Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (53 page)

The conflict of interest between domestic and foreign affairs that Kido mentioned characterized future debates on national policy. For Kido, as for other members of the Iwakura mission, the weakness of Japan, certainly when compared with the major countries of the West, was all too evident, and they were sure this was not a time for Japan to engage in a war with Korea. Because Kido was too ill to attend sessions of the Court Council, Iwakura assumed leadership of the antiwar faction. He realized that he needed the help of
Ō
kubo Toshimichi to stop Saig
ō
from being sent to Korea, but
Ō
kubo repeatedly refused appointment as a councillor (
sangi
), a necessary condition for attending the Court Council. Even Kido, who had had a falling out with
Ō
kubo during their travels abroad, joined in persuading
Ō
kubo to accept.
Ō
kubo finally agreed, on condition that Soejima also be made a councillor.
⁴⁵
This was puzzling: far from being an ally, Soejima was a convinced advocate of the invasion of Korea, but
Ō
kubo may have hoped that even if an ambassador was sent to Korea, the council would choose Soejima, who would not seek death, rather than Saig
ō
, who would.

Meiji appointed
Ō
kubo as a councillor on October 12. On the following day Soejima was similarly appointed. At the Court Council on October 14 Iwakura delivered his views. He contended that of the three problems facing Japan—settling the dispute with Russia over Sakhalin, punishing the Taiwan aborigines, and sending an embassy to Korea—the last was the least urgent. Saig
ō
, disagreeing, argued that the problems of Sakhalin and Taiwan were not urgent but that the Korean question involved the authority of the throne and country and could not be postponed. He concluded by saying that if the Court Council decided Sakhalin was the most urgent problem, he would be willing to go as an envoy to Russia. During the arguments it became clear that four members of the Court Council (Itagaki, Got
ō
, Soejima, and Et
ō
) sided with Saig
ō
, and three members (
Ō
kubo,
Ō
kuma, and
Ō
ki) sided with Iwakura.
⁴⁶

On October 15 Sanj
ō
Sanetomi announced his support for Saig
ō
. This seemed to mean Saig
ō
would definitely be sent to Korea, but the same night Sanj
ō
wrote to Iwakura confessing that he had changed his mind once again, prompted by anxiety over what Saig
ō
might do. On October 17
Ō
kubo announced his intention of resigning, as did Kido, by way of protesting Saig
ō
’s apparent success. Iwakura failed to appear at the Court Council on October 18, alleging illness. The next day, Sanj
ō
had a nervous breakdown, the result of intense strain over deciding the disposition of Saig
ō
’s plan.

When the emperor learned of Sanj
ō
’s illness, he sent his personal physicians, including two Germans, to treat him. Later that day, he himself visited Sanj
ō
’s house. After leaving, the emperor went to Iwakura’s residence, where he delivered his command that Iwakura replace Sanj
ō
as prime minister. On October 23 Iwakura sent a memorandum to the emperor stating his reasons for opposing the sending of an ambassador to Korea, and he asked for the emperor’s decision. In the memorandum, Iwakura insisted on the necessity of developing Japan’s strength to international levels in order to obtain equal treatment. He pointed out that it had been only four or five years since the Restoration and that this was no time to engage in foreign conflict. Predicting that war with Korea would break out on the day an ambassador arrived, he argued that they should wait until Japan was strong before sending an embassy; otherwise, disaster might follow.
⁴⁷

On the following day, October 24, the emperor’s decision was received. He supported Iwakura’s recommendations.
⁴⁸
With this, the possibility of an invasion of Korea withered away. Saig
ō
and his supporters among the
sangi
(Et
ō
, Got
ō
, Itagaki, and Soejima) all resigned because of illness.
⁴⁹
The emperor was greatly distressed. But there would be no war in Korea.
⁵⁰

Chapter 25

The turbulent political developments of 1873 tended to overshadow Meiji’s personal life, although it, too, was marked by events of exceptional dramatic interest. In May of that year his
gon no tenji
(concubine) Hamuro Mitsuko, the daughter of Hamuro Nagatoshi (a former acting major counselor), in her fifth month of pregnancy, underwent the ceremony of putting on the maternity sash. On July 1 in preparation for the birth, she moved from the palace to a house belonging to the Imperial Household Ministry. On September 18, 1873, Meiji’s first child, a son, was born. The child was stillborn, and his mother died four days later.
¹

On November 2 another
gon no tenji
, Hashimoto Natsuko, the daughter of Hashimoto Saneakira, put on the maternity sash. She had earlier moved to the house of her brother Saneyana for the birth. No doubt the greatest precautions were exercised before the forthcoming birth, especially in view of the recent death of Hamuro Mitsuko and her baby, but on November 13 Natsuko was seized with extreme uterine pains and her condition rapidly worsened. Iwakura Tomomi, Tokudaiji Sanenori, and other officials, learning of her grave condition, rushed to the scene. After first informing the emperor, they decided to ask the doctors to use artificial means to induce the birth, but despite the doctors’ efforts, the baby, a girl, was stillborn. Hashimoto Natsuko died the next day.

Meiji was undoubtedly distressed by the loss of his first two children and probably shed tears when he learned that two women on whom he had bestowed his favors, both of the high nobility, had died young; but outwardly he disclosed nothing of his private emotions.

A disaster of quite a different kind struck the emperor and his family on the night of May 5, 1873. The carelessness of a palace lady in not making sure that some embers were fully extinguished caused a fire to break out in a palace storehouse. Guards attempted to extinguish the blaze, but fanned by a strong wind, it spread from building to building of the old Edo Castle until it had consumed the whole in flames. The emperor and empress escaped without harm, and the most vital treasures (including the imperial regalia) were saved, but many important documents and other possessions were reduced to ashes. The emperor made his temporary residence at the Akasaka Detached Palace, the former residence of the Kish
ū
domain. He lived there for more than ten years until the new palace was completed in 1889.

Some alterations were essential in order for the temporary palace to serve as both residence and office for the emperor, but he directed that the strictest economy be practiced.
²
Members of the court expected that a new palace would be erected as soon as possible in place of the one destroyed in the conflagration, but on May 18 the emperor sent Prime Minister Sanj
ō
Sanetomi a message stating that at a time when many other demands were being made on the national finances, he did not wish the palace to be rebuilt. He declared, “It must not happen that for the sake of Our dwelling, public finances sustain losses and the people are made to suffer.”
³
The emperor’s Confucian training had fostered a stoicism that revealed itself in his lifetime dislike of extravagance and ostentation.

Perhaps the emperor’s greatest pleasure at this time was in taking part in military drills and maneuvers. On April 29, 1873, he led the Household Guards (Konoe-hei) to Shim
ō
sa Province. On that morning at six he set out from the palace on horseback. Bugles were blown, the soldiers of the four Guards battalions presented arms, and the emperor, raising his sword, gave the signal for the march to begin. The march continued for some twenty miles with only brief stops for rest. At the destination, tents were erected where the emperor, along with the officers and men, were to spend the night.

That night there was a strong wind and rain, and the tents threatened to collapse. The commanding general, Marshal Saig
ō
Takamori, rushed up to the emperor’s tent to make sure that he was safe. The emperor quite calmly replied, “The only thing that bothers me is the rain leaking in.”
⁴
This story, widely reported, was interpreted as an indication of the emperor’s affection for Saig
ō
, an impression that scholars today are happy to confirm. The emperor decided that despite the bad weather, the site was ideally suited for maneuvers and gave it a name befitting its new importance, Narashinohara, or “Maneuver Fields.”

On June 12 the emperor observed a platoon of Guards soldiers give a demonstration with live ammunition inside the grounds of the temporary palace, the first time guns had been fired within its precincts. When it was proposed that a stand be constructed from which the emperor might observe the maneuvers, he said it would not be necessary, and he sat on a chair under a tree.

The closest glimpses we have of the young emperor at this time are provided by the official photographs for which he sat on October 1873. These were not his earliest photographs. As we have seen, he was included in the photograph taken in the Yokosuka Navy Yard in November 1871. Again in May 1872, still beardless and wearing traditional court attire, he posed for the photographer Uchida Kuichi.
⁵
The photographs taken on this occasion were intended to be distributed to foreign dignitaries in return for the photographs of monarchs received by the Iwakura mission, but it was officially stated that they were not ready in time for
Ō
kubo Toshimichi (who had returned briefly from America) to take with him when he went back to Washington. More likely
Ō
kubo was disappointed that in the photographs, the emperor did not look like the ruler of a modern state and so decided not to present them abroad.
⁶

The photographs taken on October 8, 1873, are distinctly more modern, showing Meiji in the Western military uniform that would henceforth be his customary attire.
⁷
He sits rather uncomfortably on a Western-style chair, his embroidered cocked hat on the table beside him. His hair (cut in March of that year)
⁸
is parted in the middle, and the moustache and beard familiar from later portraits have begun to make an appearance. His hands are folded on the hilt of a sword. He still looks young, but his expression is severe.
⁹

The changes in the emperor’s appearance, made in order that he might impress the world as looking like a modern monarch, were echoed by similar (though smaller-scale) changes in the appearance of the empress and empress dowager: in March 1873 they stopped painting false eyebrows on their foreheads and blackening their teeth. Even the old buildings underwent changes: the Gosho, long the hallowed residence of the imperial family in Ky
ō
to, was turned over to the city of Ky
ō
to in February 1873 and, in the following month, was “borrowed” as the site of an exposition. Treasures from the imperial collection, hitherto unseen by the general public, were placed on display for ninety days.

Many of the new edicts promulgated at this time by the “caretaker government”
¹⁰
seem to have been intended to display to the world how willing and able the Japanese were to adopt international practices. Japanese were officially permitted to marry foreigners, and the nearly 2,000 “hidden Christians” who had refused to give up their faith were released from imprisonment, ending a long cause of contention between Japan and the West.
¹¹

Such changes aroused bitter opposition and even revolt among the Japanese people, particularly the lower classes, but the first major uprising of 1873 arose from a simple misunderstanding. The proclamation issued in December of the previous year announcing military conscription had used the term
ketsuzei
, literally “blood tax,” a circumlocution for military service. This was interpreted by the peasants of H
ō
j
ō
as meaning that their blood would be squeezed from them by way of serving their country. The misunderstanding was intensified by rumors of sightings of white-garmented medical personnel. Before long, more than 3,000 men were rampaging through the countryside by way of expressing their hatred of the measure. Their first target, however, was an
eta
(outcast) village that they burned to the ground, allegedly because the
eta
, who had been submissive, were now uppish, encouraged by the new regime. Anger was voiced also over paying taxes for schools, cutting hair in the Western style, and slaughtering cattle. It is evident from the specific grievances that although a misunderstanding over military service was the direct cause of the uprising, it was essentially an expression of resentment of the changes decreed by the government in its efforts to achieve modernization.
¹²