The evolution of new Japan

Preface

rpmS little book has at least one original feature. It is, to the best of the author's knowledge, the first book on Japan which has ever been issued at the price of one shilling. Surely, this will commend it to readers and bookbuyers, even if it exposes no more than the skeleton of the modern history of a people who are both our allies and our good customers (as well as our rivals) in trade, and who can now give us valuable lessons of patriotic courage, sacrifice, and perseverance in return for all we have taught them.

J. H. L.

August^ 1913.

Contents

CHAP. ' PAGE

Introduction . 1

III. Reforms in Foreign and Domestic Policy . . 28

Introduction

In the 7th century of the Christian era, Japan, as one incident in the general assimilation of Chinese civilisation which then took place, adopted the Chinese calendar, in which years are counted in chronological periods of irregular length, distinguished from each other by specific names — nengo or year names. In 1872, subsequent to the abandonment of the Chinese in favour of the European system as the foundation of the national civilisation, the old calendar was replaced by the Gregorian, though not in its entirety. A formal recognition of the Christian era would have been inconsistent with the reverence that was due to the Emperor as the acknowledged descendant of the Gods of Heaven, and to the national religion of which he was the head, and it was therefore decided that while days and months should henceforth be reckoned on the Western model, the old system of year-counting by nengo should be retained. Under it a name, usually one of good omen, such as " Great Honour," "Heavenly Virtue," "Tranquil Peace," "Great Prosperity," was chosen at the beginning of each period

2 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN

and the successive years were described as the first, second, etc. years of that period until the time came when it was arbitrarily terminated and a new one adopted. There was not even a remote approximation to uniformity in the length of the periods. Many only continued for one year, while three exceeded 20 and one 30 years.

In the year following the accession of the late Emperor the occurrence of his birthday was signalised by the inauguration of a new period to which the name of Meiji — Enlightened Government — was given. It was, at the same time, decreed that in future there should be only one chronological period in each reign and that it should coincide with the length of the reign, with the exception that, as a new period has, through all ages, always been reckoned from the first day of the year of its adoption, each should in future begin on the 1st of January preceding the sovereign's accession and close on the 31st of December preceding his death. The period of Meiji — the longest in history — dates from January 25th, 1868, that being New Year's Day under the old (Chinese) calendar, till December 31st, 1911, and is almost synchronous with the late Emperor's reign. In this volume we propose to tell the story of the evolution of Japan from an unknown and impotent Asiatic state into one of the acknowledged Powers of the world, which took place during the

CH. I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 3

period of Meiji, in the reign of the Emperor Mutsu Hito. It is the story of one of the most eventful reigns of any period or of any nation in the world's history, a story which is full of the most pregnant lessons of what can be achieved by an intelligent and courageous people, working with whole-hearted patriotism, under the leadership of a liberal and enlightened sovereign.

Chapter I Historical Sketch

Before proceeding with our main task it is necessary that a short sketch of the history and polity of Japan should be given in order that our readers may be enabled to have a clear understanding of the social and political conditions of the Empire at the beginning of Meiji. The first Emperor was Jimmu Tenno, who founded the Empire and ascended the throne in the year 660 B.C., little more than a century later than the founding of Rome. From him, all the subsequent occupants of the throne traced their descent in an unbroken line, and as Jimmu was the direct descendant, in the fifth generation, of the Sun Goddess (Tensho Daijin), who herself sprang from the creators of Heaven and Earth, all

1—2

4 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh.

his successors have claimed through him a divine descent, a claim which has been accepted with unquestioning faith by their subjects in all times, which the most extreme spirit of modern materialism has not yet affected, and which is as devoutly acknowledged to this day by the most advanced student of Huxley or Schopenhauer as it was by any of the sages of old.

Jimmu's successors, throughout twelve centuries, were all sovereigns in reality as well as in name, all taking an active and vigorous share in their government, but from the seventh century of the Christian era they permitted the executive power to fall into the hands of the leading family among their courtiers, the Fujiwara, who, like the Emperors themselves, claimed divine origin, their remote ancestor having descended from Heaven in the train of Jimmu's progenitor, the Sun Goddess's grandson ; they also, like the Emperors, survive to this day. For four hundred years the Fujiwara conserved to themselves all the executive authority of the realm until it was wrested from them by the leaders of a race of soldiers, who, while the later generations of the Fujiwara were, in the ease and luxury of the Court at Kioto, sinking into the condition of idle and incapable voluptuaries, had been hardened by continuous military service against the Ainu, the savage autochthons of Japan, in those days still numerous and powerful on the northern frontiers of the lands that had been colonised by the followers of Jimmu and their descendants. The greatest of these leaders was Yoritomo, who succeeded at the close of the twelfth century in making himself dictator of the Empire, under the title of Sei-i-tai-Shogun or "Barbarianrepressing-great-General," which was conferred on him by the Emperor. The title, abbreviated in common use into Shogun, was one which had previously been frequently conferred on generals in command of armies in the field, but it signified only military authority and it lapsed with the termination of the special command for which it was given. Yoritomo gave it a new significance. He assumed not only the military but the civil power and retained the title for life. He established his residence at Kamakura, a town about 30 miles from Tokio, which quickly grew into a large and populous city and became the real capital of the Empire while Kioto, the home of the legitimate Emperors, was only so in name. There he administered, as the de facto sovereign, the government of the Empire while the provinces were held and governed by his relatives and adherents, soldiers who had fought by his side and who owed all their fealty to him alone.

This was the beginning of the systems of dual government and of feudalism in Japan which lasted from the time of Yoritomo (1192 — 1199) until the

6 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh.

accession of the late Emperor. At Kioto there was always the Emperor, the legitimate sovereign, the acknowledged source of all authority and the sole fountain of honour, surrounded by a small retinue of courtiers, who were known as Kuge, many of whom sprang from the Imperial family, and all of whom claimed an origin and descent that were only less illustrious than those of the Emperor. Both Emperors and court were entirely dependent on the Shoguns for their means of support, which were for many long centuries provided with such parsimony, that all were practically sunk in abject poverty. On the other side, the Shogun's courts, first at Kamakura and afterwards at Yedo, with an interval between the two at Kioto, in the very shadow of the Emperor's own palace, were maintained in the utmost Imperial splendour ; the national executive was entirely in the hands of the Shoguns and their ministers, and all the land in the provinces was parcelled among feudal lords — the daimio — the majority of whom sprang from soldiers of fortune who were rewarded by successive dynasties of th« Shoguns with the grants of large estates, the spoils of almost unceasing civil war.

Yoritomo's own direct descendants did not long hold the great office which their progenitor had won. It fell in turn to other military adventurers during the succeeding four centuries, the last and the greatest of whom was Tokugawa lyeyasu who became Shogmi at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The system, inaugurated by Yoritomo, was brought to its highest perfection by lyeyasu, who, in the measures he took to secure the retention of the Shogunate in his own family and the peace of the reahn, showed that he was a constructive statesman of the highest order of genius, and he was ably followed by some of his earliest successors. So successful were he and they, that throughout 260 years, during which his descendants occupied the throne of the Shoguns at Yedo, their authority was never once questioned and the country under their government, which, for five centuries prior to the accession of lyeyasu, had been almost continuously desolated by civil war, fought with no less bitterness and savage cruelty than those which characterised the wars of Europe in the same periods, enjoyed jDrofound and unbroken peace, and its people, according to the descriptions of European writers, who saw and studied them, should have been one of the happiest in the world.

To this picture there was another side. During the last half of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth centuries Japan fi-eely admitted to her harbours European ships, which found their way to the Far East, and Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English traders were in turn welcomed by her. Jesuit and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic

Church followed the first Portuguese and Spanish traders and their proselytising efforts, carried on with equal zeal and ability, met with such success that, within one century from the landing of the first missionary, there were said to have been over a million native converts to Christianity of all classes of the people. Unfortunately the zeal of the missionaries outran their discretion and gave rise to the suspicion that proselytism was merely an antecedent step to territorial aggression threatening the political independence of the Empire, and as the suspicion grew to certainty, the whole attitude of the Government changed both to Christianity and to Europeans. Christianity was extirpated by persecution as ruthless as that of Nero. Missionaries were put to death or expelled. Traders too were expelled, an exception being made only in favour of the Dutch, a small colony of whom were permitted to remain under the most humiliating conditions, closely interned in the little island of Desima in the harbour of Nagasaki, where they carried on a trade which, though hampered by vexatious restrictions, brought them enormous profits. All other Europeans were forbidden to approach the shores of Japan or to land on pain of death. And not only were Europeans forbidden to land in Japan, but Japanese were, under equally severe penalties, forbidden to go abroad. None who did so was permitted to return. Throughout the middle ages the Japanese had shown themselves bold and adventurous seamen, making their way both as pirates and traders not only to China and Siam, but in some instances across the Pacific to Mexico. Now they were forbidden by their own authorities to build any ship larger in burthen than 500 Koku (50 tons) and from the day on which the edict which forbade them was issued their traditional maritime spirit was gone, and the national seclusion, which it was the policy of the early Tokugawas to effect, was complete.

For 220 years Japan was cut off from all the world. She had her own high degree of social and artistic civilisation, refined and picturesque in all its elements, but while Europe was advancing with giant strides in industrial, military and political science, Japan stood still and her internal state in the middle of the nineteenth century showed no material advance on what it had been in the early part of the seventeenth. She was contented in herself and with her own acquirements and neither knew nor cared for aught that was happening in the outer world.

Internally the country was crushed under one of the most iron systems of feudalism that the world has ever seen. The Shogun was the feudal superior, though nominally only as the mandatory of the Emperor. A third of the whole Empire was under his direct rule and the revenues were paid into his Treasury. The remainder was shared among 260 feudal lords, all of whom varied in strength, wealth and influence in proportion to the extent of their domains, but all alike enjoyed complete legislative and executive autonomy within their own boundaries, an autonomy which did not even exclude the right of coinage. All maintained armies of hereditary soldiers — samurai — whose allegiance was due only to their own immediate feudal lords, for whose sake every samurai was always ready to sacrifice without a murmur life, liberty, name, family or property. Each lord, in his turn, owed allegiance to the Shogun, from whom he received his investiture on succession, whose approval he had to obtain in marriage and adoption, and to whom he was obliged to render military service when called ujion. All lived in regal splendour and independence in fortified castles on their own estates, and in no less splendour in great palaces in Yedo, where they were obliged to pass part of each year. The sole occupations of the samurai were those of arms, literature and the administration of their lords' estates and revenues, and both daimio and samurai combined to form the governing and aristocratic class and with their families numbered some two million souls. Beneath them, divided by an unfathomable social gulf, across which none could pass, was the subject and plebeian class, divided into three orders, farmers, artisans and traders, in number about thirty millions, whose sole lot in life was to minister to the well-being and luxury of their superiors.

The general characteristics of the Japanese people were then such that there is scarcely a word which Buckle wrote in the second chapter of his History of Civilization on the physical and moral conditions of the ancient peoples of India, Egypt, Mexico or Peru, which mutatis mutandis might not have been applied to those of the people of Japan. On the part of the upper class there was the most autocratic use of despotic power ; on that of the lower the most servile subservience in every incident of life. Slavery, except perhaps in prehistoric times, never existed as a recognised institution in Japan, but practically speaking, less than sixty years ago, slavery, abject slavery, was the natural state of the great body of the people. They counted for nothing. They not only had no voice in the management of the public affairs of the state, the province, or the city, but their liberty, their property, and even their lives were held at the absolute disposal of their immediate rulers. Their occupations, their dress, their residences were all rigidly prescribed for them ; on them fell the entire financial burthens of the state and their sole functions were to labour for the comfort and luxury of the upper classes and to render to them an absolute and unquestioning obedience. The " habits of tame and servile submission were generated among them" and extended through successive generations had their invariable result in that the history of the world affords no more striking instance of an abjectly spiritless race than that of the Japanese lower classes only sixty years ago. They spoke in subdued tones, with bent backs and eyes on the ground : they would scarcely dare to strike a blow even in the defence of their own lives and families, and all the history of Japan does not furnish one single instance of their having "turned upon their rulers, of any war of classes, of any popular insurrection, of even one great popular conspiracy."

As subjection made the lower classes abjectly servile so did despotic power and immunity from all the burthens of life render the aristocratic class tyrannical and cruel. The samurai of Japan have been quoted in England as models of everything that is most noble in man, as chivalrous, frugal, brave, courteous, loyal, patriotic, self-sacrificing. They were all that theoretically, and actually so in many individual cases, but foreigners in Japan, fifty years ago, conceived very different ideas of them as a class. Sir Rutherford Alcock, our first minister to Japan, a keen observer, a man of the world, a careful student, who knew the Japan of his day, calls them " Swashbucklers, swaggering blustering bullies, many cowardly enough to strike an enemy in the back or cut down an unarmed and inoffensive man, but ever ready to fling their own lives away in accomplishing a revenge or carrying out the behests of their chief." Even contemporaneous writers of their own class in Japan described them as ignorant, cruel, dissolute and idle. They treated the classes below them with the utmost contempt and brutality. Their patriotism and loyalty were local not national, were given entirely to their immediate feudal chiefs and not to the sovereign, and jealousy among rival clans would always have been a serious obstacle to national union, even in defence of the country against foreign aggression.

Such were the conditions of the people of Japan in the closing years of the Tokugawa regime. They were all, daimio, samurai and plebeians, entirely segregated from their legitimate sovereign, the Emperor, who, living in the sacred seclusion of his palace at Kioto, maintained intact the divine prestige which had been transmitted to him from his ancestors but was utterly powerless to assert himself in the administration of the Empire of which he was the nominal head. The Shogun was his Mayor of the Palace, the major-domo, who carried on the Government and who alone of all his subjects enjoyed the right of access to him. So great was the power of the Shogun, so complete its outer manifestation, both at the beginning and at the close of the Tokugawa regime, that Europeans who came to Japan invariably termed him "His Majesty." The learned Jesuits of the

16th and I7th centuries, the equally learned Dutch savants of the 18th century, and the diplomatists of the 19th century all erred alike. They heard vaguely of another Emperor who was never seen either by his own subjects or by them, not even when they visited the holy city of Kioto in which he lived, of whom they were told as a sacred being of divine origin, vested with divine prerogatives and shrouded in impenetrable mystery, but powerless as a political factor in the state, so much so that neither the Jesuit missionaries nor the Dutch traders seem ever to have made the smallest effort to enlist his influence in their favour.

On the other hand, what they termed "the Emperor," but who was in reality the Shogun, the Mayor of the Palace, was very vividly present to the eyes and thoughts of both. His authority over all the realm was undisputed. AU the feudal lords, both great and small, rendered homage to him, and though exercising almost unlimited autonomy in their own domains accepted his orders with unquestioning obedience. He had great wealth of his own, the yearly revenue from his family estates amounting to eight millions sterling in an age when the purchasing power of money was manifold what it now is. He had at his call an immense army of devoted samurai, he had a council of able ministers and he lived in imperial splendour, that was apparent to all, both

The Emperor Komei natives and foreigners, in the great city of Yedo which in size, wealth and population far outshadowed the ancient and venerated capital of Kioto. To the Jesuits, fresh from the splendours of Rome, Madrid or Lisbon, his palace seemed in its grandeur, glittering with gold, "like an enchanted palace," and when attended by a great and stately escort he made royal progresses beyond its walls, the streets were all cleared of everything that could offend his sight ; the upper windows of all houses closed so that none could look down on him ; no fires could be lighted for two days beforehand lest the sky should be obscured, and all people humbly prostrated themselves on the ground as he passed by.

When Europeans once more made their appearance on the shores of Japan, no longer as abject suppliants like the Dutch, but demanding ingress as a right and prepared to support their demands with irresistible force, the Emperor was still a myth in their eyes. The Shogun was the de facto sovereign with whom they had to deal and as far as they knew, in their ignorance of the history and institutions of Japan, he was also the dejure sovereign. In Perry's treaty he was described as "the August Sovereign of Japan," and in the first English treaty — that of Admiral Stirling concluded in 1854 — as "His Imperial Highness, the Emperor " : in Lord Elgin's Treaty of 1858, as "His Majesty the Tycoon," and in the

Prussian Treaty of 1861, as "Seine Majestat der Taikun." The title "Tycoon" or more properly "Taikun" was a new one adopted from China. Its literal signification is "Great Lord."

The new treaties came into force in 1858. The ports of Yokohama, Nagasaki and Hakodate were opened to foreign trade and residence. Diplomatic representatives of the Treaty Powers took up their residence in Yedo and their countrymen began to live and trade at the opened ports. The Shogun apparently retained all his power and influence and the country was governed by his ministry with whom alone the foreign diplomatists had any direct relations. But a revolution had already begun which was destined within one decade to destroy utterly the political fabric that had lasted for more than seven centuries and to restore to the legitimate Emperor all the executive functions that were his undoubted constitutional prerogative.

Chapter II Restoration Of The Emperor

Iyeyasu in his old age devoted himself to the study and encouragement of literature. His grandson, the feudal lord of the province of Mito and the chief of one of the Go Sankei, the three families in which was vested the succession to the Shogunate in the event of failure of the direct line, inherited all his grandfather's literary tastes and, unlike him, was able to devote his whole life to their cultivation, lyeyasu favoured the study of the Confucian classics and other masterpieces of the ancient literature of China. The Lord of Mito, on the other hand, was attracted by the ancient records of Japan which told the story of the creation and of the divine descent of the Emperors. Under his patronage, the great scholars whom he gathered around him in his province from all parts of the Empire compiled the Dai~NiJion-SM, the History of Great Japan from the accession of the mythical Emperor Jimmu in 660 B.C. to the abdication in 1414 a.d. of Go Komatsu, the ninety-ninth Emperor of the line. This great work was completed in 1715, and it was followed, one hundred years later, by the Nihon Guaishi, the External History of Japan, which told the true history of the Shogunate, from its foundation by Yoritomo in the 12th century down to the accession of lyeyasu. Both works were eagerly read by scholars throughout the Empire. Their whole spirit was that the Emperor is the true and only legitimate sovereign, the lineal descendant of the Gods of Heaven by whom Japan was created, the first and best of all the lands on earth ; that to him alone the unquestioning allegiance of every loyal Japanese is due ; and that the

Shoguns were usurpers, who, themselves of no higher degree than the other feudal lords, had vested themselves with the supreme executive authority by the power of the sword.

These doctrines were eagerly imbibed by the greatest of the feudal lords, who were traditional enemies of the House of Tokugawa but had yielded to its superior strength and to the irresistible military and political genius of lyeyasu. Prominent among them were the chiefs of the great southern fiefs of Choshiu and Satsuma. They were themselves hereditary foes but both had been long fretting under the domination of the Shogun with all its attendant disabilities, and their impatience was intensified by the incapacity and sloth of several of lyeyasu's later successors. Both hated each other but both hated their Tokugawa oppressor still more, and only awaited a plausible cause and a favourable opportunity for combining their arms against him and enlisting the aid of other feudal chiefs who were in the same position as themselves. Both cause and opportunity were furnished by the arrival of Europeans and their demand that the country should be opened to them.

While the great sea Powers of Europe were too fully occupied in their own international jealousies and in the acquisition and expansion of colonies comparatively near at hand to bestow even a thought on a remote and unknown island Empire of whose people and resources they were entirely ignorant, Japan had acquired interest and importance in the eyes of the United States of America. The Western States of the Union were growing in commercial value, and it was already foreseen that the Pacific might become a highway of trade between America and the rich and populous Empire of China. Japan lay in the ocean fairway between the two countries and it was of vital interest to American shipping, trading between them, that it should have the right of access to Japanese harbours. The United States Government, entirely unhampered by either domestic or foreign complications, determined therefore to establish intercourse with the Japanese, to induce them to enter into treaty relations, by persuasion if possible, if not by force, and thus secure guarantees for the future protection and assistance of United States ships when in Japanese waters. The mission was entrusted to Commodore Perry and successfully carried out by him, and on the 31st of March 1854, Japan signed her first formal treaty with a Western Power.

Along with the revival of loyalty to the Emperor another doctrine, ancillary to it, had also won many disciples. This was that Japan is the Land of the Gods, and only those who are children of the Gods are worthy to dwell in it, that the presence of outer Barbarians is sacrilege to be avoided at all cost and

2—2 at all risks. When Perry arrived, " Peace and Prosperity of long duration had," it was said, " enervated the spirit, rusted the armour and blunted the swords of the Samurai " and incapacitated them for military service against the Barbarians in their heavily-armed ships. The Shogun, only too conscious of the national impotency to resist the demand that was made in no uncertain language, yielded, and by doing so at once became a traitor to the Emperor and the country. The cry was raised "Sonno Joi," "Honour the Emperor and expel the Barbarians," and it was eagerly taken up by the leaders and clansmen of the Satsuma, Choshiu and other great southern fiefs, and made by them a pretext for initiating hostilities against the hated Government beneath which they had so long cowered.

The Emperors had, as already explained, been, with a very few striking exceptions, political nullities throughout the whole existence of the Shogunate. It happened that the Emperor Komei, the 120th of his line, who occupied the throne at this period, formed one of these exceptions. He had never fallen into the physical and mental incapacity of his forerunners and was now in the very prime of early manhood. All the revived traditions of his house and country had entered deeply into his heart, and he hated both the Shogunate, by which he knew he had been despoiled of his Imperial prerogatives, and with a still more mastering passion the foreigners, who were now polluting his country with their presence. His hatred against both Shogun and foreigner was intensified by the thought that the treaties which the former had traitorously signed, under which the foreigners lived within his dominions, were a new and farther outrage on his prerogatives, a violation of the constitutional principle, which had existed throughout all ages, that great national changes required the formal sanction of the Emperor, nominal though his authority was. The indignation of both Emperor and Court was strong, and all their sympathy was with the great feudal chiefs who were now in open rebellion.

We need not enter into the details of the civil war, a war which was fought with great bitterness, much bloodshed and varying fortune. In the end, the revolutionaries were completely successful, but before that climax was reached the deaths occurred within a very short interval of the two principal figures of the times. In September 1866, lyemochi, the fourteenth Shogun of the Tokugawa line, died and was succeeded by Yoshinobu, who was destined to be the last of the dynasty. lyemochi was little more than a boy, who was entirely in the hands of his ministers and vassals. Yoshinobu, on the other hand, had already, on his accession, arrived at manhood, and was fully capable of forming his own opinion and exercising his judgment on the changing conditions of Japanese life and politics. The death of lyemochi was followed within six months by that of the conservative and bigoted Emperor Komei, and the reverse of what had occurred in the case of the Shogunate happened in regard to the succession to the Imperial throne.