Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (57 page)

As the mother of Princess Shigeko, Yanagihara Naruko enjoyed preferential treatment, but the birth of her third child, the future Taish
ō
, was so difficult and accompanied by such hysteria and screams of anguish that she was never again permitted to share the emperor’s bed.
¹³
She was nevertheless promoted to
tenji
and elevated to the second rank and, after her death, to the junior first rank, all as the result of having given birth to a prince who became the heir apparent.
¹⁴

Princess Shigeko lived for only about a year and a half before succumbing to brain fever despite the court physicians’ determined efforts.
¹⁵
Two years elapsed between her birth and that of the next imperial child. One can imagine how impatiently Meiji waited for word that one of his
gon no tenji
had put on a maternity belt.

In the meantime he spent his days as usual, receiving visitors from at home and abroad, riding, and occasionally issuing rescripts on matters of the day. He was also obliged to read and form opinions on the memorials submitted by his officials. At the end of February, for example, he received a long memorial from Iwakura Tomomi that stressed Japan’s weakness when compared with the major nations of the West—no doubt the product of Iwakura’s reflections after his travels abroad.
¹⁶
An awareness of Japan’s military and industrial backwardness, had impelled Iwakura to oppose sending Saig
ō
Takamori to Korea, but in this memorial Iwakura warned instead of the Russian menace to China, using a familiar expression from the Chinese classics: if the lips perish, the teeth will feel the cold.
¹⁷
He urged closer relations with China as a bulwark against Russian aggression; the two nations should help and depend on each other like the two wheels of a cart or the wings of a bird. His recommendation was unusual, as Japanese officials of the time thought of China as an enemy, a rival for control of the Korean peninsula, or as a self-satisfied but ineffectual country whose claims to possession of Taiwan could be defied with impunity.

Iwakura also described in his memorial how profoundly he had been impressed by the emperor’s powers of judgment. He prayed that the emperor would henceforth deign to decide all matters of state, for if he graciously granted the benefit of his wisdom, what plan could fail? Once the nation, basking in his benevolence, was fully united, it would be able to gain equality with foreign countries, and the imperial glory would not falter for 10,000 years to come.
¹⁸
This was more than mere flattery. Perhaps because of his experiences abroad, Iwakura seems to have come to believe that the emperor should be (at least in principle) all-powerful, in this differing from such men as Kido,
Ō
kubo, and It
ō
who favored gradual progress toward a democratic state. But the despotism Iwakura had in mind would follow not the European style but the ancient Japanese ideal. The emperor, the descendant of the gods, would rule serenely, untroubled by the political antagonisms of those beneath him, imparting his wisdom to his ministers.
¹⁹

Iwakura may have come to believe in the necessity of an all-powerful emperor because of his observation of the hostility that some major figures were then displaying toward the government. Even though he was minister of the left, Shimazu Hisamitsu had long refused to attend court, alleging illness, and had consistently opposed every innovation. He was especially enraged by the Western clothes that most officials now wore as their normal costume. In addition, Saig
ō
Takamori, back in Kagoshima, showed no signs of returning to T
ō
ky
ō
, maintaining mute opposition to the government.
²⁰

On April 14 the emperor attended the Sh
ō
in and, in the presence of the councillors and other important officials, announced the creation of the Genr
ō
-in and the Taishin-in.
²¹
Regional legislatures would also be inaugurated. These measures were intended to be preparatory to the establishment of a parliamentary system of government. Meiji declared,

At the beginning of our reign, We assembled our various ministers and swore an Oath in Five Articles to the gods. With these articles as the policy of Our government, We have sought a way to enable our people to live in security. Fortunately, thanks to the spirits of Our ancestors and the efforts of Our ministers, we have attained the present short respite. It is evident to Us, however, that this prosperity is not deep-seated, and that many things in our domestic policy have yet to be revived and restored. We now, in an extension of Our Oath, have established the Genr
ō
-in, in this way broadening the sources of lawmaking; created the Taishin-in, in this way strengthening judicial power; and summoned the provincial officials, in this way preparing the people to think of the public good and thereby laying the ground for the gradual creation of a government with a national constitution.
²²

In April, Iwakura submitted another long memorial to the throne that included the statement “Although the customs and languages of those who dwell in the many countries of this world differ, all are equally human beings.”
²³
This may seem like a truism to modern readers, but it served as a prelude to Iwakura’s analysis of the changes in Japanese relations with foreigners. In the past Tokugawa Ieyasu had closed Japan to all but a handful of Chinese and Dutch merchants in Nagasaki, but this was no longer feasible. Japan could not ignore the achievements of the major nations of the West and the many facilities that contributed to their prosperity and strength. They made steam engines run on the ground and floated steamships on the oceans. The telegraph enabled them in a matter of seconds to be in communication with the most distant parts of the world. Places that in the past were thought to be 10,000 leagues away were now as close at hand as one’s own backyard; East and West were neighbors. Unlike the fanatical believers in
j
ō
i
of ten years earlier, Iwakura believed that the Japanese would have to recognize the qualities of men in other countries and learn to live with them.

Despite Iwakura’s apprehensions over Russian territorial aims, a treaty was signed at this time with Russia that seemed likely to settle the long dispute over possession of Sakhalin. The treaty provided that the emperor of Japan would cede rights to the entire island in return for receiving from the czar of all the Russias the eighteen islands of the Kurile chain.
²⁴
Not long afterward the czar’s decision in favor of Japan in the case of the Peruvian ship
Maria Luz
mollified even Japanese who believed that Russia was Japan’s greatest enemy.
²⁵
It seemed likely that better relations between the two countries would prevail, and Meiji expressed his gratitude to the czar.

The acquisition of the Kurile Islands caused attention to be focused on the north. In July 1875 Sanj
ō
Sanetomi, Kido Takayoshi, and
Ō
kubo Toshimichi presented a memorial asking the emperor to visit Hokkaid
ō
in order to learn about its landscapes and people. They were convinced that if he toured Hokkaid
ō
, it would make the entire country aware of the island. Its great size and possibilities for development would silence petty disputes on other matters, enlarge the imperial authority, and bring enlightenment to the ignorant.
²⁶

The government also began at this time to devote its attention to Okinawa, at the opposite end of the empire, applying pressure on the Ry
ū
ky
ū
kingdom to conform to Japanese usage. In July an envoy was sent to Shuri Castle with orders for King Sh
ō
Tai to discontinue vassal relations with China. Henceforth the Ry
ū
ky
ū
government was not to send envoys to China or to congratulate Chinese emperors on their accession to the throne or to accept appointment to their own throne from the Chinese government. They were to use the
neng
ō
Meiji. The Ry
ū
ky
ū
ans, however, were reluctant to break their historical ties with China.

The remnants of
j
ō
i
sentiments in Japan now took the form of protests over the importation of foreign products, which had caused an imbalance in trade and an outflow of specie. The minister of the left, Shimazu Hisamitsu, was the spokesman for a group of antiforeign partisans that included the emperor’s grandfather, Nakayama Tadayasu. The emperor listened to their complaints and promised to give them careful consideration, but there was less and less inclination among members of the court to pay attention to Hisamitsu’s protests, whether about the trade deficit, the clothes worn at court, or the solar calendar.
²⁷
Besides, any attempt to prohibit the importation of foreign goods would certainly cause difficulties with the Western powers.

Ō
kubo Toshimichi also was concerned about the Japanese trade deficit and had started a more positive program to reduce the deficit. Two years earlier he had employed an American to introduce sheep raising and to build a factory for making blankets in the hopes that this would reduce Japan’s imports of wool and help develop hitherto unproductive land. Students of sheep raising were recruited throughout Japan, and in September, after visiting some uncultivated property in Shim
ō
sa Province,
Ō
kubo himself decided to start his sheep ranch there. Unfortunately this scheme did not help correct the trade imbalance.

The most dramatic event of 1875 was an incident at Kanghwa Island in Korea that September. According to the Japanese version of what happened,
²⁸
the Japanese warship
Un’y
ō
, on a mission to survey the Tsushima Strait, was passing along the west coast of the Korean peninsula on its way to China when it ran out of firewood and water. The ship anchored on September 20 off Kanghwa Island, and the captain went by boat to look for a place where he might land and obtain water, only to be greeted suddenly with rifle fire followed by blasts of artillery. The
Un’y
ō
responded with naval gunfire, but the captain, realizing that the water was too shallow for the Japanese ship to approach shore and that he had too few men with him to engage in combat, returned to the ship and ordered the firing to stop. The next day at dawn, the Japanese attacked and occupied the island after a brief but intense clash. The Japanese lost only one man to thirty-five by the Koreans. Sixteen Korean prisoners were taken. The Japanese ship returned to Nagasaki on September 28.
²⁹

The incident was no more than a minor clash involving a few dozen men on each side, but it was deliberately expanded into a crisis by Japanese officials who used it as an excuse for demanding concessions from the Koreans. When word of the action at Kanghwa Island reached the government, a session of the Court Council was held in the presence of the emperor. The council decided to dispatch a warship to Pusan to protect the lives of Japanese residents of Korea. The emperor, extremely disturbed by these developments, sent for Iwakura and asked for a detailed explanation of the Kanghwa incident, treating it as a matter of major national importance.

Kido Takayoshi, who a few years earlier had opposed Saig
ō
’s request to be sent as an envoy to Korea because he believed that strengthening the country internally was more important than avenging a supposed affront to Japanese honor, now changed his mind. He decided that although previously the evidence to warrant attacking Korea had been insufficient, firing on Japanese troops constituted an unmistakably hostile act. He proposed himself as an envoy to Korea. In a letter he sent to Sanj
ō
Sanetomi, he blamed the crises Japan had faced during the recent years—the political upheaval of 1873 and the Saga rebellion—on the failure to establish satisfactory relations with Korea. In 1874, members of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
domain had been killed by Taiwanese savages, but the present event was much more serious—not only had the Japanese flag been dishonored, but (unlike Taiwan) Japanese lived in Korea, and their plight could not be ignored. The first step should be to ascertain whether China was willing to take action to chastise Korea, its tributary state; if not, he (Kido) should be delegated to deal with the Korean government. A Korean refusal to accept blame would justify the use of military force, and the responsibility would be clear. Kido was confident that if the Japanese government left the tactics of negotiations with the Koreans to him, he would do nothing to impair the glory of the imperial land.

Public opinion was aroused over the Kanghwa incident,
³⁰
but the government was prevented from acting immediately because of internal problems, notably the attack directed against Prime Minister Sanj
ō
Sanetomi by Minister of the Left Shimazu Hisamitsu in a letter to the emperor. He declared that if his advice—to dismiss Sanj
ō
—was not heeded, Japan would be enslaved by the Western powers. He urged the emperor to assume full control of the government.
³¹

Shimazu’s accusations were vague and left the emperor perplexed. On October 22 he sent for Shimazu and, rejecting his petition, stated that Sanj
ō
had served the nation devotedly and enjoyed his confidence. Shimazu Hisamitsu replied that if his petition were not accepted, he would have no choice but to resign his post. The emperor responded that in view of the crisis in Korea, he could not accept Hisamitsu’s resignation.