Missions to Foreign Governments—Hindrances to Reform—Language
Difficulties—Attitude of Foreign Powers.
The numerous measures called for by the abolition of feudalism did not
prevent the new Government from turning their attention to foreign
affairs. In the same year (1871) which saw the issue of the Decree
giving practical effect to the surrender of feudal fiefs a mission
composed of Iwakura, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and two Councillors
of State, Kido and Ōkubo, was despatched to Europe and the United
States. The suite of the mission, which numbered more than fifty
persons, included Mr. (afterwards Prince) Itō.
This was the third mission sent from Japan to the Courts of Treaty
Powers, and by far the most important. The first of these, despatched by
the Tokugawa Government early in 1862, when the conditions surrounding
foreign intercourse were rendered precarious by the open hostility of
the Court party, had achieved some measure of success in obtaining a
postponement for five years of the dates fixed for the opening of the
ports of Hiogo and Niigata, and the towns of Yedo and Ōsaka; the reasons
by which the request was supported, as well as the conditions on which
consent was given, being recorded so far as Great Britain was concerned,
in the London Protocol of June, 1862. The reasons were: “the
difficulties experienced by the Tycoon and his Ministers in giving
effect to their engagements with foreign Powers having treaties with
Japan in consequence of the opposition offered by a party in Japan which
was hostile to all intercourse with foreigners.” The conditions, shortly
stated, were: the strict observance of all other Treaty stipulations;
the revocation of the old law outlawing foreigners; and the cessation in
future of official interference of any kind with trade and intercourse.
The second was sent by the same Government in February, 1864. Its
ostensible object was to apologize to the French Government for the
murder of the French officer, Lieutenant Camus, which had taken place in
October of the previous year. Its real objects, however, were to
endeavour to obtain the consent of Treaty Powers to the closing of the
port of Yokohama, a matter in regard to which the Shōgun’s Ministers had
already appealed in vain to the foreign representatives; and,
incidentally, to take an opportunity if it offered, of purchasing war
material. The mission, which never went beyond Paris, returned to Japan
in the following August at the moment when arrangements were being
completed for the forcing of the Straits of Shimonoséki by a combined
foreign squadron. It brought for the approval of the Shōgun’s Government
a convention concluded by the members of the mission with the French
Government. This somewhat singular instrument, which bore the signature
of Monsieur Drouyn de Lhuys, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, provided
that it was—after its acceptance by the Shōgun’s Government—to come into
force at once, and was to be regarded as forming an integral part of the
existing Treaty between France and Japan. It contained, amongst other
things, a stipulation for the reopening of the Straits within three
months after the return of the mission to Japan, and also provided for
the co-operation, if necessary, of the French naval squadron in Japanese
waters with the Shōgun’s forces in the attainment of this object. The
Shōgun’s repudiation of the agreement prevented the occurrence of what
might have been troublesome complications, the only result of the
incident being a delay of a few days in the departure for Shimonoséki of
the allied squadron.
The ostensible object of this third mission, like that of the first,
related to Treaty stipulations. By a clause of the treaties of 1858—the
texts of which were more or less identical, while their interpretation
was governed by the stipulation regarding “most-favoured-nation”
treatment—provision was made for revision _by mutual consent_ in 1872.
This consent it was the purpose of the mission to obtain. The number of
Treaty Powers had by this time increased to fifteen, but the interests
of most of them being very small, it was recognized that if the consent
of the chief Powers could be obtained, no difficulties would be raised
by others.
The working of the treaties had been on the whole satisfactory, as
satisfactory, that is to say, as it was reasonable to expect from the
exceptional circumstances attending their negotiation; and there seemed
to be no special points in regard to which revision was in any way
urgent. This, however, was not the view taken by the Japanese
Government. Very soon after the coming into operation of the treaties of
1858 the Japanese authorities and people seem to have taken umbrage at
the extra-territorial privileges enjoyed by foreigners in Japan under
Treaty stipulations. It is more than probable that this feeling with
regard to extra-territoriality may not have been altogether spontaneous,
but may have been inspired at this time by foreigners actuated by mixed
motives, and inclined to draw hasty conclusions. In any case, the
Japanese early became aware that the enjoyment of extra-territoriality
was regarded generally as a privilege conceded under pressure to the
subjects of countries possessing, or claiming to possess, a civilization
more advanced in some respects than that of the country from which the
concession was obtained. The pride of the nation rebelled against the
discrimination thus exercised, and not unnaturally it was eager to seize
the first opportunity that presented itself to get rid of the obnoxious
extra-territorial clauses that stood in the way of the exercise of
Japanese jurisdiction over foreigners in Japan. This was the main motive
underlying the desire for revision of the treaties.
There were, however, additional objects in view in sending the mission.
To the foreign representatives the Government explained their anxiety to
communicate to the Governments of Treaty Powers details of the internal
history of their country during the years preceding the revolution of
1868, and their wish to inform them of the actual state of affairs, and
the future policy it was intended to pursue. They also considered it
important, it was added, to study the institutions of other countries
and to gain a precise knowledge of their laws, of the measures in force
regarding commerce and education, as well as of their naval and military
systems.
So far as these minor objects were concerned, the proceedings of the
mission were attended with success. This was shown not only by the
period of its absence abroad, which extended over two years, far longer
than had been intended, but also by the rapid progress of the work of
reform after its return. The information gained by its members, amongst
whom were some of the most talented men of the day, was later on of much
service to their country; while the insight they gained into foreign
affairs, and the disposition of foreign Governments towards Japan, was
of the greatest value. In the matter of the ostensible purpose of the
mission, however, nothing was accomplished. The efforts of the
ambassadors in this direction met with no encouragement. The foreign
Governments concerned were indisposed to overlook the constant
obstructions to the fulfilment of Treaty stipulations caused by
indifference and ill-will on the part of Japanese officials. Nor, in
view of the short interval that had elapsed since Japan had emerged from
feudalism, were they in any haste to gratify the aspirations expressed
in the Letter of Credence presented by the head of the mission to the
President of the United States—the first country visited—which spoke of
an “intention to reform and improve the treaties, so that Japan might
stand on an equality with the most enlightened nations.” They
accordingly declined to enter into any discussion on the subject on the
ground that the moment had not arrived when the discussion could be
useful.
The rebuff thus administered caused disappointment and ill-feeling, and
led before long to the beginning of an agitation for Treaty revision,
which did much mischief to foreign relations; was frequently used as a
convenient cry by politicians in the course of attacks directed against
the Government of the day; and lasted until the first of the new revised
treaties was signed by Great Britain in the summer of 1894. Its chief
effect, however, so far as foreigners were concerned, was to strengthen
the Japanese Government in its determination to resist all efforts on
the part of foreign Powers to obtain further access to the interior of
the country, and to restrict in every way possible the granting of any
additional facilities for foreign trade and intercourse under existing
treaties.
Much space has been devoted in previous chapters to the abolition of
feudalism as being the starting-point of Japan’s modern progress. The
immediate effect of that step, as well as the various measures relating
to land tenure and land taxation, which were its natural sequel, have
also been explained in some detail. There is, however, no intention to
trace with the same minuteness, or in strict chronological order, the
successive stages of the work of reform. Our purpose being to give a
general idea of the process which brought about the gradual
transformation of an Oriental country into a progressive modern Empire,
we shall pass lightly over many matters, dwelling mainly on such
conspicuous and outstanding features as will illustrate most clearly the
character and course of Japan’s modern development.
Before touching on other measures of reform undertaken in the first
years following the Restoration, it may be well to glance at the
conditions under which the work of reform proceeded. The initial
difficulty which hampered the reformers at the outset was the absence of
any definite scheme of reconstruction. Beyond the surrender of feudal
fiefs nothing in the nature of a detailed programme had been thought
out. They had to feel their way. As one of the leading figures in the
events of the Restoration said some years later, “They could not look
far ahead; it was sufficient if they could agree on the next step to be
taken.” Another difficulty with which they had to contend was the
question of language. The spread of Christianity in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had not been accompanied by the introduction, to
any appreciable extent, of any of the languages of the three
nationalities—Portuguese, Spanish and Italian—to which the early
missionaries belonged. The use of Latin in the religious services, and
the study of Japanese by the missionaries, had rendered this
unnecessary. And when Christianity disappeared, what little Portuguese,
or other Latin language, had come with it disappeared too. But with the
advent of the Dutch things were changed. The Dutch language became the
medium of commerce, and also the medium through which all Western
learning, and indeed all knowledge of the West, was received. A class of
Dutch-speaking interpreters, who found employment in foreign trade, grew
up; and with the enterprise, unsubdued by constant official repression,
and the curiosity for what is new, which have always distinguished the
Japanese people, men took to learning Dutch in order to educate
themselves.
So, when foreign relations were renewed on a wider basis in the middle
of the nineteenth century, Dutch was the language to which Japanese and
foreigners naturally turned as the medium for the conduct of the newly
established intercourse. All communications were carried on in this
language, and it became the authentic text of all the earlier treaties,
including those of 1858. Harris, the first American representative in
Japan, in his diary gives us some idea of the trouble and vexation
involved on both sides in wrestling with the language problem. The Dutch
the Japanese had learnt was, he tells us, a mercantile patois, the
correct Dutch spoken by the Dutch interpreters attached to his mission
being quite strange to them. When it came to drawing up written
agreements in both languages, they insisted that every word in the Dutch
version should stand in the same order as its equivalent in the Japanese
version. This, he says, occasioned some difficulty, and we feel that he
is not overstating the case.
The employment of Dutch as the medium of communication in the early days
of renewed foreign intercourse, though inevitable, was unfortunate. And
for this reason. During many years of the Dutch monopoly—so far as
Western nations were concerned—of trade with Japan, Holland was at the
zenith of her power. If not actually mistress of the seas, she occupied
a position of pre-eminence as a maritime state. But by the time the
first treaties with Japan were negotiated Holland had lost this high
position. She was no longer a great Power, and consequently the
knowledge of Dutch possessed by many Japanese ceased to be useful to
Japan. It was necessary for some other language to take its place.
Thanks to the growing commerce and power of Great Britain and the United
States, English was the language which stepped naturally into the
breach, and it became necessary for the Japanese to abandon Dutch, and
turn their attention to the acquisition of the new language which had
superseded it.
So far we have dwelt on the difficulty connected with the languages of
the foreigners who had made their more or less unwelcome appearance on
the scene, and from whom Japan was intent on borrowing the materials of
the contemplated reforms. If we now turn to the other side of the
question, the difficulty arising from the Japanese language itself, it
will be seen how serious an obstacle to Japan’s modern progress her own
language presented.
Until the seventh century of our era Japan had, as we have seen, her own
language. This was spoken, not written. Then by one of those
unaccountable impulses which affect the destinies of nations, she
followed the example of Korea, which had also spoken dialects of her
own, and adopted the written language of China. Later on, from the
Chinese characters thus borrowed, she evolved syllabaries, filling the
place for her of our alphabet for us, and so developed native scripts of
her own. But this native written language never prospered in its
competition with the Chinese characters from which it was derived.
Though it was employed in poetry, and other native classical literature
and served a useful purpose as a literary vehicle for women of the upper
classes, in whose hands it displayed unexpected potentialities, and for
the uneducated masses, it eventually found its most usual place in
literature as a simple adjunct to the use of Chinese.
This incubus of two languages, disguised as one, was rendered still more
irksome by the fact that the borrowed Chinese written language never
became thoroughly assimilated and incorporated with the Japanese spoken
language to which it was joined, but preserved a more or less separate
identity. It would have simplified matters if the Japanese had given up
their spoken language and adopted Chinese in its place. There would then
have been a natural harmony and relation between the spoken and written
tongues, such as exists in China to-day. Japanese would then have
written as they spoke, and spoken as they wrote. But this they did not
do. Their own spoken language was there, and had sufficient vitality to
resent the intrusion of the alien tongue, though not enough to enable
the nation to shake itself free of the incubus it had voluntarily
imposed upon itself by this wholesale importation of Chinese characters.
In these considerations lies the explanation of the constantly recurring
agitation in favour of the adoption of the Roman alphabet in the place
of Chinese.
In justice to Chinese characters it is well not to overlook the
advantage which a knowledge of them gives to the Japanese people over
foreign competitors in their intercourse and trade with China. It should
also be borne in mind that the Chinese side, so to speak, of the
Japanese language lends itself with peculiar facility to the formation
of new words to express new ideas. In this respect it has served to
encourage the introduction of Western civilization. These advantages
are, nevertheless, counterbalanced to a large extent by the addition to
the language of a countless host of dissyllabic words, only to be
distinguished one from the other by the attendant hieroglyphs. The
result is the creation of a cumbrous vocabulary, based on Chinese, which
is growing so fast as to discourage scholarship, thus hampering the very
progress it is employed to promote.
One other difficulty remains to be considered. In turning to the West
for inspiration in the work of reconstruction Japan was borrowing not
from one country, as before, but from several. Nor was there any natural
affinity between her and them, as in the case of the first country,
China, which she had laid under contribution. The new ideas, moreover,
she was assimilating belonged not to the same, but to different periods
of time. There was as great diversity of date, as there was of origin.
But they all came together, and had to be harmonized, in some degree,
with a foundation of things in its origin Chinese. Japan has been
generally regarded as having deliberately embarked on a policy of
eclecticism. No other course lay open to her. Out of the crowd of new
things which presented themselves she had to make a choice. And the
urgency of the moment left her little time in which to make it.
We have noticed some of the difficulties which lay in the path of
Japan’s progress, and tended to complicate the work of reconstruction.
Let us see what advantages she had to help her. There were not many, and
some were moral and not material. The reforming statesmen were helped by
the feeling of exaltation common to all political revolutions, as well
as by the wave of enthusiasm for what was hailed as the restoration of
the direct rule of the Sovereign, though what this would mean, when
accomplished, beyond the disappearance of the Shōgunate, none of its
advocates had any clear notion. The general feeling in favour of reform
which, with exceptions in the case of the former military class, existed
throughout the country was also in their favour. Japan, too, in these
early years was conscious of the sympathy of Treaty Powers. It has been
the fashion amongst a certain class of writers to decry the attitude of
foreign Powers, who are represented as unsympathetic and as having held
out no helping hand to the young Government then on its trial. This is
an erroneous view. Even before the Restoration, at the time when the
Court was openly hostile to foreign intercourse, and the Shōgunate, in
its extremity, was facing both ways—announcing to the Throne its
determination to expel the hated barbarian, while assuring the latter in
the same breath of the friendliness of its feelings; conniving at
obstruction it would have liked to direct more openly and then feigning
indignation at its own misdeeds—the forbearance of foreign Governments,
and the patience of their agents, are things of which the West may well
be proud. And as soon as the sincerity of Japanese reforms was clearly
understood, the sympathy of foreign Governments took a more active
shape.
Perhaps, also, we shall be safe in assuming that the new Government was
assisted to some extent in the introduction of reforms by the
submissiveness of the people they were called upon to rule. Under the
influence of Chinese ideas the dividing line separating rulers from
ruled was very sharply drawn. Both in Confucian ethics, and in Buddhist
teaching, the two foundations of Japanese morality, the greatest weight
is given to the virtue of loyalty to superiors, which comprises—and this
is an essential point—obedience to constituted authorities. Equal
prominence in the same ethics and teaching is assigned to the
corresponding duty of the ruler to govern wisely, or, as the phrase
runs, “with benevolence.” The conception of the relationship between
governors and governed, as it presented itself to the Japanese mind of
those days, was that it was the business, the duty, of the Government to
govern, the privilege, or right, of the subject to be ruled. The latter
looked to those in authority for light and leading. So long as the
government was in accordance with Confucian doctrine, conducted with
“benevolence,” that is to say, without glaring injustice and tyranny, he
was satisfied. The establishment later on of constitutional government
and the practical working of a Diet and local assemblies have somewhat
modified this habit of mind. But even in the most stormy and tumultuous
sessions which have of recent years characterized the development of
parliamentary institutions the influence of this old idea has been
apparent; while in the earlier periods of which we are now speaking it
was a dominant and salutary factor, lightening very materially the task
of the administrator.
There was still another agency working in the same direction. This was
the new field of activity opened by the changes accompanying the
Restoration to the energies of the people, more especially those of the
commercial and industrial classes. Their attention was engrossed in a
large measure by their own concerns, which were rendered of increased
and more varied interest by the upheaval caused by the revolution in
national life. They had thus little time, even had the wish been there,
to enquire closely into the direction of public affairs.
There was advantage, too, in the fact that Japan had borrowed before,
and had, therefore, gained experience in the art of assimilating foreign
ideas. She was not new to the work. She was only doing now on a less
extensive scale what she had done on a previous occasion. And her task
was rendered more simple because what she was now taking from the West
lent itself to her immediate requirements, perhaps, in a more practical
way than her borrowings of former days from a sister nation.
Finally, we must not overlook the immense advantage she had in the
adoption of all reforms which were based on Western models. At no cost
to herself, without expenditure of time, thought, labour or money, she
took the fruit of generations of toil in Europe and America. She levied
toll on all the Western world. Profiting, at once, by the discoveries
and improvements made in the course of centuries in every field of human
energy, she began in her career of constructive progress at the point
which other countries had already reached.