Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (49 page)

After the emperor boarded ship and left Kagoshima, the common people were permitted to examine the place where he had stayed. Crowds that lined up before dawn accepted with reverence bits of the rush matting on which the emperor had knelt in prayer, and cryptomeria needles from the decorations of the platform where he had enjoyed the cool of evening, which they used as talismans to ward off misfortune.
²⁷

The emperor’s ship proceeded from Kagoshima to Marugame in Shikoku, where he arrived on August 7, a day of rain, lightning, and fierce wind. On the following day it cleared, and from a temporarily established place of worship the emperor directed prayers to the tomb of Emperor Sutoku at Shiramine and that of Emperor Junnin on the island of Awaji; both emperors had perished in exile. That day, word came from T
ō
ky
ō
of dissension among the various elements composing the Household Guards, the majority of whom came from Satsuma. Saig
ō
Takamori and Saig
ō
Tsugumichi returned by fast ship to T
ō
ky
ō
, for, as Satsuma men, they were thought to be the only officers who could calm the turbulent elements.
²⁸
The emperor continued his journey as scheduled, calling at K
ō
be on his way back to Yokohama.

After his return to T
ō
ky
ō
, Meiji continued to display particular interest in education. On September 3 the first public library was opened in Ueno. On the following day the emperor sent a message stressing the importance of education and revealing the plans that had been drawn up for education at every level. The number of institutions planned ranged from eight universities to 53,760 elementary schools. All children from the age of six would be required to enter one of several kinds of elementary schools intended to meet the different needs of boys and girls, children in the city and the country, and so on. The model for the educational system would be France. These plans were intended to implement the promise made by the emperor in his Five Article Charter Oath to abolish evil customs and to seek learning throughout the world.
²⁹

The country seemed at last to be peaceful after the years of turbulence. Twenty-one of the fortified outer gates of T
ō
ky
ō
Castle were removed, leaving only the foundation stones and stone walls. The special guards who had been assigned to protecting foreign diplomats, residents, and
yatoi
were replaced by ordinary police. But there were still sporadic outbreaks of peasant revolts in the provinces, and international questions assumed particular importance.

On September 26 judgment was pronounced in the case of the
Maria Luz
, a Peruvian ship that had been damaged on the way from Macao to Peru and had called at Yokohama on July 9 for repairs. One night while the ship was anchored there, a Chinese laborer escaped by jumping overboard. He was rescued by a British warship and turned over to the Kanagawa authorities. The Chinese complained of gross mistreatment of himself and the 231 other Chinese aboard the Peruvian ship and asked the protection of the Japanese authorities. The Peruvian captain was summoned and the Chinese escapee returned to him, but he was warned that he must treat the Chinese aboard the ship more humanely. He was enjoined with particular severity not to punish the man who had escaped. But the captain not only punished him brutally but continued his cruel treatment of the other Chinese crew members. The acting British minister, R. G. Watson, receiving word of this, personally inspected the
Maria Luz
and discovered that what the escaped Chinese had said was true: the Chinese laborers aboard ship were living under conditions close to penal servitude. He asked Foreign Minister Soejima to look into the matter.

Soejima at once issued orders that the Peruvian vessel not leave the harbor. He learned on further examination that the ship’s officers had deceived the illiterate Chinese and, after concluding a contract in Macao that committed the men to virtual slavery, had confined them to the hold of the ship where they were subjected to inhumane treatment. A preliminary hearing was held at which the Peruvian shipping company was found guilty of wrongdoing, and all the Chinese were permitted to go ashore. The Court Council approved the decision on August 27. Each of the foreign countries represented in Japan was informed of the decision and asked its opinion. Only the British supported it. The American consul declined to give an opinion because the matter was not related to his own country, but the other countries opposed the decision, citing the regulations signed in October 1867 for the supervision of the Yokohama foreign residence district and expressing doubts about whether the Japanese government was empowered to deal with an incident that had occurred outside its territory. The presiding judge,
Ō
e Taku (1847–1921), appealed to Soejima, who announced that the court’s decision would be respected.

On August 30
Ō
e ruled that the Chinese should be set free. He added that the ship’s captain, though deserving a hundred strokes of the lash, would be permitted to leave port on his ship. The Peruvians, still not ready to yield, attempted to prove that the contract signed with the Chinese laborers in Macao was legal and binding. The court confirmed on September 26
Ō
e’s earlier decision, declaring that the actions of the Peruvian captain had violated international law and were not compatible with Japanese law. Some of the Chinese crew of the ship, encouraged by this decision, deserted, and the captain, perhaps fearing for his life, fled to Shanghai, abandoning the ship. The Chinese government subsequently thanked the Japanese for their friendly action.
³⁰
In June 1873 the matter was submitted to the arbitration of Czar Alexander II of Russia, who two years later upheld the Japanese court’s decision.
³¹

William Elliot Griffis, a worshipful admirer of Emperor Meiji, described his part in the decision:

Mutsuhito returned to Yokohama about the middle of August. While here he had a long consultation with the governor of Yokohama, Mr. Oyé Taku, concerning the case of the Peruvian ship
Maria Luz
, which had come into the harbor through stress of weather. It was loaded with the human freight of Chinese laborers, who had been decoyed, practically kidnapped, and cruelly treated. Their condition was made known by one of them swimming off to a British man-of-war then in the harbor.

Mutsuhito, not afraid of “the vice called republicanism,” nor of Peruvian ironclads, nor of the frowns of men behind the age, resolved to strike a blow for human freedom. After due trial in court, the Chinese laborers were landed on Japanese soil and held until the Peking government was heard from. This was Japan’s first manifesto in behalf not of herself only but of Asian humanity. Some foreigners severely criticized the Imperial action and even imagined a Peruvian man-of-war coming to demand satisfaction; but the matter was settled by arbitration, the Russian emperor deciding that Japan was right.
³²

Griffis’s mention of the emperor’s personal role in the settlement of the
Maria Luz
case is not confirmed by other contemporary sources. If Griffis was correct, this was a rare instance of the emperor’s intercession in a legal matter. Griffis recalled also, “In the trial at court the cogent arguments of the English barrister, F. V. Dickins, and the translator of Japan’s classic verse, helped mightily.
³³
Young girls, who had been forced to go into service for vile purposes, were practically set free and the old contracts, which bound them involuntarily for a period of years, were annulled.”

Dickins, a fluent speaker of Japanese who had been hired by the Peruvian government to present its case in answer to the argument that the contract made with Chinese laborers constituted slave labor, cited the sale of prostitutes in Japan; if this was legal, the Peruvians had committed no crime. The Japanese were taken aback by his argument, and
Ō
e, the presiding magistrate, hastily adjourned the court. In the end
Ō
e ruled that even if slavery did exist in Japan, as exemplified by the sale of prostitutes, it was prohibited to send slaves abroad, and therefore the Peruvian captain, because he intended to send Chinese slave laborers abroad from Yokohama, had violated the law. This tortuous reasoning gave
Ō
e the authority to order the release of the Chinese.
³⁴

It was highly embarrassing to the Japanese that their practice of selling human beings had been revealed to the foreign consular officials assembled in the courtroom.
Ō
e urged the government to prohibit this traffic as soon as possible. On November 1 an epoch-making ordinance was issued strictly prohibiting the sale of human beings.
³⁵
All prostitutes were released from their contracts, and the debts of geishas and prostitutes were canceled because they had been incurred under nonhuman conditions. The contracts of apprentices were also modified to provide that they could not be bound for more than one year.

A series of actions taken by the Japanese government at about this time complicated Japanese relations with two countries closer to hand than Peru—Korea and the Ry
ū
ky
ū
kingdom.

For about 400 years the Japanese had had a trading post in Korea—rather like the Dutch “factory” at Deshima in Nagasaki Bay.
³⁶
The Japanese stationed at the S
ō
ry
ō
(Choryang) Wakan in Pusan were restricted to members of the Tsushima domain: because of its geographic situation midway between Japan and Korea, the island of Tsushima had traditionally served as the intermediary between the two countries. Although the Japanese were subjected to strict surveillance and at times discourteous treatment, they remained because trade—largely barter—was profitable.

Japan’s relations with Korea had been strained early in the Meiji era. On being informed that the shogunate (with which it had enjoyed good relations) had been overthrown,
³⁷
the Korean government was reluctant to enter into relations with the imperial government.
³⁸
Then the Japanese government, trying to break the impasse, decided in 1869 to relieve S
ō
Shigemasa, the former daimyo of Tsushima, of his post as negotiator between the two countries and to carry on its own negotiations. Two members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were sent to Korea in March 1870 to inform the Koreans of the change, but the Koreans’ only response was that the Japanese message could not be received. The offended envoys returned to Japan where they urged an invasion of Korea (
seikan
).

A Japanese mission sent in October of the same year had no more success. The three envoys asked to meet with local officials, but they were refused. The Koreans said that for 300 years Tsushima had served as the intermediary between the two countries. Why should this tradition be broken now? If the Japanese wished to strengthen the ties between the two countries, the only way was to conform to the old usages. The Japanese were once again rebuffed.

The next mission sent from T
ō
ky
ō
arrived in Pusan in February 1872. The
hundo
, the officer who dealt with the Japanese, declined to meet members of the mission, alleging illness, and not until April did Sagara Masaki, the chief of the mission, succeed in delivering to the acting
hundo
letters with which he had been entrusted as well as his own statement on the purpose of the mission. In June the
hundo
visited the Japanese station and said that Sagara would receive an answer after his statement had been discussed, but he could not promise when this would be. Sagara and the other Japanese, annoyed by the vagueness of the message and the likelihood of wasting time waiting for a reply, broke the rules by leaving the Wakan and going directly to the provincial headquarters. The commandant not only refused to meet the Japanese but severely rebuked them for having left the trading station and entered a forbidden area.
³⁹

The Japanese had no choice but to withdraw to the Wakan. Members of the mission returned to Japan in order to inform Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi of the situation. On September 12 Soejima, who had decided that for reasons of both history and prestige, the trading post should be maintained, presented to the
sh
ō
in
a series of proposals that were approved by the Court Council and the emperor on September 20. The first article conveyed Soejima’s belief that the Wakan should be maintained as Japan’s outpost in Korea.
⁴⁰

On September 30 the assistant foreign minister, Hanabusa Yoshimoto (1842–1917), sailed for Korea in order to implement Soejima’s proposals. His most important task was to replace the officials at the S
ō
ry
ō
Wakan, vassals of the Tsushima domain, with Foreign Ministry officials, and to place the post under the ministry’s direct control. The Wakan would no longer serve as a trading station for the Tsushima domain, and accounts between the domain and the Korean government would have to be cleared. Once again negotiations dragged on, ostensibly because the Koreans were waiting for the former
hundo
to resume office. Finally on December 10 the Koreans announced their refusal to accept either the wares that Hanabusa had brought with him (by way of settling accounts) or his officials.