Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (140 page)

The noise of the clashes in the park could be heard in the palace, and the emperor, unable to sit tranquilly in his chair, paced back and forth listening to the tumult. Suddenly there was a sound of rifle fire; the military police were firing pistols to intimidate the protesters. The emperor, normally so impassive, was extremely agitated by the noise outside.
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Soon afterward, Prime Minister Katsura rushed to the palace to report on the situation, and that night the emperor repeatedly sent chamberlains to discover the latest developments.

The demonstrations continued for two more days. On the second day, the protesters set fires, burned ten or more streetcars, and stormed from place to place burning police boxes. Martial law, declared for T
ō
ky
ō
and vicinity, was not lifted until November 29. There were smaller-scale meetings of protest in other Japanese cities. Heavy rains on the third day of riots discouraged the demonstrators, and the situation returned to normal.

The demonstrations against the treaty were widely reported abroad, sometimes as manifestations of xenophobia or anti-Christian sentiment, although this was quickly denied by competent foreign observers in T
ō
ky
ō
. President Roosevelt thought that the Japanese government was to blame for having allowed the public to expect Russia would pay a large indemnity.
⁵⁰
Sure that peace was desirable and proud to have had a part in obtaining it, he wrote to Minister Takahira, “You have crowned a great war by a great peace.”
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Chapter 56

The first alliance between Japan and England, signed in 1902, was for a period of five years, but in 1905, while the treaty was still in effect, it was modified and extended. During the Russo-Japanese War, the British aided the Japanese in various ways, the most important of which was selling munitions, without which the Japanese could not have fought the war.
¹
The British kept the Japanese informed when they sighted Russian warships, and they also had been instrumental in preventing ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (which might have reinforced the naval forces sent against Japan) from passing through the Dardanelles.
²
But Britain’s announced policy during the war was one of strict neutrality and officially did not favor Japan.
³

Japan was nevertheless well aware of the importance of the alliance. In December 1904 Sir Claude M. MacDonald, the British minister in T
ō
ky
ō
, reported that in talks with Prime Minister Katsura Tar
ō
and Foreign Minister Komura Jutar
ō
, both had said that “if Japan was successful in war, she would seek for a closer alliance with England.”
⁴
Britain was also eager for a renewal of the alliance, as may be inferred from various suggestions made to the prime minister: that in the interests of strengthening ties between the two countries, Britain present the Order of the Garter, its highest honor, to the emperor; that the post of minister to Japan be raised to the ambassadorial level; and that Britain offer to renew the alliance for another five years.

On February 12, 1905, at a dinner given by the Japanese foreign minister to celebrate the third anniversary of the alliance, Komura not only proposed a toast to the health of King Edward VII in the customary manner but also expressed the hope that the alliance would grow in strength and solidity. The British were uncertain just how seriously Komura’s speech should be taken, but Claude Lowther, a Conservative member of Parliament, urged the government on March 29 to renew the alliance on a firmer basis because he believed it was “the only possible means by which we could secure retrenchment and efficiency with safety to the Empire.”

Lowther was worried by the threat that Russia posed to India. Now that the Russians had built, at great expense, railways that enabled them to move quickly to the Indian frontier an army of more than 500,000 men, the most economical means of defending India was with Japanese troops. He advised that the treaty not be merely renewed but be given a new character: in the event that either country’s Asian possessions were attacked, they should mutually help each other—Great Britain with its fleet and Japan with its army. This arrangement would relieve Great Britain of the upkeep of an Indian army, which had threatened to become an intolerable burden on British taxpayers. It would also save Japan the expense of building a fleet.
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It is difficult to imagine the Japanese government consenting to send a Japanese army to the north of India in order to protect the British Empire from a Russian attack, but nonetheless, Japan was extremely eager to continue the alliance. Its main advantage to the Japanese was that it seemed the best way to discourage Russia from staging a war of revenge; it would also “neutralize the schemes which were being devised by the Russians and French at present to form a European union to oppose Japan under the banner of the Yellow Peril.”
⁶

Some members of the British government, believing they could overcome Japanese reluctance to defend India, proposed that in the event that Russia threatened the northern Indian frontier, Japan be asked to supply 150,000 troops. They clung to the belief that Japanese help in India would be no more than a fair exchange for British naval support and acquiescence in whatever moves Japan might make in Korea.

The Japanese naval victory in the battle of the Tsushima Strait greatly strengthened the Japanese negotiators’ bargaining position. The final agreement, signed on August 12, 1905, in London, bound the two powers for ten more years and imposed a measure of cooperation in disputes arising in East Asia, India, and countries east of India. There were no secret clauses, and Japan did not promise to send soldiers to India, but it recognized Britain’s special interests in all that concerned the security of the Indian frontier.
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The treaty, though signed while peace negotiations were in progress at Portsmouth, had little influence on the conference.

Soon after the new treaty had been negotiated, Prime Minister A. J. Balfour announced the resignation of his ministry. Before leaving office, however, the Conservatives honored Japan by raising the British legation in T
ō
ky
ō
to an embassy. France, Germany, Italy, and the United States followed this example, symbolic recognition that Japan had emerged as a first-class power. As a second mark of respect for Japan, the government recommended that the Order of the Garter be conferred on the emperor. Edward VII had earlier resisted a similar proposal on the grounds that the Garter could not be given to a non-Christian sovereign, but in 1903, for political reasons, the order had been conferred on the shah of Persia despite the king’s opposition. Taking advantage of this precedent, the government insisted on making the offer to the emperor, and the king had no choice but to acquiesce. He appointed Prince Arthur of Connaught to head the mission that would confer the decoration, on February 20, 1906.
⁸

Among the members of the distinguished delegation was Lord Redesdale (A. B. Mitford), who had served as an interpreter at the British legation in T
ō
ky
ō
from 1866 to 1870. His joy at returning to Japan was conveyed in the opening pages of his book-length report
The Garter Mission to Japan
:

Never did the winter sun rise in greater glory than it did on the 19th of February 1906, when H.M.S.
Diadem
, Captain Savory, carrying Prince Arthur of Connaught and the Garter Mission to Japan, steamed at daybreak into the harbour of Yokohama. Never did it shine upon a fairer scene. The King’s standard was flying at the main; the buildings on shore and the vessels in the bay, blue as that of Naples, were all dressed; eleven great warships thundered out a Royal welcome, their bands playing “God Save the King”; in the distance was the pine-clad Hakoné range, beautiful as my recollection of it; but, best of all, Fuji, the Peerless Mountain, covered with snow and glittering in the morning rays, was lifting its mystic cone to heaven, without a cloud to mar the grace of its outline; for the goddess of the mountain, “the princess that causes the trees to blossom,” had risen in her beauty to give us a foretaste of the greeting which the spirit of old Japan was making ready for the messengers of her friend and ally, King Edward the Seventh.
⁹

Redesdale was absolutely delighted by the welcoming crowd along the streets of Yokohama:

The streets were very crowded; every soul in the place must have turned out to line them—the grown-up people behind, the children in front according to their stature, the best place belonging by prescriptive right to the tiniest. Every child was armed with two flags, one Japanese and one English, which were waved most conscientiously, and then there arose such a shouting of “Banzai” from shrill treble and deep bass!
¹⁰

The members of the mission boarded a train that took them to Shimbashi, where a ceremony took place

which must have stirred to their profoundest depths the hearts of all the Japanese who witnessed it. Never before, since the first creation of Japan, was such a compliment paid as that which awaited Prince Arthur. Surrounded by the Crown Prince and all the other Princes of the Blood, the Emperor had come in person to greet his guest. This august Sovereign, whom his subjects revere as something, if not actually divine, at any rate far removed above the rest of mankind, had come, for the first time in all the history of the country, publicly to acclaim a foreign prince…. When the Emperor so warmly shook hands with the Prince it was a message to his people which said in unmistakable terms, “This is MY friend.”
¹¹

Like every other king, prince, or president who ever met Emperor Meiji, Prince Arthur was convinced that the emperor had never displayed such friendship and respect toward any predecessor. Redesdale also congratulated himself: “I was the only European present who could remember the old days of mystery and seclusion in which the Emperors of Japan had lived for upward of eight centuries.”
¹²
He was obviously deeply impressed by the emperor, seen again after forty years: “From all that we can gather, the strength which is written in his face is his great characteristic. His whole time, so the Japanese statesmen tell us, is given to public work. His few leisure moments he solaces with writing poetry.”

The ceremony of the conferring of the Order of the Garter was imposing.
¹³
This order of knighthood, founded in the fourteenth century by King Edward III, had its origins (at least according to legend) in a court lady’s garter that fell to the palace floor. The king, retrieving the garter, offered it to the lady. Some of those present laughed, but the king rebuked them in French, “
Honni soit qui mal y pense
” (Shame on anyone who thinks ill of it!), a phrase inscribed on the decoration.

The order, as Prince Arthur informed the emperor, is restricted to the king, the Prince of Wales, and twenty-five knights and is recognized as the most noble British order of knighthood. In addition to the British knights, it has been the custom to confer the dignity on those emperors, kings, and princes who are in special and peculiar amity or alliance with the king of England.

Meiji was not overawed. He seemed pleased at first when he was informed that he would receive the decoration and accepted, but later he summoned the imperial household minister, Tanaka Mitsuaki, and told him, “I can’t stand receiving British envoys. Tell them not to come.”

The stunned Tanaka said, “But Your Majesty has accepted. You can’t decline it now. Prince Connaught will already have left his country. Such an act would violate the trust that must prevail among allies in matters affecting them both. It is absolutely impossible. All Your Majesty can do now is to await the prince and receive him.”

The emperor was by no means pleased by these words, but he fell silent and issued no further commands. His reluctance to meet Prince Arthur probably had nothing to do with the prince himself or his country; rather, the emperor had come to dislike receiving foreign guests. He was always in a bad mood before an audience, and he often rebuked members of his staff for arranging it. But once the guest arrived, the emperor never revealed the slightest displeasure; on the contrary, those whom he received were invariably impressed by his sincere affability.
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