for her safety was amply demonstrated in the war with Russia which
came to an end in the autumn of 1905, having lasted a year and a half.
The negotiations which had been proceeding throughout the year 1903
concerning Korea and Manchuria proved barren of satisfactory result,
and being convinced that nothing more could be hoped for in the shape
of a pacific settlement of the points in dispute, while on the other
hand Russia was protracting the discussion only to gain time for further
military preparations, the Tokio Government at last announced through the
Japanese Minister at St Petersburg the rupture of diplomatic relations,
on the 6th of February 1904, and forthwith commenced hostilities. At the
outset the operations were principally of a naval character, designed to
cripple the Russian fleet and make the landing of troops on the coast
of Korea and Manchuria secure, the first land skirmish taking place at
Cheng-ju, in Northern Korea, on the 28th of March. Wiju was occupied on
the 6th of April, and a three days’ encounter at the river Yalu ended
on the 1st of May in the complete defeat of the Russians under General
Sassulitch by General Kuroki, and the capture of Kiu-lien-cheng. Up to
this stage the operations in the field had been under the control of
General Kuroki, but in May Marshal Oyama arrived from Tokio to take
supreme command of the armies in Manchuria, and a series of important
engagements then took place, notably the storming of Nanshan near
Kinchau, close to Port Arthur, which opened the way to the investment
of that fortress, and the occupation of Feng-hwang-cheng and Dalny. The
Russian General Kuropatkin sought to relieve the growing pressure on Port
Arthur by sending an army southward through the Liao-tung peninsula, but
Marshal Oyama sent General Oku to meet it and a desperate battle was
fought at Wa-fang-kou and Telissu, adjoining villages to the north of
Kinchau, on 14th and 15th June, and ten days later a beginning was made
with the attack on the fortress on the Regent’s Sword which nine years
before Marshal Oyama had taken from the Chinese. The same month he was
personally engaged with the First and Third armies in the mountainous
region between Feng-hwang-cheng and Liao-Yang, where severe fighting
occurred at the passes in the Mo-tien-ling, Feng-shui-ling and other
ranges, on the route to the capital of Manchuria. Kaiping, on the coast
of the Gulf of Liao-tung, was captured on the 9th July, and a week
afterwards a determined attempt on the Japanese positions at Mo-tien-ling
was repulsed, with great slaughter. The second Japanese army forced back
the Russians on Ta-shi-chiao, when they again sought to break through to
the South, and at Port Arthur itself there was a severe struggle for the
possession of Wolf Hill, ending in a complete success for the Japanese
forces. Meanwhile General Oku was executing Marshal Oyama’s plan of
campaign in the direction of Newchwang, and that port and Haicheng were
in Japanese hands by the 3rd of August. Port Arthur’s outer defences fell
at about the same date, and for five days, from the 19th to the 24th
of that month, a fierce attack was delivered on the fortress, while at
the same time the assault of Liao-Yang, which proved to be a ten days’
affair altogether, was begun on the 24th of August and lasted well into
September. In that long and terrible contest there were more than 20,000
casualties on both sides, and during its progress the assault on Port
Arthur was renewed with tremendous energy, from the 27th to the end of
August. A week’s heavy fighting again took place from the 19th to the
26th September at Port Arthur, and meanwhile Marshal Oyama had been
developing his advance on Mukden, at that time the headquarters of the
Russians, and the ancient seat of the Manchu dynasty. General Kuropatkin
announced on the 2nd of October that he was strong enough to attack, and
a Russian advance actually began, leading to the series of battles at the
Sha-ho or Sand River, in mid-October, and ending in a Russian retreat
to the northward with a loss of forty guns. The fighting continued
intermittently for many weeks, the Russians losing on an average three
to one Japanese. At Port Arthur the assailants took 203-metre Hill on
the 30th of November, and fort after fort fell during December, until
on the 1st of January 1905 the surrender of the fortress was proposed
by General Stoessel and by General Nogi accepted. Severe battles took
place subsequently in Manchuria, including that of Hei-kau-tai, from
the 25th to the 29th of January, when the Russians under Gripenberg
attacked the Japanese left but were hotly repulsed, and Mistchenko’s
raid on Newchwang,—the old city,—brought about severe fighting in that
vicinity, but in March the operations against Mukden terminated in a
clear victory on the 10th, and the Russian forces fell back to the
northward. Tieh-ling was taken six days later, and on the 17th General
Kuropatkin was superseded by Linievitch. Kai-yuen was next to fall into
Oyama’s hands, and though there was fighting on the 18th and 19th to the
north of Kai-yuen, nothing serious was afterwards attempted as the peace
negotiations had been commenced at Washington.
Marshal Oyama returned to Tokio in December, and resumed his post of
Chief of Staff. He holds the Grand Order of Merit and the Golden Kite,
and, like Marshal Yamagata and Admiral Togo, received the British
Order of Merit in 1906 from King Edward VII., to the great joy of his
fellow-countrymen throughout Japan.
XVI
FUKUSAWA YUKICHI
No list purporting to be that of the Makers of Modern Japan would be
complete were the name of Fukusawa Yukichi, the pioneer of Western
education in his own land, to be omitted. His claims to remembrance
are manifold and irrefutable, not the least of them being his right
to be esteemed the founder of the leading Japanese journal, the _Jiji
Shimpo_, of Tokio. But his fame will rest chiefly on his achievement in
establishing the Kei-o-gi-juku College, wherein a large percentage of the
leading men of the Japan of to-day graduated, and by not a few of whom
he is revered as having been in no small degree the architect of their
fortunes.
Mr Fukusawa,—as he preferred to remain despite the offer of a peerage
in his later years,—was born in Osaka, on the 12th of December 1834,
that being the year which corresponds to the fifth of the Tempo era, and
while yet an infant was taken to his father’s native province of Buzen,
in Kiushiu, the family residence being in the town of Nakatsu, a port on
the north-east coast of that island. The elder Fukusawa had been staying
at Osaka for a time in the service of his feudal chieftain the lord of
Buzen. Yukichi dwelt at home, pursuing the customary studies of youths
of his age, but with a decided bent towards foreign literature, until
in the first year of the Genji period (1854), he went to Nagasaki, and
there began the study of Dutch. Prior to this he had been conspicuous
as a hard-working scholar in Chinese, which to the Japanese was then,
and is still, what Greek and Latin are to us. Yukichi was a whole year
at Nagasaki, and then he removed to Osaka, and became a pupil of the
celebrated doctor of medicine Ogata Ko-an, under whose guidance he
continued the study of the Dutch tongue, and in 1858, the fifth year of
the An-sei era, he went to Yedo, and began to impart to a few beginners
the knowledge he had thus far acquired of the foreign language. It must
be remembered that during Japan’s long seclusion from the rest of the
world there were always a few Dutchmen dwelling at Nagasaki, and that
Dutch was, as a consequence of that isolation, the only foreign tongue
spoken down to the advent of Commodore Perry in 1853. Although by 1858
people of other nations had begun to make their appearance in the
country, English was as yet almost an unknown tongue, and Dutch was still
the only medium of communication with the Occident.
[Illustration: FUKUSAWA YUKICHI]
In Yedo Mr Fukusawa occupied quarters in a mansion at Teppodzu which
belonged to his feudal chieftain the lord Okudaira of Buzen, and it was
while the scholars were immersed in their study of Dutch works that the
opening of Yokohama to foreign trade brought about a change in their
ideas, and led their tutor to enlarge the field of his own researches.
For by the year 1859 the treaties with five foreign powers had been
concluded, and the first steps were taken by Japan to fully acquaint
herself with what had been the progress of other nations during the
period of her voluntary severance of all communication with them. Yukichi
was only twenty-five years old when he paid his first visit to an open
port and saw something of the British people of whose characteristics
he had read a great deal but had had previously no personal experience.
He had at that time no knowledge whatever of English as a language, but
he set himself diligently to work, and with the aid of a dictionary
compiled in English and Dutch he sought, by private study, to master the
difficulties of a tongue which he perceived would afford him the key to
learning of the kind that his ambitions prompted him to seek. It was
impossible at that time for him to procure an English teacher, or in
all probability it would have been his choice to obtain his information
direct rather than by the roundabout fashion in which he was compelled to
acquire it—by Dutch intervention, as it were,—and, as it was, the burden
of the task of procuring a competent knowledge of so complex a language
as ours was rendered vastly more onerous by the nature of the method that
he was driven to adopt in his studies. It is due to the memory of this
eminent scholar to declare that he surmounted all the obstacles in his
path and became the first of Japanese teachers of the Western tongue.
But in the meantime, towards the close of 1859, he sailed for the United
States of America, in the suite of Kimura, the lord of the province of
Settsu, who was despatched on a mission to America by the Government of
the Shogun. The party voyaged in the little man-of-war _Kan-riu-maru_,
commanded by Katsu, the feudal lord of Awa, and Yukichi was in the United
States for some months. The following year he returned to his own land,
and his first act was to publish in book form a translation of a work
which he had brought with him from the other side of the Pacific. This
was the beginning of a long series of similar educational works from his
pen for which Japan is deeply indebted to him.
In the year 1861 Mr Fukusawa voyaged to Europe on a British man-of-war,
being entrusted at that time with a government mission to make literary
researches, and he travelled through England, Holland, Prussia, Russia,
and Portugal. On his return to Japan in the ensuing year he translated
and published many of the English and other books which he had brought
back with him, thereby adding immeasurably to the store of information
then possessed by his countrymen on the subject of foreign lands and
peoples. After occupying himself in this useful work more or less until
1867 he was despatched in that, the third year of the Kei-o era, to the
United States, taking his passage this time in an American mail-boat for
San Francisco. His object accomplished, he returned to Yedo just at the
beginning of the Meiji period, and established in 1868 the College with
which his name will for ever be associated.
The Kei-o Gi-juku school was first set up in the temple of Shinsenza, in
the Shiba quarter of the capital, but in the fourth of Meiji (1871), it
was transferred to more spacious and convenient premises at Mita, still
in the Shiba district, the curriculum including law, mathematics, and
political economy. Not less than 14,000 students claim to have passed
through this college, and at the present time fully 2500 are entered on
its books.
It is impossible to convey an adequate idea in so many words of the
extent of Mr Fukusawa’s influence and the share which he had in building
up the fabric of modern Japan, for at one time and another by far the
major portion of her leading men derived their education either by direct
training at his school or by the perusal and study of the English works
which he translated. He was an ardent advocate of the early opening of
the Diet, and was a resolute opponent of those ancient customs that
tended to hinder Japan’s progress, strongly insisting, for one thing, on
monogamy and the equality of rights of the sexes, having accomplished
much in his lifetime towards raising the status of womanhood throughout
the Japanese dominions. He vigorously opposed Confucianism in his
“General laws of the doctrines of Morality,” a work which had for its
primary object the enforcement of the principle of the independence and
justification of the right of prudent self-government of man.
The value of Mr Fukusawa’s work was enhanced by the circumstance that it
was perseveringly carried on in spite of opposition and almost contumely,
and in days when the utility of a sound commercial education could not
be discerned, for the samurai abhorred of all things the contamination
of trade, and those who devoted themselves to the acquisition of other
than classical knowledge, equally with those who might seek to impart
it, were openly scoffed at. It has been pointed out with much force
by one of his contemporaries that long before the Jo-I and Kai-koku
parties in the State had adjusted their differences concerning the
retention or abandonment of a policy of isolation, Mr Fukusawa was
enjoining on his pupils the benefits to be derived from a study of
Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” and that while feudalism was still in the
ascendant his students were deep in the mysteries of the standard work
on “Representative Government” by John Stuart Mill. The greater the
opposition that he encountered, the more determined was Mr Fukusawa to
fulfil the task which he had set himself, and he no doubt imbibed during
his stay in America not a few ideas relative to the spread of education
that were of use to him later in life. Mr Fukusawa seemed to be marked
out for the post of Minister of Education whenever that post might fall
vacant, but he consistently declined to take office, preferring to carry
on his school rather than to aim at rank and station. And when it is
remembered that he was mentor to half the statesmen who have risen to
power in the Meiji era, the extraordinary influence that he exerted
indirectly on the affairs of his country will readily be comprehended.
Mr Fukusawa died in 1900, and his second son Sutejiro, who—together
with his elder brother, Mr Fukuzawa Ichitaro,—went to America in 1883,
to prosecute his studies, and entered at Yale University, remaining
there until 1890, now edits the _Jiji Shimpo_ in Tokio, and married the
daughter of Viscount Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador to Great Britain.
XVII
MARQUIS KIDO KOIN
Dying, as he did, prior to the adoption of the Western system of orders
of nobility, Kido Koin—better known as Kido Takakoto, or still earlier
in his career as Kido Jiunichiro,—won during his lifetime a title to the
esteem and everlasting gratitude of his fellow-subjects of the Japanese
Emperor far above any rank that he could have been rewarded with even had
he lived to see his aspirations for his country’s welfare realised, as
they have in great measure been, during recent years. He was a Choshiu
man, a native of the same province as those other Makers of Japan—Ito,
Inouye, and Yamagata,—and he was active throughout that troubled period
in which his clan came to the front in affairs, and participated in all
those stirring events in which it was engaged. As became a samurai of the
great southern province, he was an expert swordsman, and he was likewise
one of the most profound scholars of his time. The two things did not
always go together, even in Japan, and it suited those knights of old
whose tastes ran primarily in the direction of falconry or the chase, or
who were given to fencing and drill, to somewhat undervalue culture, as
scarcely deserving of their serious attention. Every fief had its college
for the education of the youthful samurai, but they rarely aspired to
literary excellence or renown, preferring the more robust accomplishments
of archery and swordsmanship to the ability to pen an essay or compose a
stanza, even though it were but one of the orthodox thirty-one syllabled
kind that every gentleman was supposed to be able to produce at will.
Kido’s energy was unbounded, his patriotism unquenchable. There was no
risk that he would not cheerfully run if it afforded a prospect of adding
to his store of knowledge of a character likely to enhance his ability
to serve his country or the imperialist cause with which he was always
identified. Dangers and disguises were for years inseparable from his
daily life, as he never missed an opportunity of acquiring information
that would the better qualify him for the services that he sought to
render to the nation. How much he accomplished in his comparatively brief
span of life is matter of common knowledge in Japan, though perhaps,
for lack of information, his talents have hitherto met with but scant
appreciation outside the borders of the Japanese Emperor’s dominions.
[Illustration: MARQUIS KIDO]
Entering the military service of the Nagato province at a very early
age, Kido Jiunichiro proceeded to acquire a competent acquaintanceship
with all those arts in which skill was demanded of the young samurai of
the time, and in some he soon excelled. He was with the Choshiu men when
they made their assault on Kioto, and was daring enough to remain behind
at that capital and headquarters of his lord’s political opponents after
the rest of the Choshiu forces had been compelled to beat a retreat to
their own territory. It was at Kido’s house, on a later date, that the
reconciliation which had such stupendous consequences for Japan as a
nation between the clans of Satsuma and Choshiu was quietly arranged to
the satisfaction of all parties, the two Satsuma leaders Kuroda and Oyama
going to him and consulting with him, as the representative of Choshiu,
in reference to joint action which had for its object the overthrow of
the Shogunate and the re-establishment of the imperial regime.
When the new government was set up Kido, together with Goto Shojiro, of
Tosa, and Komatsu Tatewaki, of Satsuma, were made _Ko-mon_, or advisers,
of the So-Sai,—the title then conferred on the official head of the
administration, but which is now applied to the president of a board,—and
as it rested with the So-Sai to give or refuse the imperial consent to
all measures proposed by the other departments of State, the position of
_Ko-mon_ was one of great power and responsibility.
It will be understood that at this time the present sovereign had only
just come to the throne, and that the establishment of the imperial
government at Kioto was the outcome of the resignation of his office of
Shogun by the present Prince Tokugawa Keiki, who had a few weeks before
surrendered his rights and privileges and retired into private life,
though his adherents were still fighting beyond Tokio, and the war of
the Restoration was not yet over. The Emperor, of course, was still in
residence at the Kioto Dairi, or palace, and Kido realised that before
a settled order of things could be hoped for the feudal system must
be abolished, root and branch. He clearly perceived the necessity for
centralisation as a first step in the direction of the introduction of a
constitutional regime, and, with Kido, to see his duty before him was to
act.
The daimio of Choshiu, his own chieftain, was then at Yamaguchi, and by
way of estimating the chances of success for the bold proposal by which
he was resolved to stand or fall, Kido set out for that distant town,
determined to ascertain first of all how the lord Mori might be disposed
to view so audacious a proposition as that to be submitted for the
consideration of the territorial magnates.
Arriving at Yamaguchi, which stands at a distance from the coast, in a
hilly district—as its name, _lit._: “mountain’s mouth,” might imply—Kido
lost no time in procuring an interview with the baron, and endeavouring
to prove by every argument at his command how fatally feudalism was
obstructing the progress of the empire. In conclusion he respectfully
invited the lord of Choshiu to divest himself of his inherited estates
and make a present of them to the Emperor!
Baron Mori listened to this astounding suggestion of his retainer with
composure, and remained silent, Kido wondering, in all probability, what
would be the nature of the punishment that would descend upon him for his
temerity.
But to his everlasting honour the daimio raised his head and said, after
a while,—“Let it be so: act as you think best.”
Although Kido knew that his lord’s patriotism was of a kind that would
prompt him to make enormous sacrifices, and that with Choshiu as with
Satsuma, the overwhelming superiority of foreign armaments had been so
effectively demonstrated as to make it clear that unless Japan was to
fall a prey to some enterprising foe she must bestir herself and reform
her institutions to a degree that would enable her to present a united
front to an aggressor, it was with a feeling of intense gratitude that
Kido received his chieftain’s answer. He had had no expectation of
obtaining so ready a consent to his excessively venturesome proposition.
As he was retiring the baron called Kido back and warned him, “You must
be careful, for the samurai are excited with their recent achievements
and may not take it quietly. You had better watch for a convenient
opportunity before making my decision known.”
Kido’s joy at this initial success was great beyond measure, and he
forthwith made his way to Kioto, where he found Okubo Toshimichi, and
they entered deeply into the question of approaching the other daimios
with a similar suggestion. Okubo thoroughly shared Kido’s views as to
the imperative need of abolishing the feudal system, and was not less
surprised than Kido himself had been at the willingness shown by the lord
of Choshiu to relinquish his possessions. He accepted it, however, as a
good augury in his own case when he should attempt to convince the lord
of Satsuma, to which province he belonged, of the wisdom of adopting a
course similar to that taken by baron Mori.
Representations were made most cautiously to one daimio after the other,
and Kido drew up a paper in the form of a memorial to the Emperor,
which the feudal chiefs were asked to subscribe to, and to which four
of them at once appended their seals, they being those who had been
most active in bringing about the situation which culminated in the
fall of the Shogun from power. The very essence of this epoch-making
document, conveying an unequivocal renunciation of their possessions
and entire submission to the imperial will by the leading daimios
throughout the land, was patriotic devotion to the sovereign and repose
in his wisdom and virtue as their restored monarch. “We hereby offer
up our possessions, our men, and ourselves to his Majesty,—let the
imperial commands issue for the remodelling of the clans,—let everything
henceforward be done exclusively in his sovereign name, and let the
internal affairs of the country be so regulated and placed on a true and
safe basis that the empire shall be able eventually to take its place
side by side with the other enlightened countries of the world.” Such was
the tone and in great measure the phraseology employed when the grandees
of Japan spontaneously relinquished their positions as lords of the soil
and unconditionally bowed themselves before the throne in readiness to
conform to their ruler’s mandate, relying implicitly, for their future,
on his justice and benevolence.
To Kido Koin, in the first place, must be assigned the credit of this
truly diplomatic triumph, and in a second place to Okubo. Though Choshiu
was willing, it would have been impossible without the approval of
Satsuma to carry the proposal through, nor would it have been probable
that some, at all events, of the less prominent daimios could have been
induced to renounce their all but for the brilliant example set them by
the powerful barons of the first rank (kokushiu) of the south.
To the memorial the Emperor replied that the proposal should be debated
in Council, and in the course of a few weeks the scheme was definitely
adopted which provided for the change from daimiates or _Hans_ to
provincial administrations, and the appointment of the former lords of
those territories as _Chiji_ or Governors. The entire revenues, it was
arranged, should go to the imperial exchequer, and on the other hand
the sovereign took it upon himself to provide for the samurai who had
thereunto been the retainers of their feudal chiefs. The daimios were
themselves invited to return to their territories for the last time and
send in statements of their possessions, which they did, and ultimately,
when their own incomes had been apportioned in accordance with a settled
basis of commutation, they evacuated their old castles and went to dwell
in retirement whithersoever their tastes led them. Some entered into
trade, with a part or all of the capital obtained by commutation of their
assigned incomes, but the majority, realising their total inaptitude for
commercial pursuits, having been accustomed all their lives to leave
such matters to their factors, were warned in time and refrained from
embarking in enterprises for which they were obviously unfitted.