Anti-Foreign Feeling—Chōshiū Rebellion—Mikado’s Ratification of
Treaties—Prince Kéiki—Restoration Movement—Civil War—Fall of Shōgunate.
The signature of the Treaty was loudly condemned by the Court party, the
ex-Prince of Mito being conspicuous amongst those who protested. He
addressed a violently worded remonstrance to the Council of State,
impugning the action of the Government, which was accused of disrespect
to the Throne, and disobedience to the Imperial commands. The Regent
retorted by striking at once at his enemies with all the force of his
newly acquired position, and the prestige of his success in the matter
of the succession. The ex-Prince of Mito and the Prince of Owari were
confined to their _yashikis_ (a term applied to the feudal residences
occupied by daimiōs during their period of service in Yedo); while the
latter, together with the daimiōs of Échizen, Tosa and Uwajima, was
forced to abdicate. And when the Court, growing uneasy at this sudden
reassertion of authority on the part of the Shōgunate, summoned the
Regent, or one of the Gosanké, to Kiōto to report on the situation, a
reply was sent to the effect that the Regent was detained by State
affairs, and that the ex-Prince of Mito and the Prince of Owari were
confined to their clan _yashikis_. A mission, however—the third in
succession—proceeded to Kiōto from Yedo. This submitted a report on the
subject of the Treaty, which explained the reasons for its signature in
advance of Imperial sanction as being the arrival of more Russian and
American ships; the defeat of China by the English and French; the news
that these two countries were sending to Japan special envoys instructed
to carry matters with a high hand; and the advice to sign at once given
by the American minister. The Court’s eventual pronouncement in favour
of the Treaty displayed in a striking manner the perverseness and
inconsequence which characterized Japanese official procedure at that
time. The decree conveying the Imperial approval expressed the
satisfaction with which the Throne had received the assurance that the
Shōgun, the Regent and the Council of State, were all in favour of
keeping foreigners at a distance; and urged on the attention of the
Shōgun “the Throne’s deep concern in regard to the sea in the
neighbourhood of the Imperial shrines and Kiōto, as well as the safety
of the Imperial insignia,” which, put into plainer language, meant that
no port should be opened near Isé, or the capital. Two suggestions have
been made on good authority regarding this decree: (1) that the Shōgun’s
agents in Kiōto were directed to accept anything which established the
fact of an understanding with the Court having been effected; and (2)
that the agents in question succeeded in persuading the Court that,
though the signature of this particular Treaty was unavoidable, the Yedo
Government was not really in favour of foreign intercourse. Both
suggestions are probably correct. In any case the Court’s action in
ignoring the Throne’s previous approval of earlier treaties was
calculated to stiffen opposition to the Shōgun’s diplomacy, and was thus
doubtless responsible for some of the subsequent difficulties attending
foreign intercourse, notably in connection with the opening of the port
of Hiogo, which, with the consent of the Treaty Powers, was postponed
until January, 1868.
As showing how meaningless the Imperial approval, in reality, was it may
be well to note that the English text of the Treaty in question provided
for the exchange of ratifications at Washington on or before the 4th
July, 1859, failing which, however, the Treaty was, nevertheless, to
come into force on the date in question. The Treaty went into operation
on the date fixed, but the exchange of ratifications did not take place
until 1860. The ratification on the part of Japan is described as the
verification of “the name and seal of His Majesty the Tycoon.”
Hostility to foreigners at this time, however, was a feeling common to
most Japanese, even Shōgunate officials being no exception to the rule.
Writers on Japan mention as one cause which served to increase this
feeling the drain of gold from Japan, which began as early as the
operations of the first Portuguese traders. Another—adduced by the
Japanese Government itself—was the great rise in prices which followed
upon the opening of Treaty ports. Sir Rutherford Alcock, in the _Capital
of the Tycoon_, adds a third—the memory of the troubles connected with
the Christian persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and of the serious alarm then entertained by the Japanese authorities at
the undisguised pretensions of the Pope. The understanding regarding the
Treaty question arrived at by the Regent with the Court did little to
check the growth of anti-foreign feeling, for the Court continued its
intrigues as before, and the Regent’s death, in the spring of 1860 at
the hands of assassins instigated by the ex-Prince of Mito, provided a
further opportunity. The effects of the fierce anti-foreign crusade upon
which it then embarked were seen in the murder of the Secretary of the
American Legation, in the successive attacks made on the British
Legation, and in other violent acts by which foreigners were not the
only sufferers. Yielding to the pressure of public opinion, the
Government itself became almost openly hostile. Placed in this difficult
position, the representatives of the Treaty Powers found both dignity
and safety compromised. What, they might well ask, was to be gained by
protests to the Japanese authorities in regard to acts with which the
latter’s sympathy was barely concealed, of which they not infrequently
gave warning themselves, but against which they were unable, or
unwilling, to afford protection? Under these circumstances it is not
surprising that the representatives of Great Britain, France, Germany
and Holland should in 1862 have retired temporarily from the capital to
Yokohama—an example not followed by the American representative; nor
that the British Legation on its return, at the Japanese Government’s
request, four weeks later, should have been immediately attacked in
spite of a formal guarantee of protection. In respect of this attack, in
the course of which two sentries were murdered, an indemnity was
afterwards paid. Matters were further aggravated by the murder in
September of the same year (1862) of Mr. Richardson, a British subject,
on the high road near Yokohama by the bodyguard of a Satsuma noble,
Shimadzu Saburō, who was on his way back to Kiōto from the Shōgun’s
Court in Yedo. A formal apology for this outrage was demanded by the
British, together with the payment of an indemnity.
The growing power of the Court and the anti-foreign party, for the two
were one, showed itself also in its behaviour to the Shōgunate after the
Regent’s death.
The adherents of the ex-Prince of Mito—who survived his adversary by
only a few months—held up their heads again, while the late Regent’s
friends were, in their turn, dismissed from office, fined, imprisoned or
banished. Nor did the Shōgun’s marriage to the Mikado’s sister in the
spring of 1862 materially improve the relations between Kiōto and Yedo,
or moderate the high-handed attitude of the Court. In the summer of the
same year the Shōgun was peremptorily summoned to Kiōto, which had not
seen a Shōgun for two hundred and fifty years, to confer with the Court
regarding the expulsion of foreigners; Prince Kéiki, the unsuccessful
candidate for the office of Shōgun in 1858, was made Regent, and
appointed guardian to his rival on that occasion, the young Shōgun
Iyémochi, in the place of a nearer and older relative; while the
ex-Prince of Échizen, one of the late Regent’s enemies, was made
President of the Council of State. That nothing should be wanting to
indicate its displeasure at the position taken up by the Shōgunate in
regard to foreign affairs, the Court went so far as to order the
Shōgun’s consort, who in accordance with custom had, on her marriage,
assumed the title usual in those circumstances, to revert to her
previous designation of princess. Other signs of the times, showing not
only the anti-foreign spirit of the Court, but its determination to
strike at the root of Tokugawa authority, could be noted in such
incidents as the relaxation of the conditions of the residence of feudal
nobles in Yedo, and the release of the hostages formerly exacted for
their good conduct whilst in their fiefs; the solemn fixing at a Council
of princes, attended by the Shōgun and his guardians, of a date for the
cessation of all foreign intercourse; the revival of the State
processions of the Mikado to shrines, which had been discontinued at the
beginning of the Tokugawa rule; and the residence for long periods at
Kiōto of feudal nobles, in defiance of the Tokugawa regulation which
forbade them even to visit the Capital without permission—a step which
showed that they were not afraid of its being known that they sided
openly with the Court against the Shōgunate. The same spirit accounted
for the attempt to associate the Shōgun and his Regent-guardian with the
taking of a religious oath to expel foreigners, and, finally, for the
fact that while so much that was incompatible with friendly relations
with Treaty Powers was taking place, a mission sent to those very powers
was engaged in persuading them to consent to the postponement for five
years of the dates fixed for the opening of certain ports and places to
foreign trade and residence. This consent was given, and was recorded,
in so far as Great Britain was concerned, in the London Protocol of June
6th, 1862.
The communication to the foreign representatives of the decision to
close the country duly took place on the 24th June, as arranged. But
nothing came of it. The foreign governments refused to take the matter
seriously, merely intimating that steps would be taken to protect
foreign interests, and five months later the Shōgunate asked for the
return of the Note.
Sir Rutherford Alcock in the course of a lengthy review of the
situation, in which he seems to have foreseen clearly that the reopening
of the country would eventually lead to civil war, came, though
unwillingly, to the conclusion that foreign governments, if they wished
to ensure the observance of the treaties, must be prepared to use force,
and make reprisals; in fact, that opposition to foreign intercourse
would not cease until the nation should, by drastic measures, have been
persuaded of the ability of foreign Powers to make their Treaty rights
respected. The effect of the reprisals made by the British Government in
the Richardson case, in the course of which the town of Kagoshima was
bombarded, and partly destroyed, besides the exaction of an indemnity,
went some way to prove the correctness of this view. Its truth was
further demonstrated when a second and graver incident occurred. This
was the firing upon foreign vessels in the Straits of Shimonoséki by
Chōshiū forts on June 24th, 1863. The date on which the outrage occurred
was that fixed at the Council of feudal nobles, attended by the Shōgun
and the Regent, his guardian, in Kiōto for the opening of negotiations
with the foreign representatives for the closing of the country. It was
also that on which, in accordance with the decision then taken, a
communication had been made to them by the Council of State. The
coincidence of dates gave a more serious aspect to the affair, though
the complicity of the Shōgunate was never whole-hearted. In this case,
also, it became necessary to take the drastic measures which to the
British Minister in question had seemed to be inevitable sooner or
later. Neither the first reprisals, however, instituted at once by the
French and American naval authorities, nor the lengthy negotiations with
the Japanese Government which followed, were of any effect in obtaining
redress. For more than a year the straits remained closed to navigation.
Eventually joint operations against the hostile forts conducted in
August, 1864, by a combined squadron of the four Powers immediately
concerned, accomplished the desired result. The forts were attacked and
destroyed, an undertaking that they should be left in a dismantled
condition was extorted, and an indemnity of $3,000,000 exacted. The
lessons thus administered lost none of their force from the fact that
the clans punished were the two most powerful, and those in which
hostility to foreigners was perhaps most openly displayed. Both this and
the Kagoshima indemnity were paid by the Yedo Government, and not by the
offending clans. Were further proof needed of the strange condition of
affairs at this time in Japan it is supplied by the fact that in both
cases the drastic measures taken resulted in the establishment of quite
amicable relations with the clans in question. This unlooked-for result
points to the existence, both in the nation at large, and in individual
clans, of a small minority which did not share the prevailing hostility
to foreigners.
Towards the end of 1863 the British and French Governments came to the
conclusion that the unsettled state of things in Japan, and the
anti-foreign feeling, which showed no signs of decreasing, made it
advisable to station troops in Yokohama for the protection of foreign
interests. Accordingly contingents of British and French troops were
landed, and established in quarters on shore, by arrangement with the
Japanese authorities. Their presence served admirably the purpose
intended; no collision or friction occurred between these garrisons and
the Japanese, and in 1875, when their presence was no longer needed,
they were withdrawn.
The Shōgun had been very reluctant to comply with the Imperial summons
to Kiōto. His ministers had endeavoured to arrange for the visit to be
limited to ten days. Once there, however, he was detained on various
pretexts until June in the following year, by which time the Court had
already embarked on its anti-foreign policy, and the Shimonoséki
incident had occurred. His return to Yedo was the signal for the
outbreak of further bickering between the Court and the Shōgunate, which
revealed the same disposition on both sides to shut the eyes to facts,
and change position with startling inconsistency. Ignoring its recent
co-operation with the Imperial Court and feudal nobles in the
anti-foreign policy initiated at the Capital, the fixing of a date for
the expulsion of the foreigner, and the communication of its decision to
the foreign representatives, the Shōgunate presented a memorial to the
Throne pointing out how unfavourable was the present moment for pushing
matters to extremity in the matter of foreign intercourse. The Court,
for its part, while testifying its pleasure at the revival of the
ancient practice of visits to the Capital, rebuked the Shōgun for not
keeping the Throne more fully informed of his movements, for having gone
back to Yedo _in a steamer_, and for his unsatisfactory behaviour in
regard to foreign relations. Further indications of the general
confusion of ideas and vacillation of purpose which characterized the
proceedings of persons in authority appear in the expulsion of Chōshiū
clansmen from Kiōto as a mark of the Court’s strong disapproval of the
action of the Chōshiū clan in the Shimonoséki affair, as well as in the
startling pronouncement made by the Échizen clan—whose chief’s enforced
abdication has already been mentioned—in favour of foreign intercourse,
and of the “new Christian religion,” and condemning alike both the
policy pursued by the Court, and that of the Shōgunate.
That a definite rupture of foreign relations did not take place at this
juncture was due to the promptness of the Shōgunate to repudiate its own
acts and to the patience and good-humour of foreign governments;
possibly also to the division of opinion in the country itself, where
the centre of authority was beginning to shift, though the process was
still incomplete. In its place there occurred the first threatenings,
the beginnings, in fact, of the civil war which an attentive observer
had prophesied. Conscious of the Government’s weakness, while piqued by
the Court’s inconsistency, the Chōshiū clan brought matters to an issue
in the summer of 1864 by making a sudden raid on Kiōto with the object
of abducting the Mikado and raising the Imperial standard. The attempt
was defeated; nor did the clan fare better in its efforts to repel the
invasion of its territory by the Government forces. The resistance
offered was soon overcome. Early in the following year (1865) the
rebellion was suppressed, the severity of the terms imposed on the clan
exciting widespread dissatisfaction. When, shortly afterwards, the same
clan again rebelled, owing, it is said, to the excessive character of
the punishment imposed, it was perceived that the success of the
Tokugawa troops on the previous occasion was due, not to the Shōgunate’s
military strength, but to the co-operation of other clans—notably that
of Satsuma—in the punitive measures directed against the rebels. On this
latter occasion the support of the other clans was withheld, with the
result that the second campaign, though conducted under the eye of the
Shōgun, who made Kiōto his headquarters for the purpose, was a complete
failure. By the end of the year 1866 a compromise, designed to save the
faces of both parties, had been effected. Hostilities then ceased. In
the course of the negotiations by which this conclusion was reached the
weakness of the Shōgunate was still further exposed. The prominent part
taken by _rōnin_, both in the raid on the Capital and in the subsequent
proceedings of the clan, as well as the incapacity of the feudal prince
and his son, came also to light, together with the fact that the affairs
of the fief were controlled by clan retainers, who were divided into two
mutually hostile factions, each of which in turn gained the ascendancy.
The ignominy of defeat at the hands of a rebellious clan, added to a
bankrupt exchequer, not to speak of the acceptance of a compromise which
in itself was a confession of impotence, hastened the crumbling away of
what was left of Tokugawa prestige. Fresh energy, at the same time, was
instilled into the Court party. The situation became increasingly
troubled and confused. While the Imperialists, as they now came to be
called, clamoured more loudly than ever for the expulsion of foreigners,
the ministers of the young Shōgun—soon to be succeeded very unwillingly
by his cousin and guardian, the regent Prince Kéiki—busied themselves
with explanations to the Court on the subject of the treaties, and to
the foreign representatives on the political situation and the bearing
of the Court.
In the meantime, in the summer of 1865, while the Chōshiū imbroglio was
at its height, Sir Harry Parkes had arrived in Japan as British
Minister. Soon after his arrival his attention had been drawn to the
anomalous position of the Shōgun (or Tycoon), who was not the Sovereign
of Japan, as described in the treaties, to the difficult situation
created by the revival of Imperial pretensions, and to the encouragement
afforded to the anti-foreign party by the fact that the Mikado had not
yet given his formal sanction to the treaties of 1858, though they had
been ratified by the Shōgun’s Government. The foreign representatives,
who had already received instructions from their Governments to ask for
a modification of the tariff of import and export duties annexed to the
treaties of 1858, decided to press both questions together and, at the
same time, to communicate to the Shōgunate, on behalf of their
Governments, an offer to remit two-thirds of the Shimonoséki indemnity
in return for (1) the immediate opening of the port of Hiogo and the
city of Ōsaka, and (2) the revision of the Customs tariff on a basis of
5 per cent _ad valorem_. Accordingly, in November, 1865, a combined
squadron visited Ōsaka for that purpose.
Reference has already been made to the constant anxiety of the Court to
keep foreigners away from the neighbourhood of the Capital. The
sensation created, therefore, by the appearance of foreign ships of war
in the Bay of Ōsaka can readily be imagined. It was a repetition of what
had occurred when Perry came. The action taken by the Court was the
same. The demands of the foreign representatives were referred, as in
Perry’s case, to a council of feudal nobles. These having concurred in
the view already put forward by the Shōgun, and strengthened by his
offer to resign, should this be desired, the Court intimated its
intention to accept the advice. When, however, the necessary decree was
issued, it was found to contain a clause making the sanction dependent
on the alteration of certain points in the treaties which did not
harmonize with the Imperial views, and insisting on the abandonment of
the stipulation for the opening of Hiogo. The decree was duly
communicated to the foreign representatives. But the Shōgunate in doing
so, baffled it may be by the task of endeavouring to reconcile Imperial
instructions with the fulfilment of Treaty obligations, or using,
perhaps unconsciously, the disingenuous methods of the time, concealed
the clause which robbed the sanction of much of its force. The treaties
were sanctioned, it explained, but the question of the port of Hiogo
could not be discussed for the moment. As for the tariff, instructions
would be sent to Yedo to negotiate the amendment desired. This omission
on the part of the Shōgunate to represent things as they really were
misled foreign governments, and caused serious misunderstanding in the
sequel.
The promise regarding the tariff was duly kept. It was fulfilled in the
following year (1866) by the signature in Yedo of the Tariff Convention.
A point to be noted in this instrument is the declaration regarding the
right of individual Japanese merchants, and of daimiōs and persons in
their employ, to trade at the Treaty Ports and go abroad, and trade
there, without being subject to any hindrances, or undue fiscal
restrictions, on the part of the Japanese Government or its officials.
Its insertion was due to the determination of foreign governments to put
an end to official interference with trade—a relic of the past, when all
foreign commerce was controlled by the Shōgunate—and to their wish, in
view of the reactionary measures threatened by the Court, to place on
record their resolve to maintain the new order of things established by
the treaties. Owing to the Shōgunate’s monopoly of foreign trade, which
was what its control had virtually amounted to, the profits of commerce
had swelled the coffers of the Government to the detriment of clan
exchequers—a feudal grievance which was not the least of the causes
responsible for hostility to the Yedo Government, and, indirectly, for
anti-foreign feeling.
The course of affairs during the fifteen years which followed the
conclusion of Perry’s Treaty has been described with some minuteness.
This has been necessary owing to the complex character of the political
situation, both foreign and domestic, during this time, and also because
an acquaintance with certain details is essential to the comprehension
of subsequent events. One of the features of the struggle between the
Court and Shōgunate, to which attention has been called, was the gradual
movement of several of the leading clans to the side of the Court. The
stay of the chiefs of these clans in Kiōto, in defiance of Tokugawa
regulations, led to the gradual loosening of the ties which bound the
territorial nobility to Yedo, and to the shifting of the centre of
action to the Capital, where the final scene of the drama was to be
enacted.
At the end of the year 1866 both the Shōgun and his guardian, Prince
Kéiki, were in Kiōto. There the Emperor Kōmei died early in the ensuing
spring, his death being followed within a few days by that of the young
Shōgun. The Emperor Mutsuhito, who was only fifteen years of age,
succeeded to the Throne, and Prince Kéiki became Shōgun much against his
will. Far from inheriting the forceful character of his father, the
ex-Prince of Mito, the new Shōgun was of a retiring disposition. Though
possessed of great intelligence and no small literary ability, he had a
distaste for public affairs. Well aware of the difficulties of the time,
and of the trend of tendencies unfavourable to the continuance of dual
government, he was reluctant to undertake the responsibilities of the
high office to which he was appointed. Not improbably, too, he may have
inherited some portion at least of his father’s political doctrines.
When, therefore, in October of that year (1867) the ex-daimiō of Tosa
(whose abdication had been enforced eight years before by the Regent Ïi)
presented a memorial to the Government, advising “the restoration of the
ancient form of direct Imperial government,” the Shōgun took the advice
tendered, and resigned. His decision was communicated in writing by the
Council of State to the foreign representatives. In this document, which
explains briefly the origin of feudal duarchy and of Tokugawa rule, the
Shōgun dwells on the inconvenience attending the conduct of foreign
relations under a system of dual government involving the existence of
what were virtually two Courts, and announces his decision to restore
the direct rule of the Mikado; adding, however, the assurance that the
change will not disturb the harmonious relations of Japan with foreign
countries. The statement also, it should be noted, contains an explicit
declaration of the liberal views of the retiring ruler, who does not
hesitate to express his conviction that the moment has come to make a
new departure in national policy, and introduce constitutional changes
of a progressive character.
Very possibly the retirement of the Shōgun might have been arranged in a
peaceable manner, for his views were no secret to his supporters, though
few shared them. Unfortunately, the Court, acting under the influence of
leading clans hostile to the Yedo Government, and bent on a rupture,
suddenly issued a decree abolishing the office of Shōgun, and making a
change in the guardianship of the palace, which was transferred from
Tokugawa hands to those of the opposition. This decree was followed by
others proclaiming the restoration of direct Imperial rule; establishing
a provisional government of Court nobles, daimiōs and the latter’s
retainers; remitting the punishment imposed on the Chōshiū clan; and
revoking the order expelling it from the Capital. The action of the
Court made compromise impossible. The Shōgun withdrew to Ōsaka, whence,
after a half-hearted effort to reassert his authority by force of arms,
he returned to Yedo. The civil war that ensued was of short duration.
The Tokugawa forces were no match for the Imperial troops, who were
superior both in numbers and discipline. Although a small remnant of the
ex-Shōgun’s adherents held out for some months in certain northern
districts of the main island, and still longer in the island of Yezo, by
the spring of 1869 peace was everywhere restored.
It has been said by a leading authority on Japan, as one reason for the
fall of the Shōgunate, that dual government was an anachronism. This in
itself presented no insuperable obstacle to its continuance; for the
figure-head system of government, which flourished in an atmosphere of
make-believe, was one which had grown up with the nation and was
regarded as the normal condition of things. To its inconvenience,
however, in the conduct of foreign relations the use of the title of
_Taikun_ (Tycoon) in the eighteenth century, and a resort to the same
device in the nineteenth, bear witness. And it is reasonable to suppose
that a system of administration so cumbrous would have failed to satisfy
for long the practical exigencies of modern international intercourse.
In no case, however, could the Tokugawa Government have lasted much
longer. It carried within itself the seeds of its dissolution. It was
almost moribund when Perry came. The reopening of the country simply
hastened the end. It fell, as other governments have done, because it
had ceased to govern.
Before its rule ceased the Tokugawa House had abandoned its dynasty. The
three main branches—Mito, Owari and Kishiū—each in turn deserted the
Tokugawa cause; their example being followed by leading feudal families,
such as the Échizen clan, which were connected with the ruling House.
When the long line of Tokugawa rulers came to an end, it had been in
power for more than two and a half centuries. Of the fifteen Shōguns of
the line, only the founder and his grandson, the third Shōgun, showed
any real capacity. The former was brilliant, both as soldier and
statesman; the latter had administrative talent. None of the others was
in any way distinguished. Nor was this surprising. The enervating Court
life of Kiōto had been copied in Yedo. Brought up in Eastern fashion
from childhood in the corrupt atmosphere of the women’s apartments,
Mikado and Shōgun alike grew up without volition of their own or
knowledge of the outside world, ready for the rôle of puppets assigned
to them. The last of the Shōguns was no exception to the rule. Had it
been otherwise, there might have been another and quite different story
to tell.
On the short but decisive struggle which ended in the Restoration
nothing in the nature of foreign official influence was brought to bear.
The foreign Powers concerned preserved an attitude of strict neutrality,
which was reflected in the action of their representatives. The task of
maintaining neutrality was rendered easier by the fact that the
interests of all the Powers, with one exception, were commercial rather
than political. The two leading Powers in the Far East at that time were
Great Britain and France, the former’s commercial interests far
outweighing those of her neighbour on the Asiatic continent. Germany had
not yet attained the position of an empire which she was to reach as the
result of the war of 1870, the responsibilities connected with her
slowly growing trade being undertaken by the North German Confederation,
which was then being formed under the hegemony of Prussia. America,
inclined from the first to regard Japan as her protégé, had not yet
fully recovered from the effects of the Civil War; and though she had
opened up a new avenue of trade with the Far East, the development of
her Pacific seaboard was in its infancy. She prided herself on having no
foreign policy to hamper her independence, nor had she any organized
diplomatic and consular service. The interests of Russia, the exception
referred to, were merely political, and of small importance; for neither
the Amur Railway nor the Chinese Eastern Railway had been even
projected, and the development of Eastern Siberia had hardly begun. The
interests of other Treaty Powers were negligible. While, however, under
these circumstances the conflict between the Tokugawa Government and the
Imperialists lay beyond the sphere of foreign official influence, there
were certain unavoidable tendencies which manifested themselves before
the Civil War broke out. The presence of French military instructors
engaged by the Shōgun’s Government was regarded as possibly attracting a
certain extent of French sympathy with the Tokugawa cause—an idea which
was strengthened by the attitude of the French representative and the
conduct of one or two of these officers, who accompanied the Tokugawa
naval expedition to Yezo, where a last stand was made. There was,
moreover, quite apart from their official action, a natural bias on the
part of most of the foreign representatives in favour of the Shōgunate
as being the _de facto_ government, a position it had occupied for two
and a half centuries. On the other hand, the formal sanction given in
1865 by the Mikado at the demand of the foreign representatives to the
treaties of 1858 had undoubtedly encouraged the Imperialist party in
proportion as it had impaired the prestige of the Tokugawa Government.
This demand had arisen out of the gradual realization of the fact that
the Shōgun was not, as represented in the treaties in question, the real
sovereign of Japan. But there was a further reason. From the moment that
the Tokugawa Government had at the time of Commodore Perry’s arrival
referred the question of reopening the country to the Throne, instead of
using the full power of dealing with foreign affairs vested in the
Shōgun, there had grown up two centres of authority, one in Kiōto, which
was steadily increasing in influence, the other in Yedo. As was pointed
out in the letters addressed by the foreign representatives in the
autumn of 1864 to the Tycoon (the title given to the Shōgun in the
official correspondence of the time), the existence of these two
different centres of authority had been at the bottom of most of the
complications which had arisen in respect of foreign relations. The
representatives were, therefore, it was said, obliged to insist upon the
Mikado’s recognition of the treaties, “in order that future difficulties
might be avoided, and that relations with foreigners might be placed
upon a more satisfactory and durable basis.” In other words, the
recognition of the treaties by the Mikado was sought in order to put a
stop to the anti-foreign agitation which was paralyzing the Shōgunate’s
conduct of affairs and creating a highly dangerous situation. The
reluctance of the Shōgunate to comply with this demand did not tend to
improve its position with the foreign representatives, while this
position was further weakened by its persistence in adhering to the
false status given to the Shōgun. The continued use of the term “His
Majesty” in official correspondence between the Shōgun’s Ministers and
the diplomatic body long after doubts had arisen as to its correctness
was productive of mistrust; and their confidence in the Government’s
sincerity was shaken by its strenuous efforts for various reasons to
isolate foreigners as much as possible, and by proof of its complicity
in the matter of the Court’s order for the expulsion of foreigners, as
well as in the Shimonoséki affair.
Under these circumstances—and as a result, also, of the friendly
communications established with the two leading clans after the carrying
out of reprisals—it is not surprising that some time before an appeal to
arms took place a tendency to sympathize with the cause of the Sovereign
_de jure_ should have shown itself in certain diplomatic quarters. The
busy intrigues carried on by both contending parties, which were by no
means confined to domestic circles, may have led, and probably did lead,
those whose acquaintance with Japanese history, though imperfect, far
exceeded that of others, to attach undue weight to the doctrine of
active and unimpaired Imperial supremacy sedulously inculcated by the
Court party, and thus to arrive at the not illogical conclusion that the
Tokugawa Shōguns were the wrongful usurpers they were described as being
by Imperialist historians. That this pronounced sympathy, before
hostilities began, in favour of what proved to be the winning side was a
material factor in the issue of the struggle there is some reason to
believe.
Another point claims passing attention. When the Shōgunate ceased to
rule, the wide territory known as the Shōgun’s domains came under the
control of the new Government. The classification of lands throughout
the country for administrative purposes thus fell temporarily into four
divisions—the small area known under the Shōgunate as the Imperial
domains, the feudal revenue of which had been quite inadequate for the
maintenance of the Court; the former Shōgun’s domains, the final
disposition of which was in abeyance; the territories of the clans, as
modified by the measures taken in respect of those which, having
espoused the Tokugawa cause, had held out to the last against the
Imperialist forces; and the large cities of Yedo, Kiōto and Ōsaka, which
formed a group by themselves.