era, which corresponded to A.D. 1830, there was born in Cho-shiu
province, south-west Niphon, Yoshida Torajiro, the son of _samurai_
parents, who were retainers of the dai-mio Mori, the lord of the fief.
Yoshida’s birthplace was the little village of Matsushita (Under the
pines), close to the town of Hagi, on the west coast of Niphon, facing
the peninsula of Korea. From his earliest years Yoshida was an ardent
student of Chinese literature, and exhibited an extreme cleverness as
a child that won for him uncommon fame in the district. So proficient
had he become in this department of study that at the age of eleven he
was called on to lecture on a topic of military history in the presence
of his feudal chieftain, the dai-mio Mori Kei-shin, and his erudition
was the source of the utmost astonishment to his hearers. When he was
nineteen he set out on a tour through the island of Kiu-shiu, his main
object being to make the acquaintance of those prominent men in the south
of Japan who just then had raised the cry of “loyalty to the Emperor,
expulsion of all foreigners.” This sentiment, it will be observed, did
not have its origin in the later fifties, as might have been supposed
from the frequency with which it was then heard, after Perry’s visits had
led to the conclusion of treaties of peace and amity, but was prevalent
as far back as the year 1849, when the only aliens in the country were
a few Dutchmen at Nagasaki. The feeling at that time was perhaps only
local, for it was to the vicinity of that port that Yoshida wended his
way in the evident belief that he would there meet with those who most
strongly entertained this opinion of the proper course to be taken with
the intruders. No doubt his youthful impressions had been stimulated
by the reading of the _Nihon Gaishi_, a work on Japanese history,
written by Rai Sanyo, that at that period was intensely popular. His
father’s influence, moreover, was all in the same direction, and the
circumstances all point to Yoshida’s having imbibed principles that were
distinctly adverse to the retention of foreigners in the country under
any conditions whatever. Precisely what effect his travels in Kiushiu
had on his mind can never be known, but it may be assumed with tolerable
safety that he journeyed to Nagasaki and there saw the Dutchmen dwelling
in their own fashion in the quaint little settlement of Deshima, where
they were all but prisoners, though allowed to carry on their trade.
In the meantime the Emperor Ko-mei, father of the reigning monarch, had
succeeded Ninko on the throne, and the era bore the title of Ka-ei.
It lasted until 1854, and it was when it was in its fourth year that
Yoshida went to Yedo and there met, as described in a previous chapter,
with Sakuma Shozan, whose pupil he became. At this time Sakuma was forty
years old, and Yoshida was twenty-two. From their first meeting Yoshida
recognised in the elder man a greatness of intellect and grandeur of
aim that fascinated him, and led him there and then to appreciate the
opportunity afforded him of becoming Sakuma’s disciple. More especially
was he convinced of the soundness of Sakuma’s views on the importance
of coast defence, and at his suggestion undertook a journey into the
provinces of Sagami and Awa, with the express object of searching out
the most suitable positions, from a strategical point of view, for the
defence of Yedo Bay. It will be perceived, as constituting a matter of
no trifling interest, that the defence of the coast was under anxious
consideration two years at least prior to the arrival off Uraga of
Commodore Perry and his squadron of “black ships,” so that it cannot be
said that these measures were proposed as a direct consequence of the
American expedition’s advent in Japanese waters. After visiting Awa and
Sagami Yoshida went north to the Tsugaru Straits and Hakodate, having
the same purpose ever before him, the strengthening of his country’s
defences against the intrusion of foreign powers.
In 1853, the year of Perry’s arrival, Yoshida was again in Yedo, but
in September of that year he went once more to Nagasaki. His secret
purpose was then to embark for Europe in a Russian cruiser, but by the
time he reached the port named the vessel had sailed, so that his hopes
were entirely frustrated. Sakuma had recommended him to make his way to
Europe, if possible, because, as he said, if Yoshida desired to form an
adequate idea of the most efficient means of providing for the security
of the Japanese coasts it was first requisite that he should fully
comprehend the conditions under which the protection of their own coasts
was successfully undertaken by foreign nations. It was on this advice
that he sought by every means at his command to obtain a passage to some
foreign land, and in the following year, when the American warships
again visited Uraga, Yoshida made his next attempt, in company with a
faithful servant who very possibly hoped also to get away to a land where
there would be no restrictions on their movements, and entire liberty of
thought could be secured. It is a matter for regret that his ambitions
in this regard were once more frustrated, for in Yoshida there can be no
doubt that Japan had a truly patriotic son, one who, had the opportunity
been afforded him, would have achieved distinct success in the direction
which he had marked out for himself, the preservation of Japan for the
Japanese. In Yoshida’s case, as in all others with which I am acquainted,
the innate patriotism that he had inherited had been aroused and
stimulated by the experiences that the neighbouring Chinese Empire had
undergone. In common with other people in the Far East, he had heard
of the occupation of Canton, and of Chusan, of the expedition up the
Yang-tsu-kiang, and of the forcible opening to foreign commerce of the
ports of Ningpo, Amoy, and Shanghai. Such doings were of dire portent for
the dwellers in Dai Niphon, for if the Chinese, who for so many centuries
had in the arts and sciences led Japan, found themselves reduced to
the necessity of conforming to the will of the Western invaders, by
reason of a laxity in preparation for national defence, how much more
incumbent must it be upon the Japanese, with only their islands to call
their own, and no hinterland to retire into, strenuously to make ready
for eventualities. Yoshida’s request for a passage to the United States
was refused,—Commodore Perry mentions him as Isagi Kooda,—and he was
imprisoned for having attempted to quit Japan at a time when emigration
was forbidden.
In the following year Yoshida was confined to his own house at
Matsushima, in the province of Cho-shiu, but a year later, in the third
of the An-sei era, the discipline was so far relaxed as to admit of his
taking pupils for the study of military books. It was probably at this
period that he wrote to a Court noble, by name Ohara Shigetami, who held
very similar views on the subject of the foreigners’ invasion, begging
him to visit Cho-shiu for the purpose of starting an agitation there
in favour of the “expulsion of barbarians and the restoration of the
Ten-shi to supreme control,” that twofold object on which a majority of
the patriots of the age laid stress in the belief that its attainment
was wholly indispensable to the welfare of the nation. In truth
Yoshida’s teaching of military subjects was little more than a cover for
the inoculation of his pupils with the principles of a most resolute
antagonism to the Bakufu—_i.e._ the system of government by the Tokugawa
line of Sho-guns, a plan of vicarious rule in which he could discern
nothing for his country but disaster. A school was at this time opened
in the village of Matsushima by two uncles of Yoshida Sho-in, named Kubo
and Tamaki, and after a while Yoshida succeeded them in the management
thereof; it deserves more than a passing reference, for it was destined
to be the cradle, as it were, of the revolution of 1868, by which the
present Emperor was led to abandon the life of utter seclusion that it
had for centuries been customary for the occupants of the Japanese throne
to lead, and to take upon himself the actual rule of his dominions. Among
those who attended this school were not a few to whom fell the lot of
fighting, a short time afterwards, at Fushimi, in the tremendous contest
for supremacy which took place between the adherents of the Sho-gun and
those who sided with Choshiu and Satsuma.
Yoshida conducted the village school for two years and a half, from
July 1856 to December 1858, but in the latter month he was arrested,
and thrown into gaol for having, it was alleged, incited his pupils to
plot against the Tokugawa dynasty, and planned the assassination, his
enemies asserted, of the Minister Manabe Norikatsu, a member of the
Government. It is certain, whatever degree of guilt may have attached to
him in other respects, that he consistently challenged the wisdom of the
Tokugawa’s foreign policy, and advocated most zealously the abolition of
that form of administration, becoming in consequence the object of a most
determined persecution by the Yedo Government.
After an incarceration lasting five months in his native province he was
transferred to the Temmacho Prison in Yedo, and its doors closed over
him in July 1859. On the 27th of October following he was decapitated
in obedience to the orders of the Bakufu, and thus at the early age of
twenty-nine ended the career of one of Japan’s most earnest patriots.
While his aim was the retention of Japan for the Japanese, and his
determined antagonism to the Shogunate arose from its willingness to
enter into treaties for the opening of the Empire to foreign trade,
the object sought by his followers was the destruction of the Tokugawa
dynasty itself, and their opposition to foreign intercourse proceeded not
from antipathy to the Occidentals so much as from a paramount desire to
put an end to the dual form of administration. The cry of “Expulsion of
the Alien” was raised by Yoshida’s disciples in the expectation that acts
inimical to the strangers would embroil the Bakufu with those Western
Powers, the subjects of which were by degrees attaining a foothold in
the country, and that government by the Shogunate would then become an
impossibility.
VI
MARQUIS ITO
A Statesman of transcendent ability, the Marquis Ito Hirobumi of
necessity has his detractors. By the vast majority of the nation,
however, his political views are deemed wholly acceptable, and in regard
to the value of his services to his country there are not in Japan two
opinions. He was born in September 1841, at Kumagé, in the province of
Cho-shiu, otherwise Nagato, in south-west Japan. By birth a samurai,
he spent his boyhood in studies suitable to his station in life, and
became proficient in the military exercises which were prescribed for the
retainers of the feudal barons, but from the time of Commodore Perry’s
arrival in 1853 his aspirations became directed into a new channel, and
his reading especially took a turn in the direction of the adaptation
of foreign methods to the needs of Japan. In this he was associated
with many of his fellow-clansmen whose names have become in later years
household words in the country of their birth, and are almost equally
well known to the people of other lands. Yamagata, Kido, Takasugi,
Yamao, Inouye Kaoru, with many others who have since risen to fame, were
fellow-students of the political and military systems of the Occidental
nations, striving desperately to acquire information that should guide
them in their project of raising their country to the level of the
leading powers of the world.
[Illustration: MARQUIS ITO]
The little knot of reformers was headed by Takasugi, a man of samurai
rank who was considerably the senior of his colleagues in age, and one
of the earliest acts of the party, on ascertaining the attitude of the
lord of the province towards the Bakufu, was to put itself in a posture
of something like rebellion against his authority. The reformers sought
to organise a substantial resistance in Cho-shiu to the policy of the
Shogun, who had, it was urged, betrayed the best interests of his country
by entering into treaties with foreigners. Ostensibly, if not actually,
the leaders of this anti-Bakufu league were hostile to innovations from
the Occident, but they were willing to avail themselves of Western arts
and sciences to the end that their own position might be strengthened
to oppose the Shogun’s administration, and accordingly we find the new
military system gaining ground notwithstanding the avowed antagonism of
the reformers to the invasion of their country by the originators of that
system.
At Hagi, a town beautifully situated on the west coast of Nagato, and
the castle town of the lord of that province, the reformers gradually
matured their plans and drilled a small army of their fellow-samurai in
the martial exercises of the West as set forth in books of which they had
become possessed at Nagasaki and elsewhere, mainly in the Dutch tongue.
It is recorded of Ito Shunsuke that he earnestly strove to make himself
acquainted with Occidental progress, and became by degrees a competent
English scholar, thus equipping himself for the course of Western travel
which he was able to undertake in the year 1863, when he left his country
for the first time on the long voyage to Europe in a sailing vessel
belonging to Jardine Matheson & Company of Shanghai, for whom Glover &
Company, British merchants of Nagasaki,—a port which had been opened to
foreign trade four years previously,—were agents.
Ito Shunsuke, as he was then named, was one of many young men of Samurai
rank who, with the view of acquiring information which they felt might
the better enable them to do good service to their country, were willing
to undergo all kinds of privations and run all risks in order that they
might add to their store of knowledge. Glover & Company, as agents
for the owners, Jardine Matheson & Company, facilitated the escape
of the young men, who were concealed in a garden at Yokohama, their
queues having previously been cut off and their hair trimmed in foreign
fashion, until the sailing ship was prepared to weigh anchor, when they
were stealthily put on board by their English friends. It is due to
the Marquis Ito to say that he has never failed to acknowledge in most
graceful terms his indebtedness at the outset of his career to the aid he
thus received from those who were not of his own land.
On his return to Japan twelve months later he found that his feudal
chief, the dai-mio of Cho-shiu, had become involved in a dispute with the
Bakufu, or Government of the Sho-gun, concerning right-of-way through
the Shimonoseki Straits, which separate the Cho-shiu territory from the
adjoining island of Kiu-shiu. The lord of the province was averse to
the free entry of foreign vessels into the Inland Sea from the west,
and had signified his disapproval by firing on ships that attempted the
passage of the straits, from batteries which he had placed on the hills
above. The Bakufu had failed to convince the Cho-shiu chieftain that the
channel ought to be open to all comers, and despairing of its own ability
to put a stop to the systematic interference with foreign shipping, had
authorised the admirals of the Western Powers to take such measures as
they thought fit. Ito Shunsuke, with his knowledge of the naval and
military strength of the Occident amplified by personal inspection at
the European capitals, saw that his lord was inviting disaster by his
arbitrary treatment of the strangers, and sought to dissuade him from
continuing the attacks on passing shipping, but the feudal baron was
resolved to persist in his endeavour to check the influx of foreign
ideas, and Ito had to return to the ship in which he had taken passage,
with this express object in view, from Yokohama, with his mission
unfulfilled. The foreign men-of-war had been at the time assembled in
Yedo Bay preparatory to setting out for the Inland Sea, on their way to
the Shimonoseki Straits to engage the Choshiu batteries, and the two
young men of that province, for in this matter Ito was associated with
his fellow-clansman Inouye, deemed it expedient to endeavour to convince
their lord that however skilful might be the Choshiu gunners, it would be
impossible for them to hold their own against the formidable armaments of
the Western warships. In this long and self-imposed, and, as it turned
out to be, useless journey to the capital of his native province from the
coast, Ito was accompanied by this friend and fellow-student Inouye, who
had likewise been to Europe with him,—no other than the present Count
Inouye Kaoru, who is elsewhere referred to in this book.
To appreciate the nature of the services thus early rendered to his
clan and to the nation at large, it must be remembered that the laws
under which emigration to countries abroad was prohibited, and which
had been framed in the days of Iyeyasu, were still in force. Special
permission was needed for any Japanese to quit his native shores, and
in case of surreptitious departure without the formality having been
observed it was somewhat risky to return. Ito and Inouye had contrived
to reach Europe without complying with the regulations, and were liable
to certain penalties in consequence, so that in undertaking to visit
Choshiu with the object of making representations to their chieftain Mori
they had to brave his anger for their disobedience to the regulations in
the first place, apart from the character of their mission, which was,
to say the least of it, one not calculated to appease the wrath of a
noble who held strong views on the subject of dealings with foreigners
in general. The journey from the little coast town in the Inland Sea
where the envoys, garbed as doctors of medicine, were put ashore by a
boat from the British warship _Barrosa_ in which they had come south
from Yokohama was not more than sixteen Japanese leagues (forty English
miles) in length, but the track lay across mountains, and the only means
of conveyance were _kago_ of the type used in the hills, mere baskets
slung from poles borne on the shoulders of two men, who walked at about
four miles an hour. The mission, as already said, was a complete failure,
for the lord of Cho-shiu refused to pay any attention to the letters
from Foreign Ambassadors, or to listen to the faintest suggestion that
his batteries were not a match for anything that the foreign ships
might carry, and he was resolved that the gates of Bakan,—otherwise
Akamagaseki, the Red Horse Barrier,—should not be thrown open without
a struggle. The _Barrosa_ returned to Yokohama, and shortly afterwards
the combined fleet, comprising British, French, Dutch, and American
vessels, accordingly steamed south to the Straits, and the memorable
battle of Shimonoseki, of 1864, was fought, with the result that the
Cho-shiu guns were speedily silenced. On a low hill at the back of the
town, overlooking the swift-flowing waters of the straits, is a tiny
graveyard where repose the Cho-shiu men who fell in that final effort to
close the door to Western trade. On the opposite shore are two or three
neglected graves which local tradition declares to be the burial places
of the French soldiers who were victims to the Cho-shiu artillerymen.
The gunners were aided by archers, one of the foreigners killed having
been transfixed by an arrow. Some day it may be feasible, perhaps, to
have the spot suitably marked where rest those who did their duty as
gallantly as did their foes whose memories are honoured with well-kept
tombs on the other side of the narrow channel in which the fierce combat
occurred. It was long believed that the foreigners who fell were buried
at sea, but still living witnesses of the battle aver that three bodies
were brought ashore on the Moji side and interred in the field which
abuts on the beach, and where mounds of earth are distinctly traceable,
or at all events were visible when the writer was engaged in work there
some years ago. In his task he had the assistance of several Cho-shiu
men who had taken part in the operations against us, and who bore the
scars of injuries received while serving their own guns. There was not
the slightest sign at any time manifested of resentment,—though the fight
had taken place too recently to be other than fresh in the memory. It was
felt that the best use had been made of the weapons that the province
then possessed, and that no disgrace attached to defeat under such
conditions,—moreover, had not the British bluejackets landed immediately
the firing ceased, and striven might and main to extinguish the flames
which had been ravaging the town as a consequence of the fight in its
immediate neighbourhood? The inhabitants of Shimonoseki will never forget
that the victors proved themselves to be generous foes, and nothing but
good will has been exhibited towards strangers in the now flourishing
port ever since.
Ito Shunsuke was much occupied for the ensuing two years in Kioto, where
his knowledge of Europe became of immense value to his party, and in
preparations for the struggle with the Bakufu which it was plain could
not be long delayed.
The main incidents of those two years are recorded elsewhere in
connection with the career of Prince Sanjo, and it will suffice to
mention here that immediately on the resignation of the last of the
Sho-guns, whose adherents continued the war, nevertheless, for some
months longer, Ito was busily occupied with plans for the institution
of government on a Western model, to the careful study of which he had
devoted himself while absent in the capitals of Europe. It was a period
of intense political excitement and unrest, and as the Marquis not long
since declared, little thought entered the minds of men other than the
all-absorbing idea of restoring the supreme power to the dynasty of the
true sovereigns of Japan, and abolishing for ever the influence of the
Tokugawa line of Sho-guns.
It is comparatively little known that the statesman who has been for
fifty years prominent in every great work connected with the advancement
of his country upon Western lines and has advocated the adoption of every
foreign institution that would be calculated to benefit his native land
was in his young days opposed to the influx of strangers, having been an
ardent follower of the Jo-I party which was adverse to the cultivation of
foreign relations. He was brought up in this school of thought, having
been a pupil for some time of Yoshida Shoin, who is elsewhere alluded to
in this volume, and when he at first favoured the introduction of Western
appliances and methods it was purely in order that the defence of the
empire should be secured against foreign aggression.
After the Restoration to the direct exercise of the prerogatives of
sovereignty of his present Majesty in 1867, and the final suppression
of the revolted northern clans, the opening of the port of Hiogo to
foreign trade became an accomplished fact, and Ito Shunsuke, as he
was still named, received the appointment of Governor. Though the port
was officially styled Hiogo, the residences of the foreign merchants,
indeed the whole “Settlement” in which they lived and transacted their
business, was situated in the adjoining town of Kobé, under which name
the port has become best known to Europeans, and latterly as Kobé-Hiogo.
It has had many famous men as its Governor in the years that have passed,
notably the present Minister to Great Britain, Viscount Hayashi, and
the office may be said to have been the stepping-stone to still greater
distinction in more than one instance, but Kobé will never forget that
he who is often almost affectionately referred to as the “grand old man”
of Japan was the first to occupy the chair as its chief magistrate. This
was in 1868, when he was yet a young man of twenty-seven, and he was
selected, it may be assumed, for this responsible post on account of his
exceptional acquaintance with Europe and its people, and with the habits
and requirements of foreign residents in general.
His subordinates at Hiogo, during the time he was Governor, were like
himself young and progressive men, entirely at one with the propaganda
of the new and progressive policy which aimed at the consolidation of
the Empire and the development of all its resources. Many proposals were
put forward by Governor Ito at this period with the view of remodelling
all branches of the imperial polity, in particular with respect to
the imposition of taxes, military education, and so on, covering a
wide field. Their advocacy of these measures procured for Ito and his
associates at the time the designation of holders of the “Hiogo view.”
It was really Ito who inspired Kido, the famous statesman whose history
is recorded in another chapter, with the resolve to take up the question
of the total abolition of the feudal system, and which rapidly gained
supporters in many quarters, to the extent that in a few years it came to
be an accomplished fact.
As Governor of Kobé-Hiogo, he won the highest esteem of all classes, but
he was not destined to remain long in that office, for he was called to
Tokio next year to undertake the duties of Finance Vice-Minister, and
the following spring he went to the United States to study the monetary
system of that country, a task to which he devoted himself for the
ensuing twelve months, returning to his own land in 1871.
While away he wrote the following memorandum on “Reasons for basing the
Japanese new coinage on the metric system.”