a cloud of
hostile witnesses.
The demands made on the Tycoon in respect of the attack on the British
Legation and on the Richardson party being thus satisfied, it only
remained to carry out the second portion of Earl Russell's instructions
and exact equal satisfaction from the Prince of Satsuma, over whom the
Yedo Government had shown itself to have no control whatever. Much delay
had occurred, due to a variety of circumstances--mainly to the aggressive
acts of another great Daimio, Choshiu, who possessed the western key
of the Inland Sea. This might have necessitated a concentration of the
British squadron in that spot--which actually came to pass a year later.
Finally, however, Rear-Admiral Sir Augustus Kuper proceeded in August to
the Bay of Kagoshima, the stronghold of the Satsuma principality, Colonel
Neale accompanying him to present the demand on the prince with which he
had been intrusted by the British Government.
The sole reply vouchsafed by the Daimio was a recommendation to Colonel
Neale to return to Yedo and treat with the Tycoon, as Satsuma had no
relations with Great Britain. It was now the admiral's turn to act, and
his first step in the way of reprisal was the seizing of three steamers,
then lying in the bay, which were soon burned to relieve the squadron
of their charge. Thereupon the Daimio's forts opened fire, and a hot
engagement ensued in the midst of a terrific gale, which the prince's
people afterwards said was reckoned on as a condition favourable for
his attack on the foreign ships. There was considerable loss of life
on both sides; much damage was done to the Daimio's defences, arsenal,
and magazines. But the inhabitants of the town escaped injury from the
conflagration, they having previously been removed to places of safety.
The squadron returned to the Bay of Yedo.
Within a short time the Prince of Satsuma sued for terms, paid the
indemnity demanded, £25,000, promised to punish the murderer of
Richardson, when caught, and became a good friend to the English, to the
extent at least of desiring to cultivate relations with them.
Thus happily ended the first hostile encounter between Japan and any
Western Power, the first demonstration of the superiority of foreign arms,
and, as some think, the baptism of fire which was the inaugurating rite
by which Japan entered into the comity and the competition of the Western
nations, and into that path of material progress which has since led to
such astonishing results.
The attitude of the Yedo Government in this affair may be said to
have been one of placid observation. They had nothing to regret in the
chastisement inflicted on a prince who set their authority at defiance.
In the interval of time between the settlement of the indemnities for the
two outrages and the departure of the fleet for Kagoshima the Tycoon's
Ministers had drawn closer and closer to the foreign representatives, and
English steamers were chartered for conveyance of the Tycoon's troops
to Osaka with the knowledge and approval of the British authorities.
The defence of Yokohama was by the Government voluntarily confided to
the English and French admirals, and sanguine hopes were held out to
the foreign representatives that if the Tycoon should succeed in his
endeavours at Kioto, foreign relations would assume a totally different
aspect on his return to his capital.
On the other hand, while the negotiations with the Yedo Government had
been dragging their slow length along, another of the great princes
had taken arms against the foreign Powers indiscriminately. The Daimio
Choshiu had made a strong stand against foreign intercourse, and in a
well-reasoned and moderately worded letter addressed to the Tycoon in
May 1862 he urged union between that high officer and the Mikado in order
that the country might be placed in a condition to resist foreigners. The
territory of the Prince of Nagato, as he was also designated, commanded
the narrow strait of Shimonoséki, which connects the Suwonada, or Inland
Sea, with the outer waters. This had become the regular route of steamers
between the Bay of Yedo and the south of Japan, as at this day.
Moved by an impulse which was not cleared up at the time, if ever it has
been since, Choshiu began in July 1863 to fire from his forts and from
armed vessels in the straits on passing steamers. French, American, and
Dutch war-vessels were successively bombarded as they entered the passage.
The fire was returned, and damage inflicted on the Daimio's batteries;
but such was the power of their guns and their precision of aim that
many were killed and wounded on the foreign ships, some of which were
obliged to retire without getting through the strait. The prince remained
obdurate and continued his hostile proceedings, a steamer belonging to
the Tycoon and another belonging to Satsuma, said to be the friend and
ally of Choshiu, coming in for the customary salutation as they passed.
He embargoed or destroyed trading junks attempting to pass the straits,
and thus established an effective blockade of the great commercial artery
of Japan.
It was droll to find Satsuma, soon after the affair of Kagoshima,
appealing to the Mikado against these outrages of Nagato, and opposing
the reactionary policy of his quondam ally. Satsuma had had his lesson;
Nagato had yet to receive his.
* * * * *
Sir Rutherford Alcock returned to his post after two years' furlough. His
distinguished services had been recognised by the Queen's Government,
who conferred on him the honour of Knight Commander of the Bath. In
the same year, 1862, he completed his valuable work, 'The Capital of
the Tycoon,' which for the first time brought the real Japan of that
day to the knowledge of the reading world. This, the most important
single literary work left by the busy pen of Sir Rutherford Alcock,
is a storehouse of information on the history, civilisation, politics,
religion, art, and industry of Japan, carefully sifted and presented in
the most attractive form. It contains, moreover, a vivid narrative of
the reopening of international intercourse with that country, and of the
stirring incidents which marked the earlier years of its progress. It is
also a philosophical study at first hand of the most remarkable political
evolution that history records. Considering the official activity and high
tension under which the materials were gathered, the writing of such a
book, of a Japanese Grammar, and other literary and artistic studies, is
a proof of the intellectual detachment which is usually associated with
the higher order of mind. This work of a single pioneer observer has well
borne the scrutiny of the innumerable host of students, grave and gay, who
have followed in the same path. After forty years its authority remains
intact. A short extract will at once show the character of the book and
afford a convenient summary of the then Government of Japan:--
That the Mikado is the hereditary sovereign of the empire, the
descendant of a long and uninterrupted line of sovereigns of the
same dynasty, and the only sovereign _de jure_ recognised by all
Japanese from the Tycoon to the lowest beggar--a true sovereign
in all the legal attributes of sovereignty; and that the Tycoon
receives investiture from him as his lieutenant or generalissimo,
_and as such only_, the head of the executive, is known to most
readers of the present day. True, the Mikados have been shorn
of much of their power since Yoritomo, in 1143, profiting by
civil commotions among the princes of the land, and armed with
power as generalissimo to humble these turbulent chiefs, only
suppressed the troubles to arrogate to himself the greater part
of the sovereign power under the title given by a grateful master
of Ziogun. Another Pepin d'Héristal and mayor of the palace, he
did not care to dethrone the descendant of an illustrious line of
emperors, and was content with holding the reins, and transmitting
the same privilege to his descendants. And so the power continued
divided in great degree, the shadow from the substance, until
later, towards the close of the sixteenth century, a peasant's son
and favourite attendant of the actual generalissimo, but known
in Japanese history by the name he afterwards assumed of Taiko
Sama, raised himself, apparently by great abilities as well as
daring, to the seat of power on his master's death, and stripped
the reigning Mikado of the last remains of secular power.
Since that time the successive emperors, or Mikados, are brought
into the world, and live and die within the precincts of their
Court at Miaco (Kioto), the boundaries of which they never pass
during their whole life. Is it possible to conceive a less
desirable destiny? But the Zioguns, or Tycoons, as they are
styled in European treaties, have long been undergoing a somewhat
analogous process, under which all substantial power has been
transferred from them to the principal Daimios, or Princes,
who form a Great Council of State, and whose nominee the Tycoon
himself has become, as well, I believe, as all his chief Ministers
or councillors. They exercise, if they do not claim, the right
of removing both Tycoon and Ministers, and a voice potential in
all affairs of State. For legislative changes even the almost
forgotten Mikado must indeed give his consent, never of course
refused when any unanimity prevails....
The Mikado of the day is the exact type of the last descendant
of Clovis, sitting "sad and solitary, effeminate and degenerate,"
doomed only to wield "a barren sceptre" and sigh away a burdensome
and useless existence of mock pageantry; never permitted to pass
the gates of his prison-palace....
This double machinery of a titular sovereign who only reigns,
and a lieutenant of the empire who only governs and does not
reign, from generation to generation, is certainly something
very curious; and by long continuance it seems to have led to a
duplicate system such as never existed in any other part of the
world, carried out to almost every detail of existence. Every
office is doubled; every man is alternately a watcher and watched.
Not only the whole administrative machinery is in duplicate,
but the most elaborate system of check and countercheck, on the
most approved Machiavellian principle, is here developed with a
minuteness and perfection as regards details difficult at first
to realise. As upon all this is grafted a system of more than
oriental mendacity, we feel launched into a world of shadows and
make-believes hard to grapple with in the practical business of
life. Of their mendacity and cynical views respecting it I had
many illustrations. One of the official gentry upon a particular
occasion having been found by a foreign Minister in deliberate
contradiction with himself, was asked, somewhat abruptly perhaps,
how he could reconcile it to his conscience to utter such palpable
untruths. With perfect calmness and self-possession he replied, "I
told you last month that such and such a thing had been done, and
now I tell you the thing has not been done at all. I am an officer
whose business it is to carry out the instructions I receive and
to say what I am told to say. What have I to do with its truth or
falsehood?"...
To return to the Tycoon and the governors of the early middle
ages, with its suzerain and feudatories, its fiefs and a
phantom king, with hereditary mayors of the palace and chiefs
with 10,000 retainers, each one holding himself as good as the
Tycoon, who must live in constant dread of open revolt or secret
assassination, what a pleasant state of existence for all parties
it reveals! Each of these territorial magnates or great Daimios
is practically independent of the Tycoon when within his own
territory, with power of life and death over all his subjects
and dependants; ... even an imperial passport will not secure an
intruder's life....
Power has passed in no small degree from the Tycoon's hands, as
it formerly did from the Mikado's, and now remains chiefly in an
executive Council of State, consisting of five Ministers, and
these again held in no small check, if not in subservience, by
the Daimios and feudal chiefs of the higher order, amounting to
some 360. Although these do not actually form a Chamber of Lords
nor assemble in a body at stated periods, nothing legislative, it
is said, can be done without their assent obtained.... They hold
themselves too high to demean themselves by taking part in the
administration, or holding office, under the Tycoon. But neither
the Tycoon nor the Ministers, separately or collectively, can
venture upon a change in their laws and customs without their
sanction and a further confirmation by the phantom sovereign of
Miaco....
In the mean time, between the Mikado who nominally wields the
sceptre--the Tycoon, a youth who no less nominally governs the
kingdom, and is but fourth in rank in the Japan red-book, for
three of the Mikado's officers take precedence--and the Daimios
great and small, ... the administrative machinery of the realm
seems to be kept in order.
Another incident of the year was Sir Rutherford Alcock's second marriage
to a friend of the earlier Shanghai days, the widow of the Rev. T. Lowder,
first consular chaplain of that settlement. They had been both widowed
about the same time. They were about the same age too, and the union,
based on a deep-rooted and matured affection, proved an exceptionally
happy one during thirty-five years, till death divided them. Lady Alcock
accompanied her husband on his return to Japan, where they arrived in
March 1864.
During the two years of the Minister's absence affairs in Japan had, as we
have seen, been advancing rapidly--whether towards a reasonable solution
or to a catastrophe was as yet doubtful. The agitation against the foreign
treaties had been gathering force and consistency; the Tycoon's position
was becoming more and more precarious, his existence being pledged to
the annulment of the hated treaties. Encouraged by the success which
had attended his mission to Europe in 1862, he despatched another in
the beginning of 1864, to represent to the European Governments that the
public feeling in Japan was growing worse every day, that the Tycoon would
not be able to protect foreigners in Yokohama, and that, in short, the
port must be closed and foreign trade confined to Hakodate and Nagasaki.
The mission, already on its way, was met by Sir Rutherford Alcock in
Shanghai, where he had an opportunity of personal conference with the
envoys. The situation was thus summarised by the Minister in a despatch
to the Foreign Office, 31st March 1864:--
It is just two years since I left Japan in order to be present in
London when the first mission sent by the Tycoon to the treaty
Powers in Europe should arrive. Returning to my post a month
ago, I met a second mission on its way to the same Courts. These
two embassies seem to me to form very significant events in the
history of Japan and its relations with foreign States.... I
consider the signing of the protocol of June 1862 (afterwards
adopted with unimportant modifications by all the other Powers),
freely granting without abatement all that the Tycoon asked, was
the culminating act and fitting end of the conciliatory policy
so consistently adhered to from the beginning. It was impossible
to concede more without abandoning the treaties altogether.
Thenceforth it only remained to gather the promised fruit of
greater security to life, and freer intercourse within narrowed
limits, which, for the moment at least, appeared unattainable in
the wider range of five ports and two cities.... The avowed object
of the second mission is to declare that all the hopes held out
by the Tycoon of the probable results of the first concessions
have been illusory.... The only fruit has been indiscriminate
aggression, increased insecurity, calling for measures of coercion
on the part of all the treaty Powers; finally, a decree for the
expulsion of foreigners, with a mission from the Tycoon to declare
his utter inability to maintain the treaties, and to suggest a
surrender of all the rights and privileges they were framed to
secure in perpetuity.
The mission was not successful in its main purpose, and soon returned to
Japan to report progress.
VI. THE CRISIS.
Foreign rights must be sustained by force or definitively
abandoned--Organises a retaliatory demonstration against
Nagato--Forts at Shimonoséki attacked by international squadron,
after delays--Satisfactory results--Nagato claims authority of
Mikado for his attacks on foreign ships--His defeat gave courage
to Tycoon--Anti-foreign measures promptly withdrawn--The treaties
of 1858 ratified by Mikado--Sir R. Alcock's recall--Lord Russell's
_amende_.
The Tycoon's Government had actually succeeded by patient persistence in
evil-doing in making Yedo "too hot to hold" the foreign representatives,
who had in consequence gradually accustomed themselves to residence in the
freer air of Yokohama. "Incendiarism and assassination had done their work
and effected the end for which they were employed," writes Sir Rutherford
Alcock, who goes on to remark that "the recovery of this lapsed right"
(of residence in the capital) "will have now to follow, not precede, other
measures." So far had the foreign nations retreated before the forces of
reaction, forces which necessarily acquired cohesion and momentum with
each retrograde step of the opposing Powers. The country, meaning thereby
the official hierarchy, was now at least, if not before, practically
unanimous. Mikado, Daimios, the Tycoon himself, however they may have been
embittered by their mutual jealousies, were now united, and passionately
united, in the determination to expel the foreigners, so far as it might
be possible,--on which latter point, however, there was room for great
differences of opinion. The Prince of Nagato might be a rebel against
the Tycoon's or the Mikado's authority, both of whom had disavowed his
proceedings, but his determination to block the passage of the Inland Sea
and suppress all trade but his own was an important part of the national
policy of expulsion. It appeared that the only friend of foreigners at
that time was the Prince of Satsuma, who had become a changed man since
his stronghold was bombarded, and he began to see that the restoration of
imperial rule and deposition of the Tycoon might be accomplished by the
assistance of foreigners. That event was undoubtedly accelerated by the
policy of the first two British ministers in Japan.
The new position was reviewed under a sense of deep personal
responsibility by Sir Rutherford Alcock in several despatches during
the spring of 1864, and, as we have seen, the conclusion he arrived at
was that the utmost limit of concession to Japanese exigencies had been
reached: everything had been given up to them that could be given up
without abandoning the treaties entirely and leaving the country. There
was not even room left for negotiation. "No attempt at a compromise of
such conflicting pretensions could possibly succeed." "Compromise or
concession is plainly impossible in the nature of things." Moreover, Earl
Russell had enjoined on both the _chargé d'affaires_ and the Minister to
stand firmly for their rights. His latest instruction to Sir Rutherford
Alcock on his departure from England was, "You will in any case require
from the Tycoon and the Daimios the execution of the treaty." In the face
of a determination to annul the treaties this necessitated some vigorous
action.
The most obvious and most straightforward course indicated was to deal
a decisive blow against the Prince of Nagato, who for nearly twelve
months had set the whole of the Western Powers at defiance. He was more
accessible from the salt water than even Satsuma; he was repudiated,
hypocritically or not, by his sovereign; and a punitive expedition to
Shimonoséki would not involve detriment to trade or inflict injury on
innocent people. Such an operation had, moreover, much to recommend it
from the point of view of general Japanese policy; for "in attacking
in his stronghold the most violent and rash of his class, it may be
possible," said the British Minister, "by one blow to paralyse the whole
body of Daimios.... The command of the Inland Sea and the whole internal
trade of that portion of Japan which must of necessity be in our hands
during any operations would do more, probably, to bring the Court of the
Mikado and of Yedo to a sense of the danger and folly of entering upon
hostilities with the treaty Powers than any course of diplomacy.... The
alternative is a probable catastrophe, and a war of a protracted kind at
no distant period."
About this time the appeals which for two years had been made in vain to
the British military authorities in China for a sufficient force to give
security at Yokohama were listened to, and a regiment of infantry, the
20th, and of marines, were detached from Hongkong and a force of Beloochis
from Shanghai. One of the anomalies of an unprecedented situation was that
the Government, which was concerting measures to expel all foreigners,
was nevertheless constrained to provide accommodation for these troops,
"which were not to make war, but to prevent acts which would lead to war."
For all that, the presence of foreign troops on the sacred soil was far
from palatable, even though the Tycoon might secretly acquiesce in the
reasoning by which the British Minister had commended a measure which was
in any case an unavoidable necessity.
The arrival of these troops had a marked effect on the tactics of the
Tycoon. For ten months his Government, which had been powerless and
passive regarding the warlike proceeding of Choshiu, now became alarmed
lest the foreigners were about to take the law into their own hands with
that recalcitrant Prince. The Tycoon's Ministers began to affect much
concern for his punishment and repression. They would at once move against
him, and until the result of their efforts was known they urged that the
British garrison should remain absolutely passive in Yokohama.
For effective action against the Daimio Choshiu it was necessary that an
agreement should be come to among the treaty Powers, three of whom had
been in actual collision with his batteries and armed ships. Individually
Great Britain had not received this direct provocation, and was only
interested in the general question of the obstruction to commerce and in
the maintenance of the political status of the Powers. How the concert
was brought about would be an interesting inquiry, but we may safely
conclude that the achievement owed much to two causes, one positive and
one negative. The former was the strong will, clear sight, and absolute
fearlessness of responsibility of the British Minister; the latter was
the non-existence of any ocean telegraph. For, as we have so frequently
seen nearer home, the direct efforts of the Great Powers to arrive at
any agreement for common action are always protracted, often abortive,
and seldom successful. The decision in this case had to be taken by the
agents on the spot, personally intimate with each other, acting on general
principles and on a free interpretation of the instructions from their
Governments. And so it came to pass that within three months after Sir
Rutherford Alcock's arrival in Japan the Ministers of France, the United
States, the Netherlands, and Great Britain had signed a protocol in which
they agreed to make a fresh representation in the nature of an ultimatum
to the Tycoon's Government, calling upon it to adopt means to put an end
to the hostilities of the Prince of Nagato, and informing it that on no
account would their Governments allow the port of Yokohama to be closed.
This agreement of May 1864 was the natural sequel to a declaration of 25th
July 1863, by which the same four Powers had intimated to the Tycoon the
necessity of reopening the Inland Sea, but which had remained without any
acknowledgment by the Government. The new _note identique_ addressed to
the Gorogiu was equally left unacknowledged by that body.
Nothing therefore remained but to take the respective naval commanders
into counsel. The Ministers had no authority over them, but it was quickly
found that the concert of admirals and captains was as perfect as that
of the diplomatic body. The ships of the four Powers--Great Britain,
France, United States, and Netherlands--were placed under the command of
Vice-Admiral Sir Augustus Kuper, and a plan of action was settled upon.
The advance to Shimonoséki was still, however, delayed by two
circumstances. The first was the return from Europe of two Japanese
students, out of five who had been sent there the previous year by that
very Prince of Choshiu against whom coercive measures were about to be
undertaken. These young men, hearing while abroad of the proceedings
of their chief, and convinced, from what they had seen in Europe, of
the overwhelming resources of the Powers, that Choshiu was bringing
disaster on himself in forcing battle on such antagonists, resolved to
hurry back to Japan with the express object of warning their prince of
his danger. The arrival of the two youths in Yedo was thought by the
foreign Ministers to offer some chance of coming to terms with Choshiu
without the arbitrament of arms, and accordingly facilities were afforded
by Vice-Admiral Kuper for landing the two travellers at the nearest
convenient point to their prince's territory. They were intrusted with
overtures of peace in the form of a long memorandum from the British
Minister, reviewing the whole situation, and explaining the attitude of
the Powers and the hopelessness of the armed resistance of any Daimio. The
messengers brought back to the rendezvous, where a light-draught vessel
waited for them, an oral reply from the prince explaining his attitude
and asking for three months' delay to enable Choshiu to confer with the
Mikado and Tycoon, by whose orders he had done what he had done, and
without whose consent he dare not change his policy. It is interesting
to recall the fact that the names of the two youthful emissaries were Ito
and Inouyé, who have since played so distinguished and honourable a part
in the development of their country.
The second cause of suspension of action against Choshiu was the news
of a convention concluded in Paris between the Japanese envoys and the
French Foreign Minister, dated June 20, 1864, in which this very object of
the reopening of the Straits of Shimonoséki was provided for. Were this
convention to be ratified by the Tycoon the immediate cause of dispute
would be removed. The matter, however, was disposed of with more than its
accustomed promptitude by the Japanese Government, who curtly refused to
ratify the French convention. The Tycoon's Ministers declared themselves
unable to carry out the agreement, and to ratify it would merely be to
add another to their too onerous obligations. Admiral Kuper was finally
given a free hand on August 25, and before the middle of September the
forts and ships of the recalcitrant prince were completely destroyed by
the Allied squadrons, not without considerable resistance and some loss
to the assailants. The action was conducted with admirable harmony among
the officers engaged, and the reciprocity of compliments between the
respective commanders-in-chief, especially between the French and English
admirals, is edifying reading in these later days.
The negotiations which followed on board the British flagship ended in
the most satisfactory manner. Choshiu submitted with a good grace, while
apologetically throwing the blame of his hostile proceedings on the two
higher authorities, the Mikado and the Tycoon.
All the Daimios had been notified of the decision of the Mikado and
the Tycoon to break off relations with foreigners from 20th June 1863.
Three days after this notice its purport was confirmed, and a positive
order given to "make military preparations with diligence that the ugly
barbarians may be swept out." This was promptly followed by a third yet
more explicit. "Bearing this in mind" (the date of expulsion, 20th June
1863), "you must omit nothing which is required to complete the maritime
defences of your province, and you must be ready to sweep them off should
they attack you unawares." A liberal interpretation of these imperial
decrees might be held to cover the aggressive proceedings of the most
powerful Daimio in the empire, whose province happened to command its most
important strategic position, and who watched the continual passing of
foreign ships under the guns of his forts. The time when Choshiu commenced
his attacks on passing ships coincided so exactly with the date assigned
by the Mikado for the general rupture with foreigners, that it is hardly
possible to dissociate his act from the scheme of his suzerain. When
subsequently called before the council, Choshiu boldly defied both Tycoon
and Mikado, declaring that he alone had obeyed the imperial mandate, and
deserved gratitude for executing single-handed the law of the empire for
the extermination of foreigners. The rupture was decreed for June 20.
The American steamer Pembroke was fired on on the 25th, being, no doubt,
the first foreign vessel to pass the straits after the 20th. Whatever
ulterior designs this great feudatory may have entertained, therefore, he
was not altogether without provocation in making a raid on the Mikado's
capital, which he did in the month of August following, and for which he
was condemned by his suzerain to a term of seclusion within his palace,
the usual form of punishment of an offending feudatory, which implies much
more than would appear from this mild definition.
On the capture of the forts at Shimonoséki the Government at once stepped
in and assumed all the obligations, pecuniary and other, which the issue
of the collision imposed on the Prince of Nagato. The town of Shimonoséki
had been spared, but held to ransom. A convention was signed whereby the
Tycoon agreed to pay an indemnity of three million dollars, which was
eventually paid in full, the last instalment of it after the fall of the
Shôgunate.
Taking heart of grace from his defeat by foreigners, the Tycoon, if
not the Mikado also, began to coerce Choshiu on his own account. Not
being able to reach him conveniently in his principality, the Tycoon's
Government set to work to destroy his vast establishment at Yedo. The fire
brigade was employed in this work, and such was the extent of it that
several thousand men were said to be engaged for three days in burning
down the buildings and fittings. Moreover, when categorically questioned
by the foreign Minister whether, now that Satsuma and Choshiu had been
brought under control, "the Tycoon would find it possible to give full
effect to the treaties, and to deal with any recalcitrant or rebellious
Daimios," the confidential Minister of the Tycoon replied without
hesitation, "Yes, certainly."
The defeat of the two most warlike of the Daimios illuminated the
situation and cleared the way for more intelligent action all round.
To the Japanese Government it was once for all demonstrated that it was
not by force of arms that the "ugly barbarians" were to be driven from
the country. The foreign fleets were for the time being invincible, and
the Powers had also shown themselves ready not only to act, but to act
together. There was, besides, a strong garrison of foreign troops in
Yokohama--a British force of 1200 men of all arms, with a marked tendency
to increase. The Mikado and the Tycoon wisely acquiesced in the situation,
so far as foreigners were concerned, not necessarily abandoning their
policy, but at any rate deferring its execution.
Their immediate attention was directed to the internal commotions of the
country, which could not now be long in coming to an explosion. A new
planet had intersected their system and upset its balance. There could
be no rest, therefore, until a new equilibrium was found. Foreign forces
chastising the great feudatories, with the tacit acquiescence and for the
benefit of the suzerain, could only be a step either towards dissolution
and subjugation, or towards renaissance and national unity. Feudalism had
had its day and served its turn; it was wholly incompatible with the new
relations which had been imposed on the country by the foreign Powers. But
where is the State, ancient or modern, that could entirely remodel itself,
as it were, on the field of battle and in front of the enemy? That must
remain the proud speciality of Japan.
The effect of the action at Shimonoséki on the position of foreigners
was at once made apparent in various ways. The Tycoon's Government had
laid a secret embargo on raw silk sent to market at Yokohama as part and
parcel of the general imperial design of closing that port, or, in the
alternative, of a gigantic scheme of Government monopoly of the whole
foreign trade, such being the only form of commerce for which the Japanese
officials had any real sympathy. The stoppage had lasted three months.
After Choshiu's defeat the restrictions were at once officially withdrawn,
though considerable efforts were still required to give full effect to the
withdrawal. Once more, also, "the Tycoon resolved to abandon the policy
of equivocation and duplicity," and to inform the Mikado frankly of the
impossibility of closing the port or of refusing to maintain the treaties.
The moment seemed opportune for raising the question of the ratification
of the treaties by the Mikado, in respect to which Sir Rutherford Alcock
made certain plain statements in a letter addressed to the Tycoon in
person. "There exists," he said, "a want of accord on the subject of
foreign relations between the Mikado and Tycoon.... The Mikado, by
requiring the abrogation of treaties, has reduced the Tycoon to the
alternative of either disobeying his legitimate sovereign or bringing
on his country all the calamities of war.... The only solution of the
difficulty that promises either peace or security is the ratification
of the treaties by the Mikado." The four foreign representatives
simultaneously pressed the same consideration on the Government, eliciting
from the Japanese Ministers the admission, "We perfectly agree with you,
it should now take place."
It now became the business of the British Minister to show to his
Government that the proceedings at Shimonoséki fulfilled in every point
the instructions he had received from the Foreign Office. This he did in
a despatch dated September 28, 1864, and so convincingly that Earl Russell
wrote in reply--
Your despatch of the 28th of September is a successful vindication
of the policy you have pursued.... My despatches of the 26th of
July were written with a view to discourage the interruption of a
progressive trade by acts of hostility, and to forbid recourse to
force while the treaty was generally observed. Those despatches,
you will understand, remain in full force.
But the documents you have sent me, which arrived by the last
mail, show that the silk trade was almost wholly interrupted by
the Tycoon, who seemed to be preparing to abet or to abandon the
project of driving out foreigners according to the boldness or
the timidity of our demeanour.
In this position there could be no better course than to punish
and disarm the Daimio Prince Nagato.
That course had these three separate advantages:--
1. It gave the best promise of concurrence of the four Powers,
as France, Holland, and the United States had all been sufferers
from the Prince of Choshiu's violations of treaty, while we were
most exposed to risk and loss by any Japanese attack on Yokohama.
2. It involved proceeding only against a rebellious vassal, and
not against the Mikado or the Tycoon.
3. If the operation should prove successful, the four Powers were
under no obligation to undertake further hostilities unless fresh
provocation should be received.
Her Majesty's Government have received with great satisfaction
the account of the naval operations of the four squadrons, and
their result, contained in your despatch of September 28. Those
operations were conducted in the most gallant manner; the loss was
not considerable; the four Powers acted in harmony together; no
defenceless city suffered during the hostilities; and the terms
granted to the offending Daimio were moderate towards him, and
sufficient for us.
I have only to add, that I am commanded to express to you her
Majesty's full approbation of your conduct.
So far so good. But the slow mail service of those days, and the entire
absence of the telegraph, admitted of wonderful interpolations in
correspondence with such far-off countries as Japan. Events marched
quicker than the course of post could follow them, and despatches were
sometimes written which the writer would have given a good deal to recall.
Such was the case here. We have said that soon after Sir Rutherford
Alcock's return to Japan he addressed some weighty despatches to the
Foreign Office on the situation, undoubtedly leading up to the ultimate
employment of force in vindication of the foreign treaties. This was in
full accord with the spirit of Earl Russell's instructions dated December
17, 1863. These were--
1. To require from the Tycoon and the Daimios the execution of the
engagements of the treaty.
2. To consult the admiral and any military officer who may be sent
to Japan as to the means of strengthening and holding our position
in Yokohama.
3. To endeavour to procure from Hongkong the services of a regiment
of infantry.
4. The admiral to be authorised to land marines and destroy the
batteries which have been erected for the evident purpose of
interrupting the passage of our merchandise, &c.; but he must take
care that no unarmed and peaceable town should be bombarded.
But when the Foreign Secretary received the Minister's despatches of
May, following the terms of these instructions to their only logical
conclusion, he became alarmed at the prospect of active measures, and
by despatch of August 8 he recalled the Minister under the pretext of
the need of a personal consultation on the state of affairs. This was
followed up by some temporising despatches, saying the Inland Sea was of
no consequence; that the Tycoon was professing an intention to do all
that was necessary; and that the Tycoon and Mikado, seeing the British
forces strong though passive, would gradually drop all hostile policy.
How were these vacillating utterances to be reconciled with the position
so decidedly taken up eight months before?
A disturbing influence had intervened, causing Lord Russell to see Japan
at an oblique angle. Certain other brave words of the Foreign Secretary
in that year, 1864, in connection with the Danish Duchies, had also had
their current turned awry and lost the name of action. Japan was but
an echo. Of course, after the definite energetic policy of the Queen's
representative in Japan had proved a brilliant success, had involved no
complications, had, in fact, been the means of temporarily uniting four of
the treaty Powers, Lord Russell was ready enough to make the _amende_ to
Sir Rutherford Alcock, though to have cancelled his order of recall would
have been too frank an admission of error to expect from any statesman.
In this manner was the career of Sir Rutherford Alcock in Japan brought
to an abrupt, but highly honourable, conclusion. He received his letter
of recall while in the act of completing the final convention with the
Tycoon respecting the affair of the Prince of Choshiu. The announcement
was heard in Japan almost with consternation. The Tycoon's Ministers were
particularly grieved about it, and they sent a strongly-worded letter
to Earl Russell to be laid before the Queen, dwelling on the important
services the envoy had rendered to their country, and begging that he
might be sent back to them as soon as the urgent affairs that required
his presence in England had been settled. The mercantile communities of
the treaty ports were no less warm in their commendation of the services
rendered to them and to general commerce by the decided measures adopted
by the Minister, and in their regret at his departure. "The principal
triumph of your success," they said in a farewell address, "lies in
the fact that you have accomplished all this not only without causing a
collision between her Majesty's Government and that of the Tycoon, but
by actually strengthening the Government from which you obtained the
concessions, as well as by acting in such a way as to secure the cordial
co-operation of the foreign Ministers resident at this port."
Admiral Kuper took so serious a view of the loss of a representative
of such unrivalled experience and virility, that he took it on himself
to address to the Minister privately a weighty appeal, on public and
patriotic grounds, to postpone his departure until at least he had time to
refer again to the Foreign Office, which on subsequent information must
certainly take a different view of the action of their Minister. That
the admiral correctly appreciated the attitude of the Foreign Office is
sufficiently shown by Lord Russell's despatches already quoted, and by
that dated January 31, 1865, which concludes, "I shall wish you to return
at once to Yokohama, to perform in Japan such additional meritorious
services as may be expected from your tried ability and long experience."
But Sir Rutherford Alcock did not consider that the episode would have
left him the prestige necessary for further useful service in Japan, and
he declined to return to that country.
Sir Rutherford remained at his post long enough to secure the fulfilment
of the primary objects of the Allied expedition against Choshiu: the
reopening of trade, which had been practically closed both at Yokohama and
Nagasaki, and a number of most important improvements in the conditions
of foreign residence in Yokohama. These comprised a parade-ground and
racecourse, hospitals, slaughter-houses, filling in of swamp, a clear
and convenient site for consular buildings, a good carriage-road seven
miles in circuit, away from the town, and various other extensions of the
comforts of foreign residents.
The ratification of the treaties, too, by the Mikado was virtually
arranged. The very day before Sir Rutherford Alcock embarked for England
he was enabled to report to his Government that the law interdicting
intercourse and putting all foreigners under the ban of outlawry had
been modified, and its hostile provisions repealed. This was considered
tantamount to the Mikado's acknowledgment of the Tycoon's treaties, and
thus the vice of illegality which had attached to them from their origin
was at last removed. A year later the Mikado distinctly and in so many
words approved of the treaties. This, therefore, may fairly be considered
Sir Rutherford Alcock's last service to his country in Japan. It was
not, however, till 1868, after the attack on Sir H. Parkes while on his
way to the palace of the Mikado, that an edict was published, over the
imperial sign manual, decreeing that the lives of foreigners in Japan were
thenceforth to be deemed as sacred as the lives of the subjects of the
empire.
But it would not have been Japan without an assassination to mark the
close of the Minister's eventful career. Two officers of the British
garrison, Major Baldwin and Lieutenant Bird, on an excursion on horseback
to the romantic district of Kamakura, and near the celebrated bronze
statue of Buddha, were stealthily attacked in broad day by a couple of
two-sworded men, and mercilessly cut down. One of them lived late into
the night, spoke, and drank tea, when the assassins, or accomplices
in the crime, paid another visit to the dying man and, as in the case
of Richardson, despatched him with ghastly ferocity. The Tycoon might
truthfully say, "An enemy hath done this"; but the position of the
Government had been so much strengthened by the collapse of Choshiu that
the Tycoon's officers were no longer afraid of pursuing the criminals
and bringing them to justice, especially as they happened to be _ronin_,
or masterless men. "Twelve similar onslaughts," wrote Sir Rutherford,
"have been made on foreigners, and in no one instance has justice had its
due." For "even in the only case where men were executed, the Government
did not venture in exposing their heads to declare their crime, or admit
that it was for an attack upon foreigners." The present case was to
prove an exception to the hitherto unbroken rule. Within a month certain
accomplices in the crime were brought to punishment in Yokohama, and there
one of the principals, who was executed in presence of British officers,
died boasting of his crime and claiming the highest patriotic sanction
for it.
Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock took their departure from Yokohama on
December 24, 1864.
VII. THE BIRTH OF NEW JAPAN.
Four years of civil strife--Cessation of efforts to eject
foreigners--The adoption of foreign appliances--Educational
missions--Unanimity of Japanese in cultivating foreign
intercourse--The merits of those who promoted the movement--Sir R.
Alcock's services in the cause of Japanese progress--His services
to Japanese art.
"Is this the commencement of a civil war?" wrote the British Minister
during his first year of residence in Japan. When he left the civil war
was well advanced. Feverish energy was being displayed by every party
in the State. There was a race for foreign ships and armaments among
the Daimios; the Tycoon was involved in a struggle for existence; the
legitimate sovereign was asserting his authority, and the feudatories were
rallying to his support. Neither the immediate nor the remote issues were
clear, but the sword was out of the scabbard, and would not be sheathed
again until a new order of things should be established.
The civil strife, which ended within four years in the abolition of
feudalism and the assumption by the Mikado by divine right of all
administrative functions, may be called revolution, restoration, or merely
evolution, according to the point of view from which we regard it. The
hand of the foreigner had loosened the stone from the mountain-side, but
it rolled down by its own laws. The introduction of foreigners into the
country brought down vengeance on the Tycoon as the responsible agent.
To abase him and transfer the sceptre to another house was perhaps as
far as the views of the hostile princes in the first instance extended.
The consummation of the movement in the unification of the State, though
its natural fruit, grew and ripened with a rapidity which bewildered
the lookers-on. From the moment when the goal was descried a profound
unanimity of sentiment urged the leaders towards it, the territorial
magnates being themselves the first to propose the abolition of the
privileges, titles, and responsibilities of their order, which stood
in the way of nationality in the larger sense. But wide and manifold as
were the issues raised in the course of the brief but fierce struggle, it
concerns us chiefly to remember that the avowed impulse which gave the
first impetus to the whole was the passionate purpose of expelling the
foreigner. This was the rallying cry that brought the entire nation into
line. The presence of the foreigner on the soil sacred to the gods was
an insult and a deep humiliation. The manifestoes of the Daimios, their
invective against the Tycoon, the distress of the Mikado and his constant
imploring appeals for help to purge the land of its defilement, testify
to the sincerity and universality of the feeling. In that sentiment there
was no difference between Tycoon and Mikado, the Daimios attached to the
one and those attached to the other: they were only divided as to the time
and the means, the risks and the consequences.
From the first the foreigners had evidence of the tenacious character
of the Japanese: their persistency in face of difficulties and
discouragements, and, above all, their readiness, not only to risk, but
deliberately to sacrifice, their lives in the pursuit of an object. Such
a spirit would render any people formidable,--most formidable when united
in a common purpose; and their genius for combination is one of their
most typical characteristics. What these qualities have already led to
the world has partly seen; what they will hereafter lead to is perhaps as
much hidden from our generation as the phenomena of the present were from
the preceding one. But from the earliest days of the new intercourse it
was hardly possible to misconstrue the seriousness of the Japanese people,
though their refinement of taste, especially in art, their pleasant
vices, and their addiction to light and frivolous recreation, often masked
their more solid qualities. One word may possibly reconcile the seeming
contradiction. They are an intensely vital people, living every part of
their lives earnestly, which, however, is no synonym for solemnly. The
gravest and the gayest have their appointed place in the social system,
whose parts appear to be co-ordinated as if the whole were a direct
inspiration of nature itself, elastic, accommodating, ever renewing
itself, and yet so highly organised that there is no unemployed surplus,
no waste material, nothing that does not find an effective place in the
great cosmic product. That many practical men have misjudged the Japanese
is beyond doubt. Indeed it is the so-called practical men who are the
most apt to misjudge human phenomena, seeing that their system leaves out
of account all they do not understand, which is usually a good deal. It
was long thought that the Japanese were mere copyists and imitators, and
disparaging epithets have been applied to them under that misapprehension.
But, rightly considered, their very imitation was the clearest proof of
their depth. They had been overcome by the foreigner, therefore they
would help themselves to his weapons--all his weapons, educational,
scientific, ethical, and not merely the machinery of war. This was not
imitation, but adaptation and assimilation. It was no more imitation than
what is seen every day among Americans, for instance, who so successfully
"exploit" the ideas of Europe, and improve on them. It gradually dawned
upon the intelligent few who watched the process from the beginning that
the adaptation of European customs and costume was nothing but a strict
application of the laws of evolution. The Japanese began spontaneously
to appropriate ideas from the dress of Europeans; modifications, scarce
perceptible, were adopted at first by servants. Certain malefactors
advertised for by the Yedo police as early as 1862 were described as
wearing "riding trousers and coats of tight foreign fashion." Each article
of attire was adopted on its merits, for convenience and for no other
reason, one of the first items being buttons. Strange combinations were
sometimes seen, such as a billycock hat, or policeman's cast-off coat with
a few buttons left on, surmounting a pair of bare legs shod with wooden
clogs. Such bizarre combinations were not uncommon during the time of
transition. The growing habits of travel necessitated a revolution in the
coiffure. The ancient custom of shaving part of the head and training the
truncated queue required a staff of skilled barbers to accompany every
travelling party. The expense and inconvenience were intolerable, and so
the old head-dressing had to go the way of obsolete things.
The Japanese deliberately resolved to learn every secret thing that any
foreign nation possessed. To do this they had to be conciliatory, so as
to gain access to schools, laboratories, arsenals, factories of every
kind. Japanese swarmed in the workshops of Europe and America; they took
military, naval, mercantile, and industrial service wherever they could
get it.[10] In such pursuits an outlandish costume would have been a
severe handicap, not merely marking them as strangers, but hampering them
for the mechanical work they might be engaged in. To be the comrades of
the foreign workmen they must dress like them, and minimise all personal
peculiarities. It is often said by those who regret the change that
the native dress was so becoming, and that the Japanese looked ever so
much nicer in their own than in foreign garb--which may be true, though
irrelevant. To look nice was not what they were aiming at. They had to
join the family of nations, to become men of the world, to comply with
all civilised observances, and as much as in them lay to avoid attracting
notice to their nationality. Such a programme necessitated adoption of
the common costume of the Western nations, and if we do not accuse German,
French, English, and Americans of being imitators, who for similar reasons
adopt a uniform society habit, why should the Japanese be imitators when
doing the very same thing? Let the world not deceive itself,--there is
something more serious than copying in the development of the Japanese
nationality. Borrowers they have undoubtedly been, and that on a grand
scale. Religion, philosophy, language, literature, art, and artistic
manufacture they took bodily from China, apparently through Korea. But who
shall say they have not improved upon their teachers? That is a kind of
borrowing which may yet carry Japan very far. We should not forget that
even a Shakespeare may be an incorrigible borrower.
From the first appearance of Commodore Perry's "black ships" in 1853
one idea took complete possession of the Japanese ruling classes, and
inspired all their manifestoes. How far the common people were in sympathy
with their rulers there was no evidence available to show. The idea was
that their nation was weak, and in its seclusion had been outstripped by
the nations of the West, and that they must make every exertion to arm
themselves in order to be able to cope with and to expel the barbarians.
All their temporising with the enemy had this end in view, and they
followed it up with such zeal, intelligence, and national harmony, as to
excite both wonder and admiration. In the building up of their nation, and
giving it a status among the military and industrial Powers, the Japanese
freely and extensively employed foreigners in all capacities, dispensing
with their services when done with as naturally as a builder dispenses
with his temporary scaffolding. They used foreigners from the outset,
but have never allowed foreigners to use them. They have thus remained
the masters in their own house, and therein has lain their strength,
present and prospective. Teaching they have recompensed with coin; and
though confidences have been received with courtesy, their own plans and
purposes have been veiled from the most honoured of their tutors. Their
attitude has remained what it was in the days of the Dutch monopoly,
when instruction in Western lore, including naval and military science,
was freely imparted to them, while the uses to which it was applied were
studiously hidden from the teachers. Though the Dutch, for example, taught
the Japanese mathematics and triangulation so successfully that the pupils
were able to make accurate surveys and construct maps of the country and
charts of its sea-coasts, yet the Dutch were never permitted to see the
finished result.
In looking back on the work of those foreign Governments and their
agents who by their interference shook this new nation into life, it is
obvious that they did not, any of them, know what they were doing. There
was a divinity shaping their ends which they, with their conventional
concessions to the modern spirit, had no idea of. If we are to pass
judgment at all on those men, it must not be by the ulterior consequences
which they did not and could not foresee, but on the merits of the
problem which immediately presented itself to them. The demand for free
intercourse with Japan being shared by all the nations of Christendom
was bound to be satisfied one day: it was but a question of a favourable
opportunity. Commodore Perry and the United States Government made their
opportunity. Townsend Harris had his opportunity made for him, and with
great adroitness, and not too much scruple, he took advantage of it to
force the half-open door. Lord Elgin, in his turn, did a smart thing in
sandwiching in a full treaty with Japan between his earlier and later
negotiations with China. Each in his degree contributed to the general
result without any apparent sense of responsibility for unsettling an
ancient polity of which they were ignorant, and to which they were blind.
Lord Elgin was indeed visited by the qualms of conscience which were as
natural to him as they were honourable, but the particular consequences
of which he had a passing dread were not those which followed. In any
case, his act was momentary: its results remained to be dealt with by
those who came after. The heat and burden of the day fell upon those who
had to "stub the Thurnaby waste" which the cavaliers had gaily cantered
round,--to reduce theories and compliments to everyday practice. Here was
not only a labour but a responsibility, not of the attenuated abstract
order, but one which was apt to knock violently at their door every
morning and every night. For whatever might be the remote effects, the
immediate issues were always urgent, and what a conscientious man had to
do was to shape a daily course among unknown rocks and whirlpools such
as would eventually lead to a successful ocean voyage. It is surely a
test of good pilotage in such emergencies that no step need be retraced;
that to whatever extent temporary exigencies may hasten or retard, they
should never deflect the general movement from its true direction; that
the years achievement should be homogeneous with the day's doings. It is
a test which would eliminate the time-server from political life, but it
was in all important particulars well responded to in the short career of
Sir Rutherford Alcock in Japan.
It would be idle to conjecture the probable course of events had a
different spirit prevailed among the first diplomatic representatives
in Japan. Had they been a weak and yielding body, or had they been
connected with the bureaux of their respective Governments by electric
wire; still more, had each step taken by them formed a bone of contention
between opposing factions in their legislatures, all alike ignorant of
the situation, the proceedings of the Ministers would not only have been
deprived of all initiative, but would have been liable to paralysis at
every critical moment. Under such conditions foreign policy in Japan
would have been like driftwood in a whirlpool; the forces of reaction must
have gained courage; the position of foreigners would have been rendered
untenable; and what might have happened in the country itself it would,
as we have said, be quite idle to imagine. In those days no Power would
have interfered to maintain order or to defend treaties had England held
aloof. There is no need to carry hypothesis further than this in order
to appreciate the good fortune not only of Great Britain herself, but of
Japan and the world, in having as pioneer representative a man so alert,
so capable, so clear, and with such unshakable nerve as Sir Rutherford
Alcock; for it is the man on the spot in distant countries who shapes
the policy of his Government, if it is to have a policy at all, and this
historic service the first Minister sent to Japan did effectually render
to his country. Amid difficulties unprecedented, emergencies incessant,
and an elemental strife ever raging, the terms of which were inscrutable,
two immutable principles guided the Minister to a clear issue. The first
was duty, at all costs and hazards; the second, the integrity of the
treaties. Whatever might be argued about the policy or the ethics of
making them, once made, retreat from their engagements was impossible
and compromise futile. Matters had to be pushed to an issue. The whole
term of Sir Rutherford Alcock's service in Japan was filled up with
a warfare against the temptation to temporise in the hope that things
would be better,--a temptation to which, as we have seen, her Majesty's
Government for a time succumbed. In perplexing situations the best solvent
is simplicity, and the Minister found his safety in directness of aim and
inflexibility of purpose. Standing on that rock, the mystifications with
which he was surrounded lost their power to disturb him. "Fortunately,"
he wrote to Earl Russell, "whether the Tycoon was playing a comedy or
not, the course plainly indicated is the same, the assertion of a fixed
determination not to be driven out, and to maintain the rights secured
under treaties, by force, if all other means fail."
To the man who perceived and successfully carried out this simple rule of
action his countrymen owe no common debt.
As it is proverbially the busiest people who have the most leisure, the
British Minister found time in the midst of his harassing labours to
employ his æsthetic gifts for the benefit of the public. It fell to his
lot, as the reader may remember, while consul in Shanghai, to contribute
samples of the art, industry, and natural products of China to the
Great Exhibition of 1851, neither the native Government nor the foreign
mercantile community being sufficiently interested to assist in the
work. A similar service was asked of him in Japan for the Exhibition of
1862, and it was performed under similar conditions, neither the native
Government nor the foreign residents taking any part in it. The task
had a special fascination for Sir Rutherford, for Japanese art was a new
and rich field for the student as for the dilettante. The Japanese had
originally borrowed their whole art, with their literature and religion,
from China, but they had improved or at least transformed it so much as
to make it their own, though it is contended that in ceramics they had
never succeeded in overtaking the Chinese. For five hundred years they
had worked on the Chinese idea; but at last in the eleventh century A.D.
native schools sprang up, and thenceforth Japanese artists followed their
own inspiration, which was that of nature, producing, in the fulness of
time, the exquisite results with which the world is now so familiar.
The introduction of this Japanese work to the connoisseurs of Europe
through the London Exhibition of 1862 was effected through the personal
exertions of Sir Rutherford Alcock, who added immensely to the obligations
under which he laid his countrymen by the publication in 1878 of a short
but comprehensive work on 'Art and Art Industries of Japan.' Like the
collecting of objects for the Exhibition, the writing of this book was
evidently a labour of love. It reviews with a sympathy which almost
rises to enthusiasm not only the finished product, but the stages of the
evolution of Japanese art, having its origin in a loving fellowship with
nature and in a special affinity with what may be called its humorous
side. The genius of Japan has taken a different form from that of the
West, where "the great works of the sculptor and the painter are seen by
but few," whereas the art work of Japan, "which is always in sight, tends
to cultivate the taste of the million by bringing constantly before their
eyes objects of taste, not less effective because they are unconsciously
felt and enjoyed." It is art pressed into the service of the life of the
people "which can give a priceless value to the commonest and least costly
material by the mere impress of genius and taste, ... which is the most
precious, tested by any true estimate of value and utility." The volume
is well worth perusal by those who are interested in art, not only for
its philosophical yet simple analysis of the subject generally, but for
the instructive way in which universal principles are adapted to the
popularised art of Japan. To read this book, one would imagine the writer
had devoted the whole of the three years and a half he spent in Japan to
the cultivation of the industrial fine arts.
The Japanese language, too, attracted the interest of the busy Minister,
who during his stay in Yedo brought out a grammar and phrase-book in
Japanese and English. They have, as a matter of course, been superseded by
the more recondite studies of later students; but as a first step towards
familiarising the language to visitors and strangers these introductory
works cannot be denied their meed of merit.
VIII. THE DIPLOMATIC BODY--TSUSHIMA.
Four Western Powers represented in Tokio--Russia only in
Hakodate by consul--And naval officers--Cordial Anglo-French
relations--Temptations to intrigue--Secret communications to
Japanese--Representatives of the Powers arousing suspicions
of each other's designs--Letters cited--The Tsushima
incident--Admiral Sir James Hope obtains its evacuation by
Russians.
During the first few years there were four representatives of the
Western Powers resident in or near the Tycoon's capital: they were the
Ministers of Great Britain, the United States, France, and Holland.
Russia had accredited no Minister, but intrusted her interests to the
very capable hands of M. Goskavitch, consul at Hakodate, the treaty port
in the northern island of the Japanese group. What was no doubt deemed
of at least equal importance, she maintained a powerful squadron on the
western coast of Japan, whose actual strength was magnified to the view
by their incessant activity, which had the character of a continuous
demonstration on the coast both of China and Japan; and the principle of
direct action by naval officers without the medium of diplomacy, at the
ports of Nagasaki and Hakodate, was so different from that of any other
Power, that the Daimios declared to the Tycoon that any of the foreigners
could be safely insulted except the Russians. Their manœuvres in force
round Hongkong, meaningless to the ordinary professional or political
eye, played probably a corroborative part in the impressions they were
making on the rulers of the neighbouring countries. Prussia had not yet
come effectually on the scene when the decisive operations against the two
great Daimios, which really determined the future course of events, were
undertaken.
The relations of the resident foreign Ministers among themselves
were marked by substantial harmony, in some instances rising to great
cordiality. The foreign diplomatic body thus presented a united front to
the forces, open or covert, that were opposed to them. Such differences of
opinion as arose in the course of business either were not of a nature, or
were not allowed, to interfere with the pursuit of the national interests
of each, which were inextricably bound up in the common interests of all.
United, the influence of the Powers was practically irresistible; divided,
they would have fallen an easy prey to the devices of what, for want of
another term, must be spoken of as the common enemy, Japan. It is not
pleasant to think of Japan in this way, since she was on her defence in
a position forced upon her; yet overruling circumstances had, in fact,
placed the parties in temporary antagonism--the world against Japan.
The key to the success of European diplomacy of the earlier period was
without doubt the Anglo-French alliance, which had culminated in the
coercion of imperial China, and was spending its ebbing strength in
suppressing the great Taiping insurrection against that empire. Being
possessed of mobile forces within call, the two Powers were always in a
position to act when circumstances called for action, and they had become
accustomed to co-operation. Hence the potency of their united counsels.
The Minister of France as well as the admiral on the station had the
instructions of the Imperial Government to support England in her Far
Eastern policy,--"for," said the calculating Emperor Napoleon III.,
"though our interests in that part of the world are trivial, we may find
our account in the friendship of England in quarters where our interests
are vital." That the Ministers of the two countries, therefore, should be
on terms of official intimacy and mutual confidence was only natural, and
it was a tower of strength to them both. But we gather from the despatches
that personal respect and attachment went hand in hand with the official
_liaison_; and whether it was Sir Rutherford Alcock or Colonel Neale on
the one side, or M. Duchesne de Bellecourt or Leon Roche on the other,
their expressions towards their colleagues were always of the warmest.
So completely confidential were their relations, that when something was
insinuated by third parties which, if credited, would have necessitated
explanations between the two, it was simply dismissed as unworthy of
consideration. There were not wanting those who would have regarded with
equanimity a little more coldness between the Allied colleagues.
For, notwithstanding their good fraternal relations, it cannot be said
that the foreign officials in Japan were uniformly successful in resisting
the besetting sin of diplomacy, the common temptation to intrigue. In
certain cases it was resorted to as the natural means of advancing the
solid interests of a particular country; in other cases, where no national
interest could be served by it, it would appear that intrigue was its own
allurement, followed for the mere pleasure of the game. The political
situation in Japan was sufficiently complicated to afford occasion for
both these motives of action. The unstable Government of the country,
oppressed by conflicting obligations and consciously struggling for
existence, offered an ideal theatre for volunteer experimentation by those
on whom no ulterior responsibility rested.
Be that as it may, however, secret communications did pass between certain
foreign officials and the Japanese Government of a kind which betrayed the
design of undermining the interests of other Powers and frustrating their
policy, presumably for the benefit of those whose zeal in the cause of
international honour impelled them to adopt the _rôle_ of international
informers. It need hardly be said that Great Britain was a principal
object of these occult practices; neither need it be denied that she
suffered from their effects in the estimation of the Japanese Government,
which was naturally credulous of any disparagement of the Powers it
dreaded so much. In the incandescent condition of the intercourse of those
earlier years, had any of the foreign agents spoken well of his neighbours
he would have obtained no hearing for his praise; but given vilification
for its motive, the representation would find its way straight to the
Japanese heart, since nothing could be too vile to be believed of the
intentions of any of the foreign nations. The spy system was congenial
to the Japanese, woven into their whole administration; while as regards
foreigners, they had had ample experience centuries before of the lengths
Christian nations would go in traducing each other for the sake of gaining
a little favour of the rulers of Japan. It was entirely in keeping with
their medieval experiences that these dastardly barbarians should now
be ready to stab each other in the back. Whatever reception, therefore,
on other grounds, might be accorded to gratuitous information conveyed
through prejudiced channels, no surprise was occasioned by it, and as
little doubt of its truth, so long as its burden was evil. This much has
to be borne in mind as a tribute to the intelligence of the writers of
letters such as the following, addressed to the Gorogiu, or Bureau of
Foreign Affairs, and conveyed to them with ostentatious secrecy. In 1860
one Government agent wrote--
Last year towards the middle of the second month the English
created great difficulties in China in consequence of the war
they waged by sea and land. They had violated the treaties in
a shameful manner, and as this excited the indignation of the
Chinese they attacked the English on the river, and captured three
men-of-war. Feeling herself humbled by this defeat, England swore
revenge. She uttered the most unjust menaces against China, and
at the very moment the Chinese commenced their conferences upon
this subject four or five months ago the English suddenly ordered
forty-seven men-of-war from London. These vessels are at present
at Chusan, and await the signal for action. Within two or three
months the men-of-war will leave for the north. The merchant
vessel Dayspring brought us all this news on the 12th instant.
On speaking about this important news to Mr ----, the British
Consul residing here, he gave me the following information in a
strictly private manner.
"At last," said Mr ----, "the war with China is decided upon.
We have for a long time been searching for a good harbour where
we shall be able to put the sick and wounded. We have chosen
Tsushima, where we intend to send the sick and wounded, and as
soon as the war has commenced we have resolved to take possession
of that island."
Mr ---- communicated this to me as a great secret, and I now give
you this information in a strictly private manner.
You will perceive that this is a question of the utmost
importance, and you must take it into serious consideration
without delay, and with the utmost attention.
Four years ago the English, who had for a long time coveted
an excellent little island called Perim, took possession of
it, informing the Turkish Government that they only wished to
place their invalids on that island, and this false pretext was
matter for serious discussion. The Turks were perfectly aware of
the deceitful conduct of the English. They did not ignore that
fourteen or fifteen years before, while fighting with the Chinese,
the English had stolen Hongkong under the same pretences.... But
while they were deliberating the English sent their invalids to
Perim, and immediately built forts and stole this island in the
most disgraceful manner.
As the English are wonderful impostors, it is your duty not only
to take care of Tsushima, but also of the smallest island in your
empire: this must be done with the utmost watchfulness.
I inform you of this danger in the most private and secret manner.
And a year or two later, when the intercourse between the British Minister
and the Tycoon was charged with contentious, almost with explosive,
matter, missives were passed in from philanthropic onlookers of a tenor
which excited no surprise, but a good deal of genuine exultation, in the
minds of the Japanese Ministers. It was well known some time before that
it had been sought to prevent a settlement of outstanding difficulties
between the two countries by the assurance volunteered to the Tycoon's
Government that Great Britain was quite unable to make war on Japan,
and the following letter is only one of a series of such international
amenities which shunned the light of day:--
Japan was opened by us, ... and after we had settled down here
the other Powers made their appearance. The intentions of ...
in opening this country to foreign intercourse was to increase
the welfare and prosperity of its inhabitants. While we were
doing our utmost for this nation some English men-of-war suddenly
appeared here to demand indemnities for a murder which, although
unjustifiable, was not a _casus belli_. As long as the ambitious,
warlike, and quarrelsome Englishmen are here, the object we have
in view cannot be obtained. They must, therefore, be driven out
of this country. You cannot consent to their demands. Do not
fear the English; there are other nations in Japan, and if you
require assistance you may rest assured we shall give you moral
and material support.
But in vain was the snare set by these fowlers in the sight of the bird.
The notion of setting a thief to catch a thief was not uncongenial to
Japanese habits of thought, but a generous offer of armed assistance
against a foreign Power savoured too much of the wooden horse even for
such inexperienced internationalists as the New Japan. Having expressed
their appreciation--had it been the Chinese Government it would have taken
the form of praise for their loyal obedience--the Government intimated
that they would exhaust their own resources before putting these friendly
foreign Powers to the trouble of intervening on their behalf. The Japanese
have always been wary about accepting help unasked for. The United States
frigate Niagara, which brought back the envoys in 1860, brought also a
staff of artillery officers whose services were tendered to the Tycoon,
but declined. And it was said the American officers were rather astonished
by the proofs afforded them in Yedo of the efficiency of armament and
proficiency of the gunners which Japan was already able to show.
One of the vigilant observers of political portents about that time became
convinced that the French had designs upon Tsushima, a belief which was
no doubt in some way also communicated to the Japanese Government; but
by that time--1863--it was too late for any Power to flirt with that
"excellent little island," for since the first warning given the Japanese
in 1860, above cited, the island had been made the subject of definitive
arrangements. The incident itself, though of brief duration and leaving
no visible trail behind it, nevertheless deserves to be remembered as a
landmark of history.
When Count Mouravieff was in Yedo in 1859, he took the trouble to warn
the Tycoon's Government that the English harboured aggressive designs
against the island of Tsushima, which is a long double or "twin" island,
possessing wonderful harbours, and situated midway between the main
island of Japan and the southern coast of Korea. On March 13, 1861, the
Russians landed from the corvette Possadnik in Tsushima, and saying their
ship wanted repairs, began to build houses on shore. Captain Birileff had
forced the Prince of Tsushima to receive him at his capital, which created
an intense feeling of indignation, especially in the ranks of the nobles,
who each saw himself exposed to similar intrusions. The Daimio repeatedly
requested the Russians to leave, but was always told the ship required
further repairs. In consequence of reports from his own officers and the
Japanese Government, Vice-Admiral Sir James Hope looked in at Tsushima
himself in the month of August, and observing what was going on there,
he addressed a letter to Captain Birileff, of which the substance was as
follows: The prolonged stay of his Imperial Majesty's corvette Possadnik,
the erection of buildings, &c., having created alarm in Yedo, the admiral
had the intention to communicate on the subject as early as possible
with Commodore Likatchoff. Would Captain Birileff meantime facilitate
this correspondence by replying to the questions--(1) Should the Japanese
Government appeal to the treaty, which conveys no right either to create
establishments ashore, to survey the Japanese coast without Government
sanction, or even to enter a non-treaty port except in case of necessity,
would Captain Birileff's orders admit of his leaving Tsushima immediately
on the request of the Japanese authorities? (2) Was it Captain Birileff's
intention to leave Tsushima in October as previously stated to Commander
Ward, leaving the buildings to whomsoever wanted them?... (3) Had the
captain orders to create a permanent establishment there?
The reply of Captain Birileff was to the effect that the officers of his
Imperial Majesty were accountable only to their own chiefs; ... that he
was quite astonished to hear of the alarms in Yedo, seeing that only two
months before the Prince of Bungo had been sent to Tsushima expressly
from Yedo to grant permission to the corvette to remain there; that the
same prince gave him the opportunity of visiting the Prince of Tsushima,
who was instructed to supply workmen and all that might be necessary
for the construction of the buildings in question; that if the Japanese
Government were annoyed by the surveying operations, they should address
their complaint to the Russian diplomatic agent; that he had no orders
for the occupation of the island, and the nature of the buildings which
the admiral had done him the honour to visit would not show any such
intention; and finally, that when he spoke of leaving in October it had
referred only to himself personally. So far Captain Birileff.
It was no "Prince of Bungo," but a Governor of Foreign Affairs named
Bungo, who had been despatched in haste from the capital to endeavour by
any means to induce the Russians to leave Tsushima, and was, for his want
of success, disgraced.
Sir James Hope forthwith proceeded in search of Commodore Likatchoff to
Olga Bay, whence he addressed to him a letter dated September 5, pointing
out the irregularity of the proceedings at Tsushima, the bad effect they
were having on the relations of foreigners generally in Yedo, and that he
could not recognise any establishment on Japanese territory not sanctioned
by treaty--which resolutions he would make known to the authorities
concerned.
To this the Russian commodore courteously replied from Hakodate, September
23, excusing himself from entering on any international questions, and
pointing out that in their hydrographical labours the Russians were only
following the excellent example set them by the British surveying officers
whom they met on their respective missions, and that no complaint had ever
been made by the Japanese Government. As for the "absurd rumours" alluded
to, the Possadnik had already received orders for another destination,
before receipt of the admiral's letters, and nothing consequently need be
said to calm the doubts and alarms, "si même elles auraient véritablement
raison d'exister."
Admiral Hope acknowledged this letter, "with much satisfaction," from
Chefoo, October 22, and remarked that, so far as the surveying operations
of the ships in his squadron were concerned, they were carried out with
the full consent of the Japanese Government, at whose special request
Japanese officers and interpreters were accommodated on board during
the whole of the cruise. He added that it was not so much the surveying
operations of the Possadnik as the preparation for a permanent settlement
on shore that disquieted the Japanese Government; and, moreover, that
the Japanese Ministers had distinctly stated that the matter had been
the subject of remonstrance to the commodore, through M. Goskavitch,
the consul at Hakodate, and to Captain Birileff by an officer specially
deputed for the purpose (Bungo).
The question extended itself to St Petersburg, where Prince Gortchakoff
had remarked to Lord Napier, then British ambassador, on the tone of
Admiral Hope's letter to Commodore Likatchoff, which, he said, but for
the conciliatory disposition of the latter, might have led to serious
misunderstanding. Lord Napier, in reply, observed that "Admiral Hope was
a man of a frank, downright, energetic character, who used the language
natural to him without any intention of giving offence."
As the Russians had abandoned the island, Prince Gortchakoff called
on Lord Napier to declare that the English would never take possession
of Tsushima, whereupon the ambassador reminded his Excellency that the
English had "offered to sign a treaty binding ourselves and the other
Powers having engagements with Japan to make no acquisitions in those
seas." "I think," concludes the ambassador in his letter to the Foreign
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