Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (117 page)

Three groups of suspects were sent back to Japan—the
s
ō
shi
, Minister Miura and his staff, and remaining elements. They left Seoul in three stages, on October 19, 20, and 21. The ships sailed directly to Ujina in Hiroshima Prefecture. On arriving at the army quarantine station, they were directed to take a bath, and on emerging from the bath, they were served with warrants of arrest and put in handcuffs, accused of premeditated murder and conspiracy.
⁵³

Miura was given the same treatment as the others when he arrived in Ujina. He naturally was enraged and refused to talk to anyone below the status of cabinet minister. He was escorted to a rather comfortable prison cell where he remained for some ninety days.
⁵⁴

On January 14, 1896, a court-martial was held for the Japanese army officers accused of participating in the murder of Queen Min. On January 20 the preliminary inquiry held at Hiroshima District Court to consider the charges against Okamoto Ry
ū
nosuke, Miura Gor
ō
, and Sugimura Fukashi found that “there is no sufficient evidence to prove that any of the accused actually committed the crime originally meditated by them.” The defendants were released.

The court’s findings were detailed and accurate insofar as they went. The decision made it clear that Japanese and not Koreans had planned and carried out the attack on the palace and the murder of Queen Min. For example, it stated that

Miura Gor
ō
further issued instructions to Major Umayabara Muhon, Commander of the Japanese Battalion in Seoul, ordering him to facilitate the Tai Won-kun’s entry into the palace by directing the disposition of the
Kunrentai
troops, and by calling out the Imperial force for their support. Miura also summoned the accused Adachi Kenz
ō
and Kunitomo Shigeakira, and requested them to collect their friends, meeting Okamoto at Yong-san, and act as the Tai Won-kun’s bodyguard on the occasion of His Highness’s entry into the palace. Miura told them that on the success of the enterprise depended the eradication of the evils that had done so much mischief to the kingdom for the past twenty years, and instigated them to dispatch the queen when they entered the palace.
⁵⁵

The report even mentions that after assembling “the whole party” outside the gates of the
taewon’gun
’s house, Okamoto declared that “on entering the palace the ‘fox’ should be dealt with as exigency might require, the obvious purport of this declaration being to instigate his followers to murder Her Majesty the queen.” The report follows Okamoto and the others into the palace through the Kwang-hwa Gate and then to the inner chambers but stops abruptly at this point. Having presented irrefutable evidence of the involvement of Miura and the others in the crime, the court could not seem to take the final step of finding them guilty. The Japanese jurists seemed to have tried to the utmost to preserve their integrity as men of the law but in the end submitted to the government’s order that they acquit the accused.

The failure of Miura’s policy in Korea was dramatically demonstrated on February 11, 1896, when Kojong escaped from the palace where he had been kept in confinement and took refuge in the Russian legation. The escape had been carefully planned. According to the “Official Report,”

His Majesty confided his intention to no official in the Palace nor to any one connected with the Cabinet, and though closely watched managed, early in the morning to go out through the East Gate of the Palace in a closed chair such as is used by the palace women. The Crown Prince accompanied him in a similar chair. It had been customary for ladies of the Court and the women connected with the Palace to pass in and out of this gate in such chairs and the guards, supposing that they contained women, permitted them to pass without question.

His Majesty and the Crown Prince had no escort, and the people in the Palace, supposing that they were asleep, did not discover for some time that they had left. They proceeded at once to the Russian Legation, where they arrived about twenty minutes past seven, and at once summoned a number of Koreans whom His Majesty knew to be faithful to himself, and issued edicts dismissing most of the members of the old Cabinet, appointing others in their place, and denouncing six persons…. The prime minister of the old Cabinet, Kim Hong Chip, and the Minister for Agriculture, Chung Pyung Ha, though not denounced in any proclamation, were arrested by the police and in the tumult and excitement were killed and their bodies exposed upon the street, where they were stoned and otherwise maltreated by the infuriated populace.
⁵⁶

The king’s reasons for taking refuge in the Russian legation were not revealed, but he apparently had heard the report that the
taewon’gun
intended to depose the king and put his own grandson on the throne. The king had not forgiven the Japanese for the murder of Queen Min, and his first statement emanating from the Russian legation was a call for extreme punishment to be meted out to the murderers.

Kojong’s dismissal of the pro-Japanese cabinet was the boldest action of his life. Japanese influence in Korea, which had seemed so strong a few months earlier, now dropped to its nadir, and the Russian legation became the core of the Korean government. At an audience with the king, Komura, the Japanese minister, urged him to return to his palace, but the king ignored this recommendation. The military units trained by the Japanese were disbanded, and most of the Japanese advisers to the government were dismissed.

These events naturally caused great consternation in Japan, where the king’s flight to the Russian legation was officially interpreted not merely as a serious blow to Japanese ambitions but as a threat to Korean independence, a matter of grave concern for the future of the Orient. General Miura, far from being punished for the fiasco, went on to have a distinguished political career. King Kojong left the Russian legation and returned to his palace in February 1897. In August he changed the reign-name to Kwang mu (Martial Brilliance) and in October proclaimed the establishment of the Great Han Empire.
⁵⁷
It is ironic that a king so little endowed with martial brilliance should have chosen such a time to proclaim himself an emperor.

Chapter 48

On January 1, 1896, Meiji once again did not perform the customary New Year ceremonies. Now in his forty-fifth year, he had apparently lost interest in the performance of traditional rituals. His mind was preoccupied not by the past but by the future role of Japan in a world of conflicting powers. Japan had won the war with China, its longtime mentor, but victory had not ended the tensions in East Asia. The situation in Korea remained confused and potentially dangerous, and although Taiwan had officially been pacified, there were still sporadic outbreaks of resistance to Japanese rule. A rare agreeable development, the reestablishment of friendly relations with China, may have inspired the cheerfulness of the poem the emperor composed at the first poetry gathering of the year:

On January 25 Princesses Masako and Fusako paid a visit to the palace.
²
They were accompanied by Sadako, the wife of Sasaki Takayuki, their guardian. After the audience with the emperor had ended, the empress called Sadako to her and remarked that although all the emperor’s other children, including the crown prince, had been prone to illness, the two princesses looked the picture of health. This, she said, had greatly comforted the emperor, and he always praised the efforts of Sasaki and his wife. Despite his professed interest in his two daughters, however, the emperor could not find time to see them again that year until December 29, when, at an audience before their father, they displayed their skill at reading, conversation, and drawing.
³

Granted that the emperor had many state duties to perform, it is surprising that he should have permitted almost a year to elapse without once seeing his daughters. Most of his children had died young, and the crown prince’s frequent illnesses were a constant problem. One would suppose that the emperor would be eager to see two such healthy children. Early in September, Sasaki, confessing that he had great trouble looking after the princesses, asked when they would be permitted to return to the palace. He recalled that until 1891 it had been extremely easy for the princesses to have an audience with the emperor, but such occasions had gradually become fewer, and this year he had granted them an audience only once. Sasaki tried without success to communicate his disappointment to the emperor. Later that month, Sasaki took the princesses to the palace, hoping that the emperor would be pleased to see how they had grown, but he again declined to give them an audience.
⁴
Perhaps the emperor felt that a display of special interest in his children would be unbecoming. As a result, he seemed a cold and unaffectionate father.
⁵

The education of the two princesses remained a matter of concern throughout 1896. Sasaki Takayuki was informed in January that Masako would, after the summer vacation, be brought up at the Akasaka Palace under the guidance of Kagawa Keiz
ō
. Sasaki would continue to be responsible for Fusako’s education and for that of the next child, expected in May. Sasaki protested: first of all, he and his wife were no longer young and would probably be unequal to the task of raising a newly born infant. He also expressed the belief that Fusako was now old enough to leave his care. In any case, he did not think it was a good idea to separate the two princesses. The emperor yielded to the extent of allowing both princesses to be educated by Kagawa Keiz
ō
, but he was quite determined that Sasaki be in charge of raising his next child. Perhaps the emperor attributed the survival of the two princesses, after so many early deaths among his children, to Sasaki’s ministrations.
⁶

The survival of these children was, of course, a matter of rejoicing, but they were girls, and succession to the throne had been limited to males. In April 1896 the chief chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanetsune, begged the emperor to summon more court ladies to his side. He explained that the people were secretly worried by the fewness of the emperor’s male heirs. More children would promote the glory of the imperial household and contribute to the prosperity of the nation. Yamagata Aritomo, Matsukata Masayoshi, and many other patriotic subjects had again and again discussed the matter with Tokudaiji, asking him to implore the emperor to summon additional court ladies to serve him as soon as possible; he needed sons who in the future would serve in the army and navy and command the armed forces.

Tokudaiji waited until the imperial headquarters had been disbanded and peace restored before broaching this matter to the emperor. He explained that increasing the number of concubines was desirable not for the emperor’s pleasure but as an act of piety toward his ancestors. The emperor, however, chose not to take this advice.

All of the emperor’s last eight children were born to the same
gon no tenji
, Sono Sachiko. Six were girls, four of whom survived; neither of the two boys lived to be two years old. The curse of meningitis persisted to the emperor’s last offspring, Princess Takiko, his tenth daughter, who died of this disease on January 11, 1899, when she was less than a year and a half old. Tokudaiji and the other members of the government may have been correct in their belief that if the emperor divided his affections among more women he would produce more heirs, but (contrary to gossip that persists to this day) the emperor, although he regarded succession to the throne as a matter of the highest importance, had no desire to acquire a harem. The strict manner in which his heir, the future emperor Taish
ō
, was raised suggests that Meiji had come to disapprove of the profligacy that had been a traditional privilege of the sovereign.

On May 11, 1896, the emperor’s ninth daughter, Toshiko, was born to Sono Sachiko. Undoubtedly there was disappointment that the baby was not a boy, and it now seemed inevitable that the crown prince would succeed to the throne. The day after the celebration of Princess Toshiko’s birth, it was announced that the crown prince would henceforth visit the palace every Saturday.