Hemi village, where his grave, with that of his Japanese wife, is to
be seen on the hill above the modern naval station of Yokosuka, a few
miles south of Yokohama, in the Gulf of Tokio. He had taught his friends
at Yedo the art of building ships on the Occidental model, and it is
recorded that many of his vessels were employed in over-sea trade to
the Philippines, Siam, Cochin China, and Mexico. But the law of 1621
prohibiting the use of decked ocean-going craft brought about a return
to the ancient form of junk with a single mast. The construction of
decked sailing boats has only of late years been revived in connection
with the fisheries of Yeso and the quest of the seal and sea-otter, off
the Kuriles archipelago. After the East India Company closed its factory
at Hirado trade was still further restricted, and in obedience to an
edict of 1641, the Dutch were finally confined to the islet of Deshima,
in Nagasaki harbour, and all other foreigners were ordered to quit the
country. Saris had long before returned home,—Adams had been dead for
years,—and little or nothing occurred for two centuries to remind the
Western world of the existence of the far-off Japanese Empire.
Throughout this interval the feudal system flourished and the Shogunate
was at the zenith of its power. Every daimio nominally owned allegiance
to the Ten-shi’s deputy at Yedo, but there had been murmurings against
the feudal rule long before the American ships made their appearance
at the entrance to the Bay of Yedo in 1853. A few men, more daring
than their fellows, had been bold enough to write and speak openly of
their desire to see the ancient order of things re-established and of
their hope that the Ten-shi would again in person regulate the affairs
of his dominions. In most cases the would-be reformers had for their
temerity lost their heads. But the leaven that they had introduced had
begun to work, and when the Shogun Iyesada made the treaties with the
Western nations under which Japan was reopened to foreign trade and
intercourse the real basis of the opposition which he encountered,
and which outlasted his own lifetime and that of his successor in the
office of Shogun, was an antagonism to the Shogunate itself, and not to
the strangers who sought to develop commerce with the Empire. Thus it
came about that the truly progressive clans,—Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa,
and Hizen,—all of which had in some form or other availed themselves
of foreign inventions in the form of rifles and other implements of
warfare, or of steamships and gunboats and armaments, with the object,
as it would seem, of strengthening their own positions, were to be found
ranged under the banner of Jo-I, or “Expulsion of the Alien,” when with
more candour their slogan might have been “Down with the Shogunate.” The
Tokugawa side, on the other hand, was in favour of the resumption of
foreign relations and maintained the advisability of pursuing the policy
of kai-koku—_i.e._ opening the country—which Iyesada had initiated.
Neither side was in actual fact antagonistic to foreigners, and no sooner
had the Jo-I party attained its purpose in overthrowing those who had
espoused the cause of the Shogun, than it at once adopted an attitude
towards aliens which was in effect a complete ratification of the policy
that had been adhered to by the Government of Yedo. The Sat-cho alliance
to “expel the stranger” entered into between Satsuma and Choshiu at the
end of 1861, or early in 1862,—a couple of years before the present
Marquis Ito and his comrade Inouye Bunda, now Count Inouye, stole away
to England,—was mainly designed to embarrass the Shogunate, and was by no
means so reactionary as it at first appeared to be.
When Perry dropped anchor at Uraga it was the Shogun Iyeyoshi who sat on
the Viceregal throne in Yedo, but he shortly afterwards died, and was
buried in the cemetery attached to Zozoji temple in Shiba, where five
other Shoguns of the Tokugawa line were interred, and when Perry came for
the promised answer to the American President’s letter the Shogun Iyesada
was in power. But soon afterwards his health failed him to the degree
that he found it expedient to appoint a Regent in the person of the Go
Tai-Ro (_lit._: Honoured Great Elder)—_i.e._ Prime Minister of State
under the Tokugawa Government—an office which was filled by the baron
Naosuke Ii Kamon-no-kami, between whom and the feudal chieftain of Mito
there were great differences of opinion in regard to the wisdom of the
Kai-koku policy. For reasons which were never very clearly comprehended,
Nari-aki, the senior lord of Mito, was all his life bitterly opposed to
the influx of foreigners, and when in 1860 the Regent was assassinated
at the Sakurada Gate of Yedo castle the crime was perpetrated by men
who had once been retainers of the Mito family, but had voluntarily
severed their connection therewith in order that the responsibility
for the murder that they were resolved to commit should not be laid at
the door of their lord. They banded themselves together as Ro-nins, or
“Wave-men,” casting themselves as it were on the billows of adventure,
and caring nothing whither they might drift in the political currents
of the hour. Other Ro-nins made a midnight attack in 1861 on the then
recently-established British Legation at Takanawa, a southern suburb of
Yedo, and these were afterwards proved to have belonged previously to the
Mito clan. The daimio Nari-aki died in 1862, and it was felt that one
source of uneasiness had been removed from the path of those who were
totally averse to the suggested expulsion of the subjects of foreign
powers and repudiation of the compacts which had been entered into. But
the assassinated Regent had had other enemies in the political world, for
his appointment had never been favourably received by the Jo-I party (in
reality the advocates of the restoration of direct imperial rule, and
who only used Jo-I as a convenient battle-cry) and when, in 1858, the
Shogun Iyesada died and his place was taken by the youthful Iyemochi,
at that time only twelve years old, and the Regency of Ii Kamon no Kami
was continued, the antagonism between the rival factions—one nominally
pro-foreign and the other nominally anti-foreign, but neither of them
seriously concerned with the foreigner so much as with the abrogation or
retention of the feudal system,—grew more fierce and deep-seated than
ever. The Mito clan, notwithstanding that its old prince Nari-aki had
been violently anti-foreign, had in a general way given its support to
the Shogun, but even in Mito dissensions arose, and the clansmen were
divided among themselves. In proportion as these internal quarrels arose
in the Shogun’s party its influence in the State declined and that of
the party of the Mikado, as it was termed, gained strength. It must be
understood that the reference here is not to the now-reigning Emperor but
to his father, who occupied the throne until the year 1867. An imperial
ordinance promulgated in 1862 abolished the old law made in the days of
Iyeyasu whereby the feudal lords were obliged to spend half their time
at the capital, and this repeal of a statute on which the Shogunate had
relied for the preservation of its ascendency over the clans hastened,
no doubt, the downfall of its authority. It was further weakened, it may
be supposed, by the internecine strife that arose from the rivalries of
the three branches of the Tokugawa house, for when Iyesada died it had
been the ardent desire of the Mito prince to place his son Hitotsubashi
Yoshinobu,—otherwise Tokugawa Keiki,—on the viceregal throne at Yedo, a
wish that was thwarted by the Regent Ii Kamon no kami. The reason that
Nari-aki’s son bore two names was that in the year 1848, when he was only
eleven years old, he had been adopted into the family of the Owari branch
of the Tokugawa family, which branch bore the surname of Hitotsubashi,
while his other name could be read as either Keiki or Yoshinobu, the
Chinese characters by which it was written being readable according to
the Kan-On, or Chinese sounds as Keiki, while the Japanese equivalents of
the same symbols are Yoshinobu. To the candidature of Nari-aki’s son the
Regent would not agree, and carried his point in favour of Kikuchiyo, a
prince of the Kishiu branch of the Tokugawa family, who took the name on
his accession of Iyemochi. This prince was the thirteenth child of the
XIth Shogun, and a cousin of the deceased Iyesada. The regent’s power at
this period was equal to the effort of compelling Nari-aki to confine
himself to his Yedo mansion, in a forced retirement which was tantamount
to imprisonment, and similar steps were taken in regard to the princes of
Owari, Hizen, Tosa, and Uwajima, who were opposed to the Regent’s policy.
Tokugawa Keiki was forbidden to show himself at Yedo castle, and was
ordered to remain in strict seclusion within his own abode.
Meanwhile the Emperor Komei, at Kioto, was being urged by the feudal
lords of Tosa, Hizen, Sendai, Uwajima, and other provinces to abrogate
the treaties which the Regent had made, to close the ports, and expel
all strangers from the land, but Ii Kamon no kami was too strong for
them to succeed in overthrowing him, and it will be understood that the
representations of the Ministers of foreign powers already accredited
to Japan in virtue of the treaties must all have tended to confirm the
Regent in his resolution to abide by the terms of the compacts which he
had entered into. This was in effect the situation in March 1860, when
the ro-nins at the Sakurada Gate in Yedo put an end to the life of the
Regent, and affairs were left in greater uncertainty than ever.
The baron Ii Kamon-no-kami Naosuke is considered to have been a
genuinely patriotic statesman, one, moreover, who was able to realise
the necessities of the hour and gifted with tact and resolution to carry
his point. His persistence in the policy of _kai-koku_ procured for him
the undisguised antagonism of a very powerful faction, but he remained
unshaken in his determination to adhere to the arrangements that had
been entered into with foreign powers. The assassins responsible for
his death had carried on their persons, as was customary with ro-nins
bent on some notable deed, written declarations setting forth their
motives, and declaring it to be their belief that the admission of
aliens to the country spelt speedy ruin. His intimate friend, Baron
Matsudaira of Yada, had sought to dissuade him from paying his customary
visits to the Shogun, who dwelt within the inner moat of the castle,
and in urging his request had even endeavoured to hold the Regent back
by grasping the sleeve of his robe, a scrap of the material being torn
away in the effort, so vehement were Matsudaira’s representations of
the impending danger. That was on the 21st of February, a fortnight
before the murder was actually perpetrated, so that Ii Kamon-no-kami
was perfectly conscious of the risk he ran in continuing to perform his
daily duty at the castle. His own residence was just outside the second
moat, and he had only quitted it a few minutes when, at nine o’clock on
the morning of the third of the third month (April 5th according to the
Gregorian calendar), he received several sword-thrusts as he sat in his
palanquin, and died immediately. The day was one on which his enemies
were sure that he would be passing that way early, as it was one of the
great annual festivals (Sekku) when the princes and barons invariably
went to the palace to pay their respects and offer the congratulations
appropriate to the season. Their retinues included numerous swordsmen,
and their processions were characterised by a pomp almost unimaginable
to-day, with scores of trusty henchmen, their lords’ crests prominently
displayed on their helmets and their banners and insignia borne aloft,
marching on either side the palanquin to guard their chief. The Regent’s
cortege was at the Sakurada Gate when the attack was delivered, and the
falling snow had led the retainers to keep their sword-hilts covered, so
that there was a fatal delay in encountering the ro-nins, who, moreover,
were disguised as peasants, and wore rain-coats to conceal their weapons.
Eight of the Regent’s men were killed, and three of the ro-nins were
slain on the spot, eight more being brought to execution at a later date.
The whole thing was the work of but a few minutes, and the band no doubt
had a confederate who was skilled in heraldry watching at the gate, ready
to announce the baron’s approach, and able to distinguish his procession
by the device on the banners which some of his retinue bore.
The Regent was forty-five years old at the time of his death, having been
born in 1815, the fourteenth son of the baron Naonaka. The Ii family is a
very old one, an ancestor having aided in the subjugation of the rebels,
so termed,—presumably the Ainus,—in the island of Yeso, between A.D.
987 and 1011, when the Emperor Ichijo was on the throne. The name Ii is
taken from the spot not far from Hamana inlet, in Totomi province, called
Ii-dani, or the valley of Ii, whereat the first baron built a castle in
the eighth century. But having been appointed protector of the city of
Kioto, one of the baron’s ancestors had removed to Hikoné, on Lake Biwa,
to be nearer his charge, and thus it came about that Ii Kamon-no-kami
was Lord of Hikoné at the period when he became Regent, and dwelt at the
Hikoné Yashiki in Yedo. The baron Ii bequeathed to the nation a couplet
illustrative of his real patriotism, a quality which even those who were
opposed to his policy never failed to recognise as part of his noble
nature. It runs:—
“Omi no mi kishi utsu nami no iku tabi mo,
Miyo ni kokoro wo kudaki nuru kana!”
(Rent as the wave-beat rocks on Omi’s strand
My broken heart, for our belovéd Land!)
Lake Biwa, on which stands Hikoné, is often in poetry termed the Sea
of Omi. It washes the shore of what in feudal times were the lord of
Hikoné’s estates.
At the time when the dissensions between the supporters of the Bakufu
and the nominally anti-foreign faction were at their height, the young
Shogun was but fifteen years old, and was able to render his party but
little help in the crisis in its fortunes which had been reached. An
effort was made to bring about a fusion of the interests by the marriage
of the Shogun to the Mikado’s sister, the Princess Kazu, on 11th March
1862, the hope being that it might thus be feasible to present a united
front to the incursions of the Westerners, but the union failed for the
time being to have any political results in the direction anticipated,
and the divergence of views on the question of the admission of strangers
remained as pronounced as at first. In this attempt to reconcile the
conflicting interests of parties the prince of Satsuma, acting through
his uncle, Shimadzu Saburo, and on the advice of Saigo Takamori and
Okubo Toshimichi, elsewhere referred to in this book, had exerted all
his influence but without avail. On the other hand a vast amount of
jealousy was created between the Chiefs of Satsuma and Choshiu, for the
Baron Mori, the lord of Choshiu, was at this time wholly in favour of the
expulsion of foreigners.
Matters were in this condition, when the least spark might lead to an
explosion, in the summer of 1863, at the moment when the Shogun, possibly
as a consequence of the Kioto Court influence brought to bear through his
connection by marriage with the imperial house, decided to proceed to
the Mikado’s capital and submit himself entirely to the Emperor Komei’s
commands. He expressed his concurrence in the Court party’s views on
the subject of the abrogation of the treaties, and was willing that the
aliens should be driven out of the land. Whether he was sincere in this
attitude or not is a question that it is not easy to answer, but at all
events there was a personal quarrel at Kioto between the young Shogun
and Mori, the Choshiu chieftain, which ended disastrously for Mori, who
was sent down by the Emperor Komei to his own dominions in the west and
Iyemochi remained in favour. The Choshiu clan was from that hour in
direct antagonism to the Shogun’s party, and the baron Mori’s retainers
were so indignant at what they considered to be the insult put upon their
lord at Kioto that they marched to that city and attacked it The present
ruler of Japan was only very young at the time, and it was a novel
experience, no doubt, to hear the rattle of musketry in close proximity
to the palace walls. The Choshiu clansmen were encountered and worsted
by the soldiers of the Shogun, who had been ordered by imperial edict to
punish Choshiu for the outrage, and at the same time the chief of the
insubordinate clan was by the Emperor’s command deposed.
The Choshiu baron remained obdurate, and in pursuance of his hostile
attitude towards foreigners, and presumably with the idea of embroiling
the Shogun’s government with Western powers, he persevered in the
practice, despite all remonstrance, of firing on such vessels as
attempted to pass the Straits of Shimonoseki. He set the Shogun’s
authority completely at defiance, and raised in the south-west of Japan
the standard of revolt. At the head of a numerous army the Choshiu
leaders, one of whom was the present Marshal Yamagata, again set out for
Kioto, and were met by the Shogun’s forces led by Iyemochi himself, who
was certainly not deficient in courage, though his health, even at that
time, was far from satisfactory. The series of engagements which followed
terminated badly for the Shogun’s supporters, for the Choshiu men were
better armed, and had been drilled on something like Western principles,
as the result of a study of military books translated from the Dutch.
They also bore rifles of the “Tower” and other patterns which probably
had been brought to Japan from Europe, by way of China.
The first step towards the fall of the Shogunate had in reality been
taken when the admission was made that the power of the Shogun had its
limitations, for the doctrine which had prevailed for centuries, and to
which the supremacy of the Tokugawa house was traceable, was that the
holder of this high office enjoyed complete freedom of action without
reference to the monarch at Kioto and was to all intents and purposes
the executive head of the State. The visit paid to Kioto by the Shogun
Iyemochi at the instigation of the imperial counsellors struck at the
root of this theory of absolute power and led to the open revolt of
some of the provincial magnates against the authority of the Bakufu, a
title, by the way, which, as applied to the Yedo Government, sufficiently
demonstrated its military character, since _Baku_ signified the curtain
which was used in camp to screen the Generalissimo’s quarters from the
vulgar gaze, and _Fu_ meant “seat of government.” Once the principle
became admitted that the Shogun was like other of the nation’s most
puissant nobles, only a vassal of the Ten-shi, the way was paved in
a measure for the restoration of the real monarch to the exercise of
his rightful prerogatives and the re-establishment of that direct rule
which had existed in former years prior to the usurpation of regal power
by the Ashikaga and Tokugawa Shoguns. It may be said, therefore, that
the thin end of the wedge with which the fabric of the Yedo government
was ultimately to be sundered and overthrown was inserted in 1863.
The actual outcome of the Shogun’s visit to Kioto was the issue of an
imperial notification to the Ministers of Foreign Powers at Yedo that
all strangers would be expelled from the Empire. The announcement came
from the Department for Foreign Affairs in the Bakufu, and was to the
effect that the orders which had been received by the Shogun from Kioto
were peremptory, and required the closing of the recently opened ports.
The foreigners were to be driven out, because the people of Japan were
not desirous of holding intercourse with foreign countries. The Minister
added that the discussion of this subject had been left to him “by his
Majesty,” by which term was meant the Shogun, who had figured in the
early treaties,—that for example made by the Earl of Elgin on behalf
of Queen Victoria, dated 26th August 1858,—as “his Majesty the Tycoon
of Japan.” The Shogun’s government was at this time trying to sit on
two stools simultaneously, for while the notification was given to the
foreign representatives in obedience to the orders received from Kioto
there was palpably no intention of giving effect to them in any shape,
even had the Bakufu then possessed the strength requisite to bring about
the strangers’ exclusion. On this point the presence of war vessels at
Yokohama warranted the Bakufu officials in entertaining serious doubts.
At all events the Shogun’s Government soon afterwards had to express
regret for the deplorable affair near Tsurumi, on the highroad from
Yokohama to Yedo, when an Englishman lost his life, and in offering an
apology the Bakufu expressed a hope that nothing might again arise to
imperil the friendly relations between Britain and Japan. When it was
urged that the murderers should be brought to justice the Bakufu was
fain to acknowledge that it had not the power to punish the Satsuma clan
which had been guilty of the crime, and thereupon Admiral Kuper was sent
to Kagoshima to bombard the Satsuma chieftain’s forts. The engagement
took place on the 11th of August, a fortnight before the Elgin treaty
was signed at Yedo, the breach between the Shogun and the southern clans
being at that time practically complete. The bombardment spurred the
Satsuma clan to the attainment of greater military strength, for their
leaders were quick to grasp the importance which Satsuma would acquire,
in connection with those coming events which even then were casting long
shadows athwart the political path, by being first in the field with
approximately efficient naval and military forces. Western appliances
were imported and foreign inventions largely drawn upon to increase
Satsuma’s effective strength, and from being hostile to foreigners the
attitude of the clansmen became almost friendly, a circumstance that was
partly due, it may have been, to the consciousness of the Satsuma leaders
that in spite of their antiquated weapons they had made no mean fight of
it when assailed in their stronghold by the modern British ships of war.