Makers of Japan

I His Majesty the Emperor of Japan

At the head of the list of Makers of Modern Japan stands by right the name of the illustrious ruler, not merely in virtue of his imperial position, but of the supreme efforts which throughout his reign of thirty-eight years to the present time he has made to raise the status of his country among nations and to confer upon his subjects the blessings of enlightened government. His Majesty Mutsuhito, son of the Emperor Komei, succeeded to the throne of Japan in February 1867, when he was fourteen years and three months old, was crowned on the 13th October 1868, married the Princess Haruko on the 9th February 1869, and has issue a son (the Crown Prince Yoshi-hito) and four daughters, the Princesses Tsune, Kane, Fumi, and Yasu.

The Crown Prince was born on the 31st August 1879, and was installed in this dignity on the Emperor’s birthday, 3rd November 1889, came of age and took his seat in the Upper House, in 1897, married on the 10th of May 1900 the Princess Sadako, daughter of Prince Kujo, and has issue two sons.

The personal name of the sovereign is rarely written or spoken in Japan, it being regarded almost as a discourtesy to allude to the ruler as other than the Ten-shi, the son of the heavens, or more elegantly as the Tenno, the heaven-sent Emperor. The theory of the supernatural origin of the imperial dynasty ceased to have weight with the educated classes long ago, but that in no way lessens the respect and affection which his subjects have for their sovereign. It was at his express command that they divested themselves of every vestige of superstition concerning his traditional semi-divine descent, and when they ascribe to his personal virtues their success in war, as they commonly do, it is but evidence of their conviction that it is an immeasurable benefit to themselves, and ensures success in their undertakings, to have as their monarch one who is in every sense a man to be esteemed for his high sense of honour, his love of truth and justice, and his innate appreciation of the duties devolving upon him as having inherited the proud title of “an Emperor who owns allegiance only to heaven.” There were, in the years which have gone by, some Emperors who sadly failed to realise the necessity of setting a good example to their subjects, in Japan as elsewhere, but the memory of those monarchs is not revered. The present ruler has won throughout his reign the love of his people for the purity of his life, the untiring attention which he bestows on the affairs of his country, the supreme magnanimity he has ever displayed in his treatment of those who by the force of circumstances have been placed in a position of hostility, not to his rule, for that is impossible in Japan, but to his Cabinet, and above all for the readiness that he has invariably evinced in time of national anxiety to enter into his people’s feelings and to subordinate his personal comfort to his paramount duties as an active sovereign. Had it still been the custom for monarchs to head their forces in the field his Majesty Mutsuhito, as all his loyal and dutiful subjects know, would have mounted his charger and led his hosts to battle with as great a zest as did ever one of his predecessors on the throne in the fighting days of old. That happiness being denied him, he sat at his desk in his headquarters at Hiroshima for sixteen hours a day while his troops, for eight months, waged war a decade ago with the Chinese in Manchuria and Shantung.

It may be useful here to explain that the title of Mikado by which his Majesty is perhaps best known to Europeans, although undeniably an appellation of great antiquity and in no degree derogatory, is in little use in Japan itself. Literally it signifies the “honourable gateway” or “entrance,” and though in ancient times the designation, when applied to a ruler who dispensed justice from a seat at the entrance to his pavilion, may have been more or less an appropriate title, it may be also that as years went by the preference of the people for some term that should more definitely convey the idea of the sovereign’s supremely exalted origin, according to then popular belief, led to the gradual adoption, in official documents, of the title of Tenno, and in common conversation of that of Ten-shi, terms which are in general use at the present day. The perpetuation of the term Mikado among foreigners, though almost obsolete among the inhabitants of the Ten-shi’s realms, is on a par with the retention of the name “Japan” as that of the country itself, it being a survival of the “Jipangu” of Marco Polo, who thus alluded to it in writing an account of his travels. Marco Polo’s book was prepared in 1299 at Genoa, and Jipangu was doubtless the traveller’s rendering of the Ji-pên-kwoh of the Chinese, the name by which Japan is known to that nation to-day, and by which Marco Polo heard the island Empire spoken of some 600 years ago. To the Ten-shi’s subjects their land is Ni-hon-koku, or Sun-origin Land, a term that is fairly translated, perhaps, as the Land of Sunrise. Ji-pên-kwoh, in Chinese, has precisely the same meaning, and the three ideographs employed are identical in Chinese and Japanese, the difference being one of pronunciation only. Though the dwellers in Nihon know as a rule by this time what is meant by Japan they always speak of their land as Nihon or Nipon, and though they know to whom strangers allude as the Mikado, they refer to his Majesty as the Ten-shi or Tenno. Nevertheless, the terms in use abroad, though they have less to recommend them on the score of accuracy, either for country or ruler, bid fair to survive for generations.

In Japan there are four Imperial families in which are vested the rights of succession to the throne in case of the failure of the direct line of the sovereign. These families are the Arisugawa, Katsura, Fushimi, and Kanin. The throne has ten times been occupied by a woman, but it was ever an inflexible rule that she should choose a prince-consort from among these four Shinnō, or Imperial families, and the relationship of these families to the throne well illustrates the principle of adoption which prevails throughout Japan in all classes, from the Imperial circle down to the home of the humblest peasant. Adoption there confers all the rights, privileges, and obligations of blood relationship, and it was on this basis that the late Prince Taruhito, who played so important a part in the making of Modern Japan, and is often referred to elsewhere in this volume, came to occupy the position of uncle to the reigning monarch. Prince Taruhito, who for the first three decades of the Meiji era was the Commander-in-chief of the Japanese army, and died towards the close of the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-5, was adopted as a son by the Emperor Ninko, who reigned from 1817 to 1846 (grandfather to the present Emperor), and he thus became a brother of the Emperor Komei, who was the real son of Ninko. The Emperor Komei sat on the throne from 1846 to January 1867, and was succeeded by his only son the reigning Sovereign Mutsuhito. The late Prince Arisugawa was therefore uncle by adoption only of the present Emperor, and curiously enough that is in one sense the relationship which actually exists between the present Prince Arisugawa, who recently visited our shores, and the present Emperor, for the prince is the younger brother by birth of the late Prince Taruhito, who, having no children of his own, adopted his brother as his son and heir. Prince Taruhito having adopted his brother as his son, however, the brother then became the reigning monarch’s cousin, and, as adoption confers absolute rights, it is in the light of cousinship that we must regard the personal relation of Prince Takehito Arisugawa to the occupant of the throne. In reality it is difficult to institute anything like a fair comparison, for in Europe our family relationships do not precisely correspond to those that exist in the Japanese Empire, and any effort at explanation of the actual status attained by the system of adoption, as it prevails there, must fail to convey an accurate idea of the true position. Still it will now be understood, as adoption brings with it full privileges, how Prince Takehito, the prince who served as a midshipman in the British navy, and is generally known as Prince Arisugawa, was for some years the heir-presumptive to the Japanese throne. The Emperor Ninko having left two sons,—though one was his son by adoption,—recourse would have been had to the line of the adopted son had the present occupant of the throne remained without a direct heir. The Crown Prince was not born until 1879, but the direct succession is now, it would seem, amply secured, as he has sons of his own.

The equivalent of “his Majesty” in Japanese is “Hei-ka,” so that the full expression employed in speaking of the monarch is Tenno Hei-ka, but there are additional titles not in general use, as is the case not only in Japan and neighbouring countries but among most European as well as Asiatic States. The same is true of the land over which the Ten-shi rules, for it has borne fully as many names as have at various periods the British Isles, and it was remarked at the time that the Albion and the Shikishima battleships were being built side by side at Blackwall that these vessels carried the ancient names of the countries to which they belonged, for Shikishima is a poetical title,—implying Isles of Prosperity,—for Japan, and is employed there in very much the same way as Albion is with us.

The Emperor of Japan has no family name, for, apart from the theory of his semi-divine descent, his house dates back to a period in the world’s history when the dwellers on this globe were fewer in number, and surnames had not been brought into use in the Orient. Thus it has a claim to respect in virtue of the unparalleled duration of the dynasty such as is possessed by no other reigning family in the world. His subjects are justly proud of the fact, and likewise of the circumstance that he rules over a people who have remained unconquered through the ages, in assured tenure of the land bequeathed to them by their ancestors.

The profound respect, verging upon adoration, paid in Japan to the occupant of the Throne is ascribable to an absolute conviction, pervading the minds of all classes of his Majesty’s subjects, that their ruler is a monarch who personally studies the welfare, the happiness, and real comfort, of his people. The feeling that the sovereign takes an almost paternal interest in the well-being of those whom he governs is so universal in Japan as practically to constitute a feature of Japanese national life. It is shared by all, rich and poor, young and old, the noble and the lowly. In theory the throne is above criticism. In the present era it is so in practice. In the long history of the Land of the Rising Sun, there have been instances in which the sovereigns have conspicuously fallen short of the standard of perfection, but in Japanese eyes the failure to attain the ideal has been due not to the errors of the individual so much as to his environment. There seems to be no room in the Japanese mind for the conception of a ruler who has not the amelioration of the lot of his loyal subjects always at heart, and if they were to be confronted with direct proof to the contrary they would cling to the belief that their sovereign must have been the victim of circumstances. The people’s attachment to the throne never wanes, or can wane, but if it happens that he who occupies that exalted position is a sovereign for whom they are able to develop an intense affection, owing to his personal characteristics, so much closer must the bonds be drawn, so immeasurably in advance of all previous experience will be the enthusiasm evinced for his cause by those who may be privileged to serve him afloat or ashore.

The present Emperor has on more than one occasion, indeed, expressed the wish that his subjects would cease to attribute to his family a supernatural origin, and although it was inevitable that at the period of his accession he should be regarded as Pope as well as Emperor, in virtue of the connection that had from time immemorial existed between the throne and the Shinto faith, insomuch that Shintoism was to all intents and purposes the State religion of Japan, he took the earliest possible opportunity of investing his cousin, then the Uyeno-no-miya, or High Priest of Uyeno temples, with the spiritual functions appertaining to the Sovereign’s office, and announcing his own intention of ruling Japan purely as a secular monarch. Under the title of Kita Shirakawa-no-miya this prince two years later left the temples and entered the newly raised army, with the rank of major. General Kita Shirakawa-no-miya died some years ago, but his brother Higashi Fushimi-no-miya, who likewise was a Shinto priest at the outset of his career, was entrusted with the imperial brocade banner and ordered to chastise the rebels in the war of the Restoration in 1868, and he subsequently distinguished himself as a military officer in many hard-fought fields. He some years ago visited London as the representative of the Ten-shi and was present at St Paul’s on the day that Queen Victoria gave thanks for the recovery from a severe illness of the Prince of Wales, our present King Edward VII. With the resignation by the prince Kita Shirakawa-no-miya of his priestly office the direct relationship of the imperial family to Shintoism ceased, though by the deification of former rulers of the country, and the retention for untold years of the position of head of the church by the reigning sovereign, the union had seemed to be indissoluble. Shinto is now only a cult, but it embodies the principle on which the moral teaching of the Japanese substantially is based, and it still has for its chief function the performance of rites in memory of the imperial ancestors. Shintoism has neither creed nor dogma,—it inculcates patriotism and loyalty. It enjoins upon all the virtue of courage, the cultivation of the strictest sense of honour, and the universal practice of courtesy and consideration. The essence of Shinto (lit.: “the way of the gods”) is the spirit of filial piety, and, to quote the late Lafcadio Hearn, it implies the “zest of duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle. It is religion, but religion transmuted into ethical instinct. It is the whole emotional life of the race,—the Soul of Japan.” In its best and purest form, according to the highest authorities, it consisted of ancestor-worship combined with reverence for the forces of nature. There was the natural respect for the memory of ancestors, national or individual, added to the awe inspired by the phenomena of nature, in the tempest and the earthquake, the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s crash. The beneficent influence of the summer sun on the ripening corn led those who lived by agriculture to value the blessing as the gift of a goddess, and they revered her as “Ama-no-terasu,” the splendour of the skies, and regarded her as the special ancestress of their adored ruler. Thus, as one authority has remarked, to those Japanese whose first idea of duty is loyalty to the Emperor,—and this means the nation at large,—Shinto becomes a system of patriotism exalted to the rank of a religion. The common people still regard it in that light, and continue to worship and pray at its temples, though officially it was secularised six years ago and placed under the control of a Bureau of Shrines, as distinct from the Bureau of Religions, which takes cognisance of matters affecting the Buddhist and Christian faiths. In 1899 the officials of the Isé shrines, which are the oldest in the Empire, and in which are preserved the three sacred emblems of the monarchy,—the mirror, sword, and jewel of antiquity,—symbolical of regal power, and looked upon as coeval with the dynasty itself,—took measures to define their position as heads of a secular organisation. They then described Shintoism as “a mechanism for keeping generations in touch with generations, and preserving the continuity of the nation’s veneration for its ancestors.” But throughout the length and breadth of the land the sight of a Shinto shrine will continue to prompt the passer-by to pause for a moment in his journey, to fold his hands in silent prayer, to cast a coin into the capacious moneybox, and to bow the head in submission to a higher will, no matter whether the rites of Shinto worship be for the future viewed in the light of a religion or only as a cult.

Marco Polo’s references to “Jipangu,” as we have seen, were not based on his personal observations but on information derived from the Chinese, and though he travelled widely in China, accompanied by his brother, he never set foot on Japanese soil. That an island empire existed to the east of them, however, had been known to the Chinese for centuries, and Kublai Khan had unsuccessfully sought to bring it into subjection only a short time prior to the Polos’ arrival at his Court in 1275. It is probable that Christopher Columbus, when setting sail from Palos in 1492, hoped to reach “Jipangu,” of which he had doubtless heard through the publicity given to Marco Polo’s travels, by sailing westward, and it is possible that Columbus imagined that he had found his way to some part of an Eastern continent when he discovered America. The first traveller to actually land in Japan was Fernao Mendes Pinto, in 1542, seven years before the Jesuit Missionary Francisco Xavier arrived there. Pinto was favourably received in Bungo, a province of Kiushiu, the large island in the south-west of Japan, and arrangements were made for a vessel to visit Bungo with foreign produce, every other year. Pinto belonged to Coimbra, in Portugal, and thus it is to that power that is due the honour of its subjects having been the first to visit Japanese shores. Pinto’s ship was the only survivor of three which started from Lisbon on a voyage of adventure, and it was from her crew that the Japanese first acquired a knowledge of the use of firearms. The Bungo province gives its name to the narrow channel that here divides the islands of Kiushiu and Shikoku, which is exceptionally rich in historical associations, for if tradition be in this instance correct it was in one of its many little bays that the vessel conveying the ancestor of the Ten-shi, the first Emperor Jimmu Tenno, dropped anchor over 2500 years ago. Where Jimmu Tenno came from remains an absolute mystery, but it seems to be fairly established that he brought with him a mighty host, armed for conquest, and that he had early encounters with the tribes then inhabiting the south and west of Hondo, the main island. One of these was the Yamato tribe, which probably at that remote period dwelt in what is now Iwami, and its occupancy of the coast facing the peninsula of Korea, might be taken to imply that its people originally crossed the water from that kingdom, though it would not of necessity follow that the men of Yamato were identical in race with the dwellers in Korea at the present day. Fighting his way along the borders of the Inland Sea, the invading chieftain Jimmu Tenno ultimately reached the neighbourhood of what is now Kioto, and set up his capital in that region. It is not improbable that he brought with him many members of the Yamato tribe that he had subjugated, and this may account for the presence to this day in that part of Japan of numberless families possessing the characteristics in a marked degree of what is termed the Yamato race,—in other words, the elongated features and intellectual aspect as distinguished from the round chubby countenances of the majority of the men and women of the hei-min, or common stock, which forms so large a percentage of the entire population. The Yamato people may have emigrated in the first place from Manchuria, passing through Korea on their way to Japan, and though it may be condemned as fanciful the idea is perhaps not altogether groundless that in seeking to recover Manchuria in recent years from the grip of the Muscovite the Japanese may in reality have been striving, though few were aware of it, to deliver their own ancestral home from the presence of the Western intruder.

Jimmu Tenno began to reign as Emperor of Japan in 667 B.C., being then, it is supposed, about thirty-five years of age. Ancient Japanese tradition no doubt assigned to him a supernatural origin, and it is not difficult to trace in the unexpected advent on Japanese soil of the conqueror and his knights the germ of such a belief, supported as it probably was by martial prowess to a degree with which the then peaceful inhabitants of the Japanese chain of islands were totally unfamiliar. The peoples of the adjoining mainland of Asia—that is to say, the Chinese and the Manchus, as well as the Koreans—were appreciably in advance, it is to be presumed, in the arts of war, of any of the islanders of that age, and the invaders, as Jimmu Tenno and his men must have been, of Southern Japan, seven centuries before the Christian era, may have been regarded, and not altogether unnaturally, as beings descended from another planet. The Emperor Jimmu’s mother was a daughter, we are told, of the Sun-Goddess and the Sea-God (the Japanese Neptune) and in this myth may be traced a notable parallel to that concerning Romulus, the founder and first King of Rome, whose father was reputed to have been Mars, the god of war. Romulus founded Rome just eighty-six years before Jimmu became the founder of the dynasty of Japanese emperors, but there the parallel ends, for while Rome became a republic in less than 250 years, and underwent endless vicissitudes, a direct descendant of Jimmu occupies the imperial throne of Japan to-day.

In the older histories of Japan one may read how the Isles of Sunrise came into existence, and the legend is pretty enough to merit recognition in lands other than that to which it especially applies. When all was chaos on this globe, very far back in its nebulous stage of existence,—when the purer elements were ascending to form its skies, and the impure were gathering to form its earth,—the god Izanagi, with his august spouse the goddess Izanami beside him, was standing on the ethereal arch that spans the higher heavens, bearing in his hand the jewel-spear. Suddenly he thrust the weapon downward and with it probed the watery expanse beneath. As he drew it forth from Ocean, drops of foam and brine fell from its point, and in congealing formed an island. That island is called “Foam-land” (Awaji), in the centre of what is now Japan, and it bars the passage from the eastward to the picturesque “Inland Sea.” In it Izanagi and Izanami took up their abode, and gradually formed the other islands of the group. The Sun-goddess and the Sea-god were their children, and Ama-no-terasu, the “Splendour of the Skies,” was their grand-daughter, and became the parent of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor of Japan.

In the month of July 1853, there appeared to the astonished gaze of the inhabitants of the little fishing village of Uraga, situated on the Pacific coast within ten miles of the entrance to the Gulf of Tokio, a squadron of “black ships,” as the children termed the war vessels, the like of which they had never before seen or even heard of, and not long afterwards a boat was rowed ashore and a party of officers landed. For 230 years there had been no communication with strangers, the edicts of the Shogun Iyeyasu and his successors in the office having expressly prohibited all intercourse, for reasons which need not be given here, and the open defiance of the law of the land implied by the visit of the Americans filled the villagers with consternation. It was discovered that the unwelcome guests had brought a letter for the reigning monarch of Japan, and this the head man of the place agreed to forward to the proper officials. Commodore Perry happened to reach Japan at a time when the feudal lords of the various provinces had become jealous of the long-continued supremacy of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns, deputies of the crown who had for two and a half centuries practically ruled the country, in the name of the monarchs who had remained in seclusion at the palace of Kioto while their lieutenants governed the land from Yedo. The movement in favour of the re-establishment of the direct rule of the Emperor, in place of the semi-regal authority which had been exercised by the descendants of Iyeyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa line, had begun to take definite shape some years previously, as we shall discover when we consider the history of Fujita, Sakuma, and Yoshida,—patriots who flourished earlier in the nineteenth century,—and the advent of the American visitors served but to accentuate the difficulties of the situation for the Yedo potentate, who was placed on the horns of a dilemma. If he yielded to the demands of the Americans that the nation which had so long been hidden from the rest of the world should emerge from its retirement and admit foreigners within its gates, he would incur the wrath of the ultra-Conservative party among the nobility of his own land. If he refused to comply with the American President Fillmore’s amiable suggestions, Japan might yet share the fate of China, and a forcible invasion of his Imperial master’s dominions, which would be equally disastrous to himself as being responsible for the exclusion of the “barbarians,” was almost certain to occur. The Shogun took the advice of those who advocated the making of treaties with men whom they were not then strong enough in Japan to effectually exclude, and the thin end of the wedge was inserted by the conclusion of the compact,—at first nothing more than a promise of friendship,—between Japan and the United States of America.

Under the provisions of the American treaty then negotiated by Perry, the United States acquired the right of establishing a legation at Shimoda. This is a small town at the tip of the Idzu promontory, which extends in a southern direction from the province of Sagami, and it is sixty-five miles as the crow flies south-west of Yokohama. Over a building which had previously been a Buddhist temple the Stars and Stripes were hoisted at Shimoda in September 1856, and America’s accredited envoy, Mr Townsend Harris, resided there for many months, being the first of the diplomatic representatives of foreign powers to dwell in the newly awakened Land of Sunrise, and the first to arrange a treaty of commerce. Under the arrangement made with Commodore Perry there were to be two seaports opened to the reception of American vessels, where they might obtain coal, provisions, wood, and water. One of these ports was Shimoda, the other was Hakodate, in the northern island of Yeso. The treaty provided for hospitable behaviour towards shipwrecked crews,—a matter in which, had the instincts of the Japanese nation at large been appreciated as they are to-day it would perhaps have been deemed superfluous to make any stipulations—and it also included certain regulations for conducting trade and for the residence of consuls or agents, at the places named. The stay of the American agent at Shimoda was not of long duration, for on the opening of the capital, as a place wherein the representatives of other powers could most fittingly dwell, Mr Harris removed to that city. But it should not be lost sight of that Shimoda was for a time the official headquarters of the American Legation in Japan, and a place where the population was more or less accustomed to see foreigners long before the rest of the country,—save the trading ports of Yokohama, Kobé, Nagasaki, and three other places on the coast opened later—was available to strangers. The British treaty, made the same year by Admiral Stirling, was on similar lines. It was not until the Earl of Elgin concluded the treaty of 1858 that powers were obtained for the residence of the foreign ministers in Yedo, though it had been agreed that a third port,—that of Nagasaki,—should be opened to trade. The Elgin treaty in addition provided for the establishment of open ports at Kanagawa, Niigata, and Hiogo. But Kanagawa being a town situated on the highroad along which in those days it was usual for the feudal lords and their immense retinues to travel, and the feeling in many quarters being decidedly inimical to foreigners, it was deemed inexpedient to make it a focus of animosity due to the strangers’ settlement therein for purposes of trade whilst it might remain the recognised resting-place for imperial and other processions making the journey to and from Kioto and Yedo. Accordingly it was agreed that the little fishing village of Yokohama, lit.: “the beach across the way,” on the other side of the bay of Kanagawa, which is itself a mere indentation of the coastline of the Gulf of Tokio, should become the actual place of residence of the foreign community. From this small beginning in 1859 the port speedily grew to be the centre of a vast and profitable trade, and its population now numbers 194,000, of whom 2100 are foreigners exclusive of Chinese. It is claimed for Kobé, a port in the channel separating Shikoku from Hondo, that it has eclipsed the older port of Yokohama in respect of its commerce, and it is in some things better situated for trade, particularly with the tea-producing districts. Kobé was originally a village adjoining Hiogo, which was the port that it was settled by treaty should be thrown open, and as a matter of fact it is divided from Hiogo only by a creek, a few feet wide. The port is now officially styled Kobé-Hiogo, and to all intents and purposes the two places are one.

Not only did the dai-mios of the western provinces modify their views on the subject of the admission of strangers but the reigning Emperor Komei himself ceased to contend at the last against that influx which if it could not be successfully resisted might very possibly, it was thought, be turned to good account in preparing the nation to combat other encroachments of a less pacific character in the days to come. It may well be that this resolution was arrived at in full view of events that were taking place in the extreme north of the Empire, where Russia was little by little feeling her way towards Yeso, and had already seized the moment of Japan’s preoccupation in respect of domestic concerns to establish herself in the island of Sakhalin, between which and Yeso only a narrow strait, twenty-five miles wide, existed to bar the path of the settlers to the virgin soil and luxuriant forests of “Hokkaido,” Japan’s “North Sea Circuit.” At all events the Emperor Komei about this time signified his willingness that the engagements which the Shogun had entered into with the powers of the Occident should be recognised and adhered to.

The Shogun Iyemochi, who had been wedded to the Emperor’s sister four years previously, but who had not during the intervening time wholly succeeded in overcoming his imperial master’s reluctance to ratify the treaties which his predecessor in the Shogunate Iyesada had made, was in 1864 residing at the castle of Osaka,—the stronghold built by the renowned Hideyoshi (the Tai-ko or generalissimo) at the close of the Sixteenth Century,—and was thus within a few hours’ journey of the imperial residence. His visit to Kioto that year (1864) had been marked by the Ten-shi’s favour despite the remembrance of his failure to induce the aliens to quit Japan’s shores, and no more had been heard of the proposition that he should forthwith expel the barbarians and restore peace to the country. The vital change in the sovereign’s ideas is believed to have been brought about mainly by the advice of the lord of the Satsuma province, who, as was to be seen, had changed his own opinion very considerably after the naval engagement at Kagoshima of the previous year. There can be no doubt that the influence of Shimadzu Saburo was largely instrumental in bringing about a reconciliation between the Emperor and the Shogun, and for the moment harmonious relations were re-established. The personal quarrel which arose with the lord Mori of Choshiu would have been a more serious matter for the Shogun had the Satsuma lord been ready to throw in his lot with Iyemochi’s opponents, and whatever may have been the feeling on the point at Hagi the disinclination of Satsuma to join the Choshiu clansmen in the attack on Kioto may be held to have turned the scale against Mori. It was not long before the two clans were actually united, however, in a successful attempt to demolish the Shogunate altogether. It is thought that when Iyemochi obeyed the summons of the Ten-shi to visit Kioto with, in the first place, the avowed object of concerting measures for the expulsion of aliens, he took the fatal step of subordinating his own party’s policy to that of the Court party, and thereby hastened the downfall of the Tokugawa family, for the strength of the Shogunate had lain in the assertion of its prerogatives as inheriting the privileges of its founder, the law-giver Iyeyasu, and who re-established it in the beginning of the Seventeenth Century.

But to return to the events of 1864, it was with excellent judgment and an intuitive perception of the favourable turn which affairs were then taking that Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister, who had succeeded Sir Rutherford Alcock, seized the precise moment to despatch two members of his Legation staff, Messrs Mitford and Satow,—the present Lord Redesdale, and Sir Ernest Satow, now British representative at Peking,—to see the Shogun and personally endeavour to arrive at some satisfactory arrangement concerning the opening of the remaining ports to trade for which sanction had been obtained by the provisions of the Elgin treaty. The visit ended with complete satisfaction to the negotiators, and when the four powers directly concerned—viz. Holland, France, the United States, and Britain—urged officially on the Shogun the desirability of speedily opening Hiogo (Kobé) he agreed to write a letter to his imperial master suggesting that this should be done. The Emperor Komei at first refused but ultimately gave his consent. It was settled that Hiogo, and with it Osaka, should be opened to foreign trade and residence on and from the 1st of January 1868, which was five years later than had been contemplated by the framers of the Elgin treaty, but under the then existing circumstances it was highly creditable to the delegates to have achieved so much.

The defeat of the Choshiu men in their earlier attempt to capture Kioto had had the effect of inducing them to study the art of war as practised in the Occident, and when Iyemochi, in consonance with the imperial command, sought to chastise Baron Mori, and promptly marched his troops through the provinces bordering the Inland Sea as far as Nagato, he found himself confronted by a superior force of riflemen, armed after the modern fashion, who, though they lacked everything in the way of military uniform, had acquired sufficient knowledge of drill and co-operation to render them doughty opponents for any force that the Shogun could place in the field against them at that stage of the national development. The men who bore rifles were not in pre-Restoration days regarded as the highest in rank among soldiers, for the Japanese had of old a predilection for the personal combat, hand to hand, and were prone to despise warfare of the kind in which a missile was hurled at the foe from a comparatively safe distance. Thus the swordsman ranked highest in Japanese estimation down to a very recent period,—but the Choshiu riflemen proved by their able use of modern firearms that a power such as had been before unknown in relation to implements of strife lay in the weapons that they so coolly and dexterously handled to the complete discomfiture of their enemies. And thus was laid, it may be supposed, the foundation of that high standard of superiority which the Choshiu troops have since attained as regards their ability to wage war on modern principles. They developed a natural aptitude for the employment of firearms from a date long prior to the present Emperor’s reign, and for some years were the only force in Japan that might be said to have adopted western armaments, with perhaps the sole exception of a force of foreign-drilled infantry (some 800 in all), belonging to the Shogun, under Kubota Sentaro, which took part on behalf of the Japanese authorities in a review and sham fight that was held at Kanasawa, near Yokohama, on the 21st March 1866, at a time when it was needful to have a few British troops in the town for purposes of defence against a possible sudden descent of some recalcitrant dai-mio’s followers.

The Shogunate was tottering to its fall when it sought in June 1865 to suppress the Choshiu rising, and signally failed to do so. Only a few months later the Shogun Iyemochi died (August 1866), and was succeeded by Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu, a scion of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, and who is in more modern times alluded to as the Prince Keiki. The letters of which the Japanese pronunciation would be Yoshinobu are, when given their approximate Chinese sounds, to be read as Keiki, hence the two renderings of the Shogun’s name. Tokugawa signifies the “river of abundance,” and Keiki or Yoshinobu mean “goodness and joy,” the signification of the characters remaining unaltered, of course, whichever may be the system of pronunciation adopted. Shortly after Keiki’s accession to the Shogun’s seat the trouble in Choshiu was brought to an end by the lord Mori’s submission. Into the cause of that there is no need to enter here as it will be found to have been fully discussed in the chapter on the career of Marshal Yamagata. Peace was only nominally restored, for the reason that greater events were in preparation, and the country was now on the eve of those marvellous changes which ushered in the era of Meiji,—the period of Enlightened Rule,—by which his present Majesty chose that his reign should be known to posterity. The Emperor Komei’s decease followed very quickly upon that of the Shogun Iyemochi. Keiki had been Shogun only four months when Komei Tenno died and was succeeded by his son Mutsuhito, who happily still reigns over an adoring and devoted people, distinguished among the nations of the earth for their unfaltering attachment to the imperial throne and for the intense loyalty and patriotism they display towards its wise and benevolent occupant. It happened that at the moment when the Emperor Mutsuhito came to the throne Japan was torn by conflicting political views on the subject of the advisability of re-opening the country to foreign trade and intercourse, after having been closed to foreigners down to 1854 from a date early in the Seventeenth Century. The treaties which the Shogun had entered into with the representatives of Foreign Powers, during the lifetime of the Emperor Komei, still gave anything but unalloyed satisfaction to one section, and that a very numerous and implacable one, of the body politic, and the land was a prey to the most bitter dissensions. A large proportion of the so-termed anti-foreign party was sincere in its outcry for the expulsion of foreigners only so far as it might be the means to an end. No doubt there were thousands in Japan at that time who were genuinely hostile to strangers, and honestly believed that the land would be well rid of the intruders, but it is nevertheless true that these patriots, as they unquestionably deemed themselves, were exploited by the Reformers whose main ambition it was to see the country again governed by the Ten-shi himself, and not, as had so long been the rule, by his lieutenant the Shogun. It is due to the curious and altogether anomalous state of affairs that then existed that we have in the Makers of Modern Japan many men who at one time belonged to the party which openly advocated the expulsion of all aliens. Whatsoever may have been their real feelings at the time towards strangers, it is evident that their first care was to put an end to the dual system of control from Kioto and Yedo, and to restore the supreme power to the hands of the Ten-shi.

It is due to the memory of the Emperor Komei, though no great change was accomplished in his reign, to acknowledge the foresight he displayed in having his son and heir educated on liberal lines, thoroughly fitted for the duties of active sovereignty over his people, so that when the moment arrived for a revolution in the system of administration the youthful monarch was equipped with knowledge regarding the outer world and its chequered history that had never been acquired by his august predecessors on the imperial throne, coupled with broad and noble ideas of government far in advance of his years. The stirring events of 1867 and 1868 therefore found his Majesty not unprepared for the tasks devolving upon him. His training had indeed been almost Spartan in its rigour and simplicity, among the family of the Court noble to whose care he had been entrusted. Strict discipline is rather the rule than the exception in Japan in regard to the education of princes, and in the youth of the Emperor Mutsuhito there was no departure from established custom,—on the contrary, the Emperor his father had enjoined upon the noble charged with the heir-apparent’s education the necessity of making him a hardy rather than a delicate youth, and he was encouraged, therefore, to take delight in horsemanship and manly sports, the ancient game of da-kiu (Japanese polo) being much played in the palace grounds at that period. It is even said that he smelt powder before he was twelve years old, for the battle between the Choshiu men and the Shogun’s forces already mentioned took place in Kioto close to the imperial residence, and bullets flew in all directions among the palace buildings. As an equestrian his majesty shines conspicuously, for he is an accomplished rider, and takes a keen delight in the field manœuvres which in peace time are annually carried out in one part or another of his dominions. On these occasions it is no uncommon thing for the Emperor to be in the saddle day after day for a week together, and it may well be that to the profound study that he is well known by his troops to make, at all times, of the needs of his army, must in part be ascribed the firm belief of officers and men that they win battles by virtue of his beneficent interest in their welfare. He enjoys following his troops in their prolonged marches, when carrying out their regular training, and never hesitates to mount his charger in the roughest weather, on the principle that what his men are asked to do in the sense of exposure to the elements, he is ready himself to undertake. Alike under the hottest sun or the most drenching rain, he takes his stand on some eminence to watch them defile before him, utterly regardless of personal comfort or of danger to his health. In this he but evinces his complete repugnance to a life of luxurious ease, and it is to be said of his whole career, both prior to his accession to the throne of his ancestors and since, that he has never spared himself in any one particular, but has been a hard worker from his boyhood, with little or no disposition to indulge in play or relaxation of any kind save the mental recreation involved in the daily composition of a stanza of poetry. At another page will be found almost literal reproductions of some of his Majesty’s latest efforts in this direction, inspired, no doubt, by the circumstances of the terrible struggle in Manchuria, wherein so many thousands of his warriors have sacrificed their lives for the empire of which he is the revered head.

To return to the Emperor’s early life, he is ever ready to avow himself indebted to the ability and wisdom of his tutors, foremost among whom were the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura, whose part in the making of the Japan of to-day is elsewhere referred to in detail. They were Court nobles (kuge), and both are long since dead, but it was to their teaching in great measure, aided by that of other gifted counsellors, that was due the strikingly complete emancipation of his mind from old-fashioned ideas, and his adoption of the principles of government upon sound and progressive lines. His Majesty began his reign with a declaration, wholly spontaneous, that he would as soon as practicable create a deliberative assembly for the discussion of public affairs, that personal freedom should be secured to all his subjects, that whatever evil or pernicious customs were in existence should be abolished, and that a new system, based on the study of the experience of foreign nations, particularly as regarded the defence of the Empire, should be forthwith inaugurated. This was the substance of his Majesty’s Coronation oath, as it was termed, and is the Magna Charta of the rights and privileges of the Japanese people. The sovereign voluntarily repeated this promise at a Meeting of the feudal princes and barons assembled at the Palace in Kioto in April 1869, two years after his accession to the throne. But the interval had been occupied in effecting that radical change in the system of administration which has been the wonder of the world, and in quelling an insurrection which was the direct outcome of the abolition of the Shogun’s office, though personally the holder thereof had discouraged the rebellion as far as he could by resigning his post. The Emperor had accepted that renunciation of his rights by the Shogun Keiki, but the adherents of the Shogunate had fought on in spite of their titular leader’s withdrawal. In after years the sovereign, as we shall find, magnanimously abolished the decree which had in 1868 declared the Shogun to be in rebellion, and wholly absolved him from any intentional disobedience. But for the time being there was civil war in the Land of Sunrise, and the history of those unhappy eighteen months subsequent to the Emperor’s accession must briefly be told, though, as is the case with regard to the strife of the early sixties, in the United States of America, the memory of those terrible days when clan fought against clan in Japan has ceased to trouble the Ten-shi’s subjects, and those who once were sworn enemies are and have for many years past been good friends. The events of 1867 were especially important in respect of the influence that they were to exert on the future of the country. In the first place the powerful Satsuma clan had obtained a conspicuously influential position in the councils of the Empire. The prime mover in this had been Shimadzu Saburo, who was the real father of the feudal lord of the province, but as the previous daimio, who in reality was Shimadzu’s brother, had adopted the young prince as his son, it followed under the Japanese laws concerning adoption that the father became uncle to his own child. In the course of the violent controversy which had arisen Shimadzu had most vehemently opposed the Shogun, and accordingly he was classed among those who were averse to the opening of the treaty ports to foreign trade, but in reality he was not unfavourable to the admission of aliens, and was actually willing that the entire province of Satsuma should be open to foreign enterprise. To this suggestion, however, the Shogun had offered objections.

Satsuma had benefited by its trade with Nagasaki, the only port that had remained accessible to vessels from Europe during the long seclusion of the nation from Western intercourse. In the year 1866 the British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, had accepted an invitation to visit the headquarters of the Satsuma clan, three years after the bombardment of the town of Kagoshima by Admiral Kuper’s squadron. The Minister made the voyage in the warship Princess Royal, accompanied by the Serpent and the Salamis, and the young prince of Satsuma came off to welcome his guest in a magnificent state barge. Sir Harry Parkes, on landing at Kagoshima on the 27th July, found that adjoining the daimio’s palace within the castle walls were a foundry and well-equipped workshops, and that at the foundry they had succeeded in casting a number of very serviceable cannon, and quantities of shot and shell. Near by was a glass works, and in one of the workshops was a steam lathe. These facts afford strong testimony to the progressive spirit manifested even at that period by the Satsuma clan, and the appreciation of the value of Western appliances which had thus early in the history of the Restoration struggle prompted the samurai of Satsuma to fit themselves to attain a commanding position among the supporters of the Ten-shi, as opposed to those who favoured the regime of the Shogunate.

The inability of the Shogun’s forces to subdue the Choshiu samurai had placed the Shogun himself in a position that was obviously intolerable. Not only was one of the most powerful of the feudal lords openly antagonistic to the Shogunate but it was known for a fact that the Satsuma clan was virtually allied to Choshiu in this effort to repudiate the Shogun’s right to exact obedience from the great feudatories. It is to the infinite credit of Tokugawa Keiki that at this crisis in his country’s affairs he recognised the need of a more centralised and uniform system of administration,—one in which the real power and control should be vested in the person of the Ten-shi. He resigned the office which had been in his family for 264 years, and begged that he might be permitted to retire into private life. The Emperor Mutsuhito accepted the voluntary surrender by the Shogun of his time-honoured privileges and in doing so opened a new chapter in the record of the Japanese Empire. The manifesto was in the sovereign’s own words and was substantially as follows:—

It has pleased Us, at his request, to dismiss the Shogun. Henceforward We shall exercise supreme authority, in both the internal and the external affairs of the nation. For the term “Tycoon” (meaning Shogun) which has hitherto been employed in the Treaties must henceforth be substituted that of Emperor.

To this historic document were appended the great seal of “Dai Nihon” and the signature in the monarch’s own caligraphy—Mutsuhito—it being, perhaps, the first time in all Japanese history that the personal name of the ruler had been used officially during his lifetime. The retiring Shogun left the capital and for a brief period took up his abode in the castle of Osaka. But it was to the chief town of Suruga province, midway between Tokio and Kioto, that he finally withdrew, and thereafter lived the unobtrusive life of a country gentleman on a small estate which the Emperor bestowed upon him. In this way, in the perfect seclusion of Shidzu-oka (lit.: the Hill of Peace) he was able to wholly divest himself of political connections, and was now and then to be seen setting out on a fishing excursion with perhaps but one attendant, preferring the quietude of his existence apart from the cares of State, and revelling in his emancipation from the pomp and circumstance of that Court of which for a brief interval he had been the acknowledged and puissant head. Never, perhaps, did a potentate more completely renounce his rights, nor so absolutely efface himself on doing so, in the history of mankind, but he has had his reward in the confidence and favour of the real sovereign whose deputy he had been, and from whom he has received in recent years the highest honours. He has the rank of Prince under the new regime, while Prince Tokugawa Iyesato, the head of the Tokugawa family, has also been raised to the same rank, and holds office as President of the House of Peers. Thus the family of Tokugawa, which from the close of the Sixteenth Century until 1868 virtually ruled Japan, retains, by the magnanimity of the Emperor, a status among the nobility of the land that is unsurpassed by any princely or ducal house, and actually boasts the possession among its ranks of two princes, since his Majesty thought fit in 1900 to request his former Shogun to visit Tokio, and then and there conferred upon him the title which he now holds, declaring at the same time that he was perfectly absolved of all participation in the events of 1867-8, which would no longer blot the record. There has been nothing in the personal relations of his Majesty with his dutiful and supremely loyal people which has more endeared him to them than his extreme generosity, and inasmuch as there were necessarily among all classes of his subjects many thousands—even hundreds of thousands—who had in their early days been proud to own allegiance to the Shogun and the Tokugawa house, the sovereign’s attitude has been more widely appreciated than it is possible, perhaps, for strangers to the country to comprehend.

The surrender of his privileges by the Shogun in 1868 was resented by the bulk of his adherents, and though they were compelled to retreat towards the north before the determined advance of the Satsuma, Choshiu, Hizen, and Tosa men, under the command of Saigo Takamori, whose notable history will be found elsewhere in this volume, the struggle lasted for many months. In support of the Tokugawa side the stoutest resistance was maintained by the Aidzu clan, whose chieftain dwelt in the castle of Wakamatsu, midway, or nearly so, between the capital and the straits of Tsugaru which separate the northern island of Hokkaido or Yeso from Hondo, the mainland. The prince of Aidzu had been guardian of the “Nine Gates” of the Ten-shi’s palace at Kioto under the Tokugawa regime, until the coup d’état of the 3rd January 1868, by which his opponents contrived to secure the person of the young Emperor, whereupon an imperial edict appeared appointing, instead of the Aidzu men, the clans of Satsuma, Tosa, and Geishiu, as guardians of the Gates. Loyalty to the old regime led the Aidzu chieftain to oppose as far as he was able the deposition of the Shogun, until he was made aware that Keiki’s resignation had been accepted by the Emperor.

Clan jealousy was of course responsible to a very great extent for the opposition of the northern feudatories to the proposed changes, and in the broad sense of the term this was a conflict in which the south waged war on the north. For according to that spirit of loyalty to a chief which prevailed then and, happily for Japan, still prevails, throughout the Ten-shi’s realms, in spite of his subjects having taken for a model the matter-of-fact latter-day civilisation of the Occident, it was permissible to regard the Shogun’s voluntary submission as an act prompted solely by a desire to spare the lives of his followers, and as such one of which they were not obliged to take cognisance, for although there was no act of self-sacrifice in which they were not ready to join if it could be proved to be needful in their country’s interests, they held themselves to be in no way bound by a promise or declaration that their chief had been compelled, as they deemed it, to make under the pressure of circumstances. They regarded the Shogun as the victim of a political combination, and were indisposed on that account to yield to the ambitious dominance of the clansmen of the south. The Aidzu men, therefore, continued to oppose a solid front to the Kioto party, and in the vicinity of Wakamatsu itself many desperate contests took place. All the males of a family, from the father to the youngest son, are known in some cases to have taken the field in defence, as they believed, of their lord’s interests, and warfare of that determined character which those who have watched the career of the Japanese soldier of to-day can fully comprehend lasted in the north of Japan until late in 1868. During the preceding summer there was a fierce engagement at sea, close to the town of Hakodate, which resulted in the defeat of the Shogun’s squadron, at that time commanded by Admiral Yenomoto. Ultimately a general amnesty was proclaimed, and the ships which remained under the Tokugawa flag were handed over to the newly-formed department of the imperial navy.

But before this came to pass, incredible as it may seem, an attempt was made, it was declared, to establish in Yeso some sort of republic, and the signatures to the remarkable document in which proclamation was made of the intentions of the promoters of this scheme included that of Otori Keisuke (now Baron), who later represented his nation with distinction as its Minister to the Court of Seoul. On board one of the vessels commanded by Admiral Yenomoto, moreover, in the engagement at Hakodate, was a young officer who in his later years has been the recipient of the highest honours in recognition of the splendid services rendered to his country in the course of a distinguished diplomatic career.

Strictly speaking, though the proceedings have been described at various times as tantamount to an effort to establish a republic it is impossible that the idea can ever have been entertained of overthrowing the authority of the Ten-shi, whose rule is based on principles which are in the minds of all his subjects immutable and indestructible. What the advocates of a republic for Yeso had in view could in reality have been but the setting up of an independent administration for the northern island, distinct from that of the Central government which it was proposed to provide for the whole Empire at Tokio. But the Shogunate Republic in Yeso, had it ever taken actual shape, would have been nothing more than a local administration owning allegiance to the sovereign power at Kioto, and it would have been more an imperial dependency than a republic.

The Shogun, at the time that he tendered his resignation of his office, had urged upon his imperial master the advisability of convening a meeting of daimios at the capital of Kioto, and his advice was taken. The lords of the various provinces assembled while the War of the Restoration, as it is termed, was yet in progress. A form of Government was decided upon in which the control of the administration was vested in a Council of State, presided over by a Chancellor (the Dai-jo-dai-jin) assisted by two Vice-chancellors (the Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-chancellor of the Left, which in Japan ranks highest, and the U-dai-jin, or Vice-chancellor of the Right). The Administrative departments of State comprised those of the Imperial Household, Foreign Affairs, Finance, War, Education, Justice, and Religion, each with its departmental chief or Minister. The First Council as finally formed was composed of:—

Prince Sanjo Sanetomi	Dai-jo-dai-jin: a Court noble.
Prince Iwakura Tomomi	Sa-dai-jin: a Court noble.
Prince Shimadzu Saburo	U-dai-jin. Of Satsuma.
Saigo Takamori	Of Satsuma.
Okubo Toshimichi	Of Satsuma.
Kido Takakoto	Of Choshiu.
Inouye Bunda	Of Choshiu.
Ito Hirobumi	Of Choshiu.
Okuma Shigenobu	Of Hizen.
Itagaki Taisuke	Of Tosa.

The Ministry was in reality constituted to give equal representation to the four leading clans, as far as practicable, though the Choshiu and Satsuma influence actually predominated.

Acting under authority of his Majesty the members of the Council here mentioned had in the preceding January, on the occasion of the coup d’état, established a provisional government, and had called upon the Shogun to surrender his heritage and to submit himself entirely to the will of his imperial master. For some months past there had been frequent conferences at the Nijo Castle in Kioto between the Shogun and Goto Shojiro (late Count Goto), who, with Komatsu of the Satsuma clan, persistently urged upon the Shogun the advisability of establishing an Imperial Government, with the effect that his Highness had been on the point of yielding to their arguments. Goto was the trusted representative of the Tosa clan, and had brought a letter from his feudal lord addressed to the Shogun, in October 1867, recommending his Highness to resign his position of Shogun, for patriotic reasons. There is excellent ground for the belief widely entertained in Japan, and which it is palpable his Majesty shares, that the Shogun, had he been wholly free to follow the dictates of his own heart, would have relinquished his office there and then, but a new complication arose through his followers coming to blows with the Satsuma retainers, thus compelling him either to repudiate them or to accept a position of absolute hostility to the new government of which the Satsuma chieftain was a leading member. It was with that extreme clemency which has throughout characterised the rule of the present monarch that in after years his Majesty spontaneously recognised that the Shogun had no real intention of being hostile to himself, and that it was mainly the acts of the adherents of the Tokugawa family which drove the Shogun into seeming antagonism to the party of reform. As already explained, the Emperor has recently conferred on the former Shogun a title by which his once lofty position in pre-Restoration days is fittingly acknowledged.

But for the time, as has been said, there was civil war, and its progress was marked by the almost continuous defeat of the Shogun’s forces, and their gradual retreat through the provinces of the Tokaido, the great eastern coast road, on the Shogun’s capital of Yedo, now Tokio. There in the famous castle some of the Tokugawa clansmen were closely besieged, while others made their way northward to the more remote regions of Aidzu and Oshiu, and again defied the imperialists until the future Field-marshal Yamagata finally hunted them down and compelled them to surrender as the only alternative to extermination. The Shogun himself finally retired into private life, at the urgent solicitation of Katsu, the lord of Awa province, in May 1868, five months after his resignation of his office in the first place had been formally accepted by the sovereign, and for what happened after May, until the autumn of that eventful year of 1868 saw the terrible internecine strife brought to a close, the Shogun cannot be held directly responsible. By many he has been blamed because he did not remain by the side of the young sovereign at Kioto in the stormy period which marked the last month of 1867 and the beginning of 1868, but it must be remembered that as a consequence of the coup d’état of the 3rd January the provisional government had already thrust the Shogun aside and was issuing edicts for which it had the direct authority of the monarch. The Shogun’s office had in reality ceased by that time to exist. His presence at Kioto may well have seemed to him in those days to have become superfluous, and his sense of self-respect prompted him to retire to his own castle of Osaka three days later, on the 6th January, seeing that he was no longer being consulted on affairs of State. In the same month of January 1868, there was a naval engagement off Awaji, that “foam-land” to which reference has been made in connection with Japanese mythology, and which lies athwart the Inland Sea a little west of Kobé, the opposed squadrons consisting of the Satsuma vessels Lotus, Kiang-Su, and Scotland, and the Shogun’s Kaiyo Maru (the frigate bought from the Dutch), the yacht Emperor (Queen Victoria’s present to himself) and the Fujiyama, another steamer purchased abroad. The three Satsuma ships were part of the fleet which had in recent years gradually been formed by the lord of the fief in pursuance of his conviction that the possession of powerful vessels would some day or other prove advantageous to the clan. They held their own fairly against the stronger ships of which the Tokugawa party had simultaneously possessed itself, and though the Scotland was sunk off Awa Bay as a result of the encounter the Satsuma men had no reason to be ashamed of the figure they cut in this early clash of armaments at sea. The Satsuma vessels had been under fire before, for they had taken part in the resistance offered by the Satsuma clan to Admiral Kuper at Kagoshima, when he undertook to chastise the lord of their province in 1863. The Tokugawa ships returned to Osaka, or rather to Tempo-san, which is to the great commercial port of Japan what Gravesend is to London, and there they awaited the progress of events in that spring of 1868 which must be accounted the most stirring period of Japanese modern history, as the events already narrated when taken in conjunction with those which have to be related will, it is believed, sufficiently demonstrate. It may be observed that after the battle of Fushimi, midway between Osaka and Kioto, which soon afterwards occurred, and in which the Tokugawa men were signally defeated, the frigate Kaiyo Maru was of the utmost service to the Shogun in conveying him from the region where his forces were meeting with nothing but disaster to a safe retreat for the time being at Yedo. He took passage in her from Tempo-san, and safely reached his own castle in what is now Tokio after two nights at sea.

The then British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, early in the spring of 1868 despatched Messrs Satow and Willis to express to the newly formed Kioto Government his hope that the time might be deemed opportune for the inauguration of direct relations between the accredited representatives of Western powers and his Imperial Majesty, the Shogun having actually resigned three months or more before. Dr Willis was the medical officer attached to the British Legation, and at a later date took up his residence in Kagoshima, the chief town of Satsuma, where he was physician to the hospital which the clan established, and his services during the stormy days of the Restoration struggle and subsequently when the Satsuma men were nominally in rebellion were invaluable. The British Minister’s messengers were well received and hospitably entertained in Kioto, and were permitted to walk freely in the streets of the ancient capital of the Ten-shi, which was something that no foreigners had ever done before. The anti-foreign feeling was still very strong throughout Japan, as was proved by the wholesale massacre of a French vessel’s boat’s crew at Sakai, near Osaka. An officer and eleven men were killed in all, and the French Minister, M. Roches, made an imperative demand on the Shogun’s government, which at that time (February 1868) was administering the affairs of the country, for the delivery of the bodies of the murdered men within twenty-four hours, a request which it was found practicable as well as politic to comply with. Also a number of Bizen soldiers hailing from that province washed by the Inland Sea, west of Awaji, had in passing through the newly opened port of Hiogo, vented their animosity towards the strangers whom they saw in the streets by running amok among them and firing with their rifles right and left. This crime, like that perpetrated at Sakai, was avenged, for the Government was strong enough to issue orders for the performance of seppuku by the culprits and to insist on execution of the sentences. The Bizen men were marching from Okayama to Osaka at the time when they allowed their anti-foreign ideas to outrun their discretion, the actual order to fire on the foreign residents being given by one Heiki Tatewaki, whose death was decreed by imperial edict and the then Governor of the port, the present Marquis Ito, was directed as his Majesty’s representative, to see the act of seppuku carried out in due form.

But there were worse troubles to follow, for when, in the month of March, Sir Harry Parkes went to Kioto on the invitation of the Emperor, to attend, in company with the Ministers of France and Holland, the first imperial audience of the reign of Meiji, he and his retinue were suddenly attacked in a public thoroughfare there, by two outlaws, of the “ro-nin” type already described, and the British representative had personally a very narrow escape. But for the magnificent courage shown by the Japanese officers who had been sent to meet the Emperor’s guest, Goto,—who rode by Sir Harry’s side, and Nakai,—who was immediately in front, with a member of the Legation guard,—both of these Japanese gentlemen having instantly engaged the ro-nins with their swords so effectually that one of the assailants was slain on the spot, and the other taken prisoner, afterwards to be executed, it is probable that Sir Harry would have been killed. The eminent services rendered by Count Goto (as he afterwards became) to his country are elsewhere recorded in this volume. Queen Victoria decorated him, and likewise Mr Nakai, for their gallantry on this occasion, and the Emperor manifested his poignant regret for the outrage when the following month the British Minister was received at Court. The Ten-shi gave practical effect, moreover, to his abhorrence of these crimes by issuing a decree in which it was declared that all persons guilty in the future of murdering foreigners, or of committing any acts of violence towards them, would not only be transgressing the express commands of the Emperor, but would be the direct source of national misfortune, inasmuch as they would be committing the heinous offence of causing the national dignity and reputation for good faith to suffer diminution in the eyes of those Treaty Powers with which his Majesty had declared himself to be on terms of amity and friendship. The effect of such an edict on the minds of people so accustomed to obey their sovereign’s behests as are the Japanese could not be other than salutary, and although there were isolated cases in the years which ensued wherein attacks were made on strangers, the era of opposition to the entry of aliens was by this time practically at an end, and taken in conjunction with the abolition shortly afterwards of those anti-Christian edicts which had been promulgated by his predecessors on the throne it must be admitted that the Emperor speedily gave gracious and convincing evidence of his desire to rule with that justice and liberality towards humanity at large by which he has ever been distinguished throughout an already long reign.

These events have to be recorded in connection with the life of the imperial court at Kioto at a time when the war of the Restoration, as it is termed, was still in progress in the northern portion of the island of Hondo, and in many cases the fighting was of the most desperate character, fortune by no means invariably inclining towards the imperialists. There was a fierce encounter at Utsu-no-miya, a town about sixty miles north of the capital, resulting in a success for the Shogun’s side, their leader having been Otori Keisuke, who, after undergoing a term of imprisonment for his share in prolonging the rebellion, entered the Imperial Government service, and rose to occupy posts of distinction.

In October 1868, his Majesty Mutsuhito was crowned Emperor of Japan in the ancient castle of the Nijo, at Kioto, and it was then that he took the oath to rule constitutionally, which was a purely voluntary act, prompted by an earnest desire to confer upon his people the advantages and blessings of enlightened government. A few weeks later, in the second month of 1869, he wedded the Princess Haruko, the daughter of a Court noble, and during the ensuing spring the Imperial court was wholly transferred to Yedo, that city being renamed Tokio, or Eastern Capital, to distinguish it from Kioto, which bore thenceforward the official title of Saikio, or Western capital. At Tokio his Majesty took up his abode in the Hon-maru, or Inner circle of the former castle of the Tokugawa family, and on the following 6th of September he received Prince Alfred of England in the palace gardens of Fuki-age, adjoining the imperial residence. This was the first occasion in the history of Japan on which the sovereign had ever met a foreign prince, all previous intercourse with strangers having taken place through the medium of the Shoguns. The interview between the Ten-shi and the British prince, afterwards the Duke of Edinburgh, took place in a tiny summer-house in the picturesque grounds of Fuki-age, then of considerable extent and laid out in wholly Japanese style, with its clumps of bamboo, groves of pine, masses of rhododendron, and azalea, rippling brooks, and grassy dells that go to form the delightful pleasaunces in which the heart of every Japanese rejoices. The meeting was of a most cordial character, the Emperor on that occasion wearing the unique old-fashioned head-dress which it was customary from time immemorial for the sovereigns of Japan to don on State occasions. His majesty only once afterwards appeared in public with this peculiar crown, and that was on the day that he opened the railway from Tokio to Yokohama in 1872. He has since worn foreign dress at all State functions.

Late in 1869 the Emperor was joined at Tokio by the young Empress Haruko, who travelled overland by the highroad termed the Tokaido, with an immense retinue, resting on the way at the prescribed honjins or private hotels used by the feudal lords on their former journeys to and from Yedo, when the Shoguns required them to pay periodical visits to the headquarters of the Tokugawa government. The Empress was some weeks on the road from Kioto to Tokio, and as her procession passed through the street of Kanagawa, near Yokohama, the foreign residents took the opportunity to assemble at the wayside and show their respect for the Ten-shi’s consort. They did not catch a glimpse of her features, but they knew that behind the gauze-screened windows of her lacquered palanquin sat the highest lady of the land, perhaps as much interested in her first sight of the strangers from the west as they were with the various elements of the imperial cortege. Though her majesty had heard and read much of the characteristics of the Occidentals, she had never previously seen any of them; in after years, however, her own beneficent impulses in the cause of charity led her to receive on many occasions the wives and daughters of foreign residents and contributed to the establishment of an enduring fame as the strenuous advocate and supporter of all good works.

The Emperor was but little in evidence in the early years of his reign, and it was an event in the history of the nation when the monarch who had been brought up in such strict seclusion was one day seen in the streets of his capital driving in an open carriage to Hama-go-ten, the beach palace in the suburbs of Tokio, in company with his Ministers the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura. On this occasion he had done them the supreme honour of calling for them at their residences and conveying them in his own carriage to a ceremony in which they were both deeply concerned. This was on the 1st of October 1871, and it is difficult to estimate at its true value the extraordinary effect which so graceful an act on the part of the monarch who had only four years before succeeded to a dignity which seemed to impose on him an existence of absolute invisibility to his subjects must have had on those who were witnesses of this vast concession to modernised ideas. Under the old regime the princes would themselves have been hidden from the vulgar gaze by the latticed windows of their sedan chairs, and the sovereign would never have been seen outside his own palace walls.

The next year the first line of railway was completed and the moment was seized by his Majesty’s advisers for a grand ceremony at the port which thirteen years before had been thrown open to foreign trade. A suitable stage had been erected at the Yokohama end of the eighteen miles long railway, over which an experimental train service had been conducted for some weeks previously, and at the appointed hour the Emperor, clad in white silk robes, with a crimson sash, and scarlet trousers, and wearing in place of a crown the antique black coif terminating in an upright lath-like structure which rose some ten inches above his head, came forward in full view of the multitude, which included hundreds of foreign residents and visitors. To the great mass of his subjects, with whom the existence of the sovereign had always been a matter of pious belief rather than of assured reality, this manifestation in the flesh of their revered ruler was beyond measure impressive and gratifying. It unquestionably smoothed the path of the newly formed Central Government, for the advent of his majesty on the scene was proof positive that all which was then being done in the way of innovation upon established usage had the imperial sanction and authority. In Japan this meant a great deal more, owing to the respect for law and order which is admittedly inherent to the Japanese character and disposition, than it by any possibility could have done in lands where less reverence is shown to sovereign attributes. The day was one to be remembered by old and young alike, for it marked beyond all doubt the emancipation of Japan from the thraldom of a feudal system which had held her in check for centuries. The Emperor had set the seal of his approval on projects of reform.

In the same year the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout Japan, and from this period may be said to have been obliterated those discrepancies in dates which had been unavoidable owing to the tendency to resort to the Chinese plan of reckoning time. Down to the year named the day of the month corresponded to the age of the moon, and an intercalary month had to be provided in the calendar every third year. The new year fell usually between mid-January and mid-February, and as dates were given in conformity with the old style of reckoning in some cases and in others the new, it may be that down to 1872 there will here and there be found a difference of a month or so in the recorded dates of events.

The opening of the railway in 1872 from Tokio to Yokohama, though of no great length, made communication between the capital and its port a far more easy matter than it had been at the time when the Tokaido was the only highway and traffic was liable to dislocation by the passage of a daimio and his retinue of two-sworded samurai. It is true that for some two or three years prior to the date on which the regular service of trains between the two places began to work a revolution in the system of travel there had been a steamer or two plying to and from the wharf at Tsukiji, near the Hama-go-ten Palace, in Tokio, and the jetty at Yokohama which then existed near the northern end of the “Bund” or Esplanade. But the accommodation, though the residents freely enough availed themselves of such facilities as the service afforded, was of the most limited and primitive character, and was necessarily wholly inadequate to the demand for the means of transport of that almost pauseless ebb and flow of the tide of humanity along the shores of the bay which from the days of Kaempfer had never failed to attract the attention of travellers. One of the saddest incidents of the early days of the new era was the explosion of the small steamer Yeddo as she lay at the Tsukiji “hatoba” with steam up in readiness for her daily voyage to Yokohama, some scores of lives being sacrificed on that occasion. The Yeddo was one of the pioneers of the coasting trade of Japan, which has since grown to proportions truly enormous.

While the railway to the “Eastern capital” was being built, another line was commenced from the newly opened port of Kobé-Hiogo to Osaka and on to the “Western capital” of Kioto. It was officially opened for traffic in 1873, the Emperor being present on the occasion, which gave rise to great national rejoicing. The improved methods of transport had by that time been extensively supplemented by greatly enhanced facilities for intercommunication in the form of telegraph lines, which had been stretched over practically the entire length of the highroad from Tokio to Nagasaki, close upon 1000 English miles. The work was done in the days when the peasantry of the interior had no conception of the value of such aids to commerce and were not easily to be persuaded to refrain from interference therewith. In many cases the telegraph poles were uprooted as soon as they were planted in the ground, and in others the opposition to the innovation took the form of active hostility to the individuals, both native and foreign, charged with the duties of carrying out the proposed works. The origin of this antagonism, however, was to be ascribed solely to local prejudice, and the punishment of the ringleaders proved to be a sufficient deterrent to the rest, for after the first few months the attacks entirely ceased.

At this stage the residents of the Capital had become somewhat accustomed to see the Emperor riding or driving through the streets of the metropolis, for he periodically reviewed his troops on the Hibiya parade ground, and not infrequently was to be seen visiting places at some distance from his capital. The greatest concern was manifested by all classes when, late one night in the spring of 1873, the signal guns were heard to announce that a fire had broken out within the castle. There was a prompt muster of the forces forming the Tokio garrison and for a while the utmost consternation prevailed. The damage done was immense, and the actual source of the outbreak was discovered to have been in such dangerous proximity to the imperial apartments as to suggest for the moment that there had again been a preconcerted arrangement to seize the person of his Majesty, in the confusion which might well have been expected to arise on the warning guns being fired. Happily the monarch was efficiently guarded, and whatever may have been the true cause of the conflagration there was no difficulty in removing the Court to another palace at Akasaka, in the suburbs, wherein his Majesty dwelt during the rebuilding on a modern design of the imperial residence within the Honmaru. In the thoroughfares of Tokio were at this time to be seen scores of Satsuma samurai, retainers of the feudal chieftain Shimadzu Saburo, who was occupying the position in the new Government of Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-president of the Left, as already mentioned, and these ardent spirits of the warlike clan of the south found much in the changes that were then taking place to be displeased with. They persisted in wearing their two swords in their belts, and had their hair dressed in the old-fashioned queue. Their retention of the old style of costume, too, with its loose trousers, sandals for the feet, and lacquered helmet tied with cords for the chin, among a population that was already beginning to adopt foreign fashions to a notable extent, made them conspicuous and provoked the ridicule of the lower classes. This the Satsuma clansmen were quick to resent, and here and there slight skirmishes were recorded, the general effect being to create a feeling of uneasiness which lasted for many weeks until the Satsuma chieftain, as elsewhere explained, resigned his office and returned to his stronghold of Kagoshima in the summer of 1873.

The year 1874 was memorable as that of the expedition to Formosa, when Japan chastised the savages of the south-east coast of that island for their ill treatment of Japanese shipwrecked sailors. China’s attention had been drawn to these barbarities, but she had professed her utter inability to put a stop to them, and Japan had then warned the Peking Government that if the savages should continue to subject Japanese mariners or others who might be cast away on Formosan shores to the inhuman treatment which it had been the fate of others in misfortune to experience the Tokio Cabinet would know what to do. A fresh incident arose and Japan was as good as her word. The younger brother of the Saigo Takamori whose fame as a leader will never wane was selected as the Chief of the Expedition, and to him, afterwards the Marquis Saigo, his Majesty entrusted the duty of vindicating the honour of the Japanese Empire, of which it must never be said that it has shown the slightest hesitation to hit out when the interests of its own people have been imperilled. In past years her arm has not always been long enough to extend support to her subjects over-sea, but it is Japan’s aim, as it is that of Britain, to convince the rest of the world that while she repudiates most vigorously the idea that she seeks territorial aggrandisement or covets the recognition of an unchallenged supremacy in the Far East, she at all times resents the slightest attempt to trespass on what are regarded by her statesmen as the boundaries of her national safety. If Japan’s arm is growing longer and her policy seems to be far-reaching, it is but the natural outcome of her resolve to protect her people wherever they may be and to encourage their lawful desires for expansion into fresh fields of enterprise as the result of the remarkable growth of her population at home.

The Formosan expedition proved a complete success, and a detailed account of its progress will be met with elsewhere in these pages. It gave to the newly formed army its first opportunity of displaying to the satisfaction of the sovereign its qualifications as a fighting force, inasmuch as the difficulties which it had to encounter, although its adversaries were savages, were naturally on a formidable scale, and the undertaking bore in this respect a strong resemblance to what have been described as Britain’s “little wars.” The upshot was that the tribesmen of the Formosan east and south-east coasts developed a wholesome fear of the prowess of disciplined troops and from that time forward there were no recorded instances of their maltreatment of mariners, whilst at the present day the best effects are perceptible from the spread of education among them in consequence of the establishment of native schools in Formosa since it became a Japanese Colony. There was, however, an additional advantage secured to Japan by the expedition, in that it served for the time to divert attention from the ever-pressing political questions arising from China’s somewhat irritating attitude, mainly in regard to Korea. From time immemorial the monarch of Korea had paid tribute to Japan at stated intervals much in the way that he had paid an annual tribute to China, but owing to Japan’s preoccupation with other and weightier matters the practice had fallen into desuetude. Instigated by ambitious Chinese officials, as it was generally supposed, Korea had sought to free herself from any and all obligations to continue this practice, and by way of emphasising this reluctance to be bound by old traditions the Koreans had thought fit to attack the Japanese Legation and to otherwise commit unfriendly acts towards their immediate neighbours on the east. The Samurai of Satsuma and the other southern clans clamoured to be led against the Koreans,—and if the Koreans should be supported by China, then against the Chinese as well,—in order that these insults to the Japanese flag might be avenged. It was a strong plea, but it had to be resisted, for Japan was not ready to embark at that time in a great war. Consequently the Government deemed it prudent to be content with the compensation offered and the establishment of a garrison for the Legation at Seoul which might suffice to adequately protect its staff. By the ardent followers of the Satsuma chieftain, however, this was regarded as wholly insufficient, and matters had reached a decidedly perilous stage when the despatch of an expedition to Formosa happily provided an outlet for the superabundant energies of the younger swordsmen. The personnel of the punitive force consisted largely of Satsuma samurai, and right well did the men acquit themselves in the tasks which fell to their share in the mountainous wilds of “the Beautiful Isle.”

A few months prior to the setting out of the Formosan Expedition there had been an insurrection in Saga, the chief town of the Hizen province, led by Yeto Shimpei, who had not long before been a member of the new Government. The rising had been very quickly suppressed, and without much bloodshed, but it was an indication that the policy of the new administration met with scant favour in some of the regions remote from the metropolis, where the spirit of the people was, for want of wider knowledge, very averse to what were viewed as pernicious innovations based upon a wholesale introduction of Occidental manners and customs. Though the antipathy to foreign methods subsided with the punishment of the foremost of the Saga insurgents, the embers were not wholly extinguished, and less than three years later they burst once more into flame at Kagoshima, as will presently appear, and in the meantime the growing hostility in Satsuma to the proceedings of the Tokio Cabinet revealed itself in a variety of ways, though it was the policy of the administration to avoid the danger of driving matters to extremities with the warlike clansmen of the extreme south, at the head of whom stood Saigo Takamori, then resident on his own farm in the vicinity of the castle town which was the Satsuma stronghold and the headquarters of its quasi-independent military organisation. Nevertheless, the clansmen continued their regular drilling and set utterly at naught the remonstrances of the Tokio Government.

Affairs in Satsuma reached their climax in February 1877, when a march to Kioto was decided upon, the military cadets and the clansmen, mustering over 12,000, having resolved on accompanying their leader Saigo Takamori on a journey to the Western capital ostensibly to beg for the intervention of his Majesty in respect of the grievances which Satsuma claimed to be enduring at the hands of the existing Tokio Government. The telegraph promptly carried the news to Kioto of the departure of this formidable force from Kagoshima, and preparations were instantly made to oppose its progress. The Emperor proclaimed Saigo and his followers to be in rebellion, and the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Arisugawa, was directed to inflict punishment on the offenders. The incidents of the campaign in Kiushiu which ensued are set forth at length elsewhere in this volume, and order was not restored in the southern island until the autumn of the year, after a period of the most disastrous strife in which Satsuma was a house divided against itself, inasmuch as there were many of the clan who remained faithful to the imperial standard, notably the younger Saigo, afterwards marquis, and Admiral Kawamura, who commanded the imperial fleet.

The Emperor remained for some time at his Kioto palace before returning to Tokio, and it was known at the time that this outbreak of hostilities in a part of his dominions occasioned his Majesty the most profound sorrow, the more so that Saigo Takamori had led his own forces to victory ten years before, when the imperialists had been plunged into warfare with the adherents of the Shogun. That Marshal Saigo should have been so ill advised as to head an insurrection was to the monarch whom he had in former years served so faithfully a source of the most poignant grief, and the sad end of the arch-rebel, in battle on the crest of Shiroyama, in the town of Kagoshima, made a deep impression on all in Japan. The Emperor’s attribute of magnanimity was displayed only a few years ago in the grant of a peerage to the son of the famous Satsuma leader, and the imperial approval of the erection of a monument to his memory in the public park of Uyeno, in Tokio. The record of Saigo’s rebellion has been effaced, and only his splendid services to the State in the years prior to 1877 are kept in his sovereign’s remembrance.

The period which followed the war in Satsuma was one of uninterrupted industry and persevering endeavour on the part of all the Ten-shi’s subjects to make up for the time which had been lost by the civil war. Immense interest was taken in the advancement of education and the spread of commercial enterprise, the shipping and manufacturing trades being diligently fostered by wise enactments that were often the outcome of the ruler’s own initiative. There can be no doubt that at this period were laid the foundations of that unexampled industrial prosperity which has distinguished the latter portion, down to the present time, of the Meiji era, and which, resting as it does on the most secure basis—one which even a war with a great European power has been powerless to disturb—bids fair to last for ages to come.

In 1880 the Imperial edict appeared establishing the prefectural assemblies, local parliaments which served in not a few instances to develop a talent for debate in political aspirants, and likewise to familiarise the agricultural population, wherein lies the main strength of the nation, with the principles of representative institutions on a larger scale, such as had been foreshadowed by the Imperial promise made at the time of the Emperor’s accession. That promise was reiterated, and a definite date assigned for the opening of the Japanese Diet, by his Majesty in the following year. It was in 1880, too, that the new Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, on both of which a vast amount of careful consideration had been bestowed, were promulgated, the codes themselves having been compiled with a lucidity and completeness which leave nothing to be desired. There is no ambiguity about the laws of Japan, and as translations have been made and published under the sanction of the Government, accessible to all, it is practicable for a stranger to make himself acquainted with the rules and regulations applicable to every walk of life without the aid of lawyer or interpreter.

The announcement that the Emperor had determined to grant a Constitution was everywhere received with joy and gratitude, for though the time had not, it was fully comprehended, yet arrived when it would be feasible for a representative assembly to meet, the nation had the sovereign’s word for it that there would be no needless delay.

Under the system which existed in the early years of the Meiji era the Ministry had consisted of those charged with the conduct of Foreign and Home Affairs, the management of the naval and military forces, of the national finances, of ecclesiastical affairs, and of public instruction. At the side of the Ministry stood the Sa-In, or Senate, of which there were thirty-two members, and the Sho-In, or Council of State, the number of members whereof was unlimited,—the nominations to both these bodies being made by the sovereign. The power of the Emperor was in those days, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, regarded as boundless, and a voluntary surrender of rights which,—though they had often in the past history of the nation lain dormant,—had existed unchallenged from remote antiquity,—was a concession the importance of which could not be too highly esteemed. The Senate (Gen-Ro-In, as it was latterly termed) was composed of Peers of the realm, and of persons who had rendered the country distinguished service in their several capacities, or who were eminent by reason of their erudition, and its duty was to take charge of legislative matters referred to it by the Cabinet or introduced at the instance of the Senate itself. The Gen-Ro-In was likewise empowered to receive petitions regarding legislation from outside sources, so that in its functions it was largely the forerunner of the present House of Peers, as constituted under the edict of 1889. There was also a Local Governors’ Council, which resembled to some extent a national assembly, though composed of officially nominated members, for it was directed by imperial rescript on its first sitting that its duties would be “to attend to the affairs of State as the representative of the people’s interests.” In the same rescript the Emperor declared that the said Council had been called together “in pursuance of the solemn promise, given by Us on the occasion of Our accession to the Throne, to summon delegates of Our subjects to assist Us in the conduct of affairs of State, to make with those delegates arrangements calculated to cement the amicable understanding that prevails between rulers and ruled, and to enable both to co-operate for the common good of the country.” It was added that the Governors who attended the Council were in “no danger of incurring the displeasure of the Government for any opinion enunciated by them at the meeting.” The Council which had thus existed since 1875 was abolished in 1880, but meanwhile the prefectural assemblies had been established, and there were thus other legitimate channels for voicing public opinion.

The next year saw the issue of the proclamation providing for the assembly of a truly national representative body in 1890, and meanwhile Marquis Ito and his staff were diligently preparing the Constitution and the Laws bearing upon elections to the Diet and the Houses themselves, all of which were proclaimed in 1889, on the 11th February, the anniversary of the ascension of the throne by Jimmu Tenno. Thus was fulfilled in its entirety the promise made in the “Charter Oath,” as it is termed, taken by his Majesty on his coronation. The Imperial Rescript has been throughout the guide and mainstay of the people’s hopes and ambitions, and in its original form it was worded as under;—(the translation is almost literal)—

I. In administering the business of the State, We shall settle affairs by public opinion, which shall have an opportunity of expressing itself in public representative assembly.

II. Our administrations shall be in the interests of the whole people, and not of any particular class of Our subjects.

III. No person, whether official or private citizen, shall be hindered in the prosecution of his legitimate business.

IV. The bad customs of past ages shall be abolished, and Our Government shall tread in the paths of civilisation and enlightenment.

V. We shall endeavour to raise the prestige and honour of Our country by seeking knowledge throughout the world.

In 1893, when Parliamentary institutions were in their infancy, the representative assemblies having met for the first time in 1890, the climax was reached in a furious political agitation by the Lower House of the Diet voting a wholesale reduction of the Government expenditure, to which the Ministry absolutely refused to consent. It was then that the Emperor intervened with a characteristic message impartially addressed to both his Cabinet and to the Diet, pointing out facts which he was resolved to bring to their remembrance. The Emperor declared that the progress of foreign countries in which representative institutions had taken root had been rapid and constant, but that if disputes and bickerings were indulged in not only would time be wasted and energies dissipated but the attainment of those worthy objects for which all were working would be hindered and delayed. He continued;—“We have full confidence in the faith and ability of the servants of Our Crown, and have committed to their care the execution of measures calculated to promote our designs, and We have no doubt but that the representatives of Our people will share with Us in our care for the national welfare. The expenditures mentioned in Article 67 of the Constitution—i.e. those connected with naval and military administration—should not be the cause of any dispute or contention, seeing that they have the express written sanction of Our Decree. In the matter of administrative reform, We have given special instruction to Our Ministers to give the fullest consideration, so that there may be no error in the conclusions they arrive at, and then come to Us for Our sanction to any reforms they may desire to introduce. The question of national defence is one which brooks no delay, and in order to show our own sense of its paramount importance We have directed that the expenditures of Our Household be cut down, so that We may be able to contribute a yearly sum of Yen 300,000 [£30,000] for the next six years to the necessary equipment of the national defences. We have at the same time ordered all officers and officials in Our service to contribute, unless excused by Us for exceptional reasons, one-tenth of their salaries, for the same period of years, towards the expenses of naval construction. We depend, therefore, on the co-operation, along constitutional lines, of Ministers and Representatives, in the accomplishment of our great national tasks; and We call upon Our people, one and all, to do their duties in this matter.”

That proclamation appeared in 1893, one year before the outbreak of war with China, and it had the effect of putting an end to the disputes, for all sides cheerfully acquiesced in the wisdom and impartiality of the sovereign’s decision.

During the war with China in 1894-5, the Emperor’s solicitude for the welfare of his people and the painstaking diligence with which he entered into the minutest details of the naval and military plans for the prosecution of the campaign in Manchuria and Shantung, his unwearying attendance at his desk in the Hiroshima headquarters for more than eight months without change, having left his Court behind him when he took upon himself the serious burdens of conducting the war, endeared him to his people to an extent that no mere words could effectively describe. When at the close of the long struggle he returned to his capital his reception was such as to have satisfied his utmost aspirations and must have convinced him that his subjects feel for him not the traditional reverence they owe to a sovereign but the deep and abiding regard of a loving people.

Her Majesty the Empress has been for thirty-seven years the devoted consort of the ruler, and is esteemed throughout the imperial dominions as the very embodiment of all the womanly virtues. While the Emperor is immeasurably concerned with the welfare of the army and navy, her Majesty takes the utmost personal interest in the Red Cross Society, and continually works for the benefit of the hospitals, her greatest happiness consisting in identifying herself with or aiding with her own hands the undertakings of charitable institutions. In the wars which Japan has gone through the care of the sick and wounded has been the subject of the Empress’s most anxious thought, she and the four young princesses having toiled at bandage-making and other useful occupations day after day. She regularly devotes much time to such tasks, encouraging the sick with cheering words, and she rigorously pared down her household’s expenditure from the outset, in order that the contributions made to benevolent societies might be the more munificent. She has always been a liberal patroness of the arts, and in the direction of education she has been untiring in her promotion of worthy objects. There is not a man or woman in the empire who would allude to her Majesty in terms short of the most profound and respectful regard, and the people yield her homage not more by right of her exalted station than in their universal recognition of her queenly attributes and personal charm.

The Crown Prince has received an education which has among other things fitted him to become in due course of time the Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. He does not take part in active service, but all the other princes of the blood have by the Emperor’s desire entered the services afloat or ashore, and have very recently been serving as Military or Naval officers in war.

The late Prince Arisugawa, as the chief of the general staff, was at the headquarters at Hiroshima during the China War, and planned all the operations of the campaign. He died at the age of sixty-one from the results of hard work and exposure, during the trying months from September 1894 to January 1895.

He was succeeded in his office by his relative, the late Prince Komatsu, who in March 1895 proceeded to China as Commander-in-chief of the army in the field.

Prince Kita-Shirakawa was also in the field as commander of the imperial guards division, and fought at Port Arthur, and in Formosa, where he died before the end of the war from the effects of climate. He was universally popular as an officer, and his early decease was deplored. Prince Takehito Arisugawa was at Wei-hai-wei and the Pescadores, and did good service as the captain of the Matsushima.

Prince Kanin, as a major and officer of the staff, fought bravely in the Liaotung peninsula, and likewise took part in the Russo-Japanese war, in which also three of the imperial princes were under fire, before Port Arthur.

Prince Higashi Fushimi was a commander on board the Chitose, Prince Yamashina on the Yakumo, and Prince Fushimi was on the Hatsusé.

It was a source of immense pride to the nation that these princes of the imperial house were all actively engaged on its behalf in the hour of trial.

Thirty-eight years ago the Emperor began his most auspicious reign with the solemn message to his people, conveyed in the Go-Jo-no-Go-Sei-Mon—i.e. a Decree of Five Articles previously referred to:—

“On ascending the Throne of Our Ancestors, Our determination is, in spite of all difficulties that may beset Our path, to rule Our country in person, to secure the peace of all Our subjects, to open friendly relations with other countries, to make Our country glorious, and to establish the nation on a permanent basis of prosperity and happiness.”

With extreme tenacity of purpose and the most steadfast determination the sovereign has never deviated a hair’s-breadth from the course which he set himself to follow. He cast aside at the outset the ties which might have bound him to an ancient feudalism, resolved to substitute Constitutional and Parliamentary Government for the Absolutism that his predecessors on the throne had exercised, and by his countenance and example rendered feasible the adoption by his people of all the arts and sciences known to modern civilisation, in order that the nation might ultimately raise itself to a pinnacle of greatness never before attained by a purely Asiatic Empire.

Under his Majesty’s wise rule Japan has developed her latent resources and extended her commerce to a degree that has transcended even the most sanguine expectations of her mercantile men, while she has perfected within her borders the essentials of a permanent system of defence, naval and military, ample for her needs.

The address which the Emperor first issued to his Army and Navy made the deepest impression on the minds of all, and its stirring tones have rung in the ears of his soldiers and sailors ever since, as they have braced themselves to measure strength with their enemies on land and sea. The Emperor said:—

“As your Commander-in-chief We fully rely upon you as We do upon Our own hands, and desire you to look to Us as your head, so that the relation between us may be one of absolute and sincere confidence and trust. Whether We perform Our duty successfully or not, depends entirely on the manner in which you perform yours. If Our country fails to stand high in the opinion of other nations, We desire you to share in Our sorrow. If it rises with honour, We will enjoy the fruits of it with you. Stand firm in your duty; assist Us in protecting the country; and the result must be the prosperity of the nation and the enhancement of Our country’s reputation.”

This is the “imperial message” the terms of which are graven deep on the memories of men of both services in Japan, inspiring them with ardour in the heat of battle and encouraging them to patiently endure the inevitable privations and suffering of their lot. The root-principle of their conduct is strict conformity with the Emperor’s Message, their one anxiety not to fall short of their duty in executing the ruler’s commands. The imperial charge laid upon them is that they shall be brave and enduring, true and honourable in their actions, simple and frugal in their habits.

In their Emperor they have always had a brilliant example set them, not only of diligence in the performance of daily tasks, but of the practice of that frugality and adherence to a simple mode of life which is enjoined upon all. His menage is noticeably free from ostentation, his wardrobe and table being almost meagrely supplied. Winter and summer he is at his desk by 8 A.M., ready for the transaction of State business, and his endurance is marvellous, for when occasion demands it he will continue at work far into the night, ever ready to receive any of his ministers in audience should matters of serious importance arise. The Emperor is well known to his people to have the habit of closely questioning those who may come before him until he has mastered the facts of a case, and then he gives his decision without hesitation. His fondness for horses is proverbial, and it is always on horseback that he appears at reviews of his troops, or at the annual manœuvres, when he conducts the operations in person, as Commander-in-chief. His Majesty’s sympathies are promptly aroused by the oft-recurring calamities that unhappily sweep over Japan, in the form of tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, conflagrations, or epidemics,—he condoles with the sufferers,—and his privy purse is open to the relief of real distress. His personal attributes have won the respect and affection of his people, now numbering 46,000,000—an increase of 14,000,000 has taken place in the population of his dominions since he came to the throne—and in an intensely practical age like the present it is stimulating to discover that there is a nation in the distant Orient which, while its sons have fought their way to “a place in the sun,” has nevertheless preserved throughout a whole-souled devotion and unquestioning loyalty to its monarch, never exceeded, never perhaps equalled, in the history of the globe.

Allusion has been made to the Emperor’s predilection for writing short poems as a relaxation from the cares of State. They are occasionally given out for publication in the daily journals and appear under the heading of Giyo-Sei—i.e. Imperial Compositions. Those of last year frequently bore reference to the war in which his forces were engaged in Manchuria, and two may here be quoted in illustration of the trend of his Majesty’s thought during that anxious period:—

Ikanaran koto ni aite mo, tayumanu wa,
Waga shikishima no Yamato-damashii.

Scorning to yield, whatever fate’s decree—
Undaunted is the soul of my Japan.

Shiraku mono yoso ni motomu na yo no hito no
Makoto no michi zo Shikishima no michi.

Sincere as one who seeks for that which lies beyond,

—
My country’s course shall be.