Part 27

The value of the system of military education on which Japan relied for her safety was amply demonstrated in the war with Russia which came to an end in the autumn of 1905, having lasted a year and a half. The negotiations which had been proceeding throughout the year 1903 concerning Korea and Manchuria proved barren of satisfactory result, and being convinced that nothing more could be hoped for in the shape of a pacific settlement of the points in dispute, while on the other hand Russia was protracting the discussion only to gain time for further military preparations, the Tokio Government at last announced through the Japanese Minister at St Petersburg the rupture of diplomatic relations, on the 6th of February 1904, and forthwith commenced hostilities. At the outset the operations were principally of a naval character, designed to cripple the Russian fleet and make the landing of troops on the coast of Korea and Manchuria secure, the first land skirmish taking place at Cheng-ju, in Northern Korea, on the 28th of March. Wiju was occupied on the 6th of April, and a three days’ encounter at the river Yalu ended on the 1st of May in the complete defeat of the Russians under General Sassulitch by General Kuroki, and the capture of Kiu-lien-cheng. Up to this stage the operations in the field had been under the control of General Kuroki, but in May Marshal Oyama arrived from Tokio to take supreme command of the armies in Manchuria, and a series of important engagements then took place, notably the storming of Nanshan near Kinchau, close to Port Arthur, which opened the way to the investment of that fortress, and the occupation of Feng-hwang-cheng and Dalny. The Russian General Kuropatkin sought to relieve the growing pressure on Port Arthur by sending an army southward through the Liao-tung peninsula, but Marshal Oyama sent General Oku to meet it and a desperate battle was fought at Wa-fang-kou and Telissu, adjoining villages to the north of Kinchau, on 14th and 15th June, and ten days later a beginning was made with the attack on the fortress on the Regent’s Sword which nine years before Marshal Oyama had taken from the Chinese. The same month he was personally engaged with the First and Third armies in the mountainous region between Feng-hwang-cheng and Liao-Yang, where severe fighting occurred at the passes in the Mo-tien-ling, Feng-shui-ling and other ranges, on the route to the capital of Manchuria. Kaiping, on the coast of the Gulf of Liao-tung, was captured on the 9th July, and a week afterwards a determined attempt on the Japanese positions at Mo-tien-ling was repulsed, with great slaughter. The second Japanese army forced back the Russians on Ta-shi-chiao, when they again sought to break through to the South, and at Port Arthur itself there was a severe struggle for the possession of Wolf Hill, ending in a complete success for the Japanese forces. Meanwhile General Oku was executing Marshal Oyama’s plan of campaign in the direction of Newchwang, and that port and Haicheng were in Japanese hands by the 3rd of August. Port Arthur’s outer defences fell at about the same date, and for five days, from the 19th to the 24th of that month, a fierce attack was delivered on the fortress, while at the same time the assault of Liao-Yang, which proved to be a ten days’ affair altogether, was begun on the 24th of August and lasted well into September. In that long and terrible contest there were more than 20,000 casualties on both sides, and during its progress the assault on Port Arthur was renewed with tremendous energy, from the 27th to the end of August. A week’s heavy fighting again took place from the 19th to the 26th September at Port Arthur, and meanwhile Marshal Oyama had been developing his advance on Mukden, at that time the headquarters of the Russians, and the ancient seat of the Manchu dynasty. General Kuropatkin announced on the 2nd of October that he was strong enough to attack, and a Russian advance actually began, leading to the series of battles at the Sha-ho or Sand River, in mid-October, and ending in a Russian retreat to the northward with a loss of forty guns. The fighting continued intermittently for many weeks, the Russians losing on an average three to one Japanese. At Port Arthur the assailants took 203-metre Hill on the 30th of November, and fort after fort fell during December, until on the 1st of January 1905 the surrender of the fortress was proposed by General Stoessel and by General Nogi accepted. Severe battles took place subsequently in Manchuria, including that of Hei-kau-tai, from the 25th to the 29th of January, when the Russians under Gripenberg attacked the Japanese left but were hotly repulsed, and Mistchenko’s raid on Newchwang,—the old city,—brought about severe fighting in that vicinity, but in March the operations against Mukden terminated in a clear victory on the 10th, and the Russian forces fell back to the northward. Tieh-ling was taken six days later, and on the 17th General Kuropatkin was superseded by Linievitch. Kai-yuen was next to fall into Oyama’s hands, and though there was fighting on the 18th and 19th to the north of Kai-yuen, nothing serious was afterwards attempted as the peace negotiations had been commenced at Washington.

Marshal Oyama returned to Tokio in December, and resumed his post of Chief of Staff. He holds the Grand Order of Merit and the Golden Kite, and, like Marshal Yamagata and Admiral Togo, received the British Order of Merit in 1906 from King Edward VII., to the great joy of his fellow-countrymen throughout Japan.

XVI

FUKUSAWA YUKICHI

No list purporting to be that of the Makers of Modern Japan would be complete were the name of Fukusawa Yukichi, the pioneer of Western education in his own land, to be omitted. His claims to remembrance are manifold and irrefutable, not the least of them being his right to be esteemed the founder of the leading Japanese journal, the _Jiji Shimpo_, of Tokio. But his fame will rest chiefly on his achievement in establishing the Kei-o-gi-juku College, wherein a large percentage of the leading men of the Japan of to-day graduated, and by not a few of whom he is revered as having been in no small degree the architect of their fortunes.

Mr Fukusawa,—as he preferred to remain despite the offer of a peerage in his later years,—was born in Osaka, on the 12th of December 1834, that being the year which corresponds to the fifth of the Tempo era, and while yet an infant was taken to his father’s native province of Buzen, in Kiushiu, the family residence being in the town of Nakatsu, a port on the north-east coast of that island. The elder Fukusawa had been staying at Osaka for a time in the service of his feudal chieftain the lord of Buzen. Yukichi dwelt at home, pursuing the customary studies of youths of his age, but with a decided bent towards foreign literature, until in the first year of the Genji period (1854), he went to Nagasaki, and there began the study of Dutch. Prior to this he had been conspicuous as a hard-working scholar in Chinese, which to the Japanese was then, and is still, what Greek and Latin are to us. Yukichi was a whole year at Nagasaki, and then he removed to Osaka, and became a pupil of the celebrated doctor of medicine Ogata Ko-an, under whose guidance he continued the study of the Dutch tongue, and in 1858, the fifth year of the An-sei era, he went to Yedo, and began to impart to a few beginners the knowledge he had thus far acquired of the foreign language. It must be remembered that during Japan’s long seclusion from the rest of the world there were always a few Dutchmen dwelling at Nagasaki, and that Dutch was, as a consequence of that isolation, the only foreign tongue spoken down to the advent of Commodore Perry in 1853. Although by 1858 people of other nations had begun to make their appearance in the country, English was as yet almost an unknown tongue, and Dutch was still the only medium of communication with the Occident.

[Illustration: FUKUSAWA YUKICHI]

In Yedo Mr Fukusawa occupied quarters in a mansion at Teppodzu which belonged to his feudal chieftain the lord Okudaira of Buzen, and it was while the scholars were immersed in their study of Dutch works that the opening of Yokohama to foreign trade brought about a change in their ideas, and led their tutor to enlarge the field of his own researches. For by the year 1859 the treaties with five foreign powers had been concluded, and the first steps were taken by Japan to fully acquaint herself with what had been the progress of other nations during the period of her voluntary severance of all communication with them. Yukichi was only twenty-five years old when he paid his first visit to an open port and saw something of the British people of whose characteristics he had read a great deal but had had previously no personal experience. He had at that time no knowledge whatever of English as a language, but he set himself diligently to work, and with the aid of a dictionary compiled in English and Dutch he sought, by private study, to master the difficulties of a tongue which he perceived would afford him the key to learning of the kind that his ambitions prompted him to seek. It was impossible at that time for him to procure an English teacher, or in all probability it would have been his choice to obtain his information direct rather than by the roundabout fashion in which he was compelled to acquire it—by Dutch intervention, as it were,—and, as it was, the burden of the task of procuring a competent knowledge of so complex a language as ours was rendered vastly more onerous by the nature of the method that he was driven to adopt in his studies. It is due to the memory of this eminent scholar to declare that he surmounted all the obstacles in his path and became the first of Japanese teachers of the Western tongue.

But in the meantime, towards the close of 1859, he sailed for the United States of America, in the suite of Kimura, the lord of the province of Settsu, who was despatched on a mission to America by the Government of the Shogun. The party voyaged in the little man-of-war _Kan-riu-maru_, commanded by Katsu, the feudal lord of Awa, and Yukichi was in the United States for some months. The following year he returned to his own land, and his first act was to publish in book form a translation of a work which he had brought with him from the other side of the Pacific. This was the beginning of a long series of similar educational works from his pen for which Japan is deeply indebted to him.

In the year 1861 Mr Fukusawa voyaged to Europe on a British man-of-war, being entrusted at that time with a government mission to make literary researches, and he travelled through England, Holland, Prussia, Russia, and Portugal. On his return to Japan in the ensuing year he translated and published many of the English and other books which he had brought back with him, thereby adding immeasurably to the store of information then possessed by his countrymen on the subject of foreign lands and peoples. After occupying himself in this useful work more or less until 1867 he was despatched in that, the third year of the Kei-o era, to the United States, taking his passage this time in an American mail-boat for San Francisco. His object accomplished, he returned to Yedo just at the beginning of the Meiji period, and established in 1868 the College with which his name will for ever be associated.

The Kei-o Gi-juku school was first set up in the temple of Shinsenza, in the Shiba quarter of the capital, but in the fourth of Meiji (1871), it was transferred to more spacious and convenient premises at Mita, still in the Shiba district, the curriculum including law, mathematics, and political economy. Not less than 14,000 students claim to have passed through this college, and at the present time fully 2500 are entered on its books.

It is impossible to convey an adequate idea in so many words of the extent of Mr Fukusawa’s influence and the share which he had in building up the fabric of modern Japan, for at one time and another by far the major portion of her leading men derived their education either by direct training at his school or by the perusal and study of the English works which he translated. He was an ardent advocate of the early opening of the Diet, and was a resolute opponent of those ancient customs that tended to hinder Japan’s progress, strongly insisting, for one thing, on monogamy and the equality of rights of the sexes, having accomplished much in his lifetime towards raising the status of womanhood throughout the Japanese dominions. He vigorously opposed Confucianism in his “General laws of the doctrines of Morality,” a work which had for its primary object the enforcement of the principle of the independence and justification of the right of prudent self-government of man.

The value of Mr Fukusawa’s work was enhanced by the circumstance that it was perseveringly carried on in spite of opposition and almost contumely, and in days when the utility of a sound commercial education could not be discerned, for the samurai abhorred of all things the contamination of trade, and those who devoted themselves to the acquisition of other than classical knowledge, equally with those who might seek to impart it, were openly scoffed at. It has been pointed out with much force by one of his contemporaries that long before the Jo-I and Kai-koku

## parties in the State had adjusted their differences concerning the

retention or abandonment of a policy of isolation, Mr Fukusawa was enjoining on his pupils the benefits to be derived from a study of Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” and that while feudalism was still in the ascendant his students were deep in the mysteries of the standard work on “Representative Government” by John Stuart Mill. The greater the opposition that he encountered, the more determined was Mr Fukusawa to fulfil the task which he had set himself, and he no doubt imbibed during his stay in America not a few ideas relative to the spread of education that were of use to him later in life. Mr Fukusawa seemed to be marked out for the post of Minister of Education whenever that post might fall vacant, but he consistently declined to take office, preferring to carry on his school rather than to aim at rank and station. And when it is remembered that he was mentor to half the statesmen who have risen to power in the Meiji era, the extraordinary influence that he exerted indirectly on the affairs of his country will readily be comprehended.

Mr Fukusawa died in 1900, and his second son Sutejiro, who—together with his elder brother, Mr Fukuzawa Ichitaro,—went to America in 1883, to prosecute his studies, and entered at Yale University, remaining there until 1890, now edits the _Jiji Shimpo_ in Tokio, and married the daughter of Viscount Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador to Great Britain.

XVII

MARQUIS KIDO KOIN

Dying, as he did, prior to the adoption of the Western system of orders of nobility, Kido Koin—better known as Kido Takakoto, or still earlier in his career as Kido Jiunichiro,—won during his lifetime a title to the esteem and everlasting gratitude of his fellow-subjects of the Japanese Emperor far above any rank that he could have been rewarded with even had he lived to see his aspirations for his country’s welfare realised, as they have in great measure been, during recent years. He was a Choshiu man, a native of the same province as those other Makers of Japan—Ito, Inouye, and Yamagata,—and he was active throughout that troubled period in which his clan came to the front in affairs, and participated in all those stirring events in which it was engaged. As became a samurai of the great southern province, he was an expert swordsman, and he was likewise one of the most profound scholars of his time. The two things did not always go together, even in Japan, and it suited those knights of old whose tastes ran primarily in the direction of falconry or the chase, or who were given to fencing and drill, to somewhat undervalue culture, as scarcely deserving of their serious attention. Every fief had its college for the education of the youthful samurai, but they rarely aspired to literary excellence or renown, preferring the more robust accomplishments of archery and swordsmanship to the ability to pen an essay or compose a stanza, even though it were but one of the orthodox thirty-one syllabled kind that every gentleman was supposed to be able to produce at will. Kido’s energy was unbounded, his patriotism unquenchable. There was no risk that he would not cheerfully run if it afforded a prospect of adding to his store of knowledge of a character likely to enhance his ability to serve his country or the imperialist cause with which he was always identified. Dangers and disguises were for years inseparable from his daily life, as he never missed an opportunity of acquiring information that would the better qualify him for the services that he sought to render to the nation. How much he accomplished in his comparatively brief span of life is matter of common knowledge in Japan, though perhaps, for lack of information, his talents have hitherto met with but scant appreciation outside the borders of the Japanese Emperor’s dominions.

[Illustration: MARQUIS KIDO]

Entering the military service of the Nagato province at a very early age, Kido Jiunichiro proceeded to acquire a competent acquaintanceship with all those arts in which skill was demanded of the young samurai of the time, and in some he soon excelled. He was with the Choshiu men when they made their assault on Kioto, and was daring enough to remain behind at that capital and headquarters of his lord’s political opponents after the rest of the Choshiu forces had been compelled to beat a retreat to their own territory. It was at Kido’s house, on a later date, that the reconciliation which had such stupendous consequences for Japan as a nation between the clans of Satsuma and Choshiu was quietly arranged to the satisfaction of all parties, the two Satsuma leaders Kuroda and Oyama going to him and consulting with him, as the representative of Choshiu, in reference to joint action which had for its object the overthrow of the Shogunate and the re-establishment of the imperial regime.

When the new government was set up Kido, together with Goto Shojiro, of Tosa, and Komatsu Tatewaki, of Satsuma, were made _Ko-mon_, or advisers, of the So-Sai,—the title then conferred on the official head of the administration, but which is now applied to the president of a board,—and as it rested with the So-Sai to give or refuse the imperial consent to all measures proposed by the other departments of State, the position of _Ko-mon_ was one of great power and responsibility.

It will be understood that at this time the present sovereign had only just come to the throne, and that the establishment of the imperial government at Kioto was the outcome of the resignation of his office of Shogun by the present Prince Tokugawa Keiki, who had a few weeks before surrendered his rights and privileges and retired into private life, though his adherents were still fighting beyond Tokio, and the war of the Restoration was not yet over. The Emperor, of course, was still in residence at the Kioto Dairi, or palace, and Kido realised that before a settled order of things could be hoped for the feudal system must be abolished, root and branch. He clearly perceived the necessity for centralisation as a first step in the direction of the introduction of a constitutional regime, and, with Kido, to see his duty before him was to act.

The daimio of Choshiu, his own chieftain, was then at Yamaguchi, and by way of estimating the chances of success for the bold proposal by which he was resolved to stand or fall, Kido set out for that distant town, determined to ascertain first of all how the lord Mori might be disposed to view so audacious a proposition as that to be submitted for the consideration of the territorial magnates.

Arriving at Yamaguchi, which stands at a distance from the coast, in a hilly district—as its name, _lit._: “mountain’s mouth,” might imply—Kido lost no time in procuring an interview with the baron, and endeavouring to prove by every argument at his command how fatally feudalism was obstructing the progress of the empire. In conclusion he respectfully invited the lord of Choshiu to divest himself of his inherited estates and make a present of them to the Emperor!

Baron Mori listened to this astounding suggestion of his retainer with composure, and remained silent, Kido wondering, in all probability, what would be the nature of the punishment that would descend upon him for his temerity.

But to his everlasting honour the daimio raised his head and said, after a while,—“Let it be so: act as you think best.”

Although Kido knew that his lord’s patriotism was of a kind that would prompt him to make enormous sacrifices, and that with Choshiu as with Satsuma, the overwhelming superiority of foreign armaments had been so effectively demonstrated as to make it clear that unless Japan was to fall a prey to some enterprising foe she must bestir herself and reform her institutions to a degree that would enable her to present a united front to an aggressor, it was with a feeling of intense gratitude that Kido received his chieftain’s answer. He had had no expectation of obtaining so ready a consent to his excessively venturesome proposition.

As he was retiring the baron called Kido back and warned him, “You must be careful, for the samurai are excited with their recent achievements and may not take it quietly. You had better watch for a convenient opportunity before making my decision known.”

Kido’s joy at this initial success was great beyond measure, and he forthwith made his way to Kioto, where he found Okubo Toshimichi, and they entered deeply into the question of approaching the other daimios with a similar suggestion. Okubo thoroughly shared Kido’s views as to the imperative need of abolishing the feudal system, and was not less surprised than Kido himself had been at the willingness shown by the lord of Choshiu to relinquish his possessions. He accepted it, however, as a good augury in his own case when he should attempt to convince the lord of Satsuma, to which province he belonged, of the wisdom of adopting a course similar to that taken by baron Mori.