Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (54 page)

Another uprising occurred in Hokkaid
ō
, where a reduction in taxes was demanded because of the poor catches of fish. This particular uprising ended with Kuroda Kiyotaka taking personal responsibility and freeing all those who had been arrested. A much larger uprising was staged by the peasants of Fukuoka Prefecture against merchants who were charging exorbitant prices for rice. The drought from which the peasants were suffering was blamed on the merchants’ greed, which was said to have defiled the mountain gods. The uprising, started on June 16, spread in a few days throughout the prefecture, the number of participants allegedly reaching 300,000. The insurgents set fires everywhere, destroyed houses, cut telegraph wires, burned official registers, and killed every official they saw. On June 20 the rebels broke into the cities of Fukuoka and Hakata and on the following day attacked the prefectural office and set it afire. The revolt was finally put down with the help of troops from neighboring prefectures. Although the uprising was directly inspired by hatred of rapacious rice merchants, its scale was so large as to suggest that suppressed discontent over the changes brought about by the new regime had exploded into an unreasoning desire to return to the feudal past.
¹³

Hundreds of people died in these uprisings, but it is obvious that even larger numbers would have been killed or injured if militants had succeeded in starting a war in Korea. Fortunately the year concluded without any further disturbances. The last entry for 1873 in the chronology, dated December 31, states that the German doctor Theodor Hofmann, employed by the Ministry of Education, had advised the emperor, who had been drinking very heavily this year, to shift from saké to wine and not to drink more than one bottle a night with his meal.
¹⁴
We may imagine that Meiji was depressed by the loss of his first two children and their mothers, and the conflict between advocates and opponents of the invasion of Korea had probably exhausted him. Drink was the most readily obtained comfort.

The new year, 1874, opened with an innovation: for the first time, the empress joined the emperor in worship. On January 4 the emperor attended the
sh
ō
in
and listened to various reports and proposals. Even when most given to drink, the emperor never neglected what he conceived to be his duties, such as attending these sessions. During 1874 he attended the
sh
ō
in
on more than forty occasions. He also continued to hear lectures delivered by his various tutors. The empress attended the lectures with him. It was planned to have Meiji continue his German lessons, but he disliked them so much that they were discontinued. If he had persisted and actually learned German, it (rather than English) might have become the second language of the Japanese court.

On January 13, 1874, when Iwakura Tomomi was returning in his carriage from the palace where he had dined with the emperor, he was attacked and wounded at Akasaka by some eight or nine assailants. He escaped from the carriage only to fall into the moat from which he crawled up to some bushes on the bank where he hid. In the meantime, the sounds of approaching people frightened away the assailants.
¹⁵

The emperor and empress, shocked to learn of the attack, went to the Imperial Household Ministry where Iwakura was being treated for his wounds. The emperor commanded that he be moved to the palace. When he was informed on January 17 that the culprits had not yet been apprehended, the emperor sent for Sanj
ō
Sanetomi,
Ō
kubo Toshimichi, and
Ō
ki Takat
ō
and, stressing the gravity of the incident, demanded to know why the assailants were still at large.

That night five of the assailants were arrested, followed by the remaining four. They all were samurai from K
ō
chi Prefecture, followers of Itagaki Taisuke who were enraged with Iwakura for having prevented Itagaki and Saig
ō
Takamori from carrying out their plan of conquering Korea. They had decided to get rid of Iwakura in the hopes of changing court policy. On July 9 sentence was passed on the would-be assassins: they were to be deprived of their status as samurai and beheaded.
¹⁶

The Korean crisis in the narrow sense had ended by October 1873, but the issue continued to agitate many members of the samurai class. Most samurai had yet to find employment under the new regime, and their economic difficulties compounded the anger they felt over the failure to avenge the supposed insult of a foreign country. A war with Korea might have solved their financial problems and even have ended the mutual enmity that divided the major domains, but deprived of this solution, many samurai became rebellious.

As early as February 1874 there were signs of rebellion among the samurai of Saga Prefecture. Some formed a political party that opposed the government’s efforts at modernization and advocated a return to the feudal system, including the policy of
j
ō
i
. It insisted on the importance of strengthening the military. The conquest of Korea, they said, should be delayed until this was achieved; but once internal divisions were ended and the country was strong again, Japan should attack not only Korea but also China, Russia, and Germany.
¹⁷
Most of those affiliated with this party were men in their forties or fifties who nostalgically recalled the old days of the shogunate.

The other important party in Saga,
¹⁸
the Seikan-t
ō
, was composed mainly of men in their twenties and thirties who in general favored the changes effected by the new regime but resented its failure to send an envoy to Korea, as the majority of the councillors had voted. As a first step, the Seikan-t
ō
advocated implementing this decision, but its ultimate aim was the conquest of Korea. The two parties, though diametrically opposed in many points of view, were alike in that their prime concern was the predicament of the samurai class at a time when there seemed to be no alternative solution to their unhappy idleness. Both groups actively recruited new members and, from the beginning of 1874, began stocking weapons and provisions in preparation for war. The Seikan-t
ō
, whose strength in Saga was only some 2,000 men, revealed that it had allies among the samurai of Kagoshima, K
ō
chi, and elsewhere.

Although he had resigned his post as
sangi
, Et
ō
Shimpei remained in T
ō
ky
ō
, under orders to continue serving the government. Despite his defeat on the issue of Korea, he continued to work on behalf of programs he had initiated as minister of justice. He had lost none of the energy that had enabled him to rise from the humblest ranks of the samurai class to the eminence of a
sangi
. Et
ō
, who consistently advocated the creation of a parliament and insisted on the need to respect basic human rights, was one of the signers of a petition submitted to the Sa’in on January 17 calling for the popular election of a legislative body.
¹⁹
But on January 13, four days before the petition was submitted, he suddenly left T
ō
ky
ō
for Saga, in defiance of governmental orders. He was responding to the request of members of the Seikan-t
ō
that he become their leader. The decision to accept, made despite the warnings of friends in T
ō
ky
ō
,
²⁰
led irrevocably to his tragic end. It is difficult to understand why a man of his intelligence and enlightened views associated himself with an ill-conceived movement that could only end in disaster.
²¹

Et
ō
told Itagaki Taisuke and Got
ō
Sh
ō
jir
ō
that he was returning to Saga in order to calm the hotheads of the Seikan-t
ō
; but some sources say that he privately informed an acquaintance that he believed the time had come for a second “restoration.”
²²
Probably he did not envision at first an out-and-out revolt against the government, but the belligerence of the partisans of war with Korea reached feverish intensity with the arrival of Et
ō
, and this may have affected him.

Alarmed by reports of the situation in Saga, coming on the heels of the attempted assassination of Iwakura,
Ō
kubo decided to replace the governor of Saga with a henchman, Iwamura Takatoshi (1840–1915), commanding him to restore order. Iwamura, an overbearing, incompetent man who knew nothing about the situation in Saga, was the worst possible choice, and he exacerbated the situation by accidentally making a dangerous enemy. By chance he had as his fellow passenger on the ship taking him to Saga, Shima Yoshitake (1822–1874), a Saga samurai who had served as a chamberlain and later as governor of Akita Prefecture. Shima was traveling to Saga at the request of Sanj
ō
Sanetomi, who had urged him to help calm the situation there. In the course of shipboard conversations with Iwamura, however, Shima became so annoyed by Iwamura’s nasty comments about Saga men and his prediction that it would take him only one sweep of his net to catch all the rebels, that he decided to join Et
ō
to protect Saga from the new governor.
²³

Ō
kubo received repeated warnings of imminent conflict in Saga. He felt that it was incumbent on him to suppress the disturbance as quickly as possible and decided to go to Ky
ū
sh
ū
to see to it personally that effective measures were taken. On February 10, four days before his departure,
Ō
kubo was invited to dinner by the emperor, and three days later the emperor received him in an audience at which he expressed his concern.

That same day, after conferring with members of the Seikan-t
ō
, Et
ō
issued a statement saying that if Japan did not punish Korea for its reckless behavior and disrespect, it risked losing its national authority. Tolerating such insults would also make Japan the object of other countries’ contempt. For the sake of the emperor and countless millions of Japanese, he and his party had sworn to wipe out the disgrace even at the cost of their lives. They had learned that the government was sending troops against them and therefore had no choice but to open hostilities, looking for inspiration to the example of Ch
ō
sh
ū
, which had successfully fought a war against the shogunate.
²⁴

On the following day, February 14, Et
ō
finally made up his mind to attack the government forces in Saga Castle and form a new government. He seems to have believed that he would be joined by disaffected samurai from Satsuma and Tosa,
²⁵
but the only help the Seikan-t
ō
would receive came from Shima and his party.

The attack began at dawn on February 16. The rebels’ first objective was the prefectural office inside the grounds of the old Saga Castle. The government forces inside, few in numbers and badly equipped, held out until February 18, when they managed to break through the cordon surrounding the castle and escape to Chikugo, leaving many casualties behind.

This was the Saga forces’ only victory during the rebellion. Et
ō
soon realized that he had gravely miscalculated in expecting that men from Satsuma and Tosa would join him once the fighting started.
²⁶
On February 17 Sanj
ō
Sanetomi issued a bulletin to commanding officers in which he asserted that despite the Saga rebels’ attempts to win adherents in other prefectures for their policy of attacking Korea, they had been completely unsuccessful. Even Kagoshima had remained calm, and although rumors of an uprising in Tosa (another hotbed of antigovernment sentiment) had circulated, they were without foundation.

On February 19
Ō
kubo arrived in Hakata, where he made his headquarters, and issued a proclamation calling for the destruction of the Saga rebels. On the twentieth, government forces advanced into Saga Prefecture and, after a battle on the twenty-second near the border between Fukuoka and Saga, broke through the defense lines of the rebel army. On the twenty-third, deciding that further resistance would only increase the number of victims, Et
ō
told his supporters that he had disbanded the army of the Seikan-t
ō
.
²⁷
He said that he was going to Kagoshima to get help. If he failed in Kagoshima, he would go to Tosa, and if he failed there, he had another plan (which he did not reveal). That night he escaped with seven of his supporters in a fishing boat, heading for Kagoshima in order to ask Saig
ō
Takamori’s help in staging another revolt.

The morale of the Saga rebels was greatly weakened by Et
ō
’s flight, but they continued their resistance. The most violent fighting of the war took place on February 27, when the government forces were again victorious. The following night Shima, who had declared that he intended to die in Saga Castle, fled with some of his staff to Kagoshima. He had refused to make the declaration of surrender demanded by the government army. The government forces entered Saga Castle on March 1 without bloodshed. Although exchanges of gunfire continued sporadically, by the time Prince Higashifushimi, appointed by the emperor as the commander in chief of the expeditionary forces, arrived on the scene, the rebel resistance had ended. On March 3
Ō
kubo, who had arrived in Saga two days earlier, sent a telegram to the Sh
ō
in announcing the pacification of the rebels.
²⁸