indebted to the ability and wisdom of his tutors, foremost among whom
were the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura, whose part in the making of the Japan
of to-day is elsewhere referred to in detail. They were Court nobles
(kuge), and both are long since dead, but it was to their teaching in
great measure, aided by that of other gifted counsellors, that was due
the strikingly complete emancipation of his mind from old-fashioned
ideas, and his adoption of the principles of government upon sound and
progressive lines. His Majesty began his reign with a declaration, wholly
spontaneous, that he would as soon as practicable create a deliberative
assembly for the discussion of public affairs, that personal freedom
should be secured to all his subjects, that whatever evil or pernicious
customs were in existence should be abolished, and that a new system,
based on the study of the experience of foreign nations, particularly as
regarded the defence of the Empire, should be forthwith inaugurated. This
was the substance of his Majesty’s Coronation oath, as it was termed, and
is the Magna Charta of the rights and privileges of the Japanese people.
The sovereign voluntarily repeated this promise at a Meeting of the
feudal princes and barons assembled at the Palace in Kioto in April 1869,
two years after his accession to the throne. But the interval had been
occupied in effecting that radical change in the system of administration
which has been the wonder of the world, and in quelling an insurrection
which was the direct outcome of the abolition of the Shogun’s office,
though personally the holder thereof had discouraged the rebellion as
far as he could by resigning his post. The Emperor had accepted that
renunciation of his rights by the Shogun Keiki, but the adherents of the
Shogunate had fought on in spite of their titular leader’s withdrawal.
In after years the sovereign, as we shall find, magnanimously abolished
the decree which had in 1868 declared the Shogun to be in rebellion,
and wholly absolved him from any intentional disobedience. But for the
time being there was civil war in the Land of Sunrise, and the history
of those unhappy eighteen months subsequent to the Emperor’s accession
must briefly be told, though, as is the case with regard to the strife
of the early sixties, in the United States of America, the memory of
those terrible days when clan fought against clan in Japan has ceased to
trouble the Ten-shi’s subjects, and those who once were sworn enemies
are and have for many years past been good friends. The events of 1867
were especially important in respect of the influence that they were
to exert on the future of the country. In the first place the powerful
Satsuma clan had obtained a conspicuously influential position in the
councils of the Empire. The prime mover in this had been Shimadzu Saburo,
who was the real father of the feudal lord of the province, but as the
previous daimio, who in reality was Shimadzu’s brother, had adopted the
young prince as his son, it followed under the Japanese laws concerning
adoption that the father became uncle to his own child. In the course of
the violent controversy which had arisen Shimadzu had most vehemently
opposed the Shogun, and accordingly he was classed among those who
were averse to the opening of the treaty ports to foreign trade, but
in reality he was not unfavourable to the admission of aliens, and was
actually willing that the entire province of Satsuma should be open to
foreign enterprise. To this suggestion, however, the Shogun had offered
objections.
Satsuma had benefited by its trade with Nagasaki, the only port that
had remained accessible to vessels from Europe during the long seclusion
of the nation from Western intercourse. In the year 1866 the British
Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, had accepted an invitation to visit the
headquarters of the Satsuma clan, three years after the bombardment of
the town of Kagoshima by Admiral Kuper’s squadron. The Minister made the
voyage in the warship _Princess Royal_, accompanied by the _Serpent_
and the _Salamis_, and the young prince of Satsuma came off to welcome
his guest in a magnificent state barge. Sir Harry Parkes, on landing at
Kagoshima on the 27th July, found that adjoining the daimio’s palace
within the castle walls were a foundry and well-equipped workshops,
and that at the foundry they had succeeded in casting a number of very
serviceable cannon, and quantities of shot and shell. Near by was a
glass works, and in one of the workshops was a steam lathe. These facts
afford strong testimony to the progressive spirit manifested even at
that period by the Satsuma clan, and the appreciation of the value of
Western appliances which had thus early in the history of the Restoration
struggle prompted the samurai of Satsuma to fit themselves to attain a
commanding position among the supporters of the Ten-shi, as opposed to
those who favoured the regime of the Shogunate.
The inability of the Shogun’s forces to subdue the Choshiu samurai had
placed the Shogun himself in a position that was obviously intolerable.
Not only was one of the most powerful of the feudal lords openly
antagonistic to the Shogunate but it was known for a fact that the
Satsuma clan was virtually allied to Choshiu in this effort to repudiate
the Shogun’s right to exact obedience from the great feudatories. It
is to the infinite credit of Tokugawa Keiki that at this crisis in his
country’s affairs he recognised the need of a more centralised and
uniform system of administration,—one in which the real power and control
should be vested in the person of the Ten-shi. He resigned the office
which had been in his family for 264 years, and begged that he might be
permitted to retire into private life. The Emperor Mutsuhito accepted the
voluntary surrender by the Shogun of his time-honoured privileges and
in doing so opened a new chapter in the record of the Japanese Empire.
The manifesto was in the sovereign’s own words and was substantially as
follows:—
It has pleased Us, at his request, to dismiss the Shogun.
Henceforward We shall exercise supreme authority, in both the
internal and the external affairs of the nation. For the term
“Tycoon” (meaning Shogun) which has hitherto been employed in
the Treaties must henceforth be substituted that of Emperor.
To this historic document were appended the great seal of “Dai Nihon”
and the signature in the monarch’s own caligraphy—_Mutsuhito_—it being,
perhaps, the first time in all Japanese history that the personal name
of the ruler had been used officially during his lifetime. The retiring
Shogun left the capital and for a brief period took up his abode in the
castle of Osaka. But it was to the chief town of Suruga province, midway
between Tokio and Kioto, that he finally withdrew, and thereafter lived
the unobtrusive life of a country gentleman on a small estate which
the Emperor bestowed upon him. In this way, in the perfect seclusion
of Shidzu-oka (_lit._: the Hill of Peace) he was able to wholly divest
himself of political connections, and was now and then to be seen setting
out on a fishing excursion with perhaps but one attendant, preferring the
quietude of his existence apart from the cares of State, and revelling in
his emancipation from the pomp and circumstance of that Court of which
for a brief interval he had been the acknowledged and puissant head.
Never, perhaps, did a potentate more completely renounce his rights, nor
so absolutely efface himself on doing so, in the history of mankind, but
he has had his reward in the confidence and favour of the real sovereign
whose deputy he had been, and from whom he has received in recent years
the highest honours. He has the rank of Prince under the new regime,
while Prince Tokugawa Iyesato, the head of the Tokugawa family, has also
been raised to the same rank, and holds office as President of the
House of Peers. Thus the family of Tokugawa, which from the close of
the Sixteenth Century until 1868 virtually ruled Japan, retains, by the
magnanimity of the Emperor, a status among the nobility of the land that
is unsurpassed by any princely or ducal house, and actually boasts the
possession among its ranks of two princes, since his Majesty thought fit
in 1900 to request his former Shogun to visit Tokio, and then and there
conferred upon him the title which he now holds, declaring at the same
time that he was perfectly absolved of all participation in the events
of 1867-8, which would no longer blot the record. There has been nothing
in the personal relations of his Majesty with his dutiful and supremely
loyal people which has more endeared him to them than his extreme
generosity, and inasmuch as there were necessarily among all classes of
his subjects many thousands—even hundreds of thousands—who had in their
early days been proud to own allegiance to the Shogun and the Tokugawa
house, the sovereign’s attitude has been more widely appreciated than it
is possible, perhaps, for strangers to the country to comprehend.
The surrender of his privileges by the Shogun in 1868 was resented by
the bulk of his adherents, and though they were compelled to retreat
towards the north before the determined advance of the Satsuma, Choshiu,
Hizen, and Tosa men, under the command of Saigo Takamori, whose notable
history will be found elsewhere in this volume, the struggle lasted for
many months. In support of the Tokugawa side the stoutest resistance
was maintained by the Aidzu clan, whose chieftain dwelt in the castle
of Wakamatsu, midway, or nearly so, between the capital and the straits
of Tsugaru which separate the northern island of Hokkaido or Yeso from
Hondo, the mainland. The prince of Aidzu had been guardian of the “Nine
Gates” of the Ten-shi’s palace at Kioto under the Tokugawa regime,
until the _coup d’état_ of the 3rd January 1868, by which his opponents
contrived to secure the person of the young Emperor, whereupon an
imperial edict appeared appointing, instead of the Aidzu men, the clans
of Satsuma, Tosa, and Geishiu, as guardians of the Gates. Loyalty to
the old regime led the Aidzu chieftain to oppose as far as he was able
the deposition of the Shogun, until he was made aware that Keiki’s
resignation had been accepted by the Emperor.
Clan jealousy was of course responsible to a very great extent for the
opposition of the northern feudatories to the proposed changes, and
in the broad sense of the term this was a conflict in which the south
waged war on the north. For according to that spirit of loyalty to a
chief which prevailed then and, happily for Japan, still prevails,
throughout the Ten-shi’s realms, in spite of his subjects having taken
for a model the matter-of-fact latter-day civilisation of the Occident,
it was permissible to regard the Shogun’s voluntary submission as an act
prompted solely by a desire to spare the lives of his followers, and as
such one of which they were not obliged to take cognisance, for although
there was no act of self-sacrifice in which they were not ready to join
if it could be proved to be needful in their country’s interests, they
held themselves to be in no way bound by a promise or declaration that
their chief had been compelled, as they deemed it, to make under the
pressure of circumstances. They regarded the Shogun as the victim of a
political combination, and were indisposed on that account to yield to
the ambitious dominance of the clansmen of the south. The Aidzu men,
therefore, continued to oppose a solid front to the Kioto party, and in
the vicinity of Wakamatsu itself many desperate contests took place. All
the males of a family, from the father to the youngest son, are known in
some cases to have taken the field in defence, as they believed, of their
lord’s interests, and warfare of that determined character which those
who have watched the career of the Japanese soldier of to-day can fully
comprehend lasted in the north of Japan until late in 1868. During the
preceding summer there was a fierce engagement at sea, close to the town
of Hakodate, which resulted in the defeat of the Shogun’s squadron, at
that time commanded by Admiral Yenomoto. Ultimately a general amnesty was
proclaimed, and the ships which remained under the Tokugawa flag were
handed over to the newly-formed department of the imperial navy.
But before this came to pass, incredible as it may seem, an attempt was
made, it was declared, to establish in Yeso some sort of republic, and
the signatures to the remarkable document in which proclamation was made
of the intentions of the promoters of this scheme included that of Otori
Keisuke (now Baron), who later represented his nation with distinction as
its Minister to the Court of Seoul. On board one of the vessels commanded
by Admiral Yenomoto, moreover, in the engagement at Hakodate, was a young
officer who in his later years has been the recipient of the highest
honours in recognition of the splendid services rendered to his country
in the course of a distinguished diplomatic career.
Strictly speaking, though the proceedings have been described at
various times as tantamount to an effort to establish a republic it is
impossible that the idea can ever have been entertained of overthrowing
the authority of the Ten-shi, whose rule is based on principles which
are in the minds of all his subjects immutable and indestructible.
What the advocates of a republic for Yeso had in view could in reality
have been but the setting up of an independent administration for the
northern island, distinct from that of the Central government which it
was proposed to provide for the whole Empire at Tokio. But the Shogunate
Republic in Yeso, had it ever taken actual shape, would have been nothing
more than a local administration owning allegiance to the sovereign power
at Kioto, and it would have been more an imperial dependency than a
republic.
The Shogun, at the time that he tendered his resignation of his office,
had urged upon his imperial master the advisability of convening a
meeting of daimios at the capital of Kioto, and his advice was taken.
The lords of the various provinces assembled while the War of the
Restoration, as it is termed, was yet in progress. A form of Government
was decided upon in which the control of the administration was vested in
a Council of State, presided over by a Chancellor (the Dai-jo-dai-jin)
assisted by two Vice-chancellors (the Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-chancellor
of the Left, which in Japan ranks highest, and the U-dai-jin, or
Vice-chancellor of the Right). The Administrative departments of State
comprised those of the Imperial Household, Foreign Affairs, Finance, War,
Education, Justice, and Religion, each with its departmental chief or
Minister. The First Council as finally formed was composed of:—
Prince Sanjo Sanetomi Dai-jo-dai-jin: a Court noble.
Prince Iwakura Tomomi Sa-dai-jin: a Court noble.
Prince Shimadzu Saburo U-dai-jin. Of Satsuma.
Saigo Takamori Of Satsuma.
Okubo Toshimichi Of Satsuma.
Kido Takakoto Of Choshiu.
Inouye Bunda Of Choshiu.
Ito Hirobumi Of Choshiu.
Okuma Shigenobu Of Hizen.
Itagaki Taisuke Of Tosa.
The Ministry was in reality constituted to give equal representation to
the four leading clans, as far as practicable, though the Choshiu and
Satsuma influence actually predominated.
Acting under authority of his Majesty the members of the Council here
mentioned had in the preceding January, on the occasion of the _coup
d’état_, established a provisional government, and had called upon the
Shogun to surrender his heritage and to submit himself entirely to
the will of his imperial master. For some months past there had been
frequent conferences at the Nijo Castle in Kioto between the Shogun and
Goto Shojiro (late Count Goto), who, with Komatsu of the Satsuma clan,
persistently urged upon the Shogun the advisability of establishing an
Imperial Government, with the effect that his Highness had been on the
point of yielding to their arguments. Goto was the trusted representative
of the Tosa clan, and had brought a letter from his feudal lord addressed
to the Shogun, in October 1867, recommending his Highness to resign his
position of Shogun, for patriotic reasons. There is excellent ground
for the belief widely entertained in Japan, and which it is palpable
his Majesty shares, that the Shogun, had he been wholly free to follow
the dictates of his own heart, would have relinquished his office there
and then, but a new complication arose through his followers coming to
blows with the Satsuma retainers, thus compelling him either to repudiate
them or to accept a position of absolute hostility to the new government
of which the Satsuma chieftain was a leading member. It was with that
extreme clemency which has throughout characterised the rule of the
present monarch that in after years his Majesty spontaneously recognised
that the Shogun had no real intention of being hostile to himself, and
that it was mainly the acts of the adherents of the Tokugawa family
which drove the Shogun into seeming antagonism to the party of reform.
As already explained, the Emperor has recently conferred on the former
Shogun a title by which his once lofty position in pre-Restoration days
is fittingly acknowledged.
But for the time, as has been said, there was civil war, and its progress
was marked by the almost continuous defeat of the Shogun’s forces, and
their gradual retreat through the provinces of the Tokaido, the great
eastern coast road, on the Shogun’s capital of Yedo, now Tokio. There in
the famous castle some of the Tokugawa clansmen were closely besieged,
while others made their way northward to the more remote regions of
Aidzu and Oshiu, and again defied the imperialists until the future
Field-marshal Yamagata finally hunted them down and compelled them to
surrender as the only alternative to extermination. The Shogun himself
finally retired into private life, at the urgent solicitation of Katsu,
the lord of Awa province, in May 1868, five months after his resignation
of his office in the first place had been formally accepted by the
sovereign, and for what happened after May, until the autumn of that
eventful year of 1868 saw the terrible internecine strife brought to a
close, the Shogun cannot be held directly responsible. By many he has
been blamed because he did not remain by the side of the young sovereign
at Kioto in the stormy period which marked the last month of 1867 and
the beginning of 1868, but it must be remembered that as a consequence
of the _coup d’état_ of the 3rd January the provisional government had
already thrust the Shogun aside and was issuing edicts for which it
had the direct authority of the monarch. The Shogun’s office had in
reality ceased by that time to exist. His presence at Kioto may well
have seemed to him in those days to have become superfluous, and his
sense of self-respect prompted him to retire to his own castle of Osaka
three days later, on the 6th January, seeing that he was no longer being
consulted on affairs of State. In the same month of January 1868, there
was a naval engagement off Awaji, that “foam-land” to which reference
has been made in connection with Japanese mythology, and which lies
athwart the Inland Sea a little west of Kobé, the opposed squadrons
consisting of the Satsuma vessels _Lotus_, _Kiang-Su_, and _Scotland_,
and the Shogun’s _Kaiyo Maru_ (the frigate bought from the Dutch), the
yacht _Emperor_ (Queen Victoria’s present to himself) and the _Fujiyama_,
another steamer purchased abroad. The three Satsuma ships were part of
the fleet which had in recent years gradually been formed by the lord of
the fief in pursuance of his conviction that the possession of powerful
vessels would some day or other prove advantageous to the clan. They held
their own fairly against the stronger ships of which the Tokugawa party
had simultaneously possessed itself, and though the _Scotland_ was sunk
off Awa Bay as a result of the encounter the Satsuma men had no reason
to be ashamed of the figure they cut in this early clash of armaments at
sea. The Satsuma vessels had been under fire before, for they had taken
part in the resistance offered by the Satsuma clan to Admiral Kuper at
Kagoshima, when he undertook to chastise the lord of their province in
1863. The Tokugawa ships returned to Osaka, or rather to Tempo-san, which
is to the great commercial port of Japan what Gravesend is to London, and
there they awaited the progress of events in that spring of 1868 which
must be accounted the most stirring period of Japanese modern history, as
the events already narrated when taken in conjunction with those which
have to be related will, it is believed, sufficiently demonstrate. It may
be observed that after the battle of Fushimi, midway between Osaka and
Kioto, which soon afterwards occurred, and in which the Tokugawa men were
signally defeated, the frigate _Kaiyo Maru_ was of the utmost service to
the Shogun in conveying him from the region where his forces were meeting
with nothing but disaster to a safe retreat for the time being at Yedo.
He took passage in her from Tempo-san, and safely reached his own castle
in what is now Tokio after two nights at sea.
The then British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, early in the spring of 1868
despatched Messrs Satow and Willis to express to the newly formed Kioto
Government his hope that the time might be deemed opportune for the
inauguration of direct relations between the accredited representatives
of Western powers and his Imperial Majesty, the Shogun having actually
resigned three months or more before. Dr Willis was the medical officer
attached to the British Legation, and at a later date took up his
residence in Kagoshima, the chief town of Satsuma, where he was physician
to the hospital which the clan established, and his services during the
stormy days of the Restoration struggle and subsequently when the Satsuma
men were nominally in rebellion were invaluable. The British Minister’s
messengers were well received and hospitably entertained in Kioto, and
were permitted to walk freely in the streets of the ancient capital of
the Ten-shi, which was something that no foreigners had ever done before.
The anti-foreign feeling was still very strong throughout Japan, as was
proved by the wholesale massacre of a French vessel’s boat’s crew at
Sakai, near Osaka. An officer and eleven men were killed in all, and the
French Minister, M. Roches, made an imperative demand on the Shogun’s
government, which at that time (February 1868) was administering the
affairs of the country, for the delivery of the bodies of the murdered
men within twenty-four hours, a request which it was found practicable as
well as politic to comply with. Also a number of Bizen soldiers hailing
from that province washed by the Inland Sea, west of Awaji, had in
passing through the newly opened port of Hiogo, vented their animosity
towards the strangers whom they saw in the streets by running amok among
them and firing with their rifles right and left. This crime, like that
perpetrated at Sakai, was avenged, for the Government was strong enough
to issue orders for the performance of seppuku by the culprits and to
insist on execution of the sentences. The Bizen men were marching from
Okayama to Osaka at the time when they allowed their anti-foreign ideas
to outrun their discretion, the actual order to fire on the foreign
residents being given by one Heiki Tatewaki, whose death was decreed by
imperial edict and the then Governor of the port, the present Marquis
Ito, was directed as his Majesty’s representative, to see the act of
seppuku carried out in due form.
[Illustration: THE ARMS MUSEUM AT TOKIO]
But there were worse troubles to follow, for when, in the month of March,
Sir Harry Parkes went to Kioto on the invitation of the Emperor, to
attend, in company with the Ministers of France and Holland, the first
imperial audience of the reign of Meiji, he and his retinue were suddenly
attacked in a public thoroughfare there, by two outlaws, of the “ro-nin”
type already described, and the British representative had personally a
very narrow escape. But for the magnificent courage shown by the Japanese
officers who had been sent to meet the Emperor’s guest, Goto,—who rode
by Sir Harry’s side, and Nakai,—who was immediately in front, with a
member of the Legation guard,—both of these Japanese gentlemen having
instantly engaged the ro-nins with their swords so effectually that one
of the assailants was slain on the spot, and the other taken prisoner,
afterwards to be executed, it is probable that Sir Harry would have been
killed. The eminent services rendered by Count Goto (as he afterwards
became) to his country are elsewhere recorded in this volume. Queen
Victoria decorated him, and likewise Mr Nakai, for their gallantry on
this occasion, and the Emperor manifested his poignant regret for the
outrage when the following month the British Minister was received at
Court. The Ten-shi gave practical effect, moreover, to his abhorrence
of these crimes by issuing a decree in which it was declared that all
persons guilty in the future of murdering foreigners, or of committing
any acts of violence towards them, would not only be transgressing the
express commands of the Emperor, but would be the direct source of
national misfortune, inasmuch as they would be committing the heinous
offence of causing the national dignity and reputation for good faith
to suffer diminution in the eyes of those Treaty Powers with which his
Majesty had declared himself to be on terms of amity and friendship. The
effect of such an edict on the minds of people so accustomed to obey
their sovereign’s behests as are the Japanese could not be other than
salutary, and although there were isolated cases in the years which
ensued wherein attacks were made on strangers, the era of opposition to
the entry of aliens was by this time practically at an end, and taken in
conjunction with the abolition shortly afterwards of those anti-Christian
edicts which had been promulgated by his predecessors on the throne it
must be admitted that the Emperor speedily gave gracious and convincing
evidence of his desire to rule with that justice and liberality towards
humanity at large by which he has ever been distinguished throughout an
already long reign.
These events have to be recorded in connection with the life of the
imperial court at Kioto at a time when the war of the Restoration,
as it is termed, was still in progress in the northern portion of
the island of Hondo, and in many cases the fighting was of the most
desperate character, fortune by no means invariably inclining towards the
imperialists. There was a fierce encounter at Utsu-no-miya, a town about
sixty miles north of the capital, resulting in a success for the Shogun’s
side, their leader having been Otori Keisuke, who, after undergoing a
term of imprisonment for his share in prolonging the rebellion, entered
the Imperial Government service, and rose to occupy posts of distinction.