With Kuroki in Manchuria

Front matter

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CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

Contents

PAGE

I. When Komura Sent for De Rosen ... i

II. The Old and the New 7

II

This morning, after Tokio had slept one night on the fact of actual war, it was my good fortune to have an hour's talk with Field Marshal Marquis Yamagata, the man behind the Cabinet, who, more than any other, is responsible for the step Japan has taken. The appointment with him had first been made for a week ago. When the day set arrived, the Genro were hastily summoned to one of their urgent sittings, and in the language of his secretary, his Excellency was "very busy." From the moment when negotiations were broken off the field work of the Elder Statesmen was finished; that of the army had begun. One of them, with true samurai courtesy, signified his leisure by not forgetting the request of a foreigner.

The drive to the Marquis's house took me to the farthest suburbs of the city. We passed many small, two-wheeled army carts drawn by ponies, and the still smaller ones drawn by coolies. Splashes of red of the stripes of Imperial Guardsmen's new caps or trousers showed through crates that were piled high in contrast to the compact little boxes that contained ammunition. The reservists from outlying districts were on their way to town. With each one were his nearest friends. The road became a procession of groups. If your servant is absent in Japan, the death, the sickness, or the marriage of a "friend" calls him. It is a land of groups of friends. All the cronies of his age see the recruit into the army, and see the recruit become reservist back into it again. The parting with his wife or his mother or his sweetheart is usually at the doorstep.

If you looked away from the soldiers and the policemen on the beat, at the shops with their sliding screens pushed back, making windows and doors and show-windows and show-room into one; at the ideographic signs and the garb of the daily workers, either near by or in the fields, the vista still had everything in common with the Japan of forty years ago, which knew no world but her own.

It was strange that on this morning of all mornings I was going to see the man I was. He had grown to manhood under a regime as different from ours as that of the Chinese from the ancient Greeks. As a youth, if he had cut off his queue, he would have been debased from his rank as a gentleman. If he had attempted to leave his native country he would have suffered death, which the Shogun thought a fit punishment for a crime against the isolation which was the gospel of the land.

Yamagata's first experience of war was as a feudal swordsman clad in armor, who fought according to the Japanese counterpart of the etiquette of the Knights of the Round Table. Clan warfare, the onlykind known, was then the privilege of the few, like private yachts. A gentleman born (a samurai) alone had the right to bear arms. Until you know the chivalry, courage, pride, and stoicism that that word stood for, you can in nowise understand how it is that this suddenly transformed Oriental people to-day cross the seas to fight on its own ground the Russian Empire. A farm laborer in those days was as far from the right to bear arms as a longshoreman is from a bishopric. Yet this Yamagata has lived to lead one army, whose soldiers were composed of all classes and armed with modern rifles, in a victorious foreign war; and he may yet take the field in another and infinitely greater one, when the forty waiting transports (improvised from steamers) shall carry an army of three hundred thousand men to Korea and Manchuria.

IO WITH KUROKI IN MANCHURIA

If I had gone to see him forty years ago— when I could not have gone unless I had been a Japanese, and wore a queue and two swords— we should have sat on mats with our legs crossed. Profound would have been our bows, delicately worded our compliments. To-day, I drove into a tree-studded yard that was entirely Japanese, surrounding a stone and stucco building which was distinctly Occidental. (The Japanese have found our houses more comfortable — if less artistic to their taste — than their own. Their sylvan effects they most wisely retain.) I was ushered into a reception room that might be that of a well-to-do person with distinction of taste at home. Yamagata has in this age the versatility and the classic simplicity of the soldier and statesman in one that we associate with another age. A field marshal by right of his victories in the field; one of the five Elder Statesmen; the Mikado's counsellor in civil as well as in military affairs, and the head of the political coalition responsible for the present Cabinet, he stands for the policy and the administration that brought on the war. He is not of the school of radicalism, but of the old school of Japan; a Tory rather than, a Whig. The manners of other days in Japan are reflected in him as the manners of other days in America are in an old-time Southerner.

THE OLD AND THE NEW II

I have said that he was one of the five Elder Statesmen; the five who are known as the Genro. Their part is advisory in a land which follows the precept of old men for counsel and young men for action. All were leaders in the reformation. In the play and' counterplay of politics, everyone has known at some time each of the others as an ally. To-day for the first time, so far as their front to the world goes, they are united — for the war. In the weeks past they have held many secret meetings whose minutes were reported to the Imperial ear alone. Out of their candid discussions has come the Imperial conclusion and, finally, the Imperial word. For the Emperor is the one who decides. He listens and listens, as unchanging of face as the Buddha at Kamakura, and once his determination is made known, keeps the faith of ancestral infallibility by holding to it.

Foremost of the Genro is Ito, purely the civilian, purely the statesman, who is criticised for his foreign policy as Gladstone was, while Yamagata, the soldier, is criticised for his home policy as Salisbury was. But Ito is not without chivalric appeal to his countrymen. It was he who, out of far-seeing patriotism and a youthful spirit of curiosity, cut off his queue and put aside his samurai sword when the penalty was loss of caste as a gentleman; who went aboard a British trading ship and secured passage to distant lands when the penalty of visiting distant lands was death. Once in his country house at Oiso he told me the story of how the British skipper who made an unwelcome passenger callous his soft hands on ropes and sails found a samurai game. For his sacrifice he learned where the foreigners' power lay; and queueless, swordless, he returned to his country with the message — meaning so much to Russia — that the only way to keep the foreigners out was to use the foreigners' weapons. That was forty years ago.

Now, Japan not only uses foreigners' weapons, but makes them; and the laying of the extensive new trolley car system of Tokio is not interrupted by the war.

At the great court dinners of this feudal, this ever impressively unique state, Ito has a little table near the throne, among the princes, by himself. In the old days the Mikado resided in state at Kyoto and the Shogun at Tokio ruled Japan. Now the Mikado is in Tokio and Ito is his right arm. After him comes Yamagata; and then, in order, Inouye, who accompanied Ito abroad, and Matsukata. They hold no office. They are sages superior to the Cabinet, which is a conservative Cabinet — Yamagata's. Neither Oyama, the head of the army, nor Ito, the head of the navy, is one of them. But their turn has come. The Genro decided that war was best. Oyama and Admiral Ito made war.

* * * * *

It was Yamagata the country gentleman, the statesman, not Yamagata the soldier, whom I saw this morning, this slight, elderly man in a frock coat, with his bronzed face, his high cheek-bones, his goodhumored eyes, and hair turning gray, in his person bringing one nearer to the old Japan, and in his military power to the modern Japan, than any other man. His secretary, Mr. Nakayama, who interpreted for us, is a Harvard graduate. But he is young and born to this regime ; he has about him the air of the Occident. The Marquis belongs at once to this regime and to the one before. As we sipped our ceremonial tea, he talked of the war which was only sixteen hours old; the war on which he had staked his reputation; the war which meant to his people more than their political future — their future as individuals. He spoke of it as simply and as calmly as if war were an every-day affair. Nothing in the shrewd face showed that he had been under continuous strain for weeks.

I spoke to him of the two things which made me marvel most. The first was the organization into a united, thoroughly disciplined army of classes which formerly had never associated; of clans that had always been at the sword's point; of the "groups" of friends ever ready to become factions. One might as well have expected to make a Pole a good Russian within forty years after the conquest, as to make a unit out of the Japanese of 1850. The army, absorbing all clan rights, seems to-day one man and one mind, keeping its secrets as one. How was this brought about? I wanted to hear the explanation from the Field Marshal who had seen the army rise from the first companies that threw away their bows and arrows for rifles. There was the Oriental deprecation of self in his answer, which left me knowing little more than before. ' He seemed a little surprised that the success had been so manifest to foreigners. It had been very difficult and it was still very difficult, according to a field marshal's high ideas of discipline, to make Japanese officers and men realize the spirit of military unity as they should.

"The spirit of corps that keeps military secrets seems perfect," I suggested.

"Not entirely," he said gently. "Some will talk when they ought not to. Our newspapers, too, are far from being as careful as they should be. Rather than know everything and know it fully and accurately in due time, their principal ambition seems to be to know the idea before anyone else, and publish it first. They are not yet enough advanced to be discreet."

I wondered what a city editor would think of the Marquis's view.

This morning, the greatest of newspaper mornings, all that appeared was the official statement of the negotiations, with Japan's reasons for breaking them off. There was nothing about the mobilization, or what troops were here or being moved there, because the Government had given strong hints of what it would and would not permit to be published. The great reason for the rise of a united army lies in the inherent respect of the Japanese for law, for the Emperor, for the nobility, and for the Emperor's counsellors.

To my second question, the answer was more enlightening to the foreigner who comes to Japan as the Japanese go abroad, bristling with question marks.

"If you will look at the geographical position of Korea you will see that it is like a poniard pointing at the heart of Japan," said the Marquis. "If Korea is occupied by a foreign power, the Japan Sea ceases to be Japanese, and the Korean Straits are no longer in our control. Our public men are of many parties, not of two only, as are yours in America. Our Cabinets are the product of coalitions, which, for the time being, seem to His Majesty and the legislative power best to serve the interests of the country. Foreign policy is a thing entirely apart. In the consideration of Korea and Manchuria, all men of all parties needed only patriotism to realize the singleness of our interests. Whatever Cabinet was in power continued the policy of its predecessor, and the policy of all on a question which put the very life of our nation at stake. So our unchanging attitude from the outset of our disagreement with Russia has been natural and inevitable. In its negotiations the Government has patiently kept the hope of peace in view. No agitation prejudicial to calm deliberation has been permitted. A society organized against Russia was suppressed. Our demands were clear and unfaltering. We had to deal with an enemy whose methods were those of evasion and hypocrisy, to whom delay meant advantage."

This war completes the chain of Japan's calculations. It represents the third period in the forwarding of her high ambitions. First, when foreign fleets opened her ports by force, she set out to make those internal reforms and to organize an army on modern principles which should guarantee her safety. As a monument of the initial step, the old forts built after Perry's coming still stand in Tokio Bay. The diplomacy of such men as Yamagata, with the constructive home policy of Ito, went hand in hand with military organization, in which the fear of India's fate was the "battle-cry of clans to sink their differences." But still the foreigners in the treaty ports lived under their own laws.

The second step was the Chino- Japanese War, when the world expected to see the giant crush the midget under his thumb, and instead saw the midget raise the flag of victory over the giant's belly. It was then, by the weapons with which place is won, that Japan forced herself into a position of power among the family of nations. Ex-territoriality ceased; foreigners are now under Japanese law. The Japanese people, thanks to the combination of Russia, Germany and France, had to see the territory which they had won by their blood fall to the lot of Russia's "glacial approach."

The third period is at hand. Its task is commensurate with the reward it offers. By arms, Japan must make room across the seas for her congested population, with the prospect of becoming one of the greatest of world powers. It shows how long human life may be in the changes and the deeds it may compass, that the samurai before me had lived through the two periods to help precipitate the third. Yet the explanation is not so difficult. A civilized race was simply transformed from fighting with swords to fighting with small-bore rifles and battleships; from heralds to newspapers; from hand to machine looms.

Ill

THE NIGHT OF VICTORY

Yesterday the Japanese lanterns were telescoped; to-night they are alight; to-night Tokio hears only of victory. All day the men who sell the extras have been hurrying through the streets, their cries drowning the decorous tinkle of their little bells. Bulletins, the size of a sheet of notepaper, have been sweetmeats to the public, whose stomach could not have surfeit of such news. This we do know: The cruiser Variag and the gunboat Korietz are wrecks at Chemulpo, and Admiral Togo has dealt a telling blow at Port Arthur. Much more we hope, wanting to believe every happy rumor that ink makes on paper and sends broadcast with clarion voice — price, one sen.

The Japanese does not cheer until he has won. To-night the population of the town seems twenty times what it was the night war began. Tokio, having something to be proud of, opens its doors and

shows its head. The little Buddhist images, with far-off, subtle smiles, wake up and blink. The paper-windowed houses that husbanded doubts and fears and the tense expectancy of a people who think of their Emperor's fortune before their own, send their occupants forth, if not to merry-making at least to walk up and down. Streets that were dark last night dance with globes of yellow light to-night.

The Japanese lantern does not belong in a land where you read from left to right horizontally, but to a land where you read from right to left perpendicularly. The lantern goes with the people, their houses, their costume, and their manners. You must come to Japan to understand the lantern; you must be in Tokio on the night of victory to realize that it is a living thing.

In columns of twos and threes — an ill-lighted city serving a pictorial end — winding in and out through the streets ran the yellow balls of light, clear-cut against the darkness, while under them was the roar of song and cheer. They went to the Admiralty, and from the steps of the big building of European architecture, the Minister of Marine made them a speech. All this was Occidental. The foreigners' interest lay farther on when the parade, with its crest of moons, passed across the moat and through the double gates that open at

THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 21

the corner of the palace enclosure into the park that faces still other gates through which the state carriages pass to the most exclusive of courts.

Across the length of the park the lantern-bearers formed in close order. Every face was turned toward the palace. The lanterns were raised high as the "Banzais!" rang out, "Dai Nippon banzai! Dai Nippon banzai! Banzai, banzai, banzai!" The dim light showed the students of the higher schools in their neat-fitting Western uniforms — they who had missed fighting for their beloved country by being born three or four years too late. The best that they could do was to split their throats in the cold, moist night air. At their heels, in the freer garb of hakamas, were the students of the university, with their future of developing and civilizing the lands that the navy and army should win.

"Isn't it pretty near time that the Emperor showed himself?" a foreigner asked. All faces were turned toward, all eyes were looking toward, a wall of darkness. Out of it was visible only the white sides of one of the buildings in the enclosure.

If this had been St. Petersburg, and the Russians had won, we can imagine how the Czar might have appeared in a doorway for a moment, under a blaze of light. That would be a part of the mise en seine for that land; a part that would receive the approval of David Belasco. Japan is different — always different. This is an Emperor whose ancestors have sat on the throne from time immemorial. If Palestine were to-day a free Jewish nation, and the Jews an inherently warlike people who had never known conquest, the descendant of Moses, who sat on the throne, would mean to them what their Emperor does to the Japanese. The services and the surroundings of divinity hedge him around. The house in which he lives is not in sight of the park. He could not see the dancing lanterns that leaped skyward with the cries of "Banzai!" If he had wished to show himself to the people, there was no way. The people cheered him as an abstraction; yet a living abstraction to whom they intrust the direction of their personal affairs.

While Tokio rejoiced, Baron de Rosen was packing his trunks. His going had more than one pathetic side. He was personally fond of the Japanese. Like the French Ambassador in Berlin in 1870, his information, leaving inclinations out of the question, made him a peace man. Whether or not he, too, had informed his country of the enemy's preparedness, and been scoffed at for his pains by

THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 23

his over-confident superiors, history may not yet relate. Weeks ago, when reports came from Port Arthur that Admiral Alexieff was convinced that there would be no war, people here wondered how he could so far misunderstand Japanese diplomacy.

Japan began hostilities of her own initiative. She carefully chose the hour of her first offensive blow. She may have expected to catch Russia unawares, but there is no reason why the Russian should have permitted her to. Japan played precisely within the letter of the law. Russia had for years made capital out of promises. Japan made capital out of sudden, decisive action.

For months before his departure the negotiations had been taken entirely out of de Rosen's hands. He was merely a messenger who carried letters from his Government to the Foreign Office, and, saying, "Your Excellency, I have the honor to present — " he was gone. Aside from his official worries, he suffered the acutest pain from an ear affection. It is a saying in the diplomatic service that the legate to a country which declares war against his own is usually shelved. De Rosen may receive a small post; it is unlikely that he will ever have another important one. With the knowledge that his career was closed, half ill, he had to wait four days in miserable loneliness in that massive brick Legation building which is now closed for — How long ?

The news of the destruction of the Variag and the Korietz at Chemulpo, of the occupation of Seoul, of the vital injuries to two battleships and a cruiser at Port Arthur, coming bit by bit, were brought to him while he was yet in the enemy's land, waiting helplessly on the date of the departure of the French steamer from Yokohama. While Japan's swift successes fairly electrified the air, his fellow Ministers, bound to avoid any reference to the war, had to pay their farewell calls when he knew that the actual sympathies of most of them were with the enemies of his country. From the palace where victory reigned came valuable presents in token of a royal adieu, without malice, borne by polite messengers to the house of defeat. Finally, the day of his going was the Japanese Fourth of July.

The train for Yokohama which the Baron chose went at nine the evening before the departure of the steamer. As the carriage passed out of the Legation gates, a faint murmur rose from the bystanders — a murmur of curiosity rather than assault. The police escort was scarcely needed. Tokio, which has no slums, seems to have no mobs. The crowd which banked the open space that the police made at Shim-

THE NIGHT OF VICTORY 25

bashi Station was wholly quiet. Not alone the Legation people were there to bid him once more bon voyage, but many Japanese officials awaited his arrival in a room upstairs. It was an incident of the bureaucratic system which grinds to the same fineness on all occasions that the Ministers had to buy their platform tickets in due course.

From the station itself the crowd was entirely excluded. The train was the regular one going at that hour, and the usual stream of getas went clicking over the concrete to the second and third class compartments. Two or three minutes before the gong was sounded, the Baron, looking ill and worn, leading, the Legation folk and the Japanese officials followed him to his compartment, where, after the Russians had entered, the others paused, and then bowed as the train pulled out with no guard except a few soldiers in the compartment ahead of the Baron's. A carriage met him at the Yokohama station, and the police saw him aboard the Yarra, which was to bear him to Europe. The next morning a few near friends were on the pier. He smiled to them as the steamer drew away, taking him out of a land that he liked and that liked him.

IV To The Front!

Never was parting guest more happy to go, never was parting guest more heartily and sincerely sped. With the correspondents of the first contingent actually away, the hopes of the second and the third rose to the dignity of expectations. They gathered at Shimbashi Station with tin horns and gave the chosen few three and a tiger. For over two months some of us have waited for official passes to join the Japanese army in the field. Now that we have the treasure it is not much to look at — only a slip of paper which would go into the average-size envelope. By rights it should be on vellum, with marginal decorations of storks standing on one leg and an inscription of summa cum laude for patience in flourishes. Our thoughts, however, are not on such trivialities. They are entirely on how much each little pass will permit us to see.

"The Japanese were absolutely prepared for this

war and all possible contingencies save one," said a secretary of legation in Tokio. "They overlooked the coming of a small army of correspondents representing the public opinion of two great friendly nations."

Nearly a hundred Europeans and Americans, used to entirely different food and conditions of life from the natives, turned a hotel into a barracks, and with persistent address asked for privileges from the Foreign Office. In time such a force, each representing a competitive property, can wear even the Japanese smile of politeness down to a studied grimace. We had and have the conviction that the army would preferably have had neither correspondents nor attaches in the field. The lives, the millions of dollars, the national aims at stake were not ours; we came only by courtesy as foreigners. A correspondent kills no Russians; he may, if indiscreet, give information to the enemy. But the Foreign Office and even a higher power said that we must go. The time and manner of our going was perforce left to the General Staff. It was not a new situation in the world; that of a decision by the Government with execution left to a department. And the General Staff kept saying, " very soon, " and bidding us be patient.

While tableau after tableau of success was unfolded by land and sea, and the rumor-mongers of the uncensored, unknowing, madly imaginative China coast met the demands of the press which wanted a battle every day, the men who wanted to see war in the field instead of through the bubbles of gossip over Eastern bars, strode up and down the corridors of their hotel prisons, among tents, saddles, and kits, like so many melancholy Danes — as if each were the Hamlet of the play.

At last the rampant curiosity of the spoiled children of the press, grateful for small favors, may feed itself on the sight of a Japanese soldier really marching toward an enemy in a disputed land.

Now that we are started, we wonder what lies in store for us in this campaign of an Oriental power in a hermit land. The time of our return is shrouded in the mystery of the vicissitudes of a great war which has scarcely begun. The departure from Shimbashi, when an Anglo-Saxon hurrah broke the long record of Banzais for departing troops, the parting of a dozen foreigners from their American and European friends, reminded us again of the romance and the picturesqueness of our position. There was never a war at all comparable to this, and never a war which drew so many foreign correspondents. The uncertainty of our position, the uncertainty of the conditions under which we shall live,, brought a havoc of buying at the last moment on the part of men who have studied their requirements in the field while they waited. We have everything, from postage-stamps done up in oiled paper to tool-chests the size of a pocket-book.

The small islands, for the most part barren and rocky, which pepper the sea near the Korean coastline, have been a blessing to the Japanese in this war. They provide cover from storms for the numerous fleet of small transports which three months ago were doing merchant service. Our own transport and our experience were typical. The Suminoye Mam, of a thousand tons burden, is thirtythree years old. She was bought in England when she was already past the Ai age limit of Lloyds. Ever since she has been running out of Hokkaido. She is as shipshape as she is patched. Her Japanese skipper, who speaks English excellently, and with more than English politeness, served his apprenticeship before the mast of a sailing vessel out of Glasgow. The result is high tribute to his teachers. He cares for his ancient charge with the niceness of a family physician, wooing ten knots out of her rheumatic engine.

When a nor'wester came up, soon after we left

Chemulpo, he ran her behind one of the accommodating islands and dropped anchor. When the sea calmed he went out again, and this morning he brought us to Chenampo, that first port where the correspondent blessed with an official pass issued in Tokio is permitted to land. Chenampo has been and is, so far as we know, the main point of landing both for troops and supplies north of Chemulpo. The settlement that looks out upon the harbor is Japanese and well isolated from the two near-by Korean villages by more than distance. It is the outpost which the Japanese flag is following. From a trading and fishing hamlet the few rows of Japanese houses have risen to the dignity of officers' quarters for an army of invasion. Until we came there was one foreigner who spoke some English — the German collector of customs. For weeks supplies and soldiers have been forwarded into the interior with no other spectator except the Japanese and the Koreans. The newcomer is as much at a loss for details of fact as a Hungarian just arrived in New York is to the intrigues of Fourth Ward politics.