Part 22

In the Government which was formed in 1872 under the presidency of Prince Sanjo, Saigo held the portfolio of Minister of War, and it was at this time that the army of Japan began to take definite shape, Saigo himself being responsible for the general plan on which the establishment of an adequate military force was based. That Japan’s ambition did not soar very high at that time may be gathered from the subjoined figures, which represent approximately the strength in peace time and in war which was then decided upon:—

In Peace time In War Household Infantry 26,880 40,320 3,200 Cavalry 360 450 150 Artillery 2,160 2,700 300 Engineers 1,200 1,500 150 Military Train 360 480 80 Marine Artillery 720 900 ... ------ ------ ----- 31,680 46,350 3,880

It was at about this period that the Korean difficulty began to make itself felt in connection with the administration of the Japanese forces, for there arose a strong party in the State which favoured immediate and resolute action with regard to what was loudly proclaimed to be a stealthy but sure advance of Russia toward the coasts of Japan, an approach that even the coolest and the wisest heads in the Empire could not reflect upon without apprehension. Okubo Toshimichi had placed it on record that “Russia, always pressing southward, is Japan’s principal danger.” The conquest of Korea, as affording a complete check to Russia’s advance, was a step that several of the Cabinet Ministers were eager to embark upon there and then. But in Okubo and Iwakura the nation had two cautious statesmen, as prudent as they were patriotic, and their influence carried the day, though Okubo was Saigo’s fellow-clansman. The annexation of Korea was postponed indefinitely, and those who were the strenuous advocates of the forward policy resigned, among them being Saigo Takamori, and Itagaki Taisuke of the province of Tosa. The standard of revolt was speedily raised in the south, not in Satsuma, for Saigo was not then prepared for such a desperate venture, but in Hizen province, to which belonged Yeto Shimpei, who had been one of Saigo’s colleagues in the Cabinet, as Minister of Justice. Yeto Shimpei and his following were soon put down, and the leader of this abortive undertaking paid the penalty with his life.

But although Saigo had not been in a position to render his former friend any active help, had he been disposed at that stage to embark in open hostilities to the existing Government, it is none the less true that he had devoted the bulk of his income of 2000 koku to the upkeep of a school at Kagoshima, named the _Shimpei Shi-gakko_, or New Army Private Academy, which was in reality a school for young samurai, belonging to his own clan, wherein were taught the science and theory of modern warfare, and the pupils were numbered by the thousand. Among them the idea was prevalent that the honour of their country had been sullied by the failure to exact an apology from either Korea or its suzerain China for the insults, as they were deemed to be, levelled at Japan during the preceding two or three years. The samurai of the south demanded that they should be led against the Koreans to exact reparation, and when this boon was denied them they murmured against the authorities at Tokio.

In the expectation that it would prove a safety-valve for this excessive eagerness to be revenged upon Korea, the Government of Tokio sought to find a vent for the ebullient enthusiasm of the Satsuma warriors in an expedition to Formosa, to demand redress for the ill treatment of some shipwrecked fishermen by the savages, whom China had professed herself unable to control. This resolve was not taken without having exhausted all ordinary means of obtaining satisfaction, and the supreme charge of the undertaking was given to Saigo’s brother, then Minister of the Navy in the Imperial Cabinet. Satsuma being the province nearest to Formosa, the transports set out from Kiushiu, and the bulk of the troops on which the task devolved of maintaining Japan’s prestige in the field on this occasion were men of Satsuma.

In due course the victorious army returned to Japan, on the completion of an Agreement with China whereby the Peking Government bound itself to repay to Japan the expense which it had incurred, but it was not until the British Minister, Sir Thomas Wade, had intervened to prevent a complete severance of relations between Japan and China, consequent upon the indisposition of the Tsung-Li Ya-men to fall in with Japan’s views, that a rupture was avoided. Okubo Toshimichi, Japan’s representative in the negotiations, was actually on the point of taking his departure from the Chinese capital when the Chinese besought the British Minister to rescue them from the predicament into which their procrastination had led them. China paid half a million taels toward Japan’s expenses, and the affair was at an end for the time, Satsuma receiving back the survivors of the contingent that she had sent out a few months before, with regret that fever had decimated their ranks, but with pride that her drilled troops had acquitted themselves so well in the day of trial.

The attitude of Korea continued to be in every way a source of anxiety, however, to the Imperial Cabinet, and though in 1875 an agreement was made whereby Korea was opened to foreign trade, and ratified on the 26th February, of the next year, termed the treaty of Kokwa, the war party in Japan was by no means willing to accept this as a solution of the problem. The Satsuma clan offered strenuous opposition to the extension of the telegraph system of the empire into its own province, and for the time the farthest point of the line southward that the wires could be carried was Kumamoto, seventy-five miles by road short of Kagoshima. It is only now, in 1906, that a State railway is being constructed to the Satsuma stronghold, and for many years the reactionary spirit was strong enough to give pause to both these enterprises of the Department of Public Works. It was Saigo’s wish to chastise Korea and bring her into complete subjection to Japan, but the Government of the day thought otherwise, and meanwhile the Shimpei Shi-gakko persevered with its drills, and the pupils regarded Saigo Takamori as a misjudged man whose most patriotic wishes were being ignored at Tokio.

At last, one day in February 1877, a messenger arrived by boat at Kumamoto and handed in a despatch for transmission by telegraph to Tokio apprising the Government of the departure three days before of 12,000 men, fully armed, on a march to Kioto,—as the leaders put it,—to lay their grievances before the Emperor, who happened to be making a brief stay at his old capital. The despatch speedily reached the Government at Tokio, and action was taken on the instant. The sovereign’s uncle was invested with full powers to punish the rebels, as Saigo Takamori and his companions in this desperate adventure were pronounced to be, and troops were hurried away to Kiushiu as fast as steam could convey them. Prince Arisugawa reached Hakata, which became the base of operations, early in March, and meanwhile the garrison of Kumamoto, which town was on the line of the Satsuma men’s march, placed the castle in a state of defence. Saigo was in command of the rebels, with Kirino, and Shinowara, who were both officers of high rank, as his lieutenants, and the Kumamoto castle was held by a Satsuma man, General Tani, whom nothing would induce to betray his trust. Apart from all question of its prospects of success had it got as far as the main island of Hondo, the chances of the expedition ever completing its projected march to Kioto were destroyed at the outset by its leader devoting his energies to the reduction of the Kumamoto fortress before proceeding beyond that point. Whether he had a sufficient following to admit of his leaving a large proportion of his force in possession of Kumamoto, numerous enough to keep General Tani within the castle walls, while himself pushing on northward, is at least doubtful, but at all events he did not attempt to do so, and the garrison offered so stout a resistance that weeks were lost in a vain effort to capture the place, all the time that the imperial forces were gathering and marching against him from Shimonoseki and Hakata, whither they had been brought by transport. The relief of Kumamoto was effected on the 14th of April 1877. Some very severe conflicts took place in the vicinity, notably at Minami-no-seki (Southern barrier) a pass in the range of hills some miles to the north of the castle, Takase, and Uyeki. A large percentage of the troops employed on the Government side were men from Aidzu and other northern districts wherein the cause of the Shogun had found its strongest support in the war of the Restoration, and in their encounters with the Satsuma men, ten years before, had been worsted. Under the improved military system which Saigo Takamori had had so great a share in establishing these northern men had developed into fine soldiers, but their efficiency was sorely tested by the fierce onslaughts of the Satsuma swordsmen, whose habit it was to fling away the rifles they bore and rush to close quarters on every occasion. Eventually the Tokio police, who are all of samurai birth, were drafted into Kiushiu to take part in the contest with the swordsmen of the south, and there was from that time onward a vast amount of hand-to-hand fighting in the fashion of a bygone era.

After the siege of Kumamoto had been raised the followers of Saigo became somewhat scattered, and were driven back towards their stronghold in Kagoshima. There were sanguinary encounters at Miyako-no-jo, Hitoyoshi, Sadowara, and Nobeoka, all places within a short radius of the Satsuma headquarters, and stage by stage the rebellion was crushed, the final stand of Saigo’s adherents being made at Shiroyama (Castle mountain) within the walls of the daimio’s residence in Kagoshima, of which the rebels had possessed themselves in the absence of their feudal lord. Shimadzu Saburo had been prevailed upon at the outset to discountenance the movement, and his influence had prevailed with his nephew to prevent him likewise from throwing in his lot with the avowed antagonists of the Government. The end was reached on 24th September, when a fierce assault was made by the Government forces on the Castle hill, and Saigo was wounded, the major part of his men falling with him to the bullets of their adversaries. When he saw that all hope was past Saigo bade his faithful friend Hemmi perform the last office that a samurai could undertake for a comrade, and the command was obeyed as soon as Saigo had himself consummated the act of _seppuku_, the headless body being found at the close of the fighting, but the head remaining for a while undiscovered. Hemmi had fallen also, on his own sword, by his leader’s side. Search was made, and soon the head was found and taken to Admiral Kawamura, who had borne his share in the attack as a loyal subject of the Emperor, though heart-broken at being compelled to oppose his fellow-clansman and life-long friend. The admiral was indeed related by marriage to the dead hero, and having carefully washed the head Kawamura carried it in his own hands to his home, there to be guarded until such time as the body could be decently interred.

However misguided may have been his actions in the opinion of some of his compatriots, Saigo was the idol of the samurai, and almost equally so of the nation at large. It was many years before millions of his countrymen were willing to credit the reports of his death. When at last they were compelled to admit it they insisted that he had taken up his abode in the planet Mars. A man of striking personality,—he stood over six feet high,—he was distinguished by the extreme simplicity of his tastes, his utter repugnance to display of any sort, his bravery and contempt of danger, his complete modesty and unselfishness, evinced in a thousand ways. His innate kindliness and generosity of heart, concealed beneath a certain taciturnity which is not infrequent among Satsuma people in general, gained for him the utmost respect and esteem and won the affections of soldiers of all ranks to a man. When the struggle was at its height in the summer of 1877 a prominent journal thus eulogised him:—

“Though Saigo Takamori is the public enemy of the State,—although his crime, according to the laws of Meiji, is absolutely unpardonable,—he is still a great man. Was it not he who overturned the despotic Bakufu, and restored the ancient imperial authority? Did he not do this with infinite exertion and the most profound indifference to the perils which beset his person?” It is safe to say that up to the time of the revolt of the clan in 1877 he was the most popular of the nation’s heroes.

The Emperor gave one more proof of his extreme magnanimity of mind when he pardoned Saigo’s transgression and ordered a statue to be erected to his memory in Uyeno Park in Tokio. Some years afterwards his Majesty conferred the title of Marquis on Takamori’s eldest son, in recognition of the invaluable support that the father had rendered to the State, in the days prior to Satsuma’s outbreak. Every line of the record of his error has been expunged by his sovereign’s command, and naught remains but the memory of splendid services given to his country with whole-souled devotion and self-sacrifice. He died as became a true and loyal samurai of his race,—died as he had hoped to die,

“... And not disgrace— Its ancient chivalry.”

XIII

FIELD-MARSHAL MARQUIS YAMAGATA

Owning allegiance originally to the great Choshiu party, Yamagata Aritomo was from the outset of his career distinguished by his strenuous advocacy of the principle of army reform which even at that early period of the history of modern Japan had come to be recognised by her most ardent patriots as a sheer necessity. The idea of establishing the paramount influence of his native country in the affairs of the Far East by endowing it with a numerous and powerful army seems to have taken possession of his active mind from an early age, and he strove unceasingly to spread the desire of attaining martial supremacy for the clan among his fellow-samurai, who were in the habit, like himself, of devoting much of their leisure to the study of translations of military works from the Dutch. In Yamagata’s young days practically the only accessible writings on fortification and the art of war were in this form, but they were devoured by the Choshiu cadets, who speedily turned to account the knowledge they thereby acquired. The military forces of the Daimio of Choshiu were drilled more or less on the Occidental system after the year 1864, and as a result, on the outbreak of hostilities between the followers of the Shogun and the great southern clans towards the close of the Emperor Komei’s reign the northern men found themselves confronted by troops which had a semblance of skill with the bayonet, and could shoot with some approach to accuracy. The rifles with which the men were armed were of a pattern obsolete in Europe, it is true, but they made the best use they could of these weapons, and the effect on the Aidzu men and other adherents of the Shogun, whose training with modern arms had been of shorter duration and less thorough, was from the first unmistakable. The superiority of Western drill and implements of warfare having been demonstrated in actual combat on the battlefield, it became the Choshiu leader’s ambition to establish a national army, fit to defend the Imperial possessions and to enable Japan some day to take her fitting place among the great powers of the world. To Yamagata, in the opinion of his countrymen, more than to any other person, belongs the credit of having established his country’s military effectiveness and laid the foundations of her martial success in later years.

[Illustration: MARQUIS YAMAGATA]

Yamagata was born in 1838, in Nagato, or Choshiu (_lit._: the Long Province), his grade as a samurai being that of the lancers, which was superior to the _ashigaru_ (or “light of foot”) rank of retainer. His father had achieved local renown as a poet and philologist, but Aritomo’s own tastes inclined him towards the study of the arts of war, and he entered the service of the clan in his boyhood, rising by degrees from the position of a common soldier to the command of a regiment. The headquarters of the Choshiu daimio were at Hagi, a town picturesquely situated on the west coast fifty miles from the Shimonoseki Straits. The seat of the present prefectural government is at Yamaguchi, an inland town standing on the highroad which connects the Inland Sea, at Mitajiri, with the Sea of Japan on the west coast of Niphon. Yamaguchi was itself a place of much importance in pre-Restoration days, and enjoys some fame for the excellence of its thermal springs.

Yamagata was very active in the War of the Restoration, leading the Choshiu forces with distinction in the campaign under Marshal Saigo against the Shogunate forces at Fushimi and elsewhere, and when the new Administration was formed in 1868 he was appointed Under Secretary of the War Department at Tokio. There he at once set to work to reorganise the new Imperial army, partly made up as it was of the forces which the feudal barons had themselves maintained and handed over to the Imperial Government after the cessation of hostilities in Oshiu, North Japan. For the ability he displayed in the campaign in that region he received signal marks of the Emperor’s approval, and a few months later he was despatched on a journey to Europe, in order that he might study more closely the art of war as there practised. He was a little over a year absent from Japan, but during the interval he had been present at most of the important engagements of the Franco-German War, and returned to his own country in the spring of 1871.

It is interesting at this stage to recall the actual constitution of the first army on the European model which Japan possessed. It was planned by the Government of the Shogun in 1861 (the first year of the Bun-kiu era), and as a first attempt was undoubtedly the nucleus of the tremendous force that the country is now able to place in the field. The intention was that it should comprise:—

6 regiments of heavy infantry: 4 battalions of light infantry: 6 battalions of heavy cavalry: 2 battalions of light cavalry: 6 batteries of light field artillery: 6½ batteries of heavy field artillery for protection of castle gates. 13 additional companies of heavy infantry for protection of castle gates. 4 additional battalions of light infantry as bodyguard for the Shogun.

But though planned this army was never completely organised, because it was only the hatamoto or other retainers of the Shogun himself who could be called on to contribute, other retainers (samurai) being already in the service of their respective feudal lords. The Hatamoto and others directly controlled by the Shogun had to provide according to their incomes as under:—

Those having incomes of 500 koku (about £625 at the present day) were required to supply one soldier. Those in receipt of 1000 koku three soldiers. Incomes of 3000 koku or more were assessed at ten men.

Those whose incomes were under 500 koku paid a tax in rice or its equivalent.

The men to be supplied had to be between the ages of 15 and 45, and served for five years, with liberty to renew their engagement if they so chose.

Each regiment of heavy infantry—6 in all—was composed of 2 battalions, each of which contained 10 sections of 40 men. Then the guard for the Shogun’s castle gates (there were 13 gates in all) was made up of 40 men at each—520 in all. Thus the total of the heavy infantry force was 5320 men.

The light infantry was to protect artillery and convoys, and consisted of 4 battalions, each with 8 sections of 32 men in each. The bodyguard or rifle brigade,—the first to carry modern rifles—numbered 890 men. The heavy cavalry had swords and carbines, and numbered 888 men. The light cavalry carried lances, and were only 192 in number.

The artillery had 6-pounder guns, and 12-in. howitzers,—8 guns to a battery, the men numbering in all 384.

The heavy field artillery (416) men had 12-pounder guns and 15-in. howitzers, and there was half a battery at each gate,—6½ batteries altogether. In the coast defences, including the forts at Shinagawa, Yedo, there were some 2000 artillerymen.

In the staff of the army were 1406 men, many being junior officers, chosen for training for military duties under the eyes of staff officers.

The total effective force of the Shogunate was thus supposed to be about 13,500 men. In reality it did not muster more than 7700 men and 64 officers when the “standing army” was called on to support the waning fortunes of the Shogunate in 1867.