Part 2
My thanks are due to His Excellency Viscount Hayashi and the members of the Japanese Embassy in London, by all of whom the most kindly interest has been taken in my work, and from whom I have received most valuable aid in its preparation. Also to Baron Suyematsu, who assisted me greatly with his personal reminiscences and who revised the chapter on Marquis Ito, his father-in-law. I have also to record my indebtedness to the Editor and Mr S. Imai of the _Osaka Mainichi Shimbun_, from whom I received material help in regard to the history of those earlier Makers of Japan who flourished in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. I have availed myself of every opportunity of consulting the writings of Messrs Black and Rein, and the works on Japan and its affairs by Count Matsukata, Sir R. Alcock, Sir E. Reed, Sir Robert K. Douglas, Messrs Hearn, Clement, and many others, and I have taken my figures for the most part from Japanese official publications. When in 1895 I wrote “Advance, Japan!” I ventured to predict the rise of Japanese influence in China and that Japan would be “the lever to set the Chinese mass in motion” though her efforts would “tend towards the consolidation of the Chinese Empire rather than to its disintegration.” That work was translated in 1904 into Russ avowedly in order that the Tsar’s people might learn something of the nation they were fighting. In 1898 I had written “What will Japan do?” and had based the story on a firm conviction that she would defeat Russia when the inevitable contest should occur, the date I ventured to assign for the outbreak of hostilities being, as it turned out, three years too soon. That little volume was at once translated into Japanese. If in the attempt that I have now made to assign to the chief personages their due positions in respect of their nation’s stirring history, I have in the smallest degree succeeded in conveying useful information concerning our allies and their country to the people of the Occident, I shall not have laboured in vain, and in submitting my work in all humility—conscious of its many defects and shortcomings—to the judgment of the public, my one hope is that it may be of some slight service to those who may honour me by perusing its pages.
J. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN 1
II. PRINCE TOKUGAWA KEIKI: THE LAST OF THE SHOGUNS 53
III. FUJITA TOKO 97
IV. SAKUMA SHURI (OTHERWISE SHOZAN) 101
V. YOSHIDA TORAJIRO (OTHERWISE SHO-IN) 114
VI. MARQUIS ITO 119
VII. PRINCE IWAKURA TOMOMI 154
VIII. PRINCE SANJO SANETOMI 163
IX. COUNT INOUYE KAORU 170
X. VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI 184
XI. COUNT GOTO SHOJIRO 195
XII. MARSHAL SAIGO TAKAMORI 202
XIII. FIELD-MARSHAL MARQUIS YAMAGATA 219
XIV. COUNT OKUMA SHIGENOBU 246
XV. FIELD-MARSHAL MARQUIS OYAMA 255
XVI. FUKUSAWA YUKICHI 268
XVII. MARQUIS KIDO KOIN 273
XVIII. COUNT ITAGAKI 279
XIX. COUNT MATSUKATA MASAYOSHI 284
XX. ADMIRAL VISCOUNT ENOMOTO 299
XXI. ADMIRAL TOGO HEIHACHI 306
XXII. BARON EICHI SHIBUSAWA 315
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
H.M. THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN _Frontispiece_
THE GEKU SHRINE AT ISÉ _to face page_ 8
THE ARMS MUSEUM AT TOKIO ” ” 32
THE EX-SHOGUN AND FAMILY ” ” 53 (_From a Photograph by the Kinkodo Co., Tokio_)
THE INTERIOR OF SHIBA TEMPLE ” ” 84
FUJITA, SAKUMA, AND YOSHIDA ” ” 97
MARQUIS ITO ” ” 119
JAPANESE SCHOOL AT SEOUL ” ” 136
PRINCE IWAKURA TOMOMI ” ” 154
PRINCE SANJO SANETOMI ” ” 163
COUNT INOUYE KAORU ” ” 170
VISCOUNT OKUBO TOSHIMICHI ” ” 184
COUNT GOTO SHOJIRO ” ” 195
MARSHAL SAIGO TAKAMORI ” ” 202
MARQUIS YAMAGATA ” ” 219
COUNT AND COUNTESS OKUMA ” ” 246 (_From a Photograph by the Kinkodo Co., Tokio_)
MARQUIS OYAMA ” ” 255
FUKUSAWA YUKICHI ” ” 268
MARQUIS KIDO ” ” 273
COUNT ITAGAKI ” ” 279
COUNT MATSUKATA ” ” 284 (_From a Photograph by Elliott & Fry_)
ADMIRAL ENOMOTO ” ” 299
ADMIRAL TOGO ” ” 306
BARON SHIBUSAWA ” ” 315
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.
[Illustration: THE GEKU SHRINE AT ISÉ]