Part 4

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