Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (157 page)

It is not clear how the journalists who wrote these eulogies gained their knowledge of the emperor’s character. Probably, word was “leaked” to the foreign press by Japanese who were close to the emperor.

The French editorials for the most part devoted greater attention to the events of Meiji’s reign than to the emperor himself, but the newspaper
Le Correspondant
not only presented its own views but quoted comments by Japanese statesmen. The first was by It
ō
Hirobumi:

Quelles que puissentêtre les causes qui ont aidé le Japon dans ses progrès et quelque importante qu’ait pu être la part que nous avons eue dans les succès des années, tout cela devient insignifiant quand on le compare avec ce que le pays doità Sa Majesté l’empereur. La volonté impériale a toujoursété l’étoile qui a guidé la nation. Quelle qu’ait puêtre l’oeuvre accomplie par ceux qui, comme moimême, ont essayé de l’aider dans son gouvernement éclairé, il eut été impossible d’obtenir d’aussi remarquables résultats, n’eût été la grande, sage et progressive influence toujours derrière chaque nouvelle mesure de réforme.
¹²

A second quotation was from Suematsu Kench
ō
:

Sa Majesté apporte l’attention la plus soutenueà chaque branche des affaires de l’État. Chaque jour, depuis le matin de bonne heure jusqu’à une heure avancée il s’occupe dans son cabinet des affaires publiques. Il est au courant de ce qui intéresse chaque département, surtout de ce qui toucheà l’armée et à la marine…. Parfois il étonne par sa connaisance d’événements qui se produisent parmi son peuple. Il prend le plus vif intérêt à tout ce qui se passe dans les grands pays du monde, son unique désire étant de prendre des leçons des autres nations.
¹³

The comment of the French editorialist was astute:

L’empereur a pu, à certains moments, influencer la politique de ses ministres, car son activité, son intelligence ne sont pas douteuses. Mais son oeuvre principale, et il l’accomplit avec une remarquable sagesse, fut d’être le chef de l’État, le vivant symbole de la vie nationale, du sentiment du pays…. Les grands rois ne sont pas ceux qui, comme Philippe II, veulent diriger eux-mêmes les affaires de l’État, mais ceux qui, ayant mis leur confiance en de grands ministres, les soutiennent de tout le prestige de la royauté.
¹⁴

A Belgian newspaper praised Emperor Meiji for having awakened the Japanese people from long slumbers, as if with a magic wand, and compared him with the heroes of ancient Greece.
¹⁵
A Russian newspaper, after pointing out resemblances between Emperor Meiji and Peter the Great, decided that the two men were fundamentally different. Peter had fought as a soldier, knew navigation, and had even worked as a carpenter, but the mikado had never fought on the battlefield, never built a ship, and never climbed a mast. Peter needed such talents in order to create single-handedly a new Russia, whereas the mikado could do without them. Japan had so many able men that the mikado had only to choose the most capable to assist him.
¹⁶

The Chinese newspapers expressed much sorrow over the death of Emperor Meiji. One Chinese newspaper mourned him in these terms:

Ah, the summit of Fuji is hidden in clouds, darkening the spirits of the ruler; and the waves lapping the shores of Lake Biwa seem to be weeping, mourning the death of a father or a mother. This hero of a generation, the Emperor of Japan, brought a country consisting of [merely] three islands onto the stage of the major Powers of the world, and left behind a land like the dragonfly, a national destiny like the dragon or tiger, and fifty millions of the Yamato people.
¹⁷

The writer, unable to contain the grief that swelled in his breast, spoke words of mourning in place of the Chinese people. Looking for a parallel between Meiji’s achievements and those of other illustrious men of world history, he decided that although he could not be compared with the great Chinese of the past, Meiji was superior to Attila, Ogodei (the founder of the Yüan dynasty), and Mohammed because they, being essentially nomadic chieftains, were barbarians and lacked the qualifications of an emperor. It was thanks to the emperor that Japan had defeated Russia in war and secured an alliance with England. The writer mourned the emperor especially because he had brought light to the “yellow men,” no doubt referring to Japan’s leadership among the nations of East Asia in achieving a modern state.
¹⁸

This may have been the first time that the Chinese thought of themselves as belonging to the same race as the Japanese. In the past, the Chinese were accustomed to thinking of their country as unique because of its long history and culture. The similarity of the facial features of its people to those of the Japanese had not been thought worthy of comment. The success of Japan under Emperor Meiji in gaining equality with the chief countries of the West, notably by defeating Russia in war, seems to have induced the Chinese to feel a bond with the Japanese as fellow members of the yellow race. But even at this time one Chinese journalist wrote, “The Japanese are brave and gifted at imitation. The country has no indigenous culture.”
¹⁹
Some writers praised the achievements of Emperor Meiji by criticizing indirectly the self-satisfaction of Chinese who were so sure of the superiority of their own culture to all other cultures that they refused to adopt the new Western learning: “There are more than ten countries, big and small, in the eastern and western regions of the Asian continent. Japan is the only one of them which has maintained its own culture, absorbed the new civilization of the West, and achieved what it can proudly call a constitutional state.”
²⁰

These comments from foreign newspapers, made soon after the death of the emperor, were followed by descriptions of the funeral. The article by the reporter for
La Revue
(G. de Banzemont) opened by describing the sorrow of the Japanese people on learning of the emperor’s death:

Mutsu-hito ne fut pas seulement un des plus illustres Empereurs du Japon, mais encore un des plus grands monarques du monde moderne. On se souvient de l’angoisse qui étreignit la nation japonaise lors des premières nouvelles relatives à l’indisposition du souverain. Plusieurs jours durant, la foule éplorée défila sans souci d’une chaleur véritablement torride, sous les fenêtres du palais imperial; à genoux, le front dans la poussière, d’une commune voix, elle implora les dieux. Et dès qu’une lanterne sourde, éclairant la chambre du moribond, annonça que le monarque entrait en agonie, ce fut la plus violente explosion de douleur qu’on puisse imaginer.
²¹

Many Japanese left accounts of their stunned reactions on learning of the emperor’s death. Even Tokutomi Roka, a novelist who had frequently been critical of the government and had protested the execution of those involved in the grand treason incident, was shocked to think that the reign in which he had been born and lived all his life had come to an end. He recalled,

When an emperor dies the
neng
ō
also changes. I was certainly not unaware of this, but I felt as if the
neng
ō
Meiji would last forever. I was born in the tenth month of the first year of Meiji, in the year when the emperor Meiji had his coronation and in the month when he traveled to T
ō
ky
ō
from Ky
ō
to, in a village some 300
ri
from T
ō
ky
ō
called Ashikita no Minamata in Higo, close to the Satsuma border. I had become accustomed to thinking of the age of Meiji as my own age, and being the same age as Meiji was at once my pride and my shame.

The death of His Majesty closed the volume of Meiji history. When Meiji became Taish
ō
, I felt as if my own life had been cut off. I felt as if Emperor Meiji had gone off taking with him half my life.

A gloomy day. The long drawn-out note of the flute a candy-man was blowing on the other side of the rice paddy seemed to penetrate my vitals.
²²

Natsume S
ō
seki related in his diary for July 20 his annoyance that the
kawabiraki
, the traditional annual festival “opening” of the Sumida River at Ry
ō
goku, had been called off:

The emperor hasn’t died yet. There was no need to prohibit the
kawabiraki
. There must be many poor people who will suffer because of this. The authorities’ lack of common sense is incredible. It seems there’s a great debate raging over whether or not to close the theaters and other entertainments. The emperor’s illness deserves the sympathy of the entire people. But the livelihood of the people, providing it is not directly harmful to the emperor’s health, should be allowed to continue as usual…. If people are forced to suspend their normal business, no matter how reverent and sympathetic they may seem on the surface toward the imperial household, they will certainly feel bitterness, and this dissatisfaction will build up in their hearts.
²³

But even S
ō
seki, once he learned that the emperor had died, wrote a panegyric.
²⁴
He, like virtually everyone else in the entire country, mourned the emperor who had provided unwavering support for the enormous changes that had occurred during his reign. Although S
ō
seki deplored many of these changes, he realized also that there had been no alternative and that the ugly aspects of modernization had to be endured, if only to maintain the independence and authority of Japan in a world that had become increasingly obtrusive and intolerant of East Asian traditions.

The funeral service, held on September 13 at the Aoyama parade grounds, was on a lavish scale. The coffin left the
arakinomiya
and was placed aboard the hearse at seven in the evening. The hearse, roofed in Chinese style like the one used at the funeral of Dowager Empress Eish
ō
, was lacquered black all over and decorated with more than 3,000 metal ornaments, the whole weighing more than three tons. The hearse was drawn by five specially chosen oxen. At eight, when it was already quite dark, the solemn procession began to move slowly from the court entrance, illuminated by lanterns. The procession was headed by the former chief chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanetsune, Chamberlain H
ō
j
ō
Ujiyasu, and Master of the Horse Fujinami Kototada, dressed in formal robes of mourning and wearing swords; they and other nobles pulled the ropes of the funeral carriage. Two nobles who had personally served the late emperor walked on either side of the carriage, holding aloft torches to illuminate the way. The emperor, the empress, and the empress dowager, who had earlier proceeded to the Double Bridge, were waiting for the funeral cortege. As it passed over the bridge, they bade a last farewell to Emperor Meiji. At that moment the army began to fire salutes of minute guns, and from the distance, the navy responded with minute salutes from warships off Shinagawa. The bells of temples inside and outside the city tolled in unison.
²⁵

At 8:20 the funeral carriage passed through the main gate of the palace where twelve horsemen joined the vanguard of the procession, clearing the way. The Guards Cavalry Regiment followed behind the twelve horsemen and was in turn followed by the Guards Military Band playing “Kanashimi no kiwami” (Extremity of Grief). Ubukata Toshir
ō
, a newspaper reporter who had been assigned to cover the funeral, declared that nothing in the world could compare in sadness with the thin, prolonged, choked sounds of this music: “The tens of thousands of people present swallowed their voices and corrected their posture. Then they surrendered themselves completely to the waves of sound suffused with grief.”
²⁶

The funeral cortege was led by two officers bearing torches. They were followed by some 300 men carrying torches, drums, bells, white flags, yellow flags, quivers, bows, shields, halberds, imperial pennants decorated with the sun and moon, and chests containing articles of war and of Shint
ō
worship. These men, in rows of two or three, served as the advance guard for the hearse. Other officials followed, and the hearse itself was preceded by fifty
Yase no d
ō
ji
in two ranks.
²⁷
Officials, including chamberlains, who had personally served the late emperor walked close to the hearse and directly behind them came other chamberlains. Next came twenty-eight generals, admirals, field officers, captains, and commanders, guarding the flanks, and behind them members of the nobility, headed by Prince Kotohito, representing the emperor, Prince Sadanaru, the commissioner in chief of the imperial funeral, other princes of the blood and lesser princes, and Yi Kang, the elder son of the former emperor of Korea. They in turn were followed by members of the nobility, the prime minister, members of the cabinet, the governor general of Korea, high-ranking army and navy officers, and other civil and military officials, all in full dress.

The T
ō
ky
ō
municipal authorities had hastily repaired the streets to be taken by the hearse and sprinkled them with white sand. Along the route were branches of
sakaki
, brocade pennants, gas beacons, and arc lanterns and in between, white and black cloths twisted into ropes. Before each building the procession passed, a white lantern was hung as a mark of grief and as a farewell to the late emperor. The area of the funeral services, although it was extremely crowded with mourners, was pervaded by a reverential silence.