Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (83 page)

Ueki nowhere explained why he kept referring to himself as the emperor. He certainly had an unusual interest in the person of the emperor. Entries in his diary, normally devoted exclusively to his own doings, from 1873 mention progresses of the emperor, the birth of royal children, and glimpses he had obtained of the “dragon countenance.” It is conceivable that this obsession with the emperor was the reverse side of his antimonarchist sentiments. On August 2, 1879, Ueki had a dream that he recalled in these terms: “I was in T
ō
ky
ō
, and somebody got angry with me because, he said, I had failed to show respect for the emperor in the course of an argument, or maybe it was that I said something close to advocating a republican form of government. Anyway, he sent two young men to stab me. I was slightly wounded, but did not die.”
³⁰

Needless to say, such diary entries have no connection with Meiji himself, but Ueki’s friend Yokoyama Matakichi wrote that in the final years of Ueki’s short life, “One might say that he had gone crazy. He thought that he was the emperor.”
³¹
If Ueki had been no more than a madman, his curious references to himself as the emperor would be of no interest; but at the time he wrote these words, he was actively engaged in giving lectures and writing articles in support of freedom and popular rights.

In January 1880 Ueki wrote an article in which he said that although some people feared a republican form of government, if truly understood, it would prove a blessing to the nation.
³²
Generally speaking, however, Ueki seemed to take the existence of the monarchy in Japan as a “given.” The constitution he drafted in 1881 provided for an emperor and mentioned some of his prerogatives. He did not openly advocate a republic.
³³

Ueki is also remembered for his article “Concerning Equal Rights for Men and Women,” perhaps the earliest example of a Japanese call for equal rights. It was long claimed that Ueki wrote his famous editorial against prostitution (published in February 1882) in a brothel, but there is no evidence to support this. All the same, his advocacy of equal rights for women certainly began while he was still very actively indulging himself with prostitutes. Although he recognized the difficulty of abolishing prostitution in the near future, he urged that efforts be made to educate prostitutes in the principles of liberalism.

Ueki served the cause of freedom and popular rights through all the movement’s convolutions. In 1880 the Aikoku-sha renamed itself the League for Establishing a National Assembly, and in 1881 it became the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
(Party of Freedom). Ueki prepared a draft of the party’s principles and procedures.

It is not known what Meiji thought of these developments, but it is unlikely they pleased him. He was certainly aware of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
members’ anger over such events as the scandal of the Hokkaid
ō
Development Office and thought it advisable to mollify them. On October 12, 1881, he announced that a parliament would be convened in 1890.
³⁴

The announcement took its urgency from the demands of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
and other political groups to open a parliament, but many important matters of policy were still to be decided. Would the new government be modeled on the British or the Prussian system? Behind national differences was the basic question of whether the constitution would come from the people (British style) or be bestowed by the emperor (Prussian style).

An even more fundamental problem was the future legislators’ almost total lack of training in parliamentary procedures. At the mass meeting of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
in October 1881, Got
ō
Shojir
ō
was chosen as the president and Baba Tatsui as the vice president, but (according to Baba’s diary) Got
ō
almost never attended meetings. It was therefore left to Baba, who had studied at the Middle Temple in London and was well acquainted with the manner in which sessions of the British Parliament were conducted, to preside. Baba was dismayed by the party members’ ignorance of even the basic rules of parliamentary discussion. When he rebuked them for their ignorance, they answered that regardless of how assemblies were conducted in Europe, they were Japanese and would behave in a “Japanese style.” Baba persisted, and in the end the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
was officially formed.
³⁵
Itagaki Taisuke was elected the chairman (
S
ō
ri
) of the new party.
³⁶

The Jiy
ū
-t
ō
’s future objectives were by no means clear now that the emperor’s proclamation had ensured the convening of a parliament. A rival party, the Rikken kai shint
ō
(Constitutional Reform Party), formed by
Ō
kuma in April 1882, had a more definite objective, the creation of a British-style parliamentary democracy headed by a constitutional monarch. In his address at the founding of the Rikken kai shint
ō
,
Ō
kuma emphasized the symbolic (rather than active) role of the monarch in the democratic government he favored: “There are some who, though they style themselves the party of ‘respect for the emperor’ and wear the trappings of that virtue, actually seek mainly to establish a few families as the bulwark of the Imperial Household or to protect the Imperial Household with troops. The extremists of this group would push the sovereign to the very forefront, and make him bear directly the administration. They would by their support of the Imperial Household place it in a position of danger.”
³⁷

Ō
kuma repeatedly emphasized his devotion to the imperial household. He stated in the same address, “I hope always to work with an ever firmer resolve for the achievement of the glorious work of the Restoration; for the laying of a foundation for our empire which will last through all eternity; and for the everlasting preservation of the dignity and prosperity of the Imperial Household and the happiness of the people.”

On April 6, 1882, having just finished delivering an address in Gifu, Itagaki was attacked and wounded by a man wielding a dagger. Although the wounds were superficial and the assailant was immediately subdued, Itagaki, no doubt believing that he was dying, is reported to have cried, “Itagaki may die, but freedom will never die!”
³⁸
The emperor was shocked by the news and immediately sent a chamberlain to find out what had happened.
³⁹

The incident created a great deal of sympathy for Itagaki, and the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
gained new members in all parts of the country. The government, however, imposed more and more stringent regulations on its activities. When members of the party protested the tyrannical actions of the governor of Fukushima in putting down a peasant revolt, they were imprisoned and eventually charged with treason.

The government had a more ingenious, even Machiavellian, plan for disposing of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
’s leadership. In March 1882 It
ō
Hirobumi, along with many advisers, went to Europe to investigate the constitutions of various countries. Itagaki visited him shortly before his departure, and It
ō
took the occasion to urge Itagaki, who had never been abroad, to go to Europe to study the politics and customs of the different countries. He declared that unless a man was personally acquainted with conditions in Europe, he was likely to be influenced by those who glorified everything foreign and to end up misleading the Japanese people. Itagaki was tempted and replied that he would go if the money for his travels could be arranged.
⁴⁰

It
ō
secretly conferred with Inoue Kaoru, and they agreed that the best way to deprive the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
of its strength was to get Itagaki and Got
ō
Sh
ō
jir
ō
to spend considerable time abroad. It
ō
and Inoue set about raising funds for their travels, eventually obtaining a promise of $20,000 from the Mitsui Bank in return for extending for three years its contract with the army.

At the end of August 1882 Itagaki suddenly announced that he was going to Europe, and Got
ō
soon afterward did the same. The two men were completely unprepared to study conditions in Europe. According to Baba Tatsui, they could not even read roman letters, let alone a foreign language. There was no chance they could learn any significant information. Although an interpreter was supplied to assist them, the man’s principal job (though they did not suspect this) was to spy on them and report their activities to Inoue.
⁴¹

The two men were never given a satisfactory explanation concerning the source of the money for their travels, but this does not seem to have bothered them. They were so desperately eager to go abroad that they became quite irrational whenever members of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
questioned the advisability of their making the journey.
⁴²

As might easily have been predicted, the stay in Europe did neither man any good. Got
ō
spent most of the time in Paris, occasionally (perhaps as a sop to his conscience) making trips to Prussia, Austria, or England. In Vienna, at It
ō
’s suggestion, for some ten days he attended lectures given by the great Professor Lorenz von Stein. It
ō
had recommended study with Stein as an antidote to the excessive liberalism expounded by those under the influence of England, France, or the United States and as a way of strengthening the foundations of the imperial household. But Professor Stein’s lectures that year were devoted to miscellaneous remarks about the coup d’état of Napoleon III, and Got
ō
derived nothing from them.

Itagaki was proud to have met Clemenceau and Victor Hugo, but his time in France was spent mainly in sightseeing, as the account of his travels published after his return to Japan demonstrated. He succeeded in meeting Herbert Spencer, the idol of Japanese intellectuals, but even as Itagaki was expounding one of his woolly arguments, Spencer cried out in exasperation, “No, no, no!” got up, and left the room.
⁴³

Itagaki and Got
ō
returned to Japan in June 1883. They discovered that in their absence, the two chief liberal parties, the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
and the Rikken kai shint
ō
, had taken to furious exchanges of mudslinging. This, no doubt, was the result the conservative leaders of the government had hoped for when they bought off Itagaki and Got
ō
with a trip to Europe. Members of the Jiy
ū
-t
ō
who hoped that Itagaki would enlighten them about the republican form of government in France or the constitutional monarchy in England were disillusioned when they heard him deliver lectures in which he declared that although Japan lagged behind Europe in the standard of living, it was well advanced in government. He urged party members to devote greater efforts to raising the standard of living and warned of the peril to Japan if its navy were not strongly reinforced.
⁴⁴
Nothing was left of the crusading liberal.

The Jiy
ū
-t
ō
was disbanded on October 29, 1884, and its bitter rival the Rikken kai shint
ō
was effectively disbanded on December 17 of the same year when
Ō
kuma and K
ō
no Togama, its two chief officers, resigned. The liberal parties were dead and would have to be brought back to life during the coming years.

Chapter 36

After the turbulent incidents that marked the fourteenth year of Meiji’s reign, 1882—or at least the first half of that year—seemed exceptionally peaceful. The year opened, as usual, with the emperor worshiping the four directions and performing other traditional New Year rituals.

The first noteworthy event of the year occurred on January 4. That day the emperor summoned Army Minister
Ō
yama Iwao and personally presented him with the Imperial Rescript for Military Men.
¹
The rescript was subsequently distributed widely among the military and, by General
Ō
yama’s command, printed at the head of the pocket notebooks distributed annually for the next sixty and more years to soldiers and sailors, to be read, memorized, and obeyed.