MAKERS OF JAPAN
[Illustration: HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY THE TENNŌ OF JAPAN]
MAKERS OF JAPAN
BY
J. MORRIS
MEMBER OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY; AUTHOR OF “WHAT WILL JAPAN DO?”
“ADVANCE, JAPAN!” “JAPAN AND ITS TRADE,” ETC. ETC.
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: A·C·McCLURG & CO]
LONDON
METHUEN & CO.
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1906
PREFACE
Modern Japan dates from the advent on the coast of Idzu province of the
American squadron under Commodore Perry in 1853. Prior to that time,
however, more than one attempt, predestined to failure, had been made to
bring about the abolition of the feudal system, the agitators, in nearly
every case, paying the penalty of their boldness with their lives. Among
the more famous of these heroes were Fujita Toko, Yoshida Shoin, and
Sakuma Shozan,—patriots who shone during the first half of the nineteenth
century. They were in advance of their age. They lived in the days of the
Tokugawa Shogunate, when old ideas on the subject of foreign intercourse
still were uppermost. It was dangerous to advocate, as these men did, a
policy of complete reconstruction on an imperialistic basis, yet they had
the courage of their opinions, and with might and main advocated recourse
to Occidental arts and sciences for the express object of rendering
their country strong to resist aggression in every form. Their memory
is held by all their fellow-countrymen in the very highest respect, not
more for their self-sacrifice than for the real benefits that are seen
to have accrued to the people from their foresight. One lost his life in
a terrible earthquake another was executed by order of the Sho-gun, and
the third was stabbed to death by _Ro-nins_, or “Wave-men,” the turbulent
spirits of an epoch of social and political unrest. All three are
esteemed as martyrs in the cause of progress. And although the country
was not reopened, after its voluntary seclusion of two centuries and a
half, until the treaty with the United States which Perry negotiated
became operative in 1854, many surreptitious efforts had been made to
obtain a footing in the Japanese empire, between the time of the East
India Company’s withdrawal in 1623 and the appearance of the “black
ships” of the American squadron in Kurihama Bay. The Portuguese had found
their way to the isles of Japan as early as 1542, and might have remained
there indefinitely had they not aimed at the acquisition of political
power, as well as at the spread of the Christian religion. Expulsion
followed persecution, and the sins of the Portuguese were visited on
all foreigners indiscriminately, access to the Land of the Rising Sun
being from that date denied to all aliens alike, save a few Dutchmen who
were permitted on somewhat humiliating conditions to remain at Nagasaki
for purposes of trade. Will Adams, sailor and shipwright, of Limehouse,
London, passed the last twenty years of his life at Yedo, and died on the
6th of May 1620, while still in the service of the Shogun Iyemitsu, and
contemporarily with him there dwelt for a time at Hirado, a tiny island
on the west coast of Kiu-shiu, between which and the mainland flow the
“Spex Straits,” a certain Captain John Saris, founder of the East India
Company’s depot there. These men were in reality the first to obtain a
footing on Japanese soil as representatives of England. Adams died and
was buried near Yokohama, and Saris returned to London, on the retirement
of his Company, for the time being, from the Japanese trade.
There came also to the Japanese ports at various times travellers from
Russia, including an embassy under M. Resanoff, whalers from the United
States, and several British warships and merchantmen. The _Eclipse_
of Boston, Mass., was at Nagasaki as early as 1807, and the British
man-of-war _Phaeton_ called at that port the following year. M. Golownin
spent two years in captivity to the feudal lord of Matsumaye in Yeso, in
1811-1813, and the famous Dr Von Siebold was able to pass four years,
from 1825 to 1829, in the Shogun’s capital of Yedo, or as it was then
commonly spelt, Jeddo. The King William who reigned in Holland in 1844
contrived, it is said, to have his autograph letter presented in that
year to the supposed ruler of Japan, in reality the Shogun, urging the
opening of Japan to foreign intercourse. There was an American whaler in
Yedo Bay in 1845, and two such vessels were wrecked soon afterwards on
the Japanese coasts, their crews being well treated by the inhabitants.
Five years before Commodore Perry landed at Uraga there had been some
American vessels in Yedo Bay under Commodore Biddle, and a British ship,
the _Mariner_, found her way thither in 1849. By such means more and
more had come to be known of Japan and its people, though in a vague,
disjointed fashion, among the dwellers in the Occident, despite the
existence of Iyemitsu’s edict prohibiting travel. Still, the rule was
very strictly enforced, and even those subjects of the Japanese Emperor
who had chanced to be carried off to America in vessels by which they
had been saved when shipwrecked in their own junks were not permitted to
return to their own country until after its formal opening to commerce
in 1854. Some who had thus involuntarily quitted their native land as
children were scarcely able to speak their mother tongue on their return,
though well acquainted with English, which they had acquired in the
interval. Needless to say, they speedily recovered the use of Japanese as
a language and became of immense service to their country as interpreters
at a time when very few who knew English were to be met with there. Much
more was known in those days of Dutch than of any other foreign tongue,
as works in Dutch had been procured of the “Oranda-jin”—as the Hollanders
were termed—then dwelling in Nagasaki, and had been most diligently
studied, not less for the sake of learning the language than of absorbing
the information on scientific matters which those works were fitted to
convey.
Concurrently with the growth of a desire for the restoration of the true
imperial rule there had been a revival of learning, and Confucianism,
long in decay by reason of the greater attachment of the masses to the
tenets of Buddhism, began again to take hold of the popular mind. Chinese
literature had become once more the study of the educated classes, and
a demand arose for everything introduced from China which was only
equalled, perhaps, by that created a half-century later for things
European. In proportion as Buddhism lost its hold of the people the
ancient Shinto religion, which is based upon the veneration of ancestors,
and is directly connected with the patriotic devotion of the subjects
of the Ten-shi to the Imperial house, acquired fresh strength, to the
complete overthrow of the Buddhistic faith and its disestablishment as
a State religion. Under the Tokugawa regime it had attained to immense
power and influence, but with the conviction gaining ground everywhere
that the best interests of the country were to be served only by the
assumption of the active duties of sovereignty by the real monarch
instead of his delegate, the cult of Shinto triumphed and the Buddhistic
religion, though by no means extinguished, took second place in the
estimation of his Majesty’s loyal subjects. But this was not until nearly
eighteen years had elapsed from the date of Perry’s arrival at Uraga,
and in the interval the country underwent innumerable vicissitudes, the
effects in reality of the sharp divergences of opinion which the proposal
to throw open the country to foreign trade and intercourse created. There
were two parties in the State—viz. the Jo-I or party of exclusion, and
the Kai-koku or party of admission. _Jo_ signifies expulsion,—to thrust
from one,—and _I_ means a barbarian. _Kai-koku_, on the other hand, was
literally “to open the country,” and the distinction between the two
parties was therefore most marked. Eventually the Jo-I party became the
O-Sei or party of Imperial Government, in opposition to the Baku-fu,
_lit._: Military Curtain government, by which was meant the government
of the Shogun. Naturally all those who were opposed from one cause or
another to the prolongation of the prevailing system of government by the
Shogun ranged themselves under the banner of the Jo-I, whether actually
hostile to aliens or not, but when the cry for expulsion had served its
purpose the promoters of the movement against the Bakufu were willing
enough that it should be abolished, in favour of a term which more aptly
expressed the real objects and desires of the party so constituted. It is
a fact that many of Japan’s foremost statesmen were originally members
of the Jo-I organisation, though it certainly is not from that to be
inferred that they were at any period of their careers downright hostile
to foreigners. The famous motto was adopted essentially as a matter of
policy.
Anxieties were multiplied for the Baku-fu when an Englishman, who formed
one of a party out riding on the highroad between Yokohama and Yedo,
was cut down and killed by swordsmen belonging to the retinue of the
Prince of Satsuma. That was in September 1862, and it brought matters
to a climax. The British Charge d’Affaires, Colonel Neale, demanded
instant reparation, but though indemnities were paid to Mr Richardson’s
relatives, both by the Shogun’s government and the daimio of Satsuma, the
actual assailants escaped justice.
A little while prior to this outrage the chiefs of Satsuma and Choshiu
had united in a league for the “subjugation and expulsion of the
Barbarians,” and as loyal retainers of their respective lords many of
the men who have since been most prominent in the establishment of a new
Japan were greatly embarrassed, for while their convictions led them to
the adoption of every art and science that was likely to render Japan a
strong nation, their strict obedience to their chieftain’s views would
have entailed the complete abandonment of their hopes of profiting by the
experience and knowledge of the Occident, since it would have involved
a return to conditions which had prevailed in the years preceding
1853. Those Choshiu men in particular, who were known to favour the
introduction of Western arts, went, therefore, with their lives in their
hands, and one to whom reference will be made at a later stage, bears
to this day the marks of cuts which he received in an attempt made upon
his life by some of his fellow-clansmen, whose ideas on the subject of
foreign intercourse were not identical with his own. I allude to Count
Inouye, whose cheek was sliced by an antagonist’s weapon whilst he was
stoutly defending himself against an altogether unexpected onslaught by
a Yamaguchi samurai. The alliance of the two great Southern daimios for
the repudiation of the treaties and the expulsion of aliens was not of
a lasting character, nor was it intended, perhaps, that it should live
long, for the object, no doubt, was to exert pressure on the Shogun
rather than to wage war on the strangers. Nevertheless the attitude
assumed towards foreigners, to be consistent, could not be other than one
of hostility for the time being, and accordingly we find the lords of the
two provinces named drifted soon afterwards into open defiance of the
Occidentals’ naval power and the actions of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki,
the first as a consequence of the daimio’s refusal to punish his people
for the Richardson murder, and the second as the result of persistency
in firing on passing European vessels, ensued, in 1863 and 1864. How far
the feudatories named were indulging their own caprices in thus defying
the Western powers, and how far they sought merely to carry out what
they conceived to be their Emperor’s wishes, cannot now be known, but
that they were amply warranted by Imperial orders in impeding the entry
of aliens is proved by the Emperor Komei having sent a high official
of the Court to Yedo with a letter to instruct the Shogun to expel all
foreigners. This remarkable despatch conveyed the Emperor’s desire
that the Shogun would forthwith proceed to Kioto to take counsel with
the court nobles and thereupon despatch orders to the various clans,
throughout the empire, to the effect that by dint of all their strength
they should combine to thrust out the barbarians and restore tranquillity
to the land. Though the Shogun did not go to Kioto just then, it was
not through disobedience to his Imperial master’s commands, and it is
probable that had not the trouble with the Satsuma procession occurred
on the Tokaido, near Tsurumi village (where there is now a railway
station), and had not Richardson’s life been forfeited, the Shogun would
have felt himself obliged to take measures to enforce the Emperor’s order
for the foreigners’ expulsion. That the Emperor Komei was very much
in earnest about the matter is to be inferred from the fact that the
official charged with the conveyance of the message to the Shogun was
accompanied by the Prince of Satsuma, at the imperial desire, and it
was when the Satsuma chieftain was returning to his own province after
the execution of the Emperor’s instructions to escort his messenger to
Yedo that the deplorable affair occurred at Tsurumi, and the Satsuma clan
was plunged into direct antagonism with the subjects of foreign powers.
The failure on the part of the Shogun to punish it, not from lack of
inclination, but from military inability to perform the task, resulted
in the bombardment of Kagoshima by the British squadron in the following
summer. It deserves mention that, despite their avowed antipathy to the
admission of foreigners to their country, the Satsuma clansmen were
ready at that early date to avail themselves of Western appliances to
the utmost, and on the principle that to retain her position among the
nations Japan must adopt all the arts and sciences that would help her
to become strong to hold her own, they had bought guns, and ships, of
modern type, and proceeded to make the best use of both, as far as their
limited experience could serve them, immediately that the British admiral
entered the Bay of Kagoshima with his fleet. They did not wait for him to
open fire: they took the initiative themselves, and with unquestionable
courage and skill. Satsuma has, indeed, from the very beginning of the
new regime been prominent in both the army and the navy, and though it
must always be a matter of extreme difficulty to draw distinctions where
the clansmen were without exception prompt to wield the sword on slight
provocation in defence of their own or the national honour, the men of
Satsuma ever bore the reputation under the old regime of being a warlike
and indomitable race.
After 1863 their attitude towards the strangers speedily became less
hostile, and they imported machinery for a cotton mill, bought more
steamers, and in every way evinced a resolve to lose no further time
in vain efforts to sweep back the tide that they saw was steadily and
irresistibly advancing. On the contrary, they perceived that it would
be to their advantage to float with it, for the clans that might be
the first to arm themselves on the foreign model, and likewise most
prompt to adapt themselves to changed circumstances, by copying the
European methods of warfare, would be the first to profit by the military
supremacy they could hardly fail to acquire over the others. Gradually
the notion of expelling foreigners lost ground, so the way was paved for
a better understanding with the nations of the Occident. And the trend
of opinion in Satsuma was quickly seen to be communicating itself to
Choshiu, where the feudal chieftain Mori, after his defeat at Shimonoseki
by the combined fleet under Admiral Kuper, was willing to enter into
peaceful relations with the subjects of other powers, and exhibited
every disposition to be on terms of friendship for the future. It is
recorded of the lord Mori that in 1864 he declared his readiness to admit
foreigners to the ports in his barony of Choshiu, within a few months
only of the actual engagement between his forts and the combined fleet,
and the daimio’s attitude may have been modified by the representations
of Ito and Inouye, who although they failed to impress on him the
futility of opposing the allied squadrons may nevertheless have in some
degree led their chieftain to recognise the benefits that would accrue
to a speedy adoption of modern weapons and the arts of the Occident, as
conferring exceptional strength on those who might be content to sink
their prejudices and avail themselves of the improved appliances which
lay ready to their hands. At all events it seems to be fair to assume
that the supremacy of the Satsuma and Choshiu clans in the councils of
the state which in later years became so noticeable as to excite the
jealousy of others had its origin in the willingness evinced by the
daimios of those clans to listen to the recommendations of patriotic
samurai who owned allegiance to them. What is true of Satsuma and Choshiu
is of course equally true of the other clans prominent in the struggle
for the revival of imperial rule, namely Hizen and Tosa. In the course
of this work it will be fitting that I should invite attention to the
individual share which each of those who are classed as Makers of Japan
actually took in the most remarkable undertaking of recent years, though
in the earlier phases of the Restoration struggle they were merely units
of the clans to which most of them belonged. And fame rests with those
Southern clans since it was by their combined action and unity of purpose
that the Emperor Mutsuhito was invested, almost from the first, with that
direct sovereign government of his subjects which for so many centuries
had been denied to his predecessors on the throne, and which is now so
conspicuously predominant in the relations that exist in Japan between
the monarch and his dutiful and contented people.
With the assent of the Emperor Komei in 1865 to the Treaties made by the
Shogun began brighter days for Japan, and if it must be owned that the
benefits were at first unrecognised, and that considerable opposition
was in some quarters manifested to the innovations proposed, matters had
advanced so far, prior to the accession to the throne of the present
sovereign, that there was hope of the total abolition of feudalism, and
the inauguration of an essentially new regime. The world has never ceased
to marvel at the ease with which this stupendous alteration was effected.
In other lands when a revolution has been brought about it usually has
been only at a vast cost in human life. True, the northern and southern
clans fought in Japan, but the strife was not of long duration, nor was
it of a particularly sanguinary character in comparison with the terrible
slaughter that has often accompanied revolution elsewhere. It left behind
it no traces of animus to disturb the harmony of the future among the
subjects of the Japanese Emperor. That these magnificent results were
attained, and that Japan has never one inch receded from the position
that she took up nearly forty years ago, are facts that may in a large
degree be ascribed to the prudence, genius, and statesmanlike capacity of
many of those pioneers in thought and action of whose careers these pages
are intended to form a brief, and necessarily most imperfect, record.
In the preparation of this volume my object has been to convey
(_a_) A general impression of Japan and her people;
(_b_) The workings of reform, as exemplified in the lives of
some of her patriots.
In the several chapters devoted to the history of these Makers of Japan
I have sought to explain the part which each played in the introduction
of reforms, and to portray the situation in Japan now that those measures
for which they were responsible may be said to have taken full effect. In
brief, the aim has been to supply History through the medium of Biography.
I cannot do better, perhaps, than quote a sentence or two which recently
fell from the lips of one of Japan’s greatest statesmen, Count Okuma, and
whose career is briefly recorded in the following pages:—
“Now that peace has crowned the tremendous efforts which Japan
made in the War with Russia the effect upon herself will be
that she will be able to make still greater progress in the
paths of civilisation, and the true spirit of the Japanese
nation will have more room to display itself. Japan has never
been an advocate of war, and will never draw her sword from its
sheath unless compelled to do so by the pressure of foreign
powers. She fought to secure peace, not for the sake of making
war, and was only too glad to lay down her weapons as soon as
peace was obtainable, and to devote herself to the promotion of
interests of a nobler kind. The eminence of Japan is ascribable
to no mere mushroom growth; it has its roots in the past, and
her progress is to be explained by natural causes which anyone
may comprehend who cares to study her history attentively.
The late war was not one of race against race, or of religion
against religion, and the victory of Japan points to the
ultimate blending into one harmonious whole of the ancient and
modern civilisations of East and West.”
My thanks are due to His Excellency Viscount Hayashi and the members of
the Japanese Embassy in London, by all of whom the most kindly interest
has been taken in my work, and from whom I have received most valuable
aid in its preparation. Also to Baron Suyematsu, who assisted me greatly
with his personal reminiscences and who revised the chapter on Marquis
Ito, his father-in-law. I have also to record my indebtedness to the
Editor and Mr S. Imai of the _Osaka Mainichi Shimbun_, from whom I
received material help in regard to the history of those earlier Makers
of Japan who flourished in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. I
have availed myself of every opportunity of consulting the writings of
Messrs Black and Rein, and the works on Japan and its affairs by Count
Matsukata, Sir R. Alcock, Sir E. Reed, Sir Robert K. Douglas, Messrs
Hearn, Clement, and many others, and I have taken my figures for the most
part from Japanese official publications. When in 1895 I wrote “Advance,
Japan!” I ventured to predict the rise of Japanese influence in China and
that Japan would be “the lever to set the Chinese mass in motion” though
her efforts would “tend towards the consolidation of the Chinese Empire
rather than to its disintegration.” That work was translated in 1904 into
Russ avowedly in order that the Tsar’s people might learn something of
the nation they were fighting. In 1898 I had written “What will Japan
do?” and had based the story on a firm conviction that she would defeat
Russia when the inevitable contest should occur, the date I ventured to
assign for the outbreak of hostilities being, as it turned out, three
years too soon. That little volume was at once translated into Japanese.
If in the attempt that I have now made to assign to the chief personages
their due positions in respect of their nation’s stirring history, I
have in the smallest degree succeeded in conveying useful information
concerning our allies and their country to the people of the Occident,
I shall not have laboured in vain, and in submitting my work in all
humility—conscious of its many defects and shortcomings—to the judgment
of the public, my one hope is that it may be of some slight service to
those who may honour me by perusing its pages.
J. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN 1
II. PRINCE TOKUGAWA KEIKI: THE LAST OF THE SHOGUNS 53
III. FUJITA TOKO 97
IV. SAKUMA SHURI (OTHERWISE SHOZAN) 101
V. YOSHIDA TORAJIRO (OTHERWISE SHO-IN) 114
VI. MARQUIS ITO 119
VII. PRINCE IWAKURA TOMOMI 154
VIII. PRINCE SANJO SANETOMI 163
IX. COUNT INOUYE KAORU 170
X. VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI 184
XI. COUNT GOTO SHOJIRO 195
XII. MARSHAL SAIGO TAKAMORI 202
XIII. FIELD-MARSHAL MARQUIS YAMAGATA 219
XIV. COUNT OKUMA SHIGENOBU 246
XV. FIELD-MARSHAL MARQUIS OYAMA 255
XVI. FUKUSAWA YUKICHI 268
XVII. MARQUIS KIDO KOIN 273
XVIII. COUNT ITAGAKI 279
XIX. COUNT MATSUKATA MASAYOSHI 284
XX. ADMIRAL VISCOUNT ENOMOTO 299
XXI. ADMIRAL TOGO HEIHACHI 306
XXII. BARON EICHI SHIBUSAWA 315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
H.M. THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN _Frontispiece_
THE GEKU SHRINE AT ISÉ _to face page_ 8
THE ARMS MUSEUM AT TOKIO ” ” 32
THE EX-SHOGUN AND FAMILY ” ” 53
(_From a Photograph by the Kinkodo Co.,
Tokio_)
THE INTERIOR OF SHIBA TEMPLE ” ” 84
FUJITA, SAKUMA, AND YOSHIDA ” ” 97
MARQUIS ITO ” ” 119
JAPANESE SCHOOL AT SEOUL ” ” 136
PRINCE IWAKURA TOMOMI ” ” 154
PRINCE SANJO SANETOMI ” ” 163
COUNT INOUYE KAORU ” ” 170
VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI ” ” 184
COUNT GOTO SHOJIRO ” ” 195
MARSHAL SAIGO TAKAMORI ” ” 202
MARQUIS YAMAGATA ” ” 219
COUNT AND COUNTESS OKUMA ” ” 246
(_From a Photograph by the Kinkodo Co.,
Tokio_)
MARQUIS OYAMA ” ” 255
FUKUSAWA YUKICHI ” ” 268
MARQUIS KIDO ” ” 273
COUNT ITAGAKI ” ” 279
COUNT MATSUKATA ” ” 284
(_From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry_)
ADMIRAL ENOMOTO ” ” 299
ADMIRAL TOGO ” ” 306
BARON SHIBUSAWA ” ” 315
MAKERS OF JAPAN
I
HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN
At the head of the list of Makers of Modern Japan stands by right the
name of the illustrious ruler, not merely in virtue of his imperial
position, but of the supreme efforts which throughout his reign of
thirty-eight years to the present time he has made to raise the status of
his country among nations and to confer upon his subjects the blessings
of enlightened government. His Majesty Mutsuhito, son of the Emperor
Komei, succeeded to the throne of Japan in February 1867, when he was
fourteen years and three months old, was crowned on the 13th October
1868, married the Princess Haruko on the 9th February 1869, and has issue
a son (the Crown Prince Yoshi-hito) and four daughters, the Princesses
Tsune, Kane, Fumi, and Yasu.
The Crown Prince was born on the 31st August 1879, and was installed in
this dignity on the Emperor’s birthday, 3rd November 1889, came of age
and took his seat in the Upper House, in 1897, married on the 10th of May
1900 the Princess Sadako, daughter of Prince Kujo, and has issue two sons.
The personal name of the sovereign is rarely written or spoken in Japan,
it being regarded almost as a discourtesy to allude to the ruler as
other than the Ten-shi, the son of the heavens, or more elegantly as the
Tenno, the heaven-sent Emperor. The theory of the supernatural origin
of the imperial dynasty ceased to have weight with the educated classes
long ago, but that in no way lessens the respect and affection which his
subjects have for their sovereign. It was at his express command that
they divested themselves of every vestige of superstition concerning his
traditional semi-divine descent, and when they ascribe to his personal
virtues their success in war, as they commonly do, it is but evidence
of their conviction that it is an immeasurable benefit to themselves,
and ensures success in their undertakings, to have as their monarch one
who is in every sense a man to be esteemed for his high sense of honour,
his love of truth and justice, and his innate appreciation of the duties
devolving upon him as having inherited the proud title of “an Emperor who
owns allegiance only to heaven.” There were, in the years which have gone
by, some Emperors who sadly failed to realise the necessity of setting a
good example to their subjects, in Japan as elsewhere, but the memory of
those monarchs is not revered. The present ruler has won throughout his
reign the love of his people for the purity of his life, the untiring
attention which he bestows on the affairs of his country, the supreme
magnanimity he has ever displayed in his treatment of those who by the
force of circumstances have been placed in a position of hostility, not
to his rule, for that is impossible in Japan, but to his Cabinet, and
above all for the readiness that he has invariably evinced in time of
national anxiety to enter into his people’s feelings and to subordinate
his personal comfort to his paramount duties as an active sovereign. Had
it still been the custom for monarchs to head their forces in the field
his Majesty Mutsuhito, as all his loyal and dutiful subjects know, would
have mounted his charger and led his hosts to battle with as great a
zest as did ever one of his predecessors on the throne in the fighting
days of old. That happiness being denied him, he sat at his desk in his
headquarters at Hiroshima for sixteen hours a day while his troops, for
eight months, waged war a decade ago with the Chinese in Manchuria and
Shantung.
It may be useful here to explain that the title of Mikado by which his
Majesty is perhaps best known to Europeans, although undeniably an
appellation of great antiquity and in no degree derogatory, is in little
use in Japan itself. Literally it signifies the “honourable gateway” or
“entrance,” and though in ancient times the designation, when applied
to a ruler who dispensed justice from a seat at the entrance to his
pavilion, may have been more or less an appropriate title, it may be
also that as years went by the preference of the people for some term
that should more definitely convey the idea of the sovereign’s supremely
exalted origin, according to then popular belief, led to the gradual
adoption, in official documents, of the title of Tenno, and in common
conversation of that of Ten-shi, terms which are in general use at the
present day. The perpetuation of the term Mikado among foreigners, though
almost obsolete among the inhabitants of the Ten-shi’s realms, is on a
par with the retention of the name “Japan” as that of the country itself,
it being a survival of the “Jipangu” of Marco Polo, who thus alluded to
it in writing an account of his travels. Marco Polo’s book was prepared
in 1299 at Genoa, and Jipangu was doubtless the traveller’s rendering of
the Ji-pên-kwoh of the Chinese, the name by which Japan is known to that
nation to-day, and by which Marco Polo heard the island Empire spoken of
some 600 years ago. To the Ten-shi’s subjects their land is Ni-hon-koku,
or Sun-origin Land, a term that is fairly translated, perhaps, as the
Land of Sunrise. Ji-pên-kwoh, in Chinese, has precisely the same meaning,
and the three ideographs employed are identical in Chinese and Japanese,
the difference being one of pronunciation only. Though the dwellers in
Nihon know as a rule by this time what is meant by Japan they always
speak of their land as Nihon or Nipon, and though they know to whom
strangers allude as the Mikado, they refer to his Majesty as the Ten-shi
or Tenno. Nevertheless, the terms in use abroad, though they have less to
recommend them on the score of accuracy, either for country or ruler, bid
fair to survive for generations.
In Japan there are four Imperial families in which are vested the rights
of succession to the throne in case of the failure of the direct line
of the sovereign. These families are the Arisugawa, Katsura, Fushimi,
and Kanin. The throne has ten times been occupied by a woman, but it was
ever an inflexible rule that she should choose a prince-consort from
among these four Shinnō, or Imperial families, and the relationship of
these families to the throne well illustrates the principle of adoption
which prevails throughout Japan in all classes, from the Imperial circle
down to the home of the humblest peasant. Adoption there confers all the
rights, privileges, and obligations of blood relationship, and it was
on this basis that the late Prince Taruhito, who played so important a
part in the making of Modern Japan, and is often referred to elsewhere
in this volume, came to occupy the position of uncle to the reigning
monarch. Prince Taruhito, who for the first three decades of the Meiji
era was the Commander-in-chief of the Japanese army, and died towards the
close of the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-5, was adopted as a son by the
Emperor Ninko, who reigned from 1817 to 1846 (grandfather to the present
Emperor), and he thus became a brother of the Emperor Komei, who was
the real son of Ninko. The Emperor Komei sat on the throne from 1846 to
January 1867, and was succeeded by his only son the reigning Sovereign
Mutsuhito. The late Prince Arisugawa was therefore uncle by adoption only
of the present Emperor, and curiously enough that is in one sense the
relationship which actually exists between the present Prince Arisugawa,
who recently visited our shores, and the present Emperor, for the prince
is the younger brother by birth of the late Prince Taruhito, who, having
no children of his own, adopted his brother as his son and heir. Prince
Taruhito having adopted his brother as his son, however, the brother then
became the reigning monarch’s cousin, and, as adoption confers absolute
rights, it is in the light of cousinship that we must regard the personal
relation of Prince Takehito Arisugawa to the occupant of the throne. In
reality it is difficult to institute anything like a fair comparison,
for in Europe our family relationships do not precisely correspond to
those that exist in the Japanese Empire, and any effort at explanation
of the actual status attained by the system of adoption, as it prevails
there, must fail to convey an accurate idea of the true position. Still
it will now be understood, as adoption brings with it full privileges,
how Prince Takehito, the prince who served as a midshipman in the British
navy, and is generally known as Prince Arisugawa, was for some years the
heir-presumptive to the Japanese throne. The Emperor Ninko having left
two sons,—though one was his son by adoption,—recourse would have been
had to the line of the adopted son had the present occupant of the throne
remained without a direct heir. The Crown Prince was not born until 1879,
but the direct succession is now, it would seem, amply secured, as he has
sons of his own.
The equivalent of “his Majesty” in Japanese is “Hei-ka,” so that the
full expression employed in speaking of the monarch is Tenno Hei-ka,
but there are additional titles not in general use, as is the case not
only in Japan and neighbouring countries but among most European as well
as Asiatic States. The same is true of the land over which the Ten-shi
rules, for it has borne fully as many names as have at various periods
the British Isles, and it was remarked at the time that the _Albion_ and
the _Shikishima_ battleships were being built side by side at Blackwall
that these vessels carried the ancient names of the countries to which
they belonged, for Shikishima is a poetical title,—implying Isles of
Prosperity,—for Japan, and is employed there in very much the same way as
Albion is with us.
The Emperor of Japan has no family name, for, apart from the theory
of his semi-divine descent, his house dates back to a period in the
world’s history when the dwellers on this globe were fewer in number, and
surnames had not been brought into use in the Orient. Thus it has a claim
to respect in virtue of the unparalleled duration of the dynasty such as
is possessed by no other reigning family in the world. His subjects are
justly proud of the fact, and likewise of the circumstance that he rules
over a people who have remained unconquered through the ages, in assured
tenure of the land bequeathed to them by their ancestors.
The profound respect, verging upon adoration, paid in Japan to the
occupant of the Throne is ascribable to an absolute conviction, pervading
the minds of all classes of his Majesty’s subjects, that their ruler is
a monarch who personally studies the welfare, the happiness, and real
comfort, of his people. The feeling that the sovereign takes an almost
paternal interest in the well-being of those whom he governs is so
universal in Japan as practically to constitute a feature of Japanese
national life. It is shared by all, rich and poor, young and old, the
noble and the lowly. In theory the throne is above criticism. In the
present era it is so in practice. In the long history of the Land of
the Rising Sun, there have been instances in which the sovereigns have
conspicuously fallen short of the standard of perfection, but in Japanese
eyes the failure to attain the ideal has been due not to the errors
of the individual so much as to his environment. There seems to be no
room in the Japanese mind for the conception of a ruler who has not the
amelioration of the lot of his loyal subjects always at heart, and if
they were to be confronted with direct proof to the contrary they would
cling to the belief that their sovereign must have been the victim of
circumstances. The people’s attachment to the throne never wanes, or
can wane, but if it happens that he who occupies that exalted position
is a sovereign for whom they are able to develop an intense affection,
owing to his personal characteristics, so much closer must the bonds be
drawn, so immeasurably in advance of all previous experience will be the
enthusiasm evinced for his cause by those who may be privileged to serve
him afloat or ashore.
The present Emperor has on more than one occasion, indeed, expressed
the wish that his subjects would cease to attribute to his family a
supernatural origin, and although it was inevitable that at the period of
his accession he should be regarded as Pope as well as Emperor, in virtue
of the connection that had from time immemorial existed between the
throne and the Shinto faith, insomuch that Shintoism was to all intents
and purposes the State religion of Japan, he took the earliest possible
opportunity of investing his cousin, then the Uyeno-no-miya, or High
Priest of Uyeno temples, with the spiritual functions appertaining to
the Sovereign’s office, and announcing his own intention of ruling Japan
purely as a secular monarch. Under the title of Kita Shirakawa-no-miya
this prince two years later left the temples and entered the newly
raised army, with the rank of major. General Kita Shirakawa-no-miya died
some years ago, but his brother Higashi Fushimi-no-miya, who likewise
was a Shinto priest at the outset of his career, was entrusted with the
imperial brocade banner and ordered to chastise the rebels in the war
of the Restoration in 1868, and he subsequently distinguished himself
as a military officer in many hard-fought fields. He some years ago
visited London as the representative of the Ten-shi and was present at
St Paul’s on the day that Queen Victoria gave thanks for the recovery
from a severe illness of the Prince of Wales, our present King Edward
VII. With the resignation by the prince Kita Shirakawa-no-miya of his
priestly office the direct relationship of the imperial family to
Shintoism ceased, though by the deification of former rulers of the
country, and the retention for untold years of the position of head
of the church by the reigning sovereign, the union had seemed to be
indissoluble. Shinto is now only a cult, but it embodies the principle
on which the moral teaching of the Japanese substantially is based, and
it still has for its chief function the performance of rites in memory
of the imperial ancestors. Shintoism has neither creed nor dogma,—it
inculcates patriotism and loyalty. It enjoins upon all the virtue of
courage, the cultivation of the strictest sense of honour, and the
universal practice of courtesy and consideration. The essence of Shinto
(_lit._: “the way of the gods”) is the spirit of filial piety, and,
to quote the late Lafcadio Hearn, it implies the “zest of duty, the
readiness to surrender life for a principle. It is religion, but religion
transmuted into ethical instinct. It is the whole emotional life of the
race,—the Soul of Japan.” In its best and purest form, according to the
highest authorities, it consisted of ancestor-worship combined with
reverence for the forces of nature. There was the natural respect for the
memory of ancestors, national or individual, added to the awe inspired
by the phenomena of nature, in the tempest and the earthquake, the
lightning’s flash and the thunder’s crash. The beneficent influence of
the summer sun on the ripening corn led those who lived by agriculture
to value the blessing as the gift of a goddess, and they revered her as
“Ama-no-terasu,” the splendour of the skies, and regarded her as the
special ancestress of their adored ruler. Thus, as one authority has
remarked, to those Japanese whose first idea of duty is loyalty to the
Emperor,—and this means the nation at large,—Shinto becomes a system of
patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion. The common people still
regard it in that light, and continue to worship and pray at its temples,
though officially it was secularised six years ago and placed under the
control of a Bureau of Shrines, as distinct from the Bureau of Religions,
which takes cognisance of matters affecting the Buddhist and Christian
faiths. In 1899 the officials of the Isé shrines, which are the oldest in
the Empire, and in which are preserved the three sacred emblems of the
monarchy,—the mirror, sword, and jewel of antiquity,—symbolical of regal
power, and looked upon as coeval with the dynasty itself,—took measures
to define their position as heads of a secular organisation. They then
described Shintoism as “a mechanism for keeping generations in touch with
generations, and preserving the continuity of the nation’s veneration for
its ancestors.” But throughout the length and breadth of the land the
sight of a Shinto shrine will continue to prompt the passer-by to pause
for a moment in his journey, to fold his hands in silent prayer, to cast
a coin into the capacious moneybox, and to bow the head in submission to
a higher will, no matter whether the rites of Shinto worship be for the
future viewed in the light of a religion or only as a cult.
[Illustration: THE GEKU SHRINE AT ISÉ]
Marco Polo’s references to “Jipangu,” as we have seen, were not based on
his personal observations but on information derived from the Chinese,
and though he travelled widely in China, accompanied by his brother, he
never set foot on Japanese soil. That an island empire existed to the
east of them, however, had been known to the Chinese for centuries, and
Kublai Khan had unsuccessfully sought to bring it into subjection only
a short time prior to the Polos’ arrival at his Court in 1275. It is
probable that Christopher Columbus, when setting sail from Palos in 1492,
hoped to reach “Jipangu,” of which he had doubtless heard through the
publicity given to Marco Polo’s travels, by sailing westward, and it is
possible that Columbus imagined that he had found his way to some part
of an Eastern continent when he discovered America. The first traveller
to actually land in Japan was Fernao Mendes Pinto, in 1542, seven years
before the Jesuit Missionary Francisco Xavier arrived there. Pinto was
favourably received in Bungo, a province of Kiushiu, the large island in
the south-west of Japan, and arrangements were made for a vessel to visit
Bungo with foreign produce, every other year. Pinto belonged to Coimbra,
in Portugal, and thus it is to that power that is due the honour of its
subjects having been the first to visit Japanese shores. Pinto’s ship
was the only survivor of three which started from Lisbon on a voyage of
adventure, and it was from her crew that the Japanese first acquired a
knowledge of the use of firearms. The Bungo province gives its name to
the narrow channel that here divides the islands of Kiushiu and Shikoku,
which is exceptionally rich in historical associations, for if tradition
be in this instance correct it was in one of its many little bays that
the vessel conveying the ancestor of the Ten-shi, the first Emperor Jimmu
Tenno, dropped anchor over 2500 years ago. Where Jimmu Tenno came from
remains an absolute mystery, but it seems to be fairly established that
he brought with him a mighty host, armed for conquest, and that he had
early encounters with the tribes then inhabiting the south and west of
Hondo, the main island. One of these was the Yamato tribe, which probably
at that remote period dwelt in what is now Iwami, and its occupancy of
the coast facing the peninsula of Korea, might be taken to imply that its
people originally crossed the water from that kingdom, though it would
not of necessity follow that the men of Yamato were identical in race
with the dwellers in Korea at the present day. Fighting his way along the
borders of the Inland Sea, the invading chieftain Jimmu Tenno ultimately
reached the neighbourhood of what is now Kioto, and set up his capital
in that region. It is not improbable that he brought with him many
members of the Yamato tribe that he had subjugated, and this may account
for the presence to this day in that part of Japan of numberless families
possessing the characteristics in a marked degree of what is termed the
Yamato race,—in other words, the elongated features and intellectual
aspect as distinguished from the round chubby countenances of the
majority of the men and women of the hei-min, or common stock, which
forms so large a percentage of the entire population. The Yamato people
may have emigrated in the first place from Manchuria, passing through
Korea on their way to Japan, and though it may be condemned as fanciful
the idea is perhaps not altogether groundless that in seeking to recover
Manchuria in recent years from the grip of the Muscovite the Japanese may
in reality have been striving, though few were aware of it, to deliver
their own ancestral home from the presence of the Western intruder.
Jimmu Tenno began to reign as Emperor of Japan in 667 B.C., being
then, it is supposed, about thirty-five years of age. Ancient Japanese
tradition no doubt assigned to him a supernatural origin, and it is not
difficult to trace in the unexpected advent on Japanese soil of the
conqueror and his knights the germ of such a belief, supported as it
probably was by martial prowess to a degree with which the then peaceful
inhabitants of the Japanese chain of islands were totally unfamiliar. The
peoples of the adjoining mainland of Asia—that is to say, the Chinese and
the Manchus, as well as the Koreans—were appreciably in advance, it is
to be presumed, in the arts of war, of any of the islanders of that age,
and the invaders, as Jimmu Tenno and his men must have been, of Southern
Japan, seven centuries before the Christian era, may have been regarded,
and not altogether unnaturally, as beings descended from another
planet. The Emperor Jimmu’s mother was a daughter, we are told, of the
Sun-Goddess and the Sea-God (the Japanese Neptune) and in this myth may
be traced a notable parallel to that concerning Romulus, the founder and
first King of Rome, whose father was reputed to have been Mars, the god
of war. Romulus founded Rome just eighty-six years before Jimmu became
the founder of the dynasty of Japanese emperors, but there the parallel
ends, for while Rome became a republic in less than 250 years, and
underwent endless vicissitudes, a direct descendant of Jimmu occupies the
imperial throne of Japan to-day.
In the older histories of Japan one may read how the Isles of Sunrise
came into existence, and the legend is pretty enough to merit recognition
in lands other than that to which it especially applies. When all
was chaos on this globe, very far back in its nebulous stage of
existence,—when the purer elements were ascending to form its skies,
and the impure were gathering to form its earth,—the god Izanagi, with
his august spouse the goddess Izanami beside him, was standing on the
ethereal arch that spans the higher heavens, bearing in his hand the
jewel-spear. Suddenly he thrust the weapon downward and with it probed
the watery expanse beneath. As he drew it forth from Ocean, drops of foam
and brine fell from its point, and in congealing formed an island. That
island is called “Foam-land” (Awaji), in the centre of what is now Japan,
and it bars the passage from the eastward to the picturesque “Inland
Sea.” In it Izanagi and Izanami took up their abode, and gradually formed
the other islands of the group. The Sun-goddess and the Sea-god were
their children, and Ama-no-terasu, the “Splendour of the Skies,” was
their grand-daughter, and became the parent of Jimmu Tenno, the first
Emperor of Japan.