CHAPTER XXII

JAPAN. MUKASHI

Ito was now appointed Governor of Hiōgo and Kōbé. It is curious that so comparatively small an office should have been spoken of as an excessive rise for a man who was destined to become a Prince and great ruler, and whose name was to become famous throughout the civilized world. He was a young man of about my own age, a yōnin or man of business of the Chōshiu clan, which some years before he had left to become a rōnin, when, with his friend Inouyé, afterwards one of the “Elder Statesmen,” he undertook a voyage to Europe, the two working their way before the mast. This journey did much to open his eyes and free his views; but, apart from that, his energies and talents were bound to push him to the front. Great as were the services of the other clans—Satsuma especially—it was Chōshiu that produced the two greatest men of the revolution—Kido and Ito.

On the 5th of March the Foreign Representatives returned to Ōsaka. On the 7th there came a pressing request to Sir Harry from the Mikado’s government to allow Dr. Willis to go to Kiōto to visit Yōdo, the Inkiyō (retired Prince) of Tosa, who was grievously ill. Sir Harry consented on condition that I should accompany him, for he never lost any opportunity of getting behind the scenes in the great political drama which was being played. I should add that during the previous month Dr. Willis had gone to the capital to give advice and help in the case of the wounded soldiers of the clans. On that occasion he was accompanied by Mr. Satow, who brought back most valuable information as to the state of parties and was able to give the government, new to all diplomatic procedure, excellent advice as to their dealings with foreigners—especially in the matter of the Bizen attack. They must have been the first foreigners to set foot in the sacred city since the days of the Christian troubles nearly three hundred years ago, for the occasional passing of the Dutch merchants of Deshima could hardly be taken into account.

Dr. Willis and I lost no time; we started at eight o’clock in the evening having, to use a Japanese expression, “broken our bones” in getting ready; we could have started earlier had it not been for the delay caused by the very officer who, with such urgent instructions, had been sent to give us all facilities, and who had done absolutely nothing! However, after endless wanderings through Ōsaka in search of this trusty guide, we were finally deposited with a brazier and a lacquer box full of rice and fish—enough for a dozen men—in a Teaboat, one of the small craft in which the good citizens take their pleasure merrily on the river during the summer nights, and so we slept and feasted our way up the river to Fushimi, eight miles from Kiōto.

Here we found but little to see of the deadly battle of the end of January. To be sure much of the town had been destroyed by fire, but in this land, where the houses are built of wood and paper and whole districts are burnt down by the peaceful upsetting of a brasero on a windy day, the charred remains of a great conflagration excite little astonishment and still less suggest the horrors of war. The burning of the bridge at Yōdo was more significant. Yōdo was a stronghold of the Tycoon which his general, dazzled as the clansmen said by the appearance of the Mikado’s standard, the golden sun on a scarlet ground, treacherously gave up to the enemy.

At Fushimi we were met by a perfect nightmare in the shape of a guard of Tosa men—wild-looking fellows, clad in armour with their faces hideously masked and long elf locks of black or white horsehair hanging down from their helmets over their shoulders. With this weird escort of pantomimic demons we marched into Kiōto along a road which was really one long, continuous village full of shops doing a brisk trade in gods and dolls—fairings to be taken home by pious pilgrims to the shrines of the sacred city. The road was in a very bad state, having been much cut up by the passing of artillery.

_Cosas d’España!_ When we reached our destination we found that we need have been in no such violent hurry. Nothing had been prepared for our reception, and we were kept waiting for several hours in a very shabby outlying building, apparently a sort of guard-room for soldiers. At last, when our patience was almost exhausted, we were conducted in all solemnity to the Prince’s residence, one of those long, rambling, bungalow-like buildings, or rather groups of buildings, surrounded by a wall, and containing quarters for a whole army of retainers and soldiers. Very white wood without a knot or flaw in it, vast roomy apartments without a decoration or ornament of any kind, except one picture hung by silken strings in the Tokonoma, the raised dais at one end of the room, composed the magnificent simplicity of a great noble’s dwelling in the days of the old Japan.

Furniture there was none save a sword rack; the fair white mats served as bed, tables and chairs; such cupboards as were needful were let into the wall; paper sliding screens, open at the tops, divided the rooms; there was no privacy, and if a confidential talk was needed the profane had to be sent away out of ear-shot, which, luckily, implied no offence. The palace occupied by the Prince had been, until the revolution, occupied by the Prince of Aidzu. It was spoil of war.

When we had been shown to our apartments, which were the state guest suite of the house, the ex-Prince sent to beg that, as he was too ill to welcome us otherwise, we would go to see him. Such a ramble through an interminable maze of passages all alike! Even our guides were sometimes puzzled, for they, of course, were hardly yet posted in the topography of this recent acquisition. At last we came to the outside of the great man’s rooms, where his retainers, all of them, no matter how high their rank might be, laid aside their dirks (_wakizashi_), for no man must enter his lord’s presence armed. The sword (_katana_) must always be taken out of the girdle on entering a house.

Prince Yōdo, the Inkiyō of Tosa, was a very remarkable man,—remarkable even among the many notable personalities of those stirring times. A Daimio when he resigned his position in favour of his heir and became Inkiyō might divest himself of the pomp and circumstance of princely rank, but he rarely gave up the actual power. Such men as Shimadzu Saburō, of Satsuma, Daté of Uwajima, and Yōdo, all Inkiyō, remained the real governing force in their several clans. The greatest of these was Yōdo, whom we were presently to see. He was a far-seeing man of the highest intelligence, and took a much more statesmanlike view of affairs than the other Daimios.

When these were pressing, as I have stated above, for the surrender by the Tokugawa clan of property bringing in two million kokus of rice he saw that such a confiscation would be futile and absurd as the nucleus of a national revenue. He it was who proposed that all the Daimios should surrender their almost regal estates, retaining only a percentage sufficient to maintain a suitable position; he foresaw that the sacrifice would be rather apparent than real, and that, if the Empire were consolidated, they would be more than compensated by being relieved of the necessity of maintaining a whole machinery of government, with military and, in some cases, naval forces. Satsuma and some other Princes jibbed at this in the first instance; they had not Yōdo’s grasp of affairs, and were wedded to what he recognized as a worn-out feudal system. In the end they had to yield and Yōdo’s wisdom won the day.

Yōdo, like some of our own statesmen of a generation little more than fifty years before his time, had been a very free liver. In his youth he had a seal engraved with the device, “The drunken Daimio of the Southern Seas.” His excesses had been notorious, and he was now paying his shot.

We found the old _viveur_—old not in years—lying on the mats in the midst of a pile of quilts and coverlets decked with beautiful purple crape, a cloud of strong colour contrasting sharply with the waxen mask and hands of the sick man. At his head was his wife, an elderly lady with her eyebrows shaven and her teeth lacquered black,[6] ministering to his wants, and behind him sat his last and favourite young lady, a pretty little girl hardly more than a child, with her hands under a corner of the quilt, for the poor little soul was very cold. She had her teeth and eyebrows left as nature had given them to her, with no disfigurement inflicted by the tyranny of fashion. She seemed at first to be very shy and abashed at the presence of the inauspicious and monstrous foreigners. The ex-Prince had the most exquisite manners, all the courtesy which to a Japanese gentleman of high rank is second nature.

He was, moreover, obviously gifted with that magnetic attraction which is so rare even amongst the greatest men and which fully accounted for his influence among his peers. He received us warmly and expressed great thanks to us for arriving so quickly. I did not prolong my visit, for he appeared to be very tired and sick—as it seemed to my non-professional eye, sick unto death. Dr. Willis, moreover, was eager to begin his examination. So I took my leave, wondering that a man of only forty-seven should look so old. He seemed to have used up his life. Dr. Willis, I may add here, soon patched him up, and he lived for several years, rendering good service to the State, though holding no office; but he could not shake off his old habits, and in the end they triumphed and killed him.

On the following morning I breakfasted with Gotō Shōjirō and Katsura, who were now important officials in the Foreign Office under the Mikado’s Government, at the house of the former, who it will be remembered belonged to the Tosa clan and was Prince Yōdo’s chief adviser. In the midst of our talk there arrived a dispatch which caused them great apprehension, though as yet they had no details. When the full news arrived it was bad enough. The story has been told before, but it needs to be repeated here, however briefly. The most complete account is that by Herr von Brandt, from which I have borrowed freely, refreshing my own memory.

On the 8th of March the two French ships _Vénus_ and _Dupleix_ were in the bay of Ōsaka, where they had been engaged in taking soundings, and with a view of continuing this work, Captain du Petit Thouars had sent his steam launch with a gig to Sakai, a small port provisionally open to foreign trade, where such authorities as there were had been informed of the operations on which these boats were engaged.

At about five o’clock in the afternoon, two of the launch’s crew asked leave to go on shore, the people up to that time having shown every sign of friendship, and other Europeans having previously landed there. Hardly had they gone a few steps from the launch when they were joined by a Samurai who made signs to them to go to the other side of the quay. Here they were surrounded by about twenty armed men, who seized them and tried to bind them. One of the two men tore himself away, and the other jumped into the water, when the soldiery fired into the launch until they believed that all the crew were dead. As soon as the officer in the gig, whose men were unarmed—and indeed, those in the launch had only revolvers, which had been stowed away in lockers for fear of accidents—heard the firing, he hurried to the rescue of the launch and was met with a hot fire of musketry. One of his men was wounded, and as he thought that all in the launch were killed, he steered for his ship and made his report. The massacre had been terrible; those who were not shot were beaten to death with poles armed with iron hooks.

Captain du Petit Thouars manned his boats and at once went off to Sakai; on the way he met the launch. Out of a crew of one midshipman and fifteen men, only two were dead; six were severely wounded, one unwounded, and seven missing, including the midshipman. Their bodies, cruelly mutilated, were afterwards given up. The machinery was riddled with bullets, but the sound man with the help of one or two of the less badly wounded men managed to rig up a sail and so escaped. The batteries on shore were manned and the foreign representatives were all in Ōsaka, and open to attack. The captain of the _Vénus_ and the French Consul were, moreover, supposed to be on their way from Ōsaka to Sakai, so Captain du Petit Thouars wisely refrained from taking any immediate action, which might have led to terrible reprisals.

When the news reached Ōsaka in the dead of the night, the representatives were roused from their beds and a conference was at once held. They determined to make common cause with their French colleague, to strike their flags, and leave Ōsaka, until the demands of M. Roches, who had not yet left, should be satisfied. Those demands were:

1. The execution of the two officers in command at Sakai and all those who had taken part in the crime.

2. An indemnity of 150,000 dollars for the families of the victims.

3. That the Prime Minister should pay a visit to the _Vénus_ to express regret and apologize on behalf of the Government.

4. That the Prince of Tosa, to whose clan the murderers belonged, should do the same.

5. That men of the Tosa clan should be excluded from the foreign ports.

Bad news for Willis and me; it was the very clan in whose hands we were. We felt that we were in a hornets’ nest. Our hosts, who should at least have remembered that we were there to save the life of their Prince whom they loved, were maddened by the news, frantic at the idea that clansmen, perhaps near relations of some of them, were to be executed for a crime in which they themselves would gladly have had a hand.

When I got back to the _yashiki_ I was met by scowling looks and fierce mutterings. The more important men of the clan showed clearly that they, at any rate, had no sympathy with the murderers. Prince Yōdo himself and Gotō Shōjirō we knew would act loyally and do all in their power to insure our safety. But it is a near thing, and an uncomfortable pass to come to, when you can almost hear two or three hundred wild men debating the propriety of wreaking vengeance upon you, and that moreover in a country where at that time _kataki-uchi_, the vendetta, was a debt of honour. However, there was nothing to be done but to put a good face upon it, so our dear old medicine-man went on with his healing, and I took advantage of being in a city so famous and still so new to us Westerns to explore its many beauties, now long since unveiled and familiar to every tourist.

At Gion, a quarter of the city where the Japanese dandies go to divert themselves, I was bidden by two or three gentlemen to an entertainment in a famous tea-house. In these sophisticated days I doubt whether such a feast could be given. There was a company of the most fashionable _geikos_—who in other parts, and indeed everywhere now, are called _geisha_. In song and in story the _geiko_ of old Kiōto is celebrated as an artist and for the willow-like beauty of her thighs—in this there is no impropriety, for there are no femoral revelations, and the expression simply means gracefulness. In singing and in dancing they excel all others.

When these young ladies sat down between the guests I saw plainly that I was an object of terror—none wished to come near me—the strange beast frightened them; but at last the prettiest of them took to herself heart of brass and squatted down beside me; shy and wild she was at first, but after a while she became quite tame, like a little gazelle that feeds out of your hand, and indeed her eyes had much the look of those of a pet deer; if only her pretty lips had not been gilt!

In the middle of the feast the landlady, black-toothed and shaven-browed, came in armed with a murderous-looking chopper in one hand, and in the other a small stand upon which was placed a bean-curd cake, the dish for which the house was famous. The cutting up of the bean-curd cake was a science and a ceremony, always taking place in the presence of guests. With a great assumption of dignity the old lady lifted her chopper, and bringing it down with a great crack upon the wooden stand, from the rebound of the blow gave a dozen or so little raps that sounded almost like the roll of a drum, with which, as quick as thought, she had sliced the bean-curd cake into as many little parts of almost mathematically equal size, which were carried off to be roasted on slender bamboo skewers. It was really a very pretty trick and received with a loud tribute of applause, which the dear lady accepted with all the consciousness of merit of a prima donna after the execution of a brilliant _cavatina_.

As in duty bound, I ate my skewerful of bean-curds, but I confess that I did not relish them. Then came dancing—all of it full of intention to the elect—to me the mere poetry of motion into which I, the barbarian, could not read the significance and the story. The palm was borne away by two pretty little mites of about eleven years, precocious pets into whom the Terpsichore of the Far East had breathed all her spirit, all her grace. When the dancing was over, the _geikos_ went away to doff their stage dresses, and appeared again as little _bourgeoises_, and the two tiny creatures became very inquisitive about me, and insisted upon taking off my socks (the shoes had been left _more Japonico_ at the door) and examining my feet. Had they been Europeans I should have thought that they were seeking for the cloven hoof. It was near midnight when I reached the Tosa Yashiki after seven hours of real good fun. I went back to an anxious night.

Not the least interesting part of the day had been a visit to the great temple of Kiyomidzu, a lovely shrine hidden away in a sanctuary as beautiful as the graces of hill, and trees and water could make it. How cleverly the monks in all countries chose the places of their holy retreat from the world! But what filled me with wonder—a wonder hardly to be understood now—was the fact that I was gazing upon a panoramic view of the sacred city, to be found in which three short months before would have meant the shortest of shrifts. There above all was the Kinri (literally “forbidden place”), the august but severely simple dwelling of the Son of Heaven, itself a mystery, of which the nine gates were each guarded by a great Daimio.

To-day all these nebulous secrets have become the common property of the guide-books and the traveller, who without a care looks down from the beautiful hills upon what now, shorn of its glamour, is but a dull, grey city—if the truth must be told, rather shabby; for the grand shrines which are the glory of its sanctity are hidden away, screened from the profane eyes in those lovely groves which were the first temples of the gods.

The following morning brought me a letter from Sir Harry Parkes, giving me the details of the Sakai tragedy, in consequence of which the ministers had left Ōsaka, and ordering me to return at once, inasmuch as if the French demands were not complied with hostilities would break out immediately. The Japanese officials also came to me with an account tallying in all particulars with my Minister’s letter; but they added that as every reparation was to be made and M. Roches’ demands were to be complied with, there need be no alarm of war. As for my position, the consternation in the Tosa Yashiki may be imagined. Prince Yōdo sent me a message begging me to stay until the next day, and as I thought that I might effect some good by doing so, that my leaving might be attributed to fear, and that to remain certainly would tell well amongst the members of the new Government, I determined to disobey my orders and comply with the Prince’s request. The Japanese Government greatly appreciated the confidence to which I thus gave expression.

Almost the whole of that day was passed in conference with high officials, and it was not until late in the afternoon that I was able to sally forth into a driving storm of rain for more sightseeing. I was rewarded by seeing one _grande dame_ with her eyebrows shaven off and artificial ones painted in high up on the forehead, as one sees the fashions of the Mikado’s Court represented in old pictures. It was my one and only experience of the mode so far as ladies were concerned. In the case of the Mikado I was to see it afterwards on a more memorable occasion.

I was roused the next morning by a message from Prince Yōdo begging me to go and see him. I found him evidently already much the better for Willis’ ministrations, in spite of the terrible shock of the Sakai massacre. I remained with him for two hours, discussing politics and especially the affair about which he spoke with deep feeling and unfeigned emotion. Had the murdered Frenchmen been his own countrymen he could not have shown greater sympathy, nor could any man have expressed it with greater dignity. I am bound to say that he inspired me with the utmost admiration.

He declared that the act of the murderers was one which he, in common with every true Samurai—every man animated by the true _Yamato Damashii_, the spirit of Old Japan, must look upon with detestation and horror. He said that this deed, far from representing the feeling of the Samurai, was a disgrace to Japan, and the ruffians who perpetrated it should be rooted out from the country. He then begged me to be the bearer of the following message to the French Minister and to the other representatives. I took it down from his own lips, and repeat it here as a noble and patriotic utterance.

“Although I am without precise information, I am aware that the affair of Sakai was criminal and unjustifiable. It is a matter of which I certainly had not the slightest cognizance. My one wish has been to entertain friendly relations with foreigners. The act of violence which my retainers have committed has caused me to be deeply ashamed. I am aware that foreign nations must feel grievously incensed. It hurts me to think that my people should have interfered with the Mikado in his projects for civilizing the country. I pray that Tosa alone, and not the whole of Japan, may be rendered responsible for this deed. I have been prevented by illness from going to Ōsaka to punish the offenders myself, but I have sent two of my _karō_ (principal advisers, literally “elders of the family”) with three officers of rank to represent me, taking with them one hundred and sixty men, with orders to deliver up to justice the guilty men. I beg you to communicate the expression of my sentiments to the French Minister in particular, and to the foreign representatives in general. Although this is a matter for the Government of the country to deal with, I am anxious that the thoughts of my heart should be made known to the French Minister and to the foreign representatives.”

Every word that Prince Yōdo spoke was uttered with the most convincing air of truth. I took my leave of him with great regret. My talk with him on general subjects and the political situation had been most interesting. He left upon me the impression that he was possessed of wide views and great sagacity; he was a man who had notoriously done much for his country and who, but for the poison instilled by that education in self-indulgence which played such mischief with men of his caste, would have been capable of very great things.

I returned to Ōsaka that evening and lost no time in delivering Prince Yōdo’s message at Hiōgo to M. Roches, who was greatly pleased with it. My presence in Kiōto during this affair, though it could not be otherwise than a somewhat anxious adventure, was therefore of advantage as having given the Prince the opportunity of making his own position clear. Sir Harry Parkes fully approved of my having disobeyed his instructions.

On the 15th of March Prince Daté (Inkiyō of Uwajima) arrived at Hiōgo and went on board the French ship _Vénus_ to carry the official acceptance of the conditions laid down by M. Roches.

The 16th of March was fixed for the execution by _Hara-kiri_ of the twenty men guilty of the murders. It was originally fixed to take place on the quay at Sakai, where the crime was committed, but the place was changed to a temple about a mile inland. Captain du Petit Thouars and a company of some twenty Frenchmen were to witness the horror.

When the first condemned man came out he plunged the dirk into his stomach with such force that his entrails protruded; he held them up in his hand and began singing verses of hatred and revenge against the detested foreigners who were polluting the sacred soil of the Land of the Gods till death stopped his ghastly song. Those who came after him followed his example, and the whole spectacle was so gruesome that when eleven men had died—this being the number of the murdered victims—the Frenchmen could hold out no longer, and Captain du Petit Thouars prayed that the remaining nine men might be spared. His account of the scene to me was blood-curdling. Brave man as he was—one of the bravest—it nearly made him sick only to think of it, and his voice faltered as with difficulty he told the tale.

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