Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (97 page)

The tone of the protests became openly xenophobic. The proposed use of foreigners as judges in Japanese courts was attacked with particular vehemence. Rhetorical questions were voiced: How is it possible that men who were so brave in face of the shogunate armies are so afraid of foreign countries? What will become of national independence if the revised treaties are put into effect?
⁴⁰

Inoue Kowashi sent a letter to the prime minister urging him to cease negotiations for treaty revision. At first Inoue had favored using naturalized foreign judges, but he was now convinced that the country faced irremediable disaster unless attempts to revise the treaties were abandoned altogether. He decided he must resign and pleaded unsuccessfully with Prime Minister Kuroda to resign as well. He sent a letter to Minister of Justice Yamada Akiyoshi recalling that when Iwakura Tomomi was on his deathbed in 1883, he had commanded him never to forget that the fate of the nation hung on not allowing foreigners to dwell in the interior as long as they demanded legal privileges. Inoue feared that if Japan went ahead with treaty revision, advocates of national rights would become increasingly emotional, and in the end patriots would join with crass politicians to rid the country of foreigners. In that case, Japan would surely suffer the fate of Egypt.
⁴¹

The emperor, who had earlier seemed to favor treaty revision as advocated by his chief ministers, was now worried. He sent for
Ō
kuma and asked about the state of negotiations with Britain and about relations with Russia since the treaty was signed.
Ō
kuma assured the emperor that despite the difficulties, he was confident that a treaty with Britain would soon be signed. The emperor was not convinced. He had the impression that Kuroda left everything to
Ō
kuma, who was trying to run the country single-handedly, and he wondered whether it was safe to leave matters in one man’s hands. When It
ō
first brought up the question of treaty revision, he did not suggest that there might be a conflict with the constitution, and for this reason the emperor had assented. The question was what to do now. Should attempts to revise the treaties be abandoned? Or should the revised treaties be revised still further? He asked It
ō
to submit a plan.
⁴²

It
ō
had no plan to offer, but the antirevisionists grew more and more strident in their demands that
Ō
kuma be compelled to resign. At this stage, prophets of disaster raised their voices. Nishimura Shigeki gave as his reason for opposing revision of the treaties the fierce and unruly dispositions of Europeans and Americans that compelled them to commit incessant acts of aggression. If the Japanese, impressed by foreigners’ learning and dazzled by their wealth, believed their fair words and were led astray by their religion, in the end they would fall into the foreigners’ trap, and Japan would suffer the same fate as India, Turkey, Egypt, and other countries. Considering the relative strength of Japan to the West—the comparative levels of information and wealth—if foreigners were allowed to live among Japanese in the interior and to buy property there, it was likely to benefit them only and to bring the Japanese only losses. After a hundred years, all the landowners would be foreigners, and the present landowners would be tenant farmers. Land that had been in the possession of the imperial household for thousands of years, ever since the foundation of the country, would belong to foreigners. Business and industry would also be in the hands of the foreigners. Japanese would be treated by them exactly like slaves. The present treaties were not without faults, but compared with the revised treaties, the harm they did to Japan was minor. The present treaties had the effect of keeping the foreigners at a distance, but the revised treaties would bring them close, and that would be a disaster.
⁴³

Although Nishimura had been chosen as a lecturer to the emperor because of his special knowledge of Western institutions, he was harsh in his appraisal of foreigners. Extraterritoriality had been considered for years as the most hateful manifestation of Western feelings of superiority to Japan, but Nishimura felt it was of only minor significance compared with the sacrifices Japan would be obliged to make in exchange for ending extraterritoriality. Ironically, the British, far from considering that the Japanese were victims, were astonished that the Germans were willing to yield so much to Japan in return for so little!
⁴⁴

On October 3, increasingly concerned over the situation, the emperor sent an official to ask Kuroda to meet with It
ō
and decide whether to push ahead with treaty revision. Kuroda was determined to carry out the revision, regardless of how many obstacles there might be, but It
ō
, who had previously supported it, had lost the courage to carry it through. Alleging illness, he refused to see anyone.
⁴⁵
Sasaki Takayuki, long one of the emperor’s trusted advisers, reported that opposition to treaty revision was growing every day. He foresaw great turbulence if the emperor did not deliver a decision, but the emperor preferred to wait until the negotiations with Britain had been concluded. He was also waiting for a decision to emerge from the deliberations of It
ō
, Kuroda, and
Ō
kuma.

A meeting of delegates from all parties was held in the presence of the emperor, but it ended in a stalemate, with neither side willing to change its viewpoint. The participants, despairing of reaching a solution, repeatedly appealed to the emperor to pass judgment, but he seemed reluctant to act without a concrete proposal from It
ō
. Both sides attempted to win Yamagata’s support, but he only counseled delay.

On October 18
Ō
kuma was seriously wounded by a “patriot.” That day, as he was leaving court to return to his house, a man leaped out and threw a bomb at his carriage.
Ō
kuma was badly wounded. Dr. Baelz, who was summoned to treat him, concluded that there was no choice but to amputate
Ō
kuma’s leg above the knee. Baelz added, “
Ō
kuma, who with much labour and skill had at length achieved what the Japanese had almost universally and for so long had been desiring, was now decried as an enemy of his country, as one who would hand it over to foreigners. Much nonsensical talk of this kind has culminated in the abominable attempt to assassinate him. A few days ago Count Ito, president of the Council of State, resigned. He is an artful dodger!”
⁴⁶

Ō
kuma eventually recovered from the wound and the loss of his leg, but treaty revision was doomed, at least for the time being. Baelz wrote in anger, “To listen to the Japanese talking about it or to read Japanese newspapers, one would suppose that it is the foreigners who have been trying to effect revision, and have wanted to force it upon the Japanese! … A year hence they will see things more clearly, and will probably want revision once more.”
⁴⁷

Kuroda said he was willing to accept full responsibility for the failure of the treaty revision and tendered his resignation to the emperor. He favored Yamagata as his successor, but Sanj
ō
Sanetomi, a safe but hardly dynamic figure, was appointed instead as a kind of interim prime minister until Yamagata was ready to take the position.
Ō
kuma resigned as foreign minister. The struggle to revise the unequal treaties was over, at least for the time being.

Chapter 41

On New Year’s Day of 1890, the emperor, now in his thirty-ninth year, once again failed to worship the four directions. It was given out that he was ill, but we may suspect that having spent many hours listening to debates about the constitution and other matters of vital concern, the emperor was not so much ill as bored with his formal duties. But even though he sometimes neglected rituals, he devoted himself to his work this year with greater enthusiasm than ever before, hardly taking a day of rest. On July 17 Tokudaiji Sanetsune, the chief chamberlain, noted in his diary that regardless of the weather—even when it was broiling hot—the emperor went every day to his office to make decisions on state affairs and, not showing the least sign of ennui, devoted himself to studying plans for the government.
¹

The observance of protocol had come to be fairly time-consuming. Not only was there a steady stream of foreign visitors who had to be received with repetitions of set expressions of greeting or farewell, but as the result of the court’s eagerness to associate itself with foreign royalty, the emperor had to send messages of congratulations whenever a child was born to the royal families of Europe. A much more tedious obligation was the necessity of going into mourning whenever word was received of the death of a foreign monarch or other member of royalty. In Europe this obligation was intelligible in terms of the blood and marital relations that joined most of the royal houses, but the death on January 8 of Empress Augusta, the consort of Wilhelm I, although it could not have meant much to Emperor Meiji, plunged the Japanese court into mourning for twenty-one days. On January 20 the death of the duke of Aosta necessitated another six days of mourning. Deaths among the emperor’s “cousins” were so frequent that regulations governing the appropriate periods of mourning had to be drawn up. The various foreign countries were divided into major (Russia, England, Germany, China, and Italy) and minor (Holland, Spain, Belgium, Hawaii, Sweden, Portugal, and so on) The deaths of the sovereigns, consorts, and crown princes of major nations required twenty-one days of mourning, but the deaths of the royalty of minor countries might require no more than three days of mourning.
²

Closer at hand, the emperor’s worries about the crown prince’s health continued. Although Sono Sachiko gave birth in February to the emperor’s seventh daughter, the health of Yoshihito, his son and heir, was a source of unending concern.

Another concern of the emperor was the plight of the former high-ranking nobles, many of whom had been reduced to penury. One solution was to appoint them as Shint
ō
priests, but this often proved unsatisfactory. The most eloquent member of the imperial family, Prince Asahiko, tried the patience of the emperor with repeated pleas for special treatment for his class. When the emperor visited Ky
ō
to in April, he felt so sorry for the impoverished nobles that he presented them with 10,000 yen.
³

These matters directly affected the emperor and were important to him, but his main interest had shifted to politics, especially to the forthcoming general election, scheduled for July 1. This would be an event without precedent in Asia. Revision of the foreign treaties, a matter of such bitter dispute in the preceding year, had certainly not been forgotten, but time went by with little progress being made. On January 29 the new foreign minister, Aoki Sh
ū
z
ō
(1844–1914), who had been appointed on December 24 of the previous year, presented for the emperor’s approval a memorandum on treaty revision to be sent to the foreign countries with which Japan had concluded treaties. The minister of the imperial household, Hijikata Hisamoto, expressed his conviction that unless the emperor himself was roused into action in support of this new plan, it would be impossible to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. Action by the emperor would also be essential in order to win the heartfelt support of the people.

Deeply concerned, the emperor consulted with It
ō
Hirobumi and Sasaki Takayuki. Sasaki, a long-time adviser, insisted that the cabinet was the appropriate agency for dealing with the matter. This might not be true of other countries, he said, but the national polity (
kokutai
) and the respect offered by the Japanese people to the gods distinguished Japan from the nations of Europe and America. The emperor, by way of criticizing those officials who claimed to speak for the entire Japanese people, commented that there was a great gap between what persons in the cabinet or in the upper classes thought and what ordinary people thought. His skepticism impressed even the highly conservative Sasaki, who wept with emotion.
⁴

The emperor continued to consult with It
ō
about the Diet’s future work. His questions show a new acuity: “What would happen if the Diet failed to pass a bill, even though it was absolutely essential to the administration?” It
ō
replied that nothing could be done without parliamentary consent and that in such a case, members of the cabinet would have to exert every effort to obtain this consent. The emperor asked next what would be done if the House of Peers and the House of Representatives disagreed or if differences in the views of the Diet and the cabinet could not be resolved. It
ō
replied that in such instances the Privy Council would have to play a major role.
⁵