the ancient castle of the Nijo, at Kioto, and it was then that he took
the oath to rule constitutionally, which was a purely voluntary act,
prompted by an earnest desire to confer upon his people the advantages
and blessings of enlightened government. A few weeks later, in the
second month of 1869, he wedded the Princess Haruko, the daughter of a
Court noble, and during the ensuing spring the Imperial court was wholly
transferred to Yedo, that city being renamed Tokio, or Eastern Capital,
to distinguish it from Kioto, which bore thenceforward the official title
of Saikio, or Western capital. At Tokio his Majesty took up his abode
in the Hon-maru, or Inner circle of the former castle of the Tokugawa
family, and on the following 6th of September he received Prince Alfred
of England in the palace gardens of Fuki-age, adjoining the imperial
residence. This was the first occasion in the history of Japan on which
the sovereign had ever met a foreign prince, all previous intercourse
with strangers having taken place through the medium of the Shoguns. The
interview between the Ten-shi and the British prince, afterwards the
Duke of Edinburgh, took place in a tiny summer-house in the picturesque
grounds of Fuki-age, then of considerable extent and laid out in wholly
Japanese style, with its clumps of bamboo, groves of pine, masses of
rhododendron, and azalea, rippling brooks, and grassy dells that go to
form the delightful pleasaunces in which the heart of every Japanese
rejoices. The meeting was of a most cordial character, the Emperor on
that occasion wearing the unique old-fashioned head-dress which it was
customary from time immemorial for the sovereigns of Japan to don on
State occasions. His majesty only once afterwards appeared in public with
this peculiar crown, and that was on the day that he opened the railway
from Tokio to Yokohama in 1872. He has since worn foreign dress at all
State functions.
Late in 1869 the Emperor was joined at Tokio by the young Empress
Haruko, who travelled overland by the highroad termed the Tokaido, with
an immense retinue, resting on the way at the prescribed _honjins_ or
private hotels used by the feudal lords on their former journeys to and
from Yedo, when the Shoguns required them to pay periodical visits to
the headquarters of the Tokugawa government. The Empress was some weeks
on the road from Kioto to Tokio, and as her procession passed through
the street of Kanagawa, near Yokohama, the foreign residents took the
opportunity to assemble at the wayside and show their respect for the
Ten-shi’s consort. They did not catch a glimpse of her features, but they
knew that behind the gauze-screened windows of her lacquered palanquin
sat the highest lady of the land, perhaps as much interested in her
first sight of the strangers from the west as they were with the various
elements of the imperial cortege. Though her majesty had heard and read
much of the characteristics of the Occidentals, she had never previously
seen any of them; in after years, however, her own beneficent impulses in
the cause of charity led her to receive on many occasions the wives and
daughters of foreign residents and contributed to the establishment of an
enduring fame as the strenuous advocate and supporter of all good works.
The Emperor was but little in evidence in the early years of his reign,
and it was an event in the history of the nation when the monarch who
had been brought up in such strict seclusion was one day seen in the
streets of his capital driving in an open carriage to Hama-go-ten, the
beach palace in the suburbs of Tokio, in company with his Ministers the
Princes Sanjo and Iwakura. On this occasion he had done them the supreme
honour of calling for them at their residences and conveying them in his
own carriage to a ceremony in which they were both deeply concerned.
This was on the 1st of October 1871, and it is difficult to estimate at
its true value the extraordinary effect which so graceful an act on the
part of the monarch who had only four years before succeeded to a dignity
which seemed to impose on him an existence of absolute invisibility to
his subjects must have had on those who were witnesses of this vast
concession to modernised ideas. Under the old regime the princes would
themselves have been hidden from the vulgar gaze by the latticed windows
of their sedan chairs, and the sovereign would never have been seen
outside his own palace walls.
The next year the first line of railway was completed and the moment was
seized by his Majesty’s advisers for a grand ceremony at the port which
thirteen years before had been thrown open to foreign trade. A suitable
stage had been erected at the Yokohama end of the eighteen miles long
railway, over which an experimental train service had been conducted
for some weeks previously, and at the appointed hour the Emperor, clad
in white silk robes, with a crimson sash, and scarlet trousers, and
wearing in place of a crown the antique black coif terminating in an
upright lath-like structure which rose some ten inches above his head,
came forward in full view of the multitude, which included hundreds of
foreign residents and visitors. To the great mass of his subjects, with
whom the existence of the sovereign had always been a matter of pious
belief rather than of assured reality, this manifestation in the flesh
of their revered ruler was beyond measure impressive and gratifying. It
unquestionably smoothed the path of the newly formed Central Government,
for the advent of his majesty on the scene was proof positive that all
which was then being done in the way of innovation upon established usage
had the imperial sanction and authority. In Japan this meant a great deal
more, owing to the respect for law and order which is admittedly inherent
to the Japanese character and disposition, than it by any possibility
could have done in lands where less reverence is shown to sovereign
attributes. The day was one to be remembered by old and young alike, for
it marked beyond all doubt the emancipation of Japan from the thraldom of
a feudal system which had held her in check for centuries. The Emperor
had set the seal of his approval on projects of reform.
In the same year the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout Japan, and
from this period may be said to have been obliterated those discrepancies
in dates which had been unavoidable owing to the tendency to resort to
the Chinese plan of reckoning time. Down to the year named the day of
the month corresponded to the age of the moon, and an intercalary month
had to be provided in the calendar every third year. The new year fell
usually between mid-January and mid-February, and as dates were given in
conformity with the old style of reckoning in some cases and in others
the new, it may be that down to 1872 there will here and there be found a
difference of a month or so in the recorded dates of events.
The opening of the railway in 1872 from Tokio to Yokohama, though of no
great length, made communication between the capital and its port a far
more easy matter than it had been at the time when the Tokaido was the
only highway and traffic was liable to dislocation by the passage of a
daimio and his retinue of two-sworded samurai. It is true that for some
two or three years prior to the date on which the regular service of
trains between the two places began to work a revolution in the system of
travel there had been a steamer or two plying to and from the wharf at
Tsukiji, near the Hama-go-ten Palace, in Tokio, and the jetty at Yokohama
which then existed near the northern end of the “Bund” or Esplanade. But
the accommodation, though the residents freely enough availed themselves
of such facilities as the service afforded, was of the most limited
and primitive character, and was necessarily wholly inadequate to the
demand for the means of transport of that almost pauseless ebb and flow
of the tide of humanity along the shores of the bay which from the days
of Kaempfer had never failed to attract the attention of travellers.
One of the saddest incidents of the early days of the new era was the
explosion of the small steamer _Yeddo_ as she lay at the Tsukiji “hatoba”
with steam up in readiness for her daily voyage to Yokohama, some scores
of lives being sacrificed on that occasion. The _Yeddo_ was one of
the pioneers of the coasting trade of Japan, which has since grown to
proportions truly enormous.
While the railway to the “Eastern capital” was being built, another line
was commenced from the newly opened port of Kobé-Hiogo to Osaka and on
to the “Western capital” of Kioto. It was officially opened for traffic
in 1873, the Emperor being present on the occasion, which gave rise
to great national rejoicing. The improved methods of transport had by
that time been extensively supplemented by greatly enhanced facilities
for intercommunication in the form of telegraph lines, which had been
stretched over practically the entire length of the highroad from Tokio
to Nagasaki, close upon 1000 English miles. The work was done in the
days when the peasantry of the interior had no conception of the value
of such aids to commerce and were not easily to be persuaded to refrain
from interference therewith. In many cases the telegraph poles were
uprooted as soon as they were planted in the ground, and in others the
opposition to the innovation took the form of active hostility to the
individuals, both native and foreign, charged with the duties of carrying
out the proposed works. The origin of this antagonism, however, was to be
ascribed solely to local prejudice, and the punishment of the ringleaders
proved to be a sufficient deterrent to the rest, for after the first few
months the attacks entirely ceased.
At this stage the residents of the Capital had become somewhat accustomed
to see the Emperor riding or driving through the streets of the
metropolis, for he periodically reviewed his troops on the Hibiya parade
ground, and not infrequently was to be seen visiting places at some
distance from his capital. The greatest concern was manifested by all
classes when, late one night in the spring of 1873, the signal guns were
heard to announce that a fire had broken out within the castle. There
was a prompt muster of the forces forming the Tokio garrison and for a
while the utmost consternation prevailed. The damage done was immense,
and the actual source of the outbreak was discovered to have been in
such dangerous proximity to the imperial apartments as to suggest for
the moment that there had again been a preconcerted arrangement to seize
the person of his Majesty, in the confusion which might well have been
expected to arise on the warning guns being fired. Happily the monarch
was efficiently guarded, and whatever may have been the true cause of
the conflagration there was no difficulty in removing the Court to
another palace at Akasaka, in the suburbs, wherein his Majesty dwelt
during the rebuilding on a modern design of the imperial residence
within the Honmaru. In the thoroughfares of Tokio were at this time to
be seen scores of Satsuma samurai, retainers of the feudal chieftain
Shimadzu Saburo, who was occupying the position in the new Government
of Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-president of the Left, as already mentioned,
and these ardent spirits of the warlike clan of the south found much
in the changes that were then taking place to be displeased with. They
persisted in wearing their two swords in their belts, and had their hair
dressed in the old-fashioned queue. Their retention of the old style
of costume, too, with its loose trousers, sandals for the feet, and
lacquered helmet tied with cords for the chin, among a population that
was already beginning to adopt foreign fashions to a notable extent, made
them conspicuous and provoked the ridicule of the lower classes. This
the Satsuma clansmen were quick to resent, and here and there slight
skirmishes were recorded, the general effect being to create a feeling of
uneasiness which lasted for many weeks until the Satsuma chieftain, as
elsewhere explained, resigned his office and returned to his stronghold
of Kagoshima in the summer of 1873.
The year 1874 was memorable as that of the expedition to Formosa, when
Japan chastised the savages of the south-east coast of that island for
their ill treatment of Japanese shipwrecked sailors. China’s attention
had been drawn to these barbarities, but she had professed her utter
inability to put a stop to them, and Japan had then warned the Peking
Government that if the savages should continue to subject Japanese
mariners or others who might be cast away on Formosan shores to the
inhuman treatment which it had been the fate of others in misfortune to
experience the Tokio Cabinet would know what to do. A fresh incident
arose and Japan was as good as her word. The younger brother of the Saigo
Takamori whose fame as a leader will never wane was selected as the Chief
of the Expedition, and to him, afterwards the Marquis Saigo, his Majesty
entrusted the duty of vindicating the honour of the Japanese Empire, of
which it must never be said that it has shown the slightest hesitation
to hit out when the interests of its own people have been imperilled.
In past years her arm has not always been long enough to extend support
to her subjects over-sea, but it is Japan’s aim, as it is that of
Britain, to convince the rest of the world that while she repudiates most
vigorously the idea that she seeks territorial aggrandisement or covets
the recognition of an unchallenged supremacy in the Far East, she at all
times resents the slightest attempt to trespass on what are regarded by
her statesmen as the boundaries of her national safety. If Japan’s arm
is growing longer and her policy seems to be far-reaching, it is but the
natural outcome of her resolve to protect her people wherever they may be
and to encourage their lawful desires for expansion into fresh fields of
enterprise as the result of the remarkable growth of her population at
home.
The Formosan expedition proved a complete success, and a detailed
account of its progress will be met with elsewhere in these pages. It
gave to the newly formed army its first opportunity of displaying to the
satisfaction of the sovereign its qualifications as a fighting force,
inasmuch as the difficulties which it had to encounter, although its
adversaries were savages, were naturally on a formidable scale, and the
undertaking bore in this respect a strong resemblance to what have been
described as Britain’s “little wars.” The upshot was that the tribesmen
of the Formosan east and south-east coasts developed a wholesome fear
of the prowess of disciplined troops and from that time forward there
were no recorded instances of their maltreatment of mariners, whilst
at the present day the best effects are perceptible from the spread
of education among them in consequence of the establishment of native
schools in Formosa since it became a Japanese Colony. There was, however,
an additional advantage secured to Japan by the expedition, in that it
served for the time to divert attention from the ever-pressing political
questions arising from China’s somewhat irritating attitude, mainly
in regard to Korea. From time immemorial the monarch of Korea had paid
tribute to Japan at stated intervals much in the way that he had paid an
annual tribute to China, but owing to Japan’s preoccupation with other
and weightier matters the practice had fallen into desuetude. Instigated
by ambitious Chinese officials, as it was generally supposed, Korea
had sought to free herself from any and all obligations to continue
this practice, and by way of emphasising this reluctance to be bound
by old traditions the Koreans had thought fit to attack the Japanese
Legation and to otherwise commit unfriendly acts towards their immediate
neighbours on the east. The Samurai of Satsuma and the other southern
clans clamoured to be led against the Koreans,—and if the Koreans should
be supported by China, then against the Chinese as well,—in order that
these insults to the Japanese flag might be avenged. It was a strong
plea, but it had to be resisted, for Japan was not ready to embark at
that time in a great war. Consequently the Government deemed it prudent
to be content with the compensation offered and the establishment of a
garrison for the Legation at Seoul which might suffice to adequately
protect its staff. By the ardent followers of the Satsuma chieftain,
however, this was regarded as wholly insufficient, and matters had
reached a decidedly perilous stage when the despatch of an expedition
to Formosa happily provided an outlet for the superabundant energies of
the younger swordsmen. The personnel of the punitive force consisted
largely of Satsuma samurai, and right well did the men acquit themselves
in the tasks which fell to their share in the mountainous wilds of “the
Beautiful Isle.”
A few months prior to the setting out of the Formosan Expedition there
had been an insurrection in Saga, the chief town of the Hizen province,
led by Yeto Shimpei, who had not long before been a member of the new
Government. The rising had been very quickly suppressed, and without
much bloodshed, but it was an indication that the policy of the new
administration met with scant favour in some of the regions remote from
the metropolis, where the spirit of the people was, for want of wider
knowledge, very averse to what were viewed as pernicious innovations
based upon a wholesale introduction of Occidental manners and customs.
Though the antipathy to foreign methods subsided with the punishment
of the foremost of the Saga insurgents, the embers were not wholly
extinguished, and less than three years later they burst once more into
flame at Kagoshima, as will presently appear, and in the meantime the
growing hostility in Satsuma to the proceedings of the Tokio Cabinet
revealed itself in a variety of ways, though it was the policy of the
administration to avoid the danger of driving matters to extremities
with the warlike clansmen of the extreme south, at the head of whom
stood Saigo Takamori, then resident on his own farm in the vicinity of
the castle town which was the Satsuma stronghold and the headquarters
of its quasi-independent military organisation. Nevertheless, the
clansmen continued their regular drilling and set utterly at naught the
remonstrances of the Tokio Government.
Affairs in Satsuma reached their climax in February 1877, when a march
to Kioto was decided upon, the military cadets and the clansmen,
mustering over 12,000, having resolved on accompanying their leader Saigo
Takamori on a journey to the Western capital ostensibly to beg for the
intervention of his Majesty in respect of the grievances which Satsuma
claimed to be enduring at the hands of the existing Tokio Government. The
telegraph promptly carried the news to Kioto of the departure of this
formidable force from Kagoshima, and preparations were instantly made to
oppose its progress. The Emperor proclaimed Saigo and his followers to
be in rebellion, and the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Arisugawa, was directed
to inflict punishment on the offenders. The incidents of the campaign in
Kiushiu which ensued are set forth at length elsewhere in this volume,
and order was not restored in the southern island until the autumn of the
year, after a period of the most disastrous strife in which Satsuma was a
house divided against itself, inasmuch as there were many of the clan who
remained faithful to the imperial standard, notably the younger Saigo,
afterwards marquis, and Admiral Kawamura, who commanded the imperial
fleet.
The Emperor remained for some time at his Kioto palace before returning
to Tokio, and it was known at the time that this outbreak of hostilities
in a part of his dominions occasioned his Majesty the most profound
sorrow, the more so that Saigo Takamori had led his own forces to victory
ten years before, when the imperialists had been plunged into warfare
with the adherents of the Shogun. That Marshal Saigo should have been so
ill advised as to head an insurrection was to the monarch whom he had in
former years served so faithfully a source of the most poignant grief,
and the sad end of the arch-rebel, in battle on the crest of Shiroyama,
in the town of Kagoshima, made a deep impression on all in Japan. The
Emperor’s attribute of magnanimity was displayed only a few years ago
in the grant of a peerage to the son of the famous Satsuma leader, and
the imperial approval of the erection of a monument to his memory in the
public park of Uyeno, in Tokio. The record of Saigo’s rebellion has been
effaced, and only his splendid services to the State in the years prior
to 1877 are kept in his sovereign’s remembrance.
The period which followed the war in Satsuma was one of uninterrupted
industry and persevering endeavour on the part of all the Ten-shi’s
subjects to make up for the time which had been lost by the civil war.
Immense interest was taken in the advancement of education and the spread
of commercial enterprise, the shipping and manufacturing trades being
diligently fostered by wise enactments that were often the outcome of the
ruler’s own initiative. There can be no doubt that at this period were
laid the foundations of that unexampled industrial prosperity which has
distinguished the latter portion, down to the present time, of the Meiji
era, and which, resting as it does on the most secure basis—one which
even a war with a great European power has been powerless to disturb—bids
fair to last for ages to come.
In 1880 the Imperial edict appeared establishing the prefectural
assemblies, local parliaments which served in not a few instances to
develop a talent for debate in political aspirants, and likewise to
familiarise the agricultural population, wherein lies the main strength
of the nation, with the principles of representative institutions on a
larger scale, such as had been foreshadowed by the Imperial promise made
at the time of the Emperor’s accession. That promise was reiterated,
and a definite date assigned for the opening of the Japanese Diet, by
his Majesty in the following year. It was in 1880, too, that the new
Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, on both of which a vast
amount of careful consideration had been bestowed, were promulgated, the
codes themselves having been compiled with a lucidity and completeness
which leave nothing to be desired. There is no ambiguity about the laws
of Japan, and as translations have been made and published under the
sanction of the Government, accessible to all, it is practicable for
a stranger to make himself acquainted with the rules and regulations
applicable to every walk of life without the aid of lawyer or interpreter.
The announcement that the Emperor had determined to grant a Constitution
was everywhere received with joy and gratitude, for though the time had
not, it was fully comprehended, yet arrived when it would be feasible for
a representative assembly to meet, the nation had the sovereign’s word
for it that there would be no needless delay.