The United States in the Far East

Front matter

K oV

W

"oV sO

Preface

Our indulgent countrymen will neither expect nor demand any formal prologue on our first appearance on the stage of American authorship. Therefore, without the sound of herald we enter upon the self-imposed task of sketching modern Japan, "The Land of the Morning," as the author saw it during four years of official sojourn, while United States Minister at the Court and Capital of the Empire. In approaching this work, we are advised of the fact that others have preceded us in this field; nor are we forgetful of the menace, uttered ages ago, "Oh that mine adversary had written a book." Neither of these considerations shall deter us from offering some contributions, hitherto unpublished, and later than any of our predecessors have made toward a better understanding of this most marvelously progressive people of the Orient, and their present and prospective commercial and political relations to the United States of America.

Contents

Page.

Dedicatory 5-7

Preface 9

List of Illustrations 15-16

Chapter I. Appointment as United States Minister — Receiving

Instructions at Washington 17

Chapter II

Interview with Ex-President Grant, Relating to Japan, nearly a year before the Author's Appointment as United States Minister . .... 19

The Educational and Political Progress of Japan in Law, Finance, Legislation, and Toleration of all Creeds and Faiths of Religion 31

Chapter XXXII. Last Days in Japan — Homeward Bound 337

Present Treaty of Commerce and Navigation Between Japan and the United States of America, 345 Amendment to the Foregoing Treaty, Proposed by

the Government of the United States of America, 260

Japan's Forward Step 361

Protocol 364

Speech of the United States Minister on the Use of the English Language in Japan, in the Conference of all Nations 366

Speech of the United States Minister on the Autonomy of Japan, in the International Conference 370

Speech of the United States Minister on Japanese Jurisdiction 379

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Pagb

Ex-Governor Richard B. Hubbard Frontispiece

General Frederick H.Winston 6

Hon. William S. Herndon 8

Ex- President U. S. Grant (Opp.) 20

Transplanting Rice " 22

A Rice Mill " 26

Japanese Hotel of First-Class ' * 28

Marquis Ito, Premier of Japan " 34

Pilgrims to Fuji " 46

Sacred Mountain in the Distance — "Fuji," " 54

A Scene in Yeddo Bay " 62

Pontoon and Jinrikishas " 64

Frederick S. Mansfield " 68

The Emperor of Japan " 74

The Empress of Japan " 80

Coolies Carrying Children " 84

Familiar Scenes — Shopping in Country Village " 88

Dinner " 92

Blood Cascade " 96

High Priest of Shintoism ' ' 98

Jinrikisha " 102

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Sengakuji (Opp

Samurai

Sleeping

A Famous " Belle" of Japan

Japanese Lady Playing the M Koto". . . . Typical Japanese Beauty of the Higher

Classes

Count Inouye, Minister of Foreign Affairs,

Ex-President Grover Cleveland

Hon. James G. Blaine .

Hon. Thomas F. Bayard

Buddhist Priests

Famous Buddhist Temple

"Shinto" — Temple Gates

Aged "Dimaio" and Wife, of Feudal Times, Approach to the Famous Shrines of the

Buddhists

His Excellency Li Hung Tsee

Pagoda — Tennonji — Osaka

Winter Scene

Wrestlers

"Ahrnohs" (or Nurses) Carrying Children, Sisters ,

Page.

114 120 130 144

Chapter I

APPOINTMENT AS UNITED STATES MINISTER RE- CEIVING INSTRUCTIONS AT WASHINGTON IN- TERVIEW WITH EX-PRESIDENT GRANT.

T was in the good year of Our Lord, 1885, tnat tne author was ?UJs£?S tendered the appointment by the President of the United States and ratified by the Senate, as Representative or, in diplomatic parlance, " Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary," to the Empire of Japan. Early in the month of May of that year, we reported to the President and Department of State for " Instructions," which are always given to the Republic's Ministers or Ambassadors before entering upon their accredited missions in foreign lands. Of the special or

2 [17]

general character of these instructions it is necessary now to say only, that their full meaning and general scope was, of course, to uphold the honor and interests of our country ; and especially, as relating to Japan, to watch and study with earnest vigilance and care her history and progress on the lines of the higher civilization, and her approaches toward the attainment of the capacity to exercise an independent self-government among the nations. Later on, in these sketches, the special applications of these "Instructions" from our government will be noted, when invoked, as they will be, by memorable events in the political evolution and life of Japan, which occurred during our mission from 1885 to 1890, and extending and widening thereafter through the war with China to its triumphant close.

Chapter II

INTERVIEW WITH EX-PRESIDENT GRANT, RELATING TO JAPAN NEARLY A YEAR BEFORE THE AUTHOR'S APPOINTMENT AS UNITED STATES MINISTER.

S$T was while at the capitol at Washington, more than a year &&<$ preceding the foregoing date, that the unpartizan suggestion was kindly made to the author, by a few of General Grant's life-long friends, to visit the Ex-President, then, in 1884, residing in the city of New York. The generous motive given for this kind suggestion was that this great American had, some years before that date, made his famous voyage around the world so graphically sketched by John Russell Young, distinguished as an editor and diplomat, and the chosen com-

20 THE UNITED STATES IK THE FAB EAST.

pagnon de voyage of the illustrious soldier. We were told by these friends that he tarried longer in Japan, the guest of the Empire than in any other land around the globe. These gentlemen added, what they had heard from his own lips, that his observations and opinions of this people would be of especial interest to any one of his countrymen who might visit those distant shores, whether on pleasure, or on public or private account.

We went from the capital to the American metropolis to meet the Ex-President for the first and what proved to be the last time. It was an unheralded meeting. We were received as in "ye olden time," with that genial and undemonstrative hospitality characteristic of that "silent man of destiny."

Our brief interview related largely to Japan and the Orient, and we became an earnest listener to his unpretending but deeply absorbing

Ex-President XT. 8, Grant of the United States of America.

recital and outline of his opinions of the present and future of that Island Empire and the Orient, and especially its probable political relations to the United States of America. The substance of that interview, brief as it was, we shall repeat, relating to what General Grant saw and thought of Japan while in the far East. Passing by the genial and informal greeting of that hour, General Grant, who, when interested himself in the subjects of his discourse, was always entertaining, after modestly giving a brief resume of his voyage across the Pacific, said his visit to Japan produced the conviction, never changed since, that if he had ever cherished ambition for diplomatic life, he had rather have represented his country in Japan than at the Courts of even England, Germany, or France. Not that it was of the same diplomatic class or of same commercial importance ; but because there was attached to this marvelous country, which impressed him deeply, the added attractions of a rapid yet steady growth ; a striding toward the better and higher civilization in all the elements that constitute the material as well as the enlightened political and moral power of a State. He saw in his study of their educational, political and judicial institutions, and their absolute toleration of all religious faiths, the promise, though far in the Pagan Hast, of a people soon to take their co-equal and independent place in the family of nations. On his first arrival in Japan what struck General Grant most forcibly, was the physical characteristics of the country.

Its soil, even on the mountains and especially in the valleys and by the sea- side, was of wonderful fertility and cultivated with all the care and skill of professional gardeners in Europe or America. For thousands of years these lands have been enriched by fertilizers and composts. From their tender nursing of flowers, of which they are passionately fond, and the culture of shrubs and trees and vines, a stranger of the Occident feels that he has entered a very fairy-land. This native and cultivated love for the beautiful of forest and field and garden manifests itself in their unequalled artificial landscape gardening which everywhere, from the sea to the mountain, attracts the eye of the most aesthetic traveler from western lands. Poor John Keats, who died in the morning of a great career, sang long ago, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." The song would have found a realization in Japan. Not alone in the flowergardens, but as well in the arrangement of their rice fields, furnishing the bread of an empire, and their cultivation of tea and silk — in fact of everything that grows from the earth or buds and blossoms under the sun, this universal national love of the beautiful is observed. In approaching their "farms," as we call them in the West, one sees at a glance that the landscape arrangement always relieves the drudgery of the laborer. The monotony is broken here and there by mots of live oak and evergreen and venerable trees and clinging vines planted by their own hands, and amid it all living waters are flowing in Hogarth's curving lines of beauty, or falling murmuringly over artificial beds of granite, or mimic cascades and waterfalls.

"This," said General Grant, "was to me, as it will be to you, a veritable and beautiful revelation of physical Japan." The author in the after years of his residence in Japan, in his study of the traditions and customs of this people, was assured by them of the fact that for many centuries, even antedating the Christian era, their native and cultivated love for flowers and forests and the beautiful in nature had literally resulted in transforming these islands into landscape gardens of rare flowers and orchids where in the long ago nothing but rugged granite and mountain sides or barren plains offended the eye. And so it is, to this day, the love of the Japanese for the tree and flower and the vine has covered the whole land by the willing labor of his hands, with carpets of beauty, hiding from the traveler the bleakness of the mountains, on which, in ages past, they had planted the cedar and Eucalyptus and fadeless evergreens, extending to the tablelands and lowlands by the sea. And another remarkable, and for that latitude of thirty-three degrees, exceptional fact which he observed and learned, as did the author in after years, from the highest sources, was, that the frost even when black and poisonous, seldom ever nipped to death the tenderest fruits or plants, save now and then when the winds freighted with volcanic-vapors from the seas, as they generally

26 THE VNITEB STATES IN THE FAR EAST.

are, fail to blow to the landward, and then "untimely frosts " there, as here, would wither and kill. So that in the winters, which are ever mild, the fruits and flowers in the more southern portions of these islands are always budding and blossoming and fruiting. And while in color and tint from the native and gorgeous chrysanthemum to the blushing rose and sensitive plant, the flora of no portion of the earth is their equal, yet, strange and unique as it may appear, there is not a shrub or flower in all Japan that has even a suggestion of fragrance. The Savants attribute this misfortune to the influence of the sulphurous volcanic vapors that envelop them — coming from the ocean, borne on the nieht winds.

But leaving its physical character, General Grant told the author in that unassuming manner which marked his career through life, "that the most gratifying incident of his visit to Japan was the earnest welcome which he received, as all Americans do receive it, at the hands alike of prince and subject, from the moment the good ship reaches its shores until, homeward bound, the returning voyage is made to native land." General Grant with his sensitive modesty, which never obtruded his own personality to the front, did not acquaint the writer with any of the special evidences of this historic welcome to himself but spoke only of the genial character of that greeting, and attributed it all to the affection which Japan felt for our country rather than for himself- — a country which they always denominated "The Great Republic of the West." He seemed to think that his magnificent welcome was simply because he was a citizen of that Republic, who, though no longer in official station, had been loyal to the Union, upholding its flag in the perilous days of the civil war, and who had last, though not least, captured the heart of Japan by his outspoken foreign policy when President, advocating the revision of the treaties with Japan, the early abolition of ex-territoriality, and recognizing her acquired capacity for self-government, because of her marvelous advances in civilization, in statesmanship, and toleration in church and State. For over forty years under the exactions of the Treaty Powers, including our own country, Japan, China, Asiatic Turkey, in fact all Asia and Africa were subjected by forced-treaty stipulations to submit to the dictations of the Treaty Powers in all matters relating to tariffs and duties on imports.

And no subject or citizen of any Christian nation, whatever his offense, could be tried in the courts of these so-called " Heathen Lands." It is so to this hour. The United States was the first nation to advocate the abolition of this unjust discrimination against Japan. These were some of the special causes which, doubtless, made the welcome of the great American ex-President surpass, in magnificence and oriental splendor, any reception ever before extended within the memory of man to princes or to crowned heads or to the great field-marshals of war from imperial Europe or the Orient. Her army and navy were placed at his service that he might study their evolutions on shore and sea. He was the guest of the Emperor in an ancient palace surrounded by gardens and landscapes and with views of the sea with which, in beauty and romantic environments, the palace-gardens of St. Cloud and St. James were hardly to be compared, as the author long afterwards verified from personal observation. Hundreds of trained servants and attendants of the descendants of the old "Samrai" and princess of the blood were in waiting. Not obtrusive, but always present and anticipating every want, from the service of the national beverage to the chivalrous courtesies of the court. The writer himself became familiar with all these things during the subsequent years of his mission. Long after General Grant had passed " across the river," like a knight of old, the writer saw them as they had been recited by the hero a year before his mission began. We shall have occasion later on in these recitals to verify the prediction of General Grant, that the welcome of all Americans to this Empire would be like his own, in spirit though not in degree, earnest and honest, because they represented a country for which Japan cherished a sentiment of love, rather than the traditional cold and formal entente cordiale of diplomatic protocols and treaties.

We listened with respectful attention to what General Grant further on related of his impressions of

The Educational and Political Progress of Japan in Law, Finance, Legislation, and Toleration of all Creeds and Faiths of Religion.

As to this interview, hasty and unheralded as it was, we can make only brief record of his general conclusions as to the future of Japan and the rest of the Orient, based upon its progress as he had seen it. That judgment, calmly formed and expressed, modestly but with earnest conviction, was, that this " gem of the Orient" was to become in some future day a great power in the far East and command the respect of all western nations. Leaving the discussion of the educational advances and the political and progressive statesmanship of the Empire, he said, in substance, that what impressed him more than anything else he saw or heard was the progress of Japan in the "arts of war."

Chapter III. Japan S Growth As A Naval And Military Power

F my opinions are worth anything," he said, "they are founded upon &£&$. my experience and life as a soldier. Serving as cadet at West Point in my early manhood, and thereafter in the regular army and in the war with Mexico, and, after an interval of years in private life, serving again in the armies of the Union, in the civil conflict, it was my business and my duty as well to study in the field as elsewhere, the ' arts of war.' ' While in Japan the general had the opportunity of becoming familiar, as he did, with the military and naval establishments of the country. Of course he did not go into details, but he did say to the author that, from the standpoint of a soldier, this people had accomplished more in the last one-third of a century in establishing an army and navy, justly commanding the respect of the world, than any other of the Powers of the earth had accomplished, in the same number of years, before that time. He saw their drills and their movements by sea and land, their life and discipline in camp and field, and their instructions in the imperial military and naval colleges, similar to our own at Annapolis and West Point. From these opportunities and observations, he arrived at the conclusion that the time would come, before a decade has passed away, when all the great Powers would see the verification of his opinion of Japan's martial prowess ! " I think," he continued, "that the test will be made in a coming war between China and Japan ! I shall probably not live to see that conflict, but it is coming ! While a visitor to both of those old nations, there were ' strained relations ' between them, even then foreboding war."

[It is now well known to our government as well as to all the Treaty Powers that a war was prevented at that time only by the fact that China and Japan submitted their old disputes, involving Formosa and the Loo Choo islands, to General Grant, as umpire, with plenary powers to settle the entire matter.]

Though then only a private citizen of America, General Grant acted as that umpire, and on his decision these ancient dynasties shook hands and " smoked the pipe of peace," Count Ito for Japan and Prince Li Hung Chang for China, accepting the decision of the American referee. This is now of record in the archives of both China and Japan ; yet General Grant observed, even while, for the time, peace was assured, that the old wounds were only healed on the surface,

Marquis Ito, Premier of Japan's Cabinet.

while " bad blood " still rankled in the hearts of the seemingly reconciled nations, and was concealed only by artful diplomacy. "War may not come," he said, "but if it shall come, my own prediction and belief as a soldier is that Japan, with less than forty millions of people, will cross the sea by way of Corea with her well-equipped and disciplined army while her war ships attack the forts of Port Arthur and Yaloo on the sea, and in less than twelve months, China, with her five hundred millions of people, will be a conquered power and a suppliant at the feet of Japan suing for peace." He spoke this, he said, with all deference, but earnestly. Those were in substance the memorable words of General Grant, which, as all the world now knows, proved to be prophetic in less than a decade from the hour of our meeting in 1884, m the almost literal fulfillment of the prediction of the great soldier. That mightiest nation of Asia was crushed by this "Lochinvar" out of the East, in less than a year of war ! General Grant passed through "the valley and the shadow of death," fearless and full of Christian hope, within a year after the date of our meeting, and long before his prophecy became verified. The ex-President confessed that these opinions of the land of which he had been a loved and honored guest were somewhat influenced by the boundless hospitality shown to the United States in the person of himself. This hospitality was shown largely because he was an American citizen, and because the occasion furnished to Japan the opportunity to manifest her respect and her love for our country.

From Li Hung Chang to the Chinese Empress Dowager and the coolie — from Pekin to Shanghai in the Middle Kingdom — they showered upon him likewise a most gracious hospitality. His opinions were founded on the evidence he everywhere saw of Japan's wonderful advance in civilization and in all the qualities which constitute the true power of a State. He would have us understand that he avoided trenching upon the peaceful and tolerant conflict in those far eastern lands, between Paganism and the Christian religion. But believing, as he did, in the God of the old Bible and in the Christ of the New Testament, in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, nevertheless, he said that the only Paganism he heard of in Japan was confined to the temples and not exhibited by the State, and seemed to rest lightly on the people, from the prince to the peasant. In a word, we were assured that almost complete toleration in matters of church existed there. The denial by the Buddhist church of the divinity of Christ Jesus and its denial of eternal punishment after death did not seem to produce fanaticism in the government, or lessen their love for our country, or teach intolerance of the Christian missionaries, or hinder their progress in any way toward the higher hopes and civilization of the West. When he returned from his long voyage around the world, and said to his countrymen in part what he said to us, many of his sincerest friends thought that he was painting Japan in the colors of the rose, and that his honest opinions thus and then expressed, smacked of Munchausen. We here close the brief recital of the substance of this the first and last interview on Japan which the writer ever had with the famous soldeir and ex-President of the great Republic.

Chapter IV. Tribute To The " Blue And The "gray

HOUGH it does not by any means

relate to Japan, yet the author feels that it is just to the memory of a great and typical American now gone to his reward, that he should give a faithful and brief recital of Grant's parting words. He expressed the sincere hope that our people would soon forgive and forget the bitter memories and bad blood of that fratricidal conflict between the States. "I rejoice in the prospect/' he continued, " of the early return of the old time spirit of union and fraternity between the North and the South. The very fact that, from the peaceful civic revolutions and changes in

our political home government, many of the 4 I39J

Southland who fought against the Union, will ere long bear the National flag to foreign lands as representatives of the restored Union will show that however we may have differed in political faiths, yet, at last, the old love for our native land comes back to us and asserts its supremacy as in the days of our fathers." He hailed these signs as the harbingers of a glorious day now dawning on the country. He was for the Union, of "course, with all his soul, but he earnestly said to us that our people, North and South, must forgive and forget. They could afford in honor to do both. As foemen they were worthy of each other's steel, on every field of battle where the Blue and the Gray fought and fell together. "We believed," he continued, " that the South was wholly wrong in her appeal to arms, but her soldiers put all controversy to the end of time at rest as to their absolute honesty and belief in the justness

MODERN JAPAN AND THE ORIENT. . 41 ) of their side of that struggle; at any rate, like

the Union soldiers they sealed their convictions

with their blood, and from that last judgment

there can be no appeal." * * * From

that good hour, if never before, General Grant

in our heart and head — unquestioned it shall

be for all time — took his place by the side of

the great patriots and field marshals of history,

who fought for principles and not from passion

or ambition, and whose lives are crowned with

blessings and benedictions, in that they could

both forget and forgive a brave and honest

adversary who had fallen in defeat. Unlike the

human vultures of the past who follow and feast

upon the blood and booty of the wounded and

the dead, they soar above the clouds of hate,

as eagles, toward the sun. In the inaugural

message of President Grant, he closed, as all

the world knows, that brief historic message

to his countrymen with the memorable words

"Let us have peace!" In the "Personal Reminiscences of his Life," written near its close to win from hard fate a living for his then almost impoverished household, and nearly at the conclusion of that autobiography, which every American should read, the dying hero repeated the same invocation to Almighty God on behalf of the restored union of these States. These were the hopeful words put on record while the golden halo of his setting sun was then gathering around his head. They are a legacy to his countrymen worthy to be enshrined with the " Farewell Address " of Washington. " I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federals and the Confederates, I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy, but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The unusually kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would be my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to, * :i: * ' Let us have peace ! ' * :!: * It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling thus inaugurated may continue to the end."

In a far distant land, more than a year after this informal interview, the flags of our country were flying at half mast from the heights of the American Legation and from our war ships in port, black crape was draped from every American's door in Japan and the Orient, and hearts were sad and eyes were moist at the announcement by cable under the sea that the great soldier and ex-President had yielded, and like a hero, to the "Last Enemy."

Chapter V. Across The Pacific To Japan " Bon Voyage,"

AND ITS INCIDENTS.

E have now crossed the continent with our family and staff, and have arrived, in the latter part of June, 1885, at San Francisco. We do not wish to tax the reader with the oft-repeated stories of an ocean voyage. However, it must be confessed that from Marryatt's ''Tales of the Sea" to the apostrophe of Byron in a Childe Harold" calling in vain unto the storms and fleets which sweep over the seas ; from the white sails of commerce entering harbors of peace, to the thunder of battle-ships in war, there is always and ever will be an enchantment of which we never grow weary from childhood tp old age. Our single design now, however, is to describe the good ship of the American merchant marine, the "Tokio," of the " Pacific Mail," in which we were a passenger, and the personnel of its officers and men and the good ship's company, embarked in the cabin or in the steerage. We shall take our readers on board with us, and they shall see as we saw, and feel as we felt in the struggles of the brave ship against winds and waves for the twenty-three days we were passing over that lonely sea. The officer in command of the "Tokio" was "Commodore" Maury, a retired captain of the United States Navy, who was styled " Commodore " because of being the oldest officer then in the continuous service of that great merchant line. He was a gallant naval lieutenant in the war with Mexico and in the late Civil War. He was a near kinsman of the Confederate Commodore, Matthew F.

Maury, of Virginia, who was, before the war, the head of the National Observatory at Washington, and who made the famous charts of the winds and the tides — of the dangerous currents and reefs of all the seas around the globe. Our " Commodore" Maury, of the "Tokio," was a typical representative of the American sailor. On board, on the passenger list, was the American Minister and his family and staff. There were consuls and consulgenerals from our own country as well as from some European nations, and a few Japanese returning to their native land from our American schools and universities and military and naval institutions. There were also merchants in the Oriental tea and silk trade on board, bound for nearly all the great ports of the Orient. These, with the lady contingent, constituted the diplomatic and political and mercantile and military portion of the cabin passage. With them, as fellow-passengers, was a number of devoted missionaries and their wives and children, mostly from the United States, but with some representatives from European lands. Many of these godly men and devoted women were returning to Japan and China and India or other countries of the far East from long-deserved vacations, or going out for the first time, bearing the banner of the Cross, under appointments of the Christian-world, of all creeds and denominations ; going —