Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (67 page)

The emperor seems to have taken his counselors’ advice to heart. He would no longer seem indifferent to the running of the state. On May 21, for example, he expressed to the two
jiho
on duty his views on abuses of the time. Some officials had built new houses in Western style. For persons of rank whose position made it necessary to associate with foreign diplomats, there was probably a need for such houses, but in the eyes of the common people, these officials were prospering from the people’s sweat and blood and seeking only personal interest. He therefore commanded officials to refrain for the time being from building such houses. If they would wait a few years until the new imperial palace was built before building their own houses, the complaints would disappear of themselves.

The emperor also expressed dissatisfaction that ever since the Restoration, posts in the government had been filled mainly by men from three provinces: Satsuma, Ch
ō
sh
ū
, and Tosa. This would have to end. There were well-qualified men in all parts of the country—even in the remote northeast regions—and they should be employed.
⁴²
The shock of
Ō
kubo’s death and the remonstrations of the
jiho
seem to have aroused a new sense of responsibility and a new sense of his own authority.

Chapter 30

On May 23, 1878, the emperor decided that he would leave in August on his long-planned tour of the Hokuriku and T
ō
kai regions. He had originally intended to make the journey in 1877, following his tour of the previous year to the north, but complications arising from the Satsuma Rebellion prevented him from carrying out this plan. The stated purpose of the forthcoming journey, as usual, was to learn from personal observation about regions of his country he did not know and about the people living there.
¹

Remembering his experiences during his travels in the north, the emperor made it clear that he did not wish his journey to cause anyone financial hardship. He mentioned in particular that when he visited schools, the pupils should all wear ordinary attire and not have new hats, shoes, or other items of clothing made in honor of the occasion. He also expressed the hope that when he visited prefectural offices, he would be shown maps of the area, vital statistics, and records of the meritorious deeds of virtuous persons. In addition, he asked that reports be submitted on police stations and the number of patrolmen, methods of encouraging industry, pastureland, the number of cattle, and the size of uncultivated lands and currently cultivated lands. He did not expect this to be a pleasure trip, nor was his object primarily to inspire awe or even affection. His journey was, above all, educational, to give him greater knowledge of his people and how they made a living. No doubt his advisers hoped also that a visit from the emperor would make the inhabitants of remote parts of the country more fully aware of the existence of the government in T
ō
ky
ō
to which they owed allegiance, a tie transcending regional loyalty.

Nothing corresponding to the element of spectacle, so important to European progresses, was planned.
²
His tours of the provinces differed in one other respect from European examples: no attempt was made to make the Japanese familiar with the face of their emperor either during his travels or on coins or banknotes. Meiji generally traveled in a closed palanquin rather than an open carriage from which he could be seen by spectators. In earlier days his face would have been visible only to members of the highest nobility, and even now he was reluctant to show it. Photographs of Meiji, few and not generally available, were not for public display. Ministers of foreign countries sometimes received a photograph of the emperor when they left Japan, but Japanese, no matter how devoted, could not display their sovereign’s photograph.

In 1874 a man in T
ō
ky
ō
began to sell (without authorization) reproductions of the photographs taken by Uchida Kuichi. This inspired Uchida to ask permission to sell his negatives, prompting a lengthy debate in the government as to the propriety of selling the emperor’s photograph.
³
In the end, sale of the photographs was prohibited, and people who had already purchased one were commanded to surrender it. The absence of photographs or other tokens of self-aggrandizement typified the restrained nature of the emperor’s journey. The crowds lining the streets of towns and villages through which the procession passed might catch a glimpse of Meiji, but he did not court their attention by wearing a splendid uniform or traveling in a luxurious carriage, and his largesse was confined to small gifts to pupils at elementary schools and to very old people.

Just before Meiji was scheduled to leave T
ō
ky
ō
, an incident occurred that threatened to postpone his journey. On August 23 soldiers of the artillery battalion of the Household Guards mutinied, angered by a reduction in their pay and the worsening of their rations. The mutiny involved only about 100 men, all (except for two noncommissioned officers) privates, and most from either Kagoshima or K
ō
chi, two regions known for their military traditions. During the brief revolt, the mutineers killed several officers, fired a cannon at the residence of Finance Minister
Ō
kuma Shigenobu, and set off with two mountain guns for the Akasaka Palace, where they intended to present their demands. Some ninety men reached the palace, where they were met by regular troops who had been warned they were coming. The mutineers were arrested.

By four the next morning, calm had been restored, but the disturbance, coming not long after the assassination of
Ō
kubo Toshimichi, made Iwakura and other
jiho
propose that the emperor’s journey be postponed. The incident was minor, they admitted, but it might be symptomatic of more serious unrest in the army. Their view was opposed by Sanj
ō
Sanetomi and most of the councillors, who felt that it would be harmful to imperial prestige if the progress was postponed because of an unimportant incident. After consulting with the
jiho
Sasaki Takayuki, the emperor decided to leave as planned.

The emperor and his entourage
⁴
set out on August 30. The first night of the journey was spent at Urawa in Saitama Prefecture. The next morning when he granted an audience to officials of the prefecture, the emperor was presented not (as one might expect) with materials attesting to the happy lives of the inhabitants but with a report on the dismal conditions under which people at Nakatsugawa lived. The people of this village of twenty-five houses and a population of 129 were so poor and backward that they had never worn even cotton clothes, and none of them was literate. When they fell ill, there was no doctor to attend them, and when they died, no temple where they might be buried. Their staple food was millet, not rice. Most of these villagers were even unaware that there were such things in the world as schools, pharmacies, saké shops, or fishmongers. It was a blot on Emperor Meiji’s glorious regime that people were living under such conditions a bare forty or fifty miles from his residence. Local officials said they planned to repair the road to the village and to guide the villagers gradually into the ways of civilization.
⁵

The emperor’s reactions to this account are not given. Later he visited the offices of each branch of the local administration, a court, and various schools where he observed classrooms and rewarded prizes to the best pupils. Next he visited a museum of industry and toured the exhibits of models of machinery, minerals, and works of art. He was particularly interested in the tea produced in Sayama and the silk thread from Koma, as tea and silk were the main Japanese exports at this time. Wherever the emperor went on this journey, he always showed a special interest in local products.

From Urawa the progress went to Maebashi, where the crowds straining to get a look at the emperor were especially numerous, and from there to Matsuida. It had rained almost every day since the emperor left T
ō
ky
ō
, and the roads were in terrible condition. At places it was impossible for the emperor’s palanquin to pass, and he had to get down and make his way through the mud. Fortunately his legs were strong, but the others of his suite, less endowed, trailed behind him, some with great difficulty. The weather was clear the day he crossed Usui Pass, and from the highest point he enjoyed a splendid view. Later the royal progress passed through Karuizawa, Oiwake, and Komoro, but low-hanging clouds blocked the view of Mount Asama, the most prominent feature of the landscape.

At Nagano the emperor met the resident priest of the celebrated temple Zenk
ō
-ji. It was unusual for him to associate with Buddhist priests, and he seldom visited a temple, but he probably considered that the Zenk
ō
-ji, the heart of Nagano, could not be ignored. At Takano where he stayed at the local school, he sent a chamberlain to offer prayers at the graves of men killed in the war of 1868. As the progress moved closer to the scenes of fighting in that war, the prayers became frequent. In Takano, the emperor bought several varieties of sweets, which he sent to the empress and empress dowager, along with cakes and fruit from Nagano. The gesture no doubt pleased people of the town; and the fact that he bought the sweets, rather than accept them gratis, distinguished him from European monarchs.

The journey from Takano to Kakizaki followed the coast of the Japan Sea most of the way, and the emperor seemed delighted by the splendid scenery. But the journey was by no means easy. The road, narrow and through deep sand, was said to have been repaired, but the little horse carriage rocked each time its wheels sank in the sand. Sunlight pouring through the windows made the interior so hot and humid that Sasaki Takayuki, accompanying the emperor, could not stand being inside. He obtained permission to proceed on foot, but the emperor, stoic as always, endured both the tossing of the carriage and the heat. All the same, when he reached Kakizaki he was feeling so poorly that he sent for his physician, overcoming his dislike of medical treatment.

The rewards of this mainly painful journey were confined to the scenery and sights along the way. At Izumozaki, for example, the emperor watched with great interest hundreds of boats fishing at night. The pains far outweighed the pleasures of travel, however: he spent the whole of each day sitting Japanese-style in a cramped palanquin and at night was obliged by custom to sit bolt upright on a chair until ten, his bedtime, when he was at last able to stretch out. The night that the emperor spent at Izumozaki, his quarters were not only cramped but invaded by swarms of mosquitoes. His chamberlains urged the emperor to retire into the protection afforded by a mosquito netting, but he answered, “The whole purpose of this journey is to observe the suffering of the people. If I did not myself experience their pains, how could I understand their condition? I do not in the least mind the mosquitoes.”
⁶
The emperor’s words seem too Confucian to be true, but it accords with other recorded episodes of the journey and gives an indication of the compassion felt for his people by a man who thus far had had little personal experience of suffering.

When the emperor reached Niigata, he was shocked by the number of people suffering from trachoma. He recalled that when he had traveled in the north two years earlier, he had noticed people who suffered from the same disease and had asked a doctor if there was no way of treating it. The doctor answered that there was none that poor people could afford. Now, seeing even more trachoma victims in Niigata, the emperor commanded his personal physician to investigate the causes and possible ways of curing and preventing trachoma. Two days later the emperor received a report blaming the climate, the physical features of the region, and the inadequately clean houses for the spread of trachoma; but the main cause was its infectious nature. The emperor donated 1,000 yen for study of a cure and prevention.

There were a few bright spots on the journey. At Nagaoka the emperor was pleased to see that this city, which had been almost totally destroyed during the war of 1868 and had been desperately poor afterward, was gradually recovering. There was much to remind him of the warfare of ten years earlier. At Fukushima Village, the site of a battle, the positions of the government troops were marked by white flags and those of the rebels by red flags to give the emperor an idea of just how the battle had been fought.
⁷

For the most part the journey was miserable. It rained day after day, leaving the roads deep in mud, and even when it cleared, the rivers were so swollen that they were extremely difficult to cross. Years later (in 1899) the emperor recalled the journey in this
tanka
: