Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (119 page)

In sum, 1896 had been a rather dull year for the emperor after the excitement of the two years during the war with China. The emperor once more seemed to withdraw into himself. He did not participate in any of the traditional rituals on New Year’s Day 1897, and the empress took his place in receiving greetings from foreign dignitaries.

Soon after the new year began, the empress dowager, who had not been well, caught a severe cold. On January 8 she felt a sudden chill. Her coughing increased and she complained of acute pains in her chest. She was examined by Surgeon General Hashimoto Tsunatsune, who pronounced that she was suffering from catarrhal pneumonia. On the tenth Dr. Erwin Baelz, who often treated members of the imperial family, examined the dowager and confirmed Dr. Hashimoto’s diagnosis. Baelz warned that the illness was extremely serious, and if it was followed by a heart attack or pulmonary edema, the dowager’s life would be endangered.
²⁰

On January 11 the emperor and empress asked a court physician about the condition of the empress dowager. They had earlier been informed that she had a cold and were taken aback to learn now that she was gravely ill. They decided to pay a visit to her sickroom at the Aoyama Palace but were dissuaded by the doctors and others because they themselves were suffering from bad colds and in no condition to pay a visit. The emperor insisted nevertheless that he and the empress go as planned at 9:30 in the morning. Word reached the palace early that morning that the dowager was in critical condition. The emperor and empress immediately set out at 8:50 without waiting for a proper escort.

As soon as the emperor entered the dowager’s sickroom, he fell on his knees and in this position crawled closer to her bed. Seeing how emaciated she was by illness, he could not restrain his intense grief and wept aloud. The dowager turned toward him. The emperor, looking at her, could only weep and bow. The dowager, also weeping, asked an attendant to convey her thanks to the emperor and empress for their visit, explaining that she was incapable of leaving her bed to bow before them. An attendant of the emperor, fearing that a longer stay might worsen both the empress dowager’s illness and their own, urged the emperor and empress to leave, and they departed shortly thereafter.

The empress dowager died that evening. She was in her sixty-fourth year and had been a widow for exactly thirty years, ever since the death of Emperor K
ō
mei in January 1867. Although the emperor was well aware that his natural mother was Nakayama Yoshiko (now known as Nii-dono), the empress dowager was officially considered to be his mother, and he always showed her filial reverence. The emperor’s grief on this occasion was genuine: quite apart from ties of personal affection, the empress dowager was a precious contact with the world of his boyhood, one of the last. Although Meiji was often surrounded by men weeping tears of awe and gratitude, he himself rarely wept. His tears at this time were surely not occasioned by regret that he had not been a good son. It can hardly be doubted that he had done everything possible to ensure that the empress dowager’s years after the death of her husband were most agreeably spent traveling, watching n
ō
plays, attending exhibitions of art, and similar pleasures.

For five days after the empress dowager’s death, court business was halted, and a period of mourning of a year was decreed, beginning on the day she died. Mourning clothes would be worn at court, and other Japanese were to desist for thirty days from song, dance, and music. Flags would be flown with black streamers. For the next fifteen days and on the days of the departure of the coffin and of the burial, criminals were not to be executed.
²¹

Some people believed that the funeral, reflecting the present glory of the imperial house, should be on a grand scale. Members of the Commission of Imperial Mourning expressed the view that Emperor K
ō
mei’s tomb was too small and that the empress dowager should have a bigger one. The emperor gave his opinion: “Of course, the empress’s funeral should be impressive, but there is a limit to everything. We must not exaggerate and surpass the scale of the funeral of my late father.”
²²

The imperial Diet at first budgeted 800,000 yen for the funeral, but Prince Takehito, calling attention to the emperor’s wishes, asked that the sum be reduced, and so it was set at 700,000 yen. The emperor and empress were unable to attend the funeral in Ky
ō
to because they both were ill, and it was feared that the exposure to winter weather might aggravate their illness. Prince Takehito and his wife represented them.

The emperor commanded that henceforth the empress dowager would be known as Dowager Empress Eish
ō
. This was a most unusual distinction, no doubt reflecting his devotion. There were scarcely any previous instances of an empress dowager or empress being given a posthumous name.
²³
Eish
ō
was not a Buddhist title but was derived from the poem “Purple Wisteria over a Deep Pool” by the T’ang-dynasty statesman Li Tê-yu.
²⁴
This name was chosen for the empress dowager because she was from the Fujiwara (Wisteria Field) family.

On February 2 Eish
ō
’s coffin left the Aoyama Palace for the
Ō
miya Gosho in Ky
ō
to. A ceremony before the departure was attended by members of the imperial family, cabinet members, the president of the Privy Council, ministers of foreign countries, and their wives. Despite their persisting illness, the emperor and empress wished to go to the Aoyama Palace for a last farewell, but the palace doctors strictly forbade them to brave the weather.

The funeral in Ky
ō
to took place on February 7. The procession from the
Ō
miya Gosho to the Tsukinowayama Funeral Hall was long and impressive. The hearse was drawn by four oxen, and nobles and great men of state, all dressed in formal robes, walked behind it. Shint
ō
priests carrying
sakaki
branches, brocade pennants, and halberds, or flaming torches walked to the left and right of the procession. A guard of honor from the Household Guards and Fourth Division, along with naval personnel, accompanied the hearse. Field artillery of the Fourth Division fired salutes of minute guns, and a military band played “Kanashimi no kiwami” (Extremity of Grief), the dirge played at the funerals of senior members of the imperial family.
²⁵

When the funeral procession reached the Yume no Ukihashi (Floating Bridge of Dreams), just before reaching the Senny
ū
-ji, the road became so narrow that the coffin was transferred to a handcart. At ten that night the procession arrived at Tsukinowayama, and at eleven a service was performed. The coffin was placed at the center of the funeral hall, and the mourners formed lines flanking the temporary altar. Then, one by one, the mourners came forward from left and right to bow before the bier and offer a sprig of
sakaki
. It must have been a sight of extraordinary solemnity and beauty, despite being performed in honor of a woman who in life was unknown to more than a handful of those who bowed in worship. The funeral of Queen Victoria could not have been more impressive.

Perhaps the funeral’s most surprising feature was the absence of Buddhist elements—no priests, no chanting of sutras, no incense.
²⁶
In the past, Shint
ō
priests had been unwilling to conduct funerals for fear of being infected by the pollution of death, but ever since the Restoration, when Buddhism had fallen from favor, Shint
ō
funeral rites had been performed.

The ceremony ended at twelve minutes after midnight on the eighth of February, but the casket was not placed in the grave until 5:30
A.M.
, and the burial was not completed until 11:55. The only foreign worshiper at the funeral was probably the ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary Yi Ha-yong, sent by the king of Korea with a pair of vases of artificial flowers to be placed before the coffin. This gesture was much appreciated by the Japanese. Yi Ha-yong was decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun, and the emperor at an audience for the ambassador expressed his gratitude. On November 22, 1897, when a funeral service was held for Queen Min, the Japanese reciprocated by sending their minister with condolences and a pair of silver incense burners.
²⁷

The emperor and empress were not able to go to Ky
ō
to for the funeral, but on April 19 they paid their respects together before the tomb of Dowager Empress Eish
ō
. They remained in Ky
ō
to for more than four months. They were scheduled to return to T
ō
ky
ō
in the middle of May when word was received of an epidemic of measles, and the court doctors warned them that returning might be dangerous. The emperor was enjoying his stay in the old capital, and even when the measles epidemic had abated, he showed no inclination to return to T
ō
ky
ō
. Not until August 22 did he tear himself away from Ky
ō
to, having at last conceded that the measles epidemic seemed to be over.
²⁸

On the morning of his departure from Ky
ō
to, the imperial train was to leave at 8:55, but the emperor suddenly announced that he would like the train to leave twenty minutes later. He gave no reason; perhaps he merely wished to enjoy Ky
ō
to a bit longer. The Transport Section of the Ministry of Communications indicated that changing the timetable would be difficult, but the emperor retorted, “Why should it be impossible to rearrange the schedule, considering that this is a special train for my use?” He was extremely displeased. In the end, the train’s departure was postponed. This was a rare instance of self-indulgence on the emperor’s part, and (as in the other cases) he probably regretted it the next day.

Another internal matter that disturbed the emperor in 1897 and would have future ramifications was the copper poisoning caused by the mines at Ashio. On March 24 a cabinet committee was established to investigate the situation. The extent of the harm to the environment and the suffering of the inhabitants of the region could hardly be exaggerated. Fish had disappeared from the Watarase River and its tributaries. Innumerable dry and wet fields had been ravaged. In recent years there had been frequent flooding, and the damage increased each year. At every session of the Diet, Tanaka Sh
ō
z
ō
(1841–1913), a member of the House of Representatives, described the terrible damage, appealing for preventive measures and relief. However, neither the government nor the mine owners did anything to help the people of the region, and it was feared they might stage a march on T
ō
ky
ō
to appeal directly to the government.
²⁹

Shortly before the investigating committee was established, the minister of agriculture and commerce, Enomoto Takeaki, traveled to Ashio in mufti to observe the effects of mineral poisoning. He was so shocked by what he saw that he resigned his post, taking blame for the disaster.
³⁰
The emperor was much upset when he was informed of conditions in Ashio, and on April 7, at his request, Tokudaiji Sanetsune sent letters to the governors of Gumma, Tochigi, Saitama, and Ibaraki Prefectures asking if they thought that the sudden spate of public criticism was occasioned by the damage caused by the flooding of 1896 or if it went back to 1892 and 1893 when the frightening effects of pollution were first discovered.

At the time some observers blamed the disasters on the indiscriminate felling of trees, resulting in landslides that filled the riverbeds. The rivers, unable to flow freely in their normal courses, had broken through the embankments and spread the poison in their water over the land. The governors were requested to reply without concealing anything and appending relevant documents.
³¹

As a result of the reports received from the cabinet committee, on May 27 Furukawa Ichibei, the operator of the mines, was issued a set of thirty-seven orders requiring him to provide settling ponds, filter beds, and similar facilities to prevent the mine water from overflowing and to eliminate smoke pollution. He was told that these improvements must be completed within 150 days and that mining operations would be halted until the settling ponds and filter beds were ready. In the event that Furukawa disobeyed these orders, he would be forbidden to engage in further mining.
³²

On November 27 the cabinet, satisfied that the work of the committee investigating the mineral poisoning at Ashio was more or less completed, relieved the committee of its functions, and assigned to the appropriate ministries the supervision of preventive measures and restoration of affected land.
³³
Judging from the persistence into the late Meiji era of the issue of copper poisoning, it is obvious that the pollution controls ordered by the government at this time were not strictly enforced. The desire to build a modern, rich country was so strong that the Japanese tended to tolerate environmental pollution, even when it was as extreme as at the Ashio copper mines.

Eleven years earlier, in 1886, Suehiro Tetch
ō
had published
Setch
ū
bai
(Plum Blossoms in the Snow), a work often praised as the finest of the Meiji-period political novels. It is set in 2040, the 173rd year of the reign of Emperor Meiji, and opens with the sounds of cannons and bugles blowing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the constitution. The accompanying illustrations depict the T
ō
ky
ō
of the future. It is a city of grim rows of brick buildings from which innumerable tall chimneys emit black smoke. Tetch
ō
wrote enthusiastically, “Telegraph wires spread like spiders’ webs, and trains run to and fro to every point of the compass. The electric lamps are so bright that even at night the streets look no different than in broad daylight.”
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