Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (68 page)

By the time they reached Oyashirazu Koshirazu, the most dangerous place on the Japan Sea coast, cliffs dropping into the sea and the only road washed by the waves, everyone was exhausted. Once safely passed this frightening place, Meiji stopped his carriage to enjoy the scenery. It was magnificent—he could catch glimpses through the ocean spray of Sado Island and the Noto Peninsula.
⁹

Danger of another sort was feared in Kanazawa, for this was where
Ō
kubo’s assassins had plotted, and there might still be unruly elements in the population. Nothing untoward happened; instead, the emperor spent his time as usual—visiting schools, the Kenrokuen garden, and a museum where products from home and abroad were displayed. At Komatsu, the emperor received letters and gifts from the empress and empress dowager. No doubt they gave him as much pleasure as letters from home bring any traveler.

From this point on, the journey was relatively easy. From Kanazawa he went to Komatsu, Fukui, Tsuruga,
Ō
tsu, and on to Ky
ō
to. One night in Ky
ō
to he entertained the members of his suite with stories of the Gosho before the Restoration. Although his recollections were barely ten years old, they may have seemed echoes of the distant past.

Plans for the emperor to worship at the Great Shrine of Ise during his progress through the T
ō
kai region had to be altered when typhus was reported in Mie Prefecture. The revised route took the procession through Kusatsu,
Ō
gaki, and Gifu to Nagoya. At each stop, as usual, the emperor visited schools and exhibitions of local products. There is no suggestion that he was bored or impatient to get back to T
ō
ky
ō
; his strong sense of duty, submerged temporarily during the Satsuma Rebellion, had again manifested itself and characterized his actions for the rest of his life.

Meiji returned to T
ō
ky
ō
on November 9. He had traveled some 440
ri
(more than 1,000 miles) over a period of seventy-two days and had passed through eleven prefectures. Despite the fatigue of the journey, he looked well and seemed to be in good spirits. The day was declared a holiday, and everywhere in the capital he was greeted with flags.

The remainder of the year was generally uneventful, but just before it ended—on December 27—an order was suddenly issued by the Court Council abolishing the Ry
ū
ky
ū
domain. The minister of the interior, It
ō
Hirobumi, had decided to demote the domain to a prefecture; it would no longer be a kingdom but merely one of many prefectures. The background of this decision was the refusal of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
domain to obey the Japanese order to break its contacts with the Chinese court. The Ry
ū
ky
ū
king had been specifically commanded not to send an envoy to express congratulations when a new emperor ascended the throne of China or to receive appointment by the Chinese emperor as king of the domain. The king had disregarded these orders and had secretly sent a member of his family to the Chinese court to appeal for help against Japan. He had also asked the domain representative in T
ō
ky
ō
to secure help from the Chinese, American, French, and Dutch ministers. No fewer than fourteen petitions were submitted to the Japanese government asking to return to the old form of dual allegiance to both Japan and China, pointing out that “Japan is our father and China our mother.”
¹⁰

The Japanese insisted, however, “For a country to serve two emperors is like a wife serving two husbands.”
¹¹
The Ry
ū
ky
ū
kingdom had for centuries served two masters, China and Satsuma, paying tribute to both. This was the only way a small country with few resources and no military strength could maintain its existence. Determined to break the ties between the Ry
ū
ky
ū
Islands and China, the Japanese were exasperated by the king’s stalling tactics. Finally It
ō
decided to abolish the domain, using as a pretext the king’s intransigence. He ordered Matsuda Michiyuki (1839–1882), the chief secretary of the Interior Ministry, to draw up a plan for terminating the Ry
ū
ky
ū
domain. The plan called for the enforced removal of the king from Okinawa to T
ō
ky
ō
. It was approved by the prime minister and the Court Council. The king was ordered to comply within a week with the order issued to him. If he refused, the Japanese government would take “positive measures” to dissolve the domain. In the meantime Ry
ū
ky
ū
officials stationed in T
ō
ky
ō
were ordered to return immediately to Okinawa, a first step in depriving the domain of its semiautonomous status.
¹²

Matsuda Michiyuki left Yokohama for Naha on January 8, 1879. He arrived in Naha on January 25 and on the following day went to Shuri, the Ry
ū
ky
ū
capital, where he met with high officials and read aloud this message from Sanj
ō
Sanetomi:

On May 29, 1875, you sent an alternate-year tributary mission to China and a congratulatory envoy on the occasion of the succession to the throne of the Chinese emperor. Moreover, when you were named king of the domain, you accepted the status of a loyal vassal of China. You were forbidden to continue these practices, but you have not yet submitted a statement of compliance. Again, although you were directed in May 1876, in connection with the establishment of a magistrate in your territory, to turn over all the court business of the domain, you have failed to comply with this to the present, terming this a “supplication.” This situation cannot be allowed to persist. If you continue to fail to obey directives, appropriate measures will be taken. This demand is urgent.
¹³

After reading this statement, Matsuda gave the document to Sh
ō
Hitsu, the younger brother of the king. He added verbally a threat of extreme measures in the event that the order was not obeyed and gave the king until 10
A.M.
on February 3 to respond. On January 29 Matsuda sent the king another missive ordering him to submit a statement of obedience, together with an oath. Failure to comply would be interpreted as a sign that the king was likely to repeat his former errors and so would not carry out his promise in good faith. The king was ordered to appear at the branch office of the Interior Ministry along with the king’s deputy. But the king did not appear on the third. Instead he sent some senior officials with his reply to Matsuda’s letter.

The king, using deferential terms, explained the difficulty of his position. If he refused to pay tribute and offer congratulations to the Chinese court (as Matsuda commanded) and refused appointment as a vassal to that court, his domain would certainly be punished by the Chinese. His small country, caught between two strong countries, was helpless. He abjectly begged for Japanese sympathy.

Sh
ō
Tai had never been a commanding figure, but there is something inescapably moving in the spectacle of a king cringing before an official whose sense of mission—disposal of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
problem—left no room for pity. Matsuda, charging that the king’s letter was evidence that he still refused to obey the order of the Court Council, announced that he was returning to T
ō
ky
ō
where he would report in detail what had transpired. He told the Ry
ū
ky
ū
officials to await further orders. When the officials begged him to show consideration, he not only refused but added a new cause of complaint: he was angry that although Ry
ū
ky
ū
ans had been directed years earlier to use the reign-name Meiji, they still dated their documents according to the Chinese reign-name Kuang-hsü. He declared that this was absolutely forbidden.

Matsuda left the next day for T
ō
ky
ō
. On March 11 the emperor issued a command abolishing the Ry
ū
ky
ū
domain and directing the king and his heirs to move to T
ō
ky
ō
.
¹⁴
Okinawa would become a prefecture, and members of the royal family would be given titles in the Japanese peerage. Matsuda sailed once again to Okinawa, this time with more than 160 police and 500 infantry troops. The king, pleading illness, refused to see Matsuda, but on March 11 he left the palace, the seat of Ry
ū
ky
ū
authority for 500 years where he had lived his entire life, and moved to the residence of the crown prince, Sh
ō
Ten.

Sh
ō
Tai’s resistance seems to have had some effect. On April 5 the emperor sent the chamberlain Tominok
ō
ji Takanao to inquire about Sh
ō
Tai’s health. He privately directed Tominok
ō
ji to urge Sh
ō
Tai to come to T
ō
ky
ō
as soon as possible and, in order that the king might travel safely, sent the government-owned ship
Meiji maru
for his use.

Tominok
ō
ji arrived in Naha on April 13 and, protected by an escort of thirty police officers, went on to Shuri. Sh
ō
Tai declined because of illness to see the emperor’s envoy but sent word asking that Sh
ō
Ten be allowed to receive him instead. Tominok
ō
ji, refusing, went with Matsuda to Sh
ō
Tai’s temporary residence. He was met at the gate by princes of the royal house and high officials, and Sh
ō
Ten led the envoy to Sh
ō
Tai’s sickroom. The king, with his clothes and hat of ceremony placed on the bed, pretended (as a mark of respect to the emperor’s envoy) to put them on. Then, supported by two attendants, he rose from bed and, kneeling, bowed profoundly.

The envoy communicated the emperor’s message. Sh
ō
Tai expressed thanks in extremely humble language. Tominok
ō
ji asked whether he would obey the emperor’s command. The king replied that he would answer the following day.

Now that the formal part of the visit was over, Matsuda left his chair and, sitting on the floor, expressed sympathy for the king’s illness and the mental anxiety he had suffered during the past months. Tominok
ō
ji joined in comforting the king. When they had left the sickroom, they agreed that although Sh
ō
Tai looked pale, there was no sign of a wasting illness; but it was clear that he was not merely pretending to be ill.
¹⁵

On April 14 Matsuda summoned the chief officials of the former domain and urged them to persuade the king to make a reply. The king was exceedingly reluctant to leave Okinawa and begged for a postponement of his departure because of illness. Matsuda refused, saying that because Sh
ō
Tai’s illness was chronic, he could not hope to recover completely. On the fifteenth, Sh
ō
Tai’s brother Sh
ō
Hitsu, along with more than twenty senior officials, begged Tominok
ō
ji and Matsuda for a stay of four or five months, proposing that one of the royal princes be sent (as a hostage) to T
ō
ky
ō
. On the sixteenth, 150 members of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
aristocracy, along with the royal princes and senior domain officials, begged for a stay of ninety days. This was refused outright. It was pointed out that the king would enjoy the special protection of the state during the voyage and that there was nothing to worry about.

Behind the intransigence of the Japanese officials was the fear that the king was delaying his departure for T
ō
ky
ō
in the hopes that in the meantime, the Chinese would come to his support. The sooner Sh
ō
Tai was in T
ō
ky
ō
, they reasoned, the less chance there was of Chinese intervention.

The king was scheduled to leave on April 18, but on the day before Sh
ō
Hitsu and other high officials made a final appeal to Matsuda. They said this time that it was not only because of Sh
ō
Tai’s health that a delay of ninety days was sought but because the former domain had been unsettled by recent changes and the king himself was needed to admonish the people and persuade them to continue at their normal occupations. This time they proposed that Sh
ō
Ten, the crown prince, be sent to T
ō
ky
ō
. Matsuda at last yielded but insisted that there was no reason to postpone the departure for ninety days. Therefore he would shorten the period of delay and inform them the next day exactly when the king would have to leave.

Matsuda was not worried by the possibility of unrest. He reasoned also that if the king persisted in refusing to go to T
ō
ky
ō
, he could be taken by main force. But if Sh
ō
Ten was left in Okinawa, he might become the focal point for a rebellion that would lead to Chinese intervention. The best plan was to get both Sh
ō
Tai and Sh
ō
Ten to T
ō
ky
ō
. He decided therefore to accept the proposal that Sh
ō
Ten be sent to T
ō
ky
ō
and to state that the decision about whether or not Sh
ō
Tai’s departure might be delayed would be left to the prime minister. Once Sh
ō
Ten was safely in T
ō
ky
ō
, they could say that Sh
ō
Tai’s request had been refused. In this way responsibility for sending Sh
ō
Tai to T
ō
ky
ō
would rest at the highest level of the government. An imperial envoy would then be sent to Okinawa to escort Sh
ō
Tai to the capital.
¹⁶