Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (51 page)

On the way to China, the
Ry
ū
j
ō
and the
Tsukuba
called at Kagoshima, where Soejima took advantage of the opportunity to visit Saig
ō
Takamori.
¹⁰
A second stop was made at Nagasaki. When the ships reached Shanghai on March 31, Soejima was invited to a banquet by the Russian grand duke Alexis, whom he had entertained in Japan the previous November. On April 8 the ships sailed from Shanghai to Tientsin but, because of navigational problems, did not arrive until April 20. Two days later Soejima visited the office of Li Hung-chang, the viceroy of Chihli Province, who thanked him profusely for rescuing the Chinese aboard the
Maria Luz
. Soejima exchanged with Li the documents of the treaty of friendship and trade ratified in the previous year. However, General Le-Gendre, who was present at this reception, wrote that Li Hung-chang treated Soejima “coldly” and that “with me he was most rude.” When LeGendre was introduced to Li, he asked who LeGendre was and, when informed, replied, “We have made treaties before this one, and we did not find the need for foreigners to advise us; what reason is there for it now?”
¹¹
Li also criticized the Western dress of members of Soejima’s embassy, to which Soejima replied:

If, Your Excellency, the dress of foreigners is not beautiful, it is quite useful, especially on board our men-of-war which are also of foreign style. With our ancient costume our men could not have thought of working in the rigging or at the guns. But since we have changed our dress, we get along very well, so well in fact, that in the ironclad and the corvette which we have brought with us to China there is not a single foreigner.
¹²

This was Soejima’s first taste of the arrogance of Chinese officials, but he turned Li’s criticism to Japan’s advantage by contrasting its modern ways with the unbending conservatism of the Chinese.
¹³
On the following day Soejima had a more cordial meeting with Li at which Sino-Japanese relations were discussed at length. Soejima made full use of his command of Chinese classical literature to criticize the contemptuous and condescending attitude displayed by the Chinese toward foreign countries, saying that it did not accord with the teachings of the sages of ancient times. His criticism seems to have struck home: Li subsequently wrote a letter to a subordinate noting that Japan had grown strong ever since adopting the policy of Westernization and that China was now lagging behind.

Soejima left Tientsin on May 5 and arrived in Peking two days later. He discovered on his arrival that “for over a hundred days,” the ministers from the various foreign countries had been engaged in a confrontation with the Chinese court on the matter of how they were to present their compliments to the emperor. They insisted that the Chinese court follow the custom elsewhere of the emperor’s receiving the foreign dignitaries standing, but the court wished these dignitaries to follow Chinese custom and kneel before the seated emperor. Neither side seemed willing to yield. The Chinese, ever since the time of Emperor K’ang Hsi in the seventeenth century, when Manchu rule was at its height, had demanded that Europeans prostrate themselves before the emperor. Needless to say, Europeans found kneeling distasteful. In response to the complaints of the Russian envoy, K’ang Hsi replied that while the Russians were in China, they must follow Chinese customs. In return, if a Chinese envoy went to Russia, he would obey Russian customs. The Russian finally yielded. On the day he presented himself before the emperor, he was compelled to kneel in the rain while the emperor sat haughtily ensconced on his throne, protected from the rain by a roof. The Russian had no choice but to execute the required three bows followed by nine kneelings.
¹⁴

Soejima was indignant that the Chinese, not recognizing the altered circumstances of the nineteenth century, still acted as if China were the Middle Kingdom—the center of the world—and required foreign diplomats to humiliate themselves in accordance with precedents established at the court of K’ang Hsi. He did not mention in his memoirs that a similar question had arisen at the Japanese court not long before. In April 1872 the British acting minister, R. G. Watson, arrived in T
ō
ky
ō
and requested an audience with the emperor in order to present his credentials. Expressing the hope that the traditional manner of receiving foreigners at the Japanese court would be changed, he asked that the emperor, following the general custom in the West, receive diplomats standing, as a mark of mutual respect, instead of receiving them while seated on his
gyokuza
. Soejima, then foreign minister, “strongly and emphatically” refused the request, saying that when diplomats visited a foreign country, they should follow the customs of that country—precisely the attitude of the Chinese court that so annoyed Soejima. He informed the British acting minister that as long as he insisted that the emperor stand during the reception, he would not be permitted to appear before the emperor.
¹⁵
Watson left without a word.

Some time later the Russian envoy to Japan, Evgenii K. Biutsov, then engaged in negotiations over the fate of Sakhalin, requested an audience with the emperor. He informed Soejima that he left it to the emperor to decide whether to receive him standing or sitting. Soejima, pleased with this conciliatory attitude, arranged an audience. On this occasion Meiji, to everyone’s surprise, received the Russian standing. When the British minister learned of this, he felt embarrassed over his earlier inflexibility and requested an audience, saying this time that it did not matter in which manner the emperor received him. He was granted an audience, at which Meiji again stood to receive the foreign envoy. This was his own decision. He apparently wished to demonstrate that he was willing to accept international standards of etiquette, provided that foreign envoys ceased to demand that he conform to their ways. It is said that the incident made Watson a staunch friend of Japan.
¹⁶

Despite the attitude he had displayed in Japan, Soejima was as reluctant as the Europeans to comply with the Chinese custom of requiring those who had an audience with the emperor to kowtow. He was sure that his country was more advanced than China and that it was no longer necessary for the Japanese to approach the Chinese court with awe and trepidation.

When Soejima met with Chinese officials of the Office for Foreign Affairs on May 24, his first question was why a busy man like himself had been kept waiting so long for an audience with the emperor. An official explained that it was because of Prince Kung’s illness. (Illness was recognized in China, as elsewhere in East Asia, as an unanswerable excuse for not meeting visitors.) He mentioned also that the Chinese government was studying the plan for the audience ceremony that had been submitted by the European and American envoys. Soejima demanded why the Chinese thought it necessary to consider the opinions of foreigners concerning a Chinese ceremony, contrasting this with the practice in Japan: “We decide how the foreign envoys are to be received and wait for their arrival; the envoys may therefore be received by the emperor as early as the day after their arrival. We do not tolerate any interference or disagreement on their part, and thus we make clear our imperial authority.”
¹⁷

Soejima took out a folding fan on which he had written in classical Chinese a brief statement of his views on how the emperor should receive foreign envoys. He used Confucian terms to evoke the relationship between the head of a state and visiting envoys: it should be that of friends, and sincerity and mutual respect should govern audiences. Soejima stated that the ceremony should conform to the standards of etiquette of the envoy’s country, rather than those of the receiving court. This contention was precisely the opposite of the attitude he had displayed in Japan.

Throughout his conversation with the Chinese officials, Soejima quoted the Chinese classics to confirm his views. For example, in berating the Chinese for their contemptuous attitude toward foreigners, he quoted the teaching of the duke of Chou: “Even barbarians are people; if you treat them as barbarians they will be just that, but if you treat them as true gentlemen they will indeed become true gentlemen.” He poured scorn on the Chinese for not relying (as he did) on their ancient wisdom.
¹⁸

On June 1 Prince Kung, who seems to have recovered, visited Soejima. Seeking to establish a difference between a Japanese who was familiar with the Chinese classics and ignorant Europeans, Prince Kung said he was sure that Soejima would not object to bowing before the emperor in the prescribed manner. Soejima was enraged and replied that it was beneath his dignity as a representative of Emperor Meiji to grovel before the Chinese emperor. The next day the Office of Foreign Affairs announced its approval of the proposal made by the Western envoys to substitute five bows for the traditional kowtow. Soejima composed a letter of reply stating that he had no intention of complying with the new plan. If he had to bow before the emperor, he expected the emperor to bow back. LeGendre urged Soejima not to send the letter, fearing that it would only make the Chinese more obstinate, but Soejima insisted, predicting that the very extremity of his statements would prove effective.
¹⁹

The negotiations continued. Soejima was determined to be received by the Chinese emperor as an equal (in his capacity as Meiji’s ambassador); he also expected to be received ahead of any of the Western diplomats whose rank was only that of minister. Although he was initially opposed on these two points by both the Chinese and the Western ministers, in the end he was victorious. He was accorded the honor due to his superior rank and was even congratulated by the Europeans; and he was consequently received before any of the other envoys at a private ceremony by the emperor.

Soejima still had not touched on what was ostensibly the main business that had brought him to China—the punishment of the Taiwan aborigines. On June 21 he sent Yanagihara Sakimitsu (1850–1894), the first secretary of the embassy, and the interpreter Tei Nagayasu to the Office of Foreign Affairs to discuss the aborigines and China’s relations with Korea. His attention at this time to Korea suggests that he was already thinking of punishing the Koreans for their discourteous treatment of Japanese envoys.

During the discussion on Taiwan, Yanagihara insisted that the Chinese had shown they were unable to control the aborigines. He pointed out that in the past the island had belonged to Japan, later to the Netherlands, and still later to Coxinga. The Chinese had never occupied more than half, and their rule did not extend to the aborigines in the eastern part of the island who two years earlier had murdered shipwrecked Japanese. The Japanese intended to send a punitive expedition against the aborigines, but because the part of Taiwan where the aborigines lived was adjacent to Chinese territory, the Japanese had thought it advisable to inform the Chinese of their intentions.

The Chinese replied that they had heard of some Ry
ū
ky
ū
subjects being murdered, but not of any Japanese. The survivors of the attack by the aborigines had been rescued by Chinese officials and returned to their country, the Ry
ū
ky
ū
Islands. Yanagihara objected, saying that ever since “middle antiquity” the islands had belonged to Satsuma and that the Okinawans, being Japanese subjects, were entitled to the protection of the Japanese government.
²⁰

During the ensuing discussion, the Chinese admitted that their political rule did not extend to every part of Taiwan and that the “wild natives” (as opposed to the “mature natives” who had accepted Chinese rule) were not under their control. This statement was used to justify the Japanese attack in April 1874 on the aboriginal areas of Taiwan.

With respect to Korea, Yanagihara was informed that although the king of Korea received investiture from the emperor of China, the internal administration of the country and questions of war and peace remained in the hands of the Koreans. This admission served to assure Soejima that the Chinese would not intervene if the Japanese attacked Korea.

Soejima concluded his mission with an audience with the emperor.
²¹
He did not kneel but bowed three times. When his audience was completed, the ministers of Russia, Britain, the United States, France, and the Netherlands were received in a group. Although their credentials had been issued nearly twenty years earlier, only now were they able to present them, largely thanks to Soejima.

After the ceremonies had ended, the various foreign envoys were invited to a formal banquet in keeping with the Chinese custom, but it was so hot that day that the Western ministers had privately agreed to decline the invitation. When Soejima was asked if he also intended to decline the meal, he replied (being familiar with Chinese etiquette), “Certainly not. I gladly accept.” This produced a favorable impression on the Chinese princes and officials, who contrasted Soejima’s courtesy with the insulting behavior of the envoys of the Western countries who had declined the emperor’s invitation. This incident did not, however, cause the Europeans to turn against Soejima. Before Soejima left Peking, the British minister, Sir Thomas Wade, called on him to express the thanks of all the foreign diplomats for solving the problem of how the emperor would receive them, a matter that had impeded communication for many years.
²²

The Chinese also expressed their gratitude for his efforts. When Soejima’s ship left Taku (the port of Tientsin), he was given a twenty-one-gun salute, the first time the Chinese had ever fired guns from their forts in honor of a foreigner.
²³
Moreover, during Soejima’s brief stay in Tientsin on the journey back to Japan, Li Hung-chang visited him at his inn, even though this meant breaking his period of mourning for his deceased brother. The two men spent several hours in conversation. Li also favored him with a letter in which he praised Soejima’s conduct of the
Maria Luz
affair and urged that their two countries, both situated in the East, join in perpetual friendship.
²⁴