1866
JAPAN
Although in one shape or another I have written a good deal about the
Land of the Gods, I have hitherto refrained from saying much about my
own personal experience in that country, or about the part which was
played by Europeans, and more especially by the English Legation, during
the great upheaval which resulted in the uniting as a solid nation of
that Japan which for centuries had been an agglomeration of more or less
independent principalities. I felt that there was much that could hardly
be written without indiscretion until a considerable time should have
elapsed. Now practically half a century has gone by since the curtain
was rung down upon a unique and most interesting drama, and the Japanese
themselves speak of the times of which I am writing as “Mukashi”—“in
the days of old.” One after another the actors, Japanese and Europeans
alike, have disappeared, and I think that the day has come when so much
as we know about what took place in a revolution which has had such
far-reaching consequences ought to be recorded, if only as _matière pour
servir à l’histoire_.
Moreover, lest those who travel in Japan of to-day should set me down as
a second Baron von Münchhausen, I am anxious to say my say while there
is yet at least one man alive who can corroborate it, or scourge me if I
depart from the truth. That man is Sir Ernest Satow, my old friend and
colleague, to whom it was largely due that the sun shone so brightly on
my days in Japan, and that the adventurous episodes through which we
lived together—troublous as they often were at the time—have remained
with us only as joyous and picturesque memories for a garrulous old age.
Those who have the patience to struggle through these stories of a dead
past will understand what the great Field-Marshal Prince Oyama meant
when, in 1906 at an exhibition of Jujutsu at Tokio by a Japanese young
lady, he turned round to me and said: “Some of that girl’s tricks would
have been pretty useful to you in the old days that you and I remember!”
The voyage from Shanghai to Yokohama in October, 1866, was a true
harbinger of the stormy times through which I was to live for the next
three or four years. We left Shanghai in the early days of October with
a falling barometer, and when we got out to sea we found a typhoon in
full blast. There was a fierce sea running, but the force of the wind was
so great that it blew the foam like a carpet spread over the waves, so
that had it not been for the tossing of the ship, we might have fancied
ourselves travelling over a smooth surface. It was a wild experience, and
right thankful we were, passengers and ship’s crew alike, when we finally
came to an anchor outside Yokohama.
My first landing in Japan was a gloomy disappointment. Could this be the
fairy land of whose beauties we had heard from Sherard Osborn, Oliphant,
and the earlier travellers? The sky was grey, sad, and unfriendly; gusts
of wind turned umbrellas inside out and defied waterproofs. Where was
Mount Fuji the peerless, the mountain of the Gods? Veiled, curtained
and invisible, like the charms of an odalisque at the Sweet Waters of
Europe. The low eaves of what seemed to be a custom house were mere
runlets of water. Drip, drip, drip! In front of the building a number
of _yakunin_, small government employés, bristling with sword and dirk,
clad in sad-coloured robes with quaint lacquer hats, a mob of coolies
with rain-coats made of straw, looking like animated haycocks sodden in
an unpropitious season; a woman or two clattering and splashing in high
wooden pattens, carrying babies sorely afflicted with skin diseases slung
behind their backs—a melancholy arrival, in all truth, and sufficiently
depressing. All but half a century ago!
But of such a crowd as this—bowmen, spearmen and swordsmen, for they were
little more—was made up the brotherhood which in some four hundred and
eighty months was to win its place in the sun, tearing to tatters China’s
boasted supremacy in the Far East, sweeping a great European navy off
the face of the seas, taking, not once but twice, by sheer dogged valour
and patriotism, scorn of life and scorn of death, the famous citadel
which men said could set at nought the science and heroism of the
civilized world.
For the first two or three days, until a lair of my own could be made
ready for me, Sir Harry Parkes took me in and lodged me at the Legation,
a rather rickety but comfortable bungalow on the bund. The first night at
dinner, perhaps owing to the dismal weather, the conversation turned upon
lugubrious subjects—the anti-foreign feeling in the country; the murders
of Richardson, and more recently of Baldwin and Bird; the bloodthirsty
attacks upon the Legation by Rônins in the time of Sir Rutherford Alcock
and Colonel Neale. After all this raw-head and bloody-bones sort of
talk we went off a little dolefully to bed. In the dead of the night
I was awakened by the clatter of wooden sliding doors, the rattling
of glass, and the shaking of the whole bungalow—it was the din of the
infernal regions. I jumped up and seizing my revolver, rushed out into
the passage, quite expecting to see it full of Rônins with blades reeking
gore. Full indeed the passages were—but not of Rônins; for every soul
was on the alert, revolver in hand, ready for deeds of derring-do. But
it was no mortal foe that was attacking us. It was an earthquake. The
devils that stoke the fires of the infernal regions were at work, and we
could hardly fight them with revolvers! For a few minutes it seemed as if
the building must collapse like a house of cards; but it managed to hold
together, and all was quiet; so we went to bed again, and when we awoke
next morning the sun was shining, the mist had all faded away, the air
was crisp and sharp, and the day was full of glory.
Walking out that afternoon and suddenly coming in full view of
Mount Fuji, snow-capped, rearing its matchless cone heavenward in
one gracefully curving slope from the sea level, I too was caught
by the fever of intoxication which the day before had seemed quite
inexplicable—a fever which burns to this day, and will continue to burn
in my veins to the end of my life.
It so happened that during the next few days there was little work to do,
and so, under the kindly guidance of my old friend Satow, I was able to
wander about the neighbourhood of Yokohama, making short excursions in
the country, now in all the bravery of its autumn beauty; and what can
be more lovely than those valleys with the rich cultivation below, and
the hillsides covered with “the scarlet and golden tissue of the maples”
fringed by graceful bamboos, standing out against the dark green pines
and sombre cryptomerias? Very picturesque and attractive are the Shintō
shrines, and the eaves of the little Buddhist temples peeping from among
the rocks, half hidden by the varied foliage which embowers the choicest
spots. It is a farmers’ country, and Inari Sama, their patron god, with
his attendant foxes, has his full meed of worship.
When I arrived in Japan the country was politically in a state of fever;
it was on the eve of an earthquake which has upset the whole balance of
the world and of which the full effects have perhaps not yet been felt.
In that upheaval the European influence was a factor of which hitherto
little notice has been taken, for obvious reasons; but it nevertheless
played a very real and important part. In 1866 that influence resolved
itself into the struggle for dominance between two men—Sir Harry Parkes
and M. Léon Roches, the French Minister.
Sir Harry Parkes was certainly a very remarkable person. He was a small,
wiry, fair-haired man with a great head and broad brow, almost out of
proportion to his body; his energy was stupendous, he was absolutely
fearless and tireless, very excitable and quick to anger. Having been
sent out to China as a boy of thirteen in 1841, he learnt the language
with almost superhuman industry, and was doing important work as
interpreter, often in most dangerous expeditions, at an age when other
boys are yet wondering whether they will ever get into the school eleven.
His career in China is too well known for me to refer to it here. When he
was only thirty-eight years old he was appointed Minister to Japan, and
there later in the year I joined him.
He often expressed to me his regret that his education had been so early
broken off. The loss weighed heavily upon him. Yet no man would have
suspected him of want of literary culture. He must have created time,
for busy as his life was, he had read greedily, and he often took me by
surprise in unexpected ways; his great shortcoming as a diplomatist was
want of knowledge of French.
M. Léon Roches, the French Minister, was a handsome swashbuckler, who
had been an interpreter in the French army in Algeria. He was far more a
picturesque Spahi than a diplomatist.
The ministers of the other Treaty Powers were mere cyphers. Herr von
Brandt, the Prussian Minister, a man of great ability, was away at home,
taking advantage of his leave to render signal service to his country
during the war of 1866, for which he received the thanks of the great
Bismarck. When he returned to Japan later in the revolution he too played
a conspicuous part.
It is not too much to say that Parkes and Roches hated one another and
were as jealous as a couple of women. In the struggle between the Daimios
and the Shōgun the _beau sabreur_ backed the wrong horse. Parkes had at
his elbow a man of extraordinary ability in the person of Mr. Satow. He
it was who swept away all the cobwebs of the old Dutch diplomacy, and
by an accurate study of Japanese history and of Japanese customs and
traditions, realized and gave true value to the position of the Shōgun,
showing that the Mikado alone was the sovereign of Japan. Nor was this
all. His really intimate knowledge of the language, combined with great
tact and transparent honesty, had enabled him to establish friendly
relations with most of the leading men in the country; thus, young as
he was, achieving a position which was of incalculable advantage to his
chief.
There was another man, Mr. Thomas Glover, a merchant at Nagasaki, who
also rendered good, though hitherto unacknowledged, service in the same
sense. Parkes had the wit to see the wisdom of Satow’s policy and the
value of his advice, and, having recognized it, he had the courage and
determination to carry it into effect, giving the whole of his moral
support to the Daimios, while Roches persisted in the vain endeavour to
bolster up the Shōgun, whose power had dwindled away to vanishing-point.
One day Parkes came into my room like a whirlwind, his fair, reddish hair
almost standing on end, as was its way when he was excited. “What is
the matter, Sir Harry?” I asked. “Matter!” was the answer. “What do you
think that fellow Roches has just told me? He is going to have a _mission
militaire_ out from France to drill the Shōgun’s army! Never mind! I’ll
be even with him. I’ll have a _mission navale_!”—and he did. Three
months later out came the _mission militaire_, with Captain Chanoine at
its head—Chanoine who afterwards became famous when, as general, he was
for three days War Minister, and resigned owing to the Dreyfus affair. My
old friend, General Descharmes, then a captain, was the cavalry officer,
and arrived with a grand piano and a whole repertoire of Beethoven,
Mozart, Chopin, etc. He was a really great musician, which did not hinder
him from being a first-rate soldier.[61] Brunet was the artilleryman; he
afterwards got into a scrape by taking command in the Shōgun’s army, when
it made its last stand at Wakamatsu in the northern province of Aidzu.
Du Bousquet represented the infantry, and became a competent Japanese
scholar; Caseneuve was the fifth officer.
Not very long afterwards Captain Tracy and the _mission navale_ appeared
upon the scene as Parkes’ counterblast.
Who could have foretold that the foundation of the marvellously
successful Japanese army and navy should have had its origin in the
jealousy of the English and French Ministers? It was indeed a pregnant
episode, of which, so far as I know, no notice has been taken. No doubt
the effect of the two missions only hurried on and brought to a head what
must ultimately have taken place, although the change would have been
slower, retarded perhaps for many years; for anyone who is acquainted
with the Japanese character must see that once the seclusion of centuries
was broken into, and the country entered into the comity of nations, the
ambitious aspirations of a people so deeply moved by national sentiment
would never have been satisfied with an inferior position.
Monsieur Roches had a whole network of schemes for the establishment of
French monopolies—docks, harbours, arsenals and what not. But all these
depended upon the permanence of the Shōgun’s power. And even if that had
been effected by his support, there would have been diplomatic wigs upon
the green before he would have been able even to initiate his ambitious
designs. Our chief was far too wide awake for him.
Political changes or upheavals are probably seldom or never due to one
cause only. They are rather brought about by combinations in which
several, or perhaps many, factors play a part. In any case, in Japan
the psychological moment had arrived. The usurped rule of the Tokugawa
Shōguns had wrought no little good in the country; two hundred years of
peace—after centuries of internecine civil wars—were something to their
credit, something for which men might well be thankful. The natural
evanescence of gratitude, however, was hurried on by the despotic laws
laid down by Iyémitsu, the third Shōgun of the dynasty—the grandson of
its founder, Iyéyasu. Iyémitsu had been dead for a hundred and sixty
years and more, and his successors, far from inheriting his masterful
spirit, had lapsed into sloth and political impotence. It took some time
even in those circumstances for the end to come—but it came.
It was not to be supposed that proud nobles like Satsuma, Chōshiu, Tosa,
and the fabulously wealthy Kaga should remain for ever in almost servile
subjection to an effete despotism under conditions which it is difficult
now to realize. Why should they do homage to a ruler—at most the
self-appointed vicar of their real sovereign? Why should they submit to
enforced residence in his capital, leaving behind them, if they went home
to their own provinces, wives and children as hostages for their return?
Why should they be deprived of all voice in the affairs of their country?
The thing was unthinkable.
One main cause of the fall of the Tokugawra power came from within. When
Iyéyasu established his dynasty he made provision for its continuance in
case the direct line of his son Hidétada should fail. He directed that
in that case the Shōgun should be chosen from the descendants of his
sons, the Lords of Ki, Owari, and Mito. The second of the Lords of Mito,
Tokugawa Mitsukuni, who has been called the Mæcenas of Japan on account
of his own scholarship and his encouragement of learning in others,[62]
employed a number of the best scholars of the Empire to produce the Dai
Nihon Shi, the history of Japan from the days of the fabulous Jimmu Tennō
down to the abdication in A.D. 1413 of the Emperor Go Komatsu. (Mr.
Longford reckons him as the 99th Mikado; but the Ō Dai Ichi Ran makes him
to have been the 101st.)
The book was not printed until 1857, but it was largely circulated in
MSS. and so it came about that the grandson of Iyéyasu was largely
responsible for the scattering broadcast of a book which, as it was
written to prove the sole supremacy of the Mikado, was one of the
earliest blows struck at the Shōgun’s power. Nay more. By one of those
coincidences in which the irony of fate reveals itself, it was upon his
own descendant, Tokugawa Kéiki, the third son of a later Lord of Mito,
that the final blow fell. In 1827 appeared the Nihon Gwai Shi,[63] “the
foreign history of Japan,” which is a history of the Shōgunate from its
first foundation by Yoritomo in the 12th century. These books had created
a ferment in the country—at least among the lettered classes—which
nothing could allay, and the great nobles were ready and eager for a
revolt.
Kingdoms and governments and systems wear out like old clothes, and the
once glorious, trefoil-crested Jim-Baori (war surcoat) of the Tokugawa
Shōgun was beginning to show many signs of wear and tear, when the
arrival of Commodore Perry with four little American ships caused the
beginning of the last fatal rent in its silken tissue. The Bakufu, the
Government of the Shōgun, were paralysed with fear; they were at their
wits’ end, and when the United States commander proposed a treaty—a very
modest agreement, asking nothing more than access to three harbours of
refuge—they referred to Kiōto for instructions—they who were supposed to
rule Kiōto—and they appealed for advice to the Daimios whom they claimed
as feudal subjects. In the meantime, as a protective measure against the
foreigner they called out the fire brigade of Yedo—some fifty miles away
from where the western ships were lying! The ringing of those fire-bells
tolled the knell of the Shōgun’s power. Commodore Perry quickly sailed
away, saying that he would come back in a year for an answer; when he
returned his modest little treaty was at his command. In 1858 Lord Elgin
and Baron Gros concluded the first substantial treaties opening the
country to foreign trade.
These few lines seem indispensable for an understanding of what was to
take place in 1867 and 1868. Those who wish for details must be referred
to the histories of Sir F. O. Adams and Professor Longford.
To return to my own story. A week had hardly passed away from my first
landing in Yokohama when I was installed in what seemed to me the
daintiest little cottage in the world. It was built of fair white wood
and paper, not much bigger than a doll’s house, and quite as flimsy; it
had a tiny verandah, decked out with half a dozen dwarf trees, looking
on to a miniature garden about the size of an Arab’s prayer carpet, and
was one of a group of three such dwellings, the other two being occupied
by Mr. Satow and Dr. Willis—so we formed a small Legation colony on the
outskirts of the native town. It was all on so miniature a scale that
it seemed as if one must have shrunken and shrivelled up in order to
fit oneself to it. As for Willis who, dear man, was a giant, how he got
into his house and how, once in, he ever got out again remained as big a
mystery as that of the apple in the dumpling.
Of course we had a house-warming—also on a miniature scale—with an
officer or two of the 9th Regiment as guests, and three or four winsome
geishas to sing and dance for us. So with _Wein, Weib und Gesang_, and a
supper of rice and mysterious dishes of fish and bean curd, sent in by a
Japanese cook-shop, we spent a very merry evening. It was midnight when
the little maids, with great reverence and many knockings of their pretty
heads upon the mats, took their leave, and my first Japanese party came
to an end. The whole cost, including music and dancing, came to a little
over a dollar a head. I don’t suppose that in these improved days you
could do it for four or five times the money.
Our little colony was fated to have but a short span of life. On the
26th of November I was aroused by a violent gale which blew in one of
the shutters of my home. I got up, but unfortunately did not dress at
once, as I wanted to arrange my furniture, part of which had only been
sent in the evening before. As I was shaving my Chinese servant came and
told me that there was a fire two-thirds of a mile off. “All right,” I
said. “When I am dressed I will go and see it.” Little did I know of
the rapidity of flames in a native town. By the time I had shaved I
saw that there would be just time to huddle on a pair of trousers and
a pea-jacket. The fire, driven by the raging wind, seemed to be all
round me. I rushed from the house followed by my dog, who, poor beast!
bewildered by the noise and the crowd, bolted back again into the
furnace, where I found his charred bones the next day under the ashes of
a clothes cupboard, to which he had evidently fled for shelter. In an
hour or a little more nothing was left of the Japanese quarter in which
we lived. The wind howled and whistled. The flames leapt from roof to
roof, the burning wooden shingles, driven, as it seemed, for a couple of
hundred yards finding fresh food for their insatiable greed. There was no
crashing noise of falling timbers such as one hears in a London fire. The
flames passed over the houses and simply devoured them like gun-cotton
passed through a burning candle—a wonderful and appalling sight. In a few
minutes of what had been teeming human homes nothing remained but a heap
of ashes and a few red-hot tiles.
Nothing could cope with the fierceness of the attack. The European
quarter was soon under the curse. Stone houses—warehouses supposed to be
fireproof—were of no avail. Had not the wind abated towards the afternoon
nothing would have remained. As it was, about one third of the foreign
buildings was destroyed. It was the swiftness of the blow that was so
terrifying; it showed how in a great town like Yedo whole quarters, a
mile or two square of houses that are just tinder, may be eaten up by
fire in a few hours.
There was much loss of life. The next day close to where my house had
stood I saw a piteous row of corpses charred so that their humanity was
hardly to be recognized, and was told that this was but one of many such
rows. The victims were chiefly women from the Gankiro where the fire
broke out. One partially burned body was found in a well into which in
her agony a poor girl had leaped.
My possessions consisted of the pea-jacket, singlet, trousers, shoes and
socks in which I stood; but those who had been spared were very kind to
us. The good English Admiral, Sir George King, sent me six shirts with a
letter which I treasure.
In the meantime Sir Harry Parkes had made up his mind that he would
once more insist upon taking up his residence in Yedo, which had been
abandoned on account of the attacks upon the Legation in Alcock’s time
and when Neale was _chargé d’affaires_—attacks culminating in the
destruction by Rônin of the buildings which were in course of erection
at Goten Yama, a hill above the ill-famed borough of Shinagawa, a very
pretty spot, which the Shōgun had assigned as a site for the foreign
Legations. It was a matter of common talk that Prince Ito in his salad
days was one of that body of Rônin; we often used to chaff him about it
in old times before he became such a great man, but when he was already a
good friend of ours, and he never denied it—but only laughed.
One morning Parkes sent for me to talk the matter over. He argued, and
I quite agreed with him, that it was a most undignified and anomalous
position for an English Minister accredited to a so-called friendly
country practically to waive the right of residence in what, if not the
true capital of that country, was, at any rate, at the moment the seat of
Government. And so to Yedo we went, remaining only a few days at first in
order to make ready for our permanent abode there. This was in the early
part of November, a few days before the great fire at Yokohama.
The buildings which we were to occupy were two long, low, ramshackle
bungalows, the one for the Minister, the other for the rest of us, in
a court below the famous temple of Sengakuji—where the forty-seven
Rônin[64] are buried. At the gate was an out-building occupied by a guard
of the 9th Regiment, now the Norfolks, from Yokohama. It must seem almost
incredible to the Japanese of the present day to think of Yokohama being
guarded by a British infantry regiment, quartered in barracks on the
bluff above the town! And this a little less than fifty years ago!
In addition to the English soldiers we had a large guard of Bettégumi,
a corps of Samurai of a rather humble class specially raised for the
protection of foreign officials, but who were far more concerned with
spying upon us than fighting for us. Never was espionage carried out in
such perfection as it was in Japan, where in the days of the Bakufu it
attained the dignity of a fine art. No native official, whatever his rank
might be, went forth on his business alone. An _ométsuké_, the “eye in
attendance,” stuck to him like his shadow. No man was trusted, and it is
not to be wondered at that we also should have been unable to move a step
without our “eyes in attendance.”
The bungalow barracks under Sengakuji furnished a miserable
lodging—neither doors, windows nor shutters fitted; there were a few
stoves, which either got red-hot and smelt of burning iron, or gave no
heat at all. The wind whistled unhindered through long passages and
chilly rooms, so that it almost seemed as if we should be better off in
the open, where, at any rate, there would be no draughts.
On that first evening there was no temptation to sit up late; shivering
and shaking, we went to bed very early, but it was long before even a
pile of blankets could bring enough warmth to enable me to sleep. While
it was yet quite dark, and as it seemed to me the middle of the night,
I was awakened by a bugle-call. I jumped up and ran, pistol in hand,
formidable, breathing bloody vengeance, as I did at Yokohama when the
earth quaked, to the verandah to see what was the terrible danger—hailed
the sentry outside. “What is the matter?” “Please, sir, it’s only the
rewelly.” Relieved, I crept back into the warmth of my nest.
What with the discomfort of the buildings, the sensation of being closely
guarded, and the inquisitive watchfulness of the Bettégumi, we felt as
if we were in prison, and so Satow and myself begged Sir Harry to allow
us to hire a little temple outside. Our chief jumped at the idea, for
he was naturally anxious to do everything that would tend to break the
spell of lack of freedom which he rightly felt to be most detrimental to
any real intercourse with Japan. So Mr. Satow and I rented Monriuin, a
delicious little shrine a few hundred yards from the Legation, on a tiny
hill commanding a lovely view over the bay of Yedo; we were the first
foreigners to live out of bounds in that great city. From the Bettégumi
there was no escape—not even for an afternoon’s walk, or to go across
to the Legation. Otherwise we were free, we could hold intercourse with
natives, and if we heard the “rewelly” it was softened by distance. Forty
years afterwards I went back to Japan, and of course wished to visit
the old place. Alas! Evil times had fallen upon the monks: the dainty
little dwelling was all rack and ruin, the trim garden a wilderness of
unwholesome weeds. It was a piteous sight.
We mounted our little _ménage_ very frugally. In order to save the
expense of a cook, a _batterie de cuisine_, knives and forks, etc., we
got our dinner sent in from a Japanese cookshop; with rice and fish we
did well enough—adding now and then a little dish of chicken or duck. But
there came a day when the weather, having been too bad for the fishermen
to go out, our restaurateur with many apologies sent us a dinner of
bamboo shoots and sea-weed. That was a _jour maigre_ with a vengeance.
From that time forth it will be seen that Satow and I hunted very much in
couples. I was nominally the senior and had to draw up the reports of our
proceedings, but I may say once for all that his was the brain which was
responsible for the work which I recorded. It is difficult to exaggerate
the services which he rendered in very critical times, and it is right
that this should not be forgotten.
It was well that we had made arrangements for settling the Legation at
Yedo, for in the last days of December the Legation house at Yokohama was
burnt down. As the Japanese in their letter of condolence to Sir Harry
expressed it, “the calamity of the dancing horse” had once more made
itself felt.[65]