THE 
 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 NEW JAPAN 
 
 J.H.LONGFORD
 
 ^TlBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 1 SAN DIEGO 
 
 presented to the 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 I&RS. KENNETH N. BAKEfj
 
 2
 
 The Cambridge Manuals of Science and 
 Literature 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF 
 NEW JAPAN
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 iLon&on: FETTER LANE, E.G. 
 
 C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 
 
 i',i' 
 
 ill 
 
 *>, PRINCES STREET 
 Berlin: JA. ASHER AND CO. 
 
 F. A. BROCKHAUS 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 The Emperor Mutsu Hito
 
 THE EVOLUTION 
 OF NEW JAPAN 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH H. LONGFORD 
 
 Late H.M. Consul at Nagasaki ; 
 
 Professor of Japanese, King's 
 
 College, London 
 
 Cambridge : 
 at the University Press
 
 (Cambridge : 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 With the exception of the coat of arms at 
 the foot, the design on the title page is a 
 reproduction of one used by the earliest known 
 Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521
 
 PREFACE 
 
 little book has at least one original feature. 
 It is, to the best of the author's knowledge, the 
 first book on Japan which has ever been issued at 
 the price of one shilling. Surely, this will commend 
 it to readers and bookbuyers, even if it exposes no 
 more than the skeleton of the modern history of 
 a people who are both our allies and our good 
 customers (as well as our rivals) in trade, and who 
 can now give us valuable lessons of patriotic courage, 
 sacrifice, and perseverance in return for all we have 
 taught them. 
 
 J. H. L. 
 
 August, 1913.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 Introduction . . . ; ! . . . 1 
 
 I. Historical Sketch . . . ; . . . 3 
 
 II. Restoration of the Emperor . . . . 16 
 
 III. Reforms in Foreign and Domestic Policy . . 28 
 
 IV. Social Reforms 41 
 
 V. Development of Constitutional Government . 54 
 
 VI. Recovery of National Autonomy. . . . 71 
 
 VII. Trade and Industry 84 
 
 VIII. Foreign Relations. 18671895 .... 100 
 
 IX. Foreign Relations. 1895 1913 .... 120 
 
 X. The Emperor Meiji . . . . . 142 
 
 Notes 157 
 
 Postscript. Books on Japan . . . . 159 
 
 Index . .. ,.'.., . 161
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP 
 
 The Emperor Muteu Hito (18671912) . . Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 The Emperor Komei (18471867) 14 
 
 The Emperor Yoshi Hito now on the throne . . 22 
 
 Sign Manual and Seal of the Emperor Mutsu Hito . 30 
 
 With Countersign and Seal of Connt Okuma, Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs, given at the palace at Kioto, April 24, 
 1897 (copied from one of the author's exequaturs). 
 
 Prince Ito 60 
 
 Assassinated at Harbing, October 26, 1909. 
 
 Sir Harry 8. Parkes, K.C.B., G.C.M.G 80 
 
 British Minister to Japan 1865 1882 (died at Peking 
 1885). 
 
 The five Choshiu Students in England, 1864. . . 116 
 
 Four of the five students subsequently became Prince 
 Ito, Marquis Inouye, Viscount Inouye (not related to 
 Marquis Inouye) and Viscount Yamao, and all five held 
 high administrative offices in the Government. The 
 present Ambassador to the Court of St James is the only 
 son of Marquis Inouye. 
 
 Marquis Inouye 132 
 
 Map of the Japanese Empire at end 
 
 The author is indebted to the courtesy of His Excellency the 
 Japanese Ambassador for the illustrations of the Emperor Komei 
 and of Marquis Inouye.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN the 7th century of the Christian era, Japan, 
 as one incident in the general assimilation of Chinese 
 civilisation which then took place, adopted the Chinese 
 calendar, in which years are counted in chronological 
 periods of irregular length, distinguished from each 
 other by specific names nengo or year names. In 
 1872, subsequent to the abandonment of the Chinese 
 in favour of the European system as the foundation 
 of the national civilisation, the old calendar was 
 replaced by the Gregorian, though not in its entirety. 
 A formal recognition of the Christian era would have 
 been inconsistent with the reverence that was due to 
 the Emperor as the acknowledged descendant of the 
 Gods of Heaven, and to the national religion of which 
 he was the head, and it was therefore decided that 
 while days and months should henceforth be reckoned 
 on the Western model, the old system of year-count- 
 ing by nengo should be retained. Under it a name, 
 usually one of good omen, such as " Great Honour," 
 " Heavenly Virtue," " Tranquil Peace," " Great Pros- 
 perity," was chosen at the beginning of each period
 
 2 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 
 
 and the successive years were described as the first, 
 second, etc. years of that period until the time came 
 when it was arbitrarily terminated and a new one 
 adopted. There was not even a remote approximation 
 to uniformity in the length of the periods. Many 
 only continued for one year, while three exceeded 20 
 and one 30 years. 
 
 In the year following the accession of the late 
 Emperor the occurrence of his birthday was signalised 
 by the inauguration of a new period to which the 
 name of Meiji Enlightened Government was given. 
 It was, at the same time, decreed that in future there 
 should be only one chronological period in each 
 reign and that it should coincide with the length of 
 the reign, with the exception that, as a new period 
 has, through all ages, always been reckoned from the 
 first day of the year of its adoption, each should in 
 future begin on the 1st of January preceding the 
 sovereign's accession and close on the 31st of 
 December preceding his death. The period of Meiji 
 the longest in history dates from January 25th, 
 1868, that being New Year's Day under the old 
 (Chinese) calendar, till December 31st, 1911, and 
 is almost synchronous with the late Emperor's 
 reign. In this volume we propose to tell the story 
 of the evolution of Japan from an unknown and 
 impotent Asiatic state into one of the acknowledged 
 Powers of the world, which took place during the
 
 CH. i] HISTORICAL SKETCH 3 
 
 period of Meiji, in the reign of the Emperor Mutsu 
 Hito. It is the story of one of the most eventful 
 reigns of any period or of any nation in the world's 
 history, a story which is full of the most pregnant 
 lessons of what can be achieved by an intelligent 
 and courageous people, working with whole-hearted 
 patriotism, under the leadership of a liberal and 
 enlightened sovereign. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 BEFORE proceeding with our main task it is 
 necessary that a short sketch of the history and 
 polity of Japan should be given in order that our 
 readers may be enabled to have a clear understanding 
 of the social and political conditions of the Empire 
 at the beginning of Meiji. The first Emperor was 
 Jimmu Tenno, who founded the Empire and ascended 
 the throne in the year 660 B.C., little more than 
 a century later than the founding of Rome. From 
 him, all the subsequent occupants of the throne 
 traced their descent in an unbroken line, and as 
 Jimmu was the direct descendant, in the fifth genera- 
 tion, of the Sun Goddess (Tensho Daijin), who herself 
 sprang from the creators of Heaven and Earth, all 
 
 12
 
 4 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 his successors have claimed through him a divine 
 descent, a claim which has been accepted with un- 
 questioning faith by their subjects in all times, which 
 the most extreme spirit of modern materialism has 
 not yet affected, and which is as devoutly acknow- 
 ledged to this day by the most advanced student of 
 Huxley or Schopenhauer as it was by any of the 
 sages of old. 
 
 Jimmu's successors, throughout twelve centuries, 
 were all sovereigns in reality as well as in name, all 
 taking an active and vigorous share in their govern- 
 ment, but from the seventh century of the Christian 
 era they permitted the executive power to fall into 
 the hands of the leading family among their courtiers, 
 the Fujiwara, who, like the Emperors themselves, 
 claimed divine origin, their remote ancestor having 
 descended from Heaven in the train of Jimmu's 
 progenitor, the Sun Goddess's grandson ; they also, 
 like the Emperors, survive to this day. For four 
 hundred years the Fujiwara conserved to themselves 
 all the executive authority of the realm until it was 
 wrested from them by the leaders of a race of soldiers, 
 who, while the later generations of the Fujiwara 
 were, in the ease and luxury of the Court at Kioto, 
 sinking into the condition of idle and incapable 
 voluptuaries, had been hardened by continuous 
 military service against the Ainu, the savage autoch- 
 thons of Japan, in those days still numerous and
 
 i] -HISTORICAL SKETCH 5 
 
 powerful on the northern frontiers of the lands that 
 had been colonised by the followers of Jimmu and 
 their descendants. The greatest of these leaders was 
 Yoritomo, who succeeded at the close of the twelfth 
 century in making himself dictator of the Empire, 
 under the title of Sei-i-tai-Shogun or "Barbarian- 
 repressing-great-General," which was conferred on 
 him by the Emperor. The title, abbreviated in 
 common use into Shogun, was one which had pre- 
 viously been frequently conferred on generals in 
 command of armies in the field, but it signified only 
 military authority and it lapsed with the termination 
 of the special command for which it was given. 
 Yoritomo gave it a new significance. He assumed 
 not only the military but the civil power and retained 
 the title for life. He established his residence at 
 Kamakura, a town about 30 miles from Tokio, which 
 quickly grew into a large and populous city and 
 became the real capital of the Empire while Kioto, 
 the home of the legitimate Emperors, was only so in 
 name. There he administered, as the de facto sove- 
 reign, the government of the Empire while the 
 provinces were held and governed by his relatives 
 and adherents, soldiers who had fought by his side 
 and who owed all their fealty to him alone. 
 
 This was the beginning of the systems of dual 
 government and of feudalism in Japan which lasted 
 from the time of Yoritomo (1192 1199) until the
 
 6 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 accession of the late Emperor. At Kioto there was 
 always the Emperor, the legitimate sovereign, the 
 acknowledged source of all authority and the sole 
 fountain of honour, surrounded by a small retinue of 
 courtiers, who were known as Kuge, many of whom 
 sprang from the Imperial family, and all of whom 
 claimed an origin and descent that were only less 
 illustrious than those of the Emperor. Both Em- 
 perors and court were entirely dependent on the 
 Shoguns for their means of support, which were for 
 many long centuries provided with such parsimony, 
 that all were practically sunk in abject poverty. On 
 the other side, the Shogun's courts, first at Kamakura 
 and afterwards at Yedo, with an interval between 
 the two at Kioto, in the very shadow of the Emperor's 
 own palace, were maintained in the utmost Imperial 
 splendour ; the national executive was entirely in 
 the hands of the Shoguns and their ministers, and 
 all the land in the provinces was parcelled among 
 feudal lords the daimio the majority of whom 
 sprang from soldiers of fortune who were rewarded 
 by successive dynasties of the Shoguns with the 
 grants of large estates, the spoils of almost unceasing 
 civil war. 
 
 Yoritomo's own direct descendants did not long 
 hold the great office which their progenitor had won. 
 It fell in turn to other military adventurers during 
 the succeeding four centuries, the last and the greatest
 
 I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 7 
 
 of whom was Tokugawa lyeyasu who became Shogun 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The 
 system, inaugurated by Yoritomo, was brought to its 
 highest perfection by lyeyasu, who, in the measures 
 he took to secure the retention of the Shogunate in 
 his own family and the peace of the realm, showed 
 that he was a constructive statesman of the highest 
 order of genius, and he was ably followed by some of 
 his earliest successors. So successful were he and 
 they, that throughout 260 years, during which his 
 descendants occupied the throne of the Shoguns at 
 Yedo, their authority was never once questioned and 
 the country under their government, which, for five 
 centuries prior to the accession of lyeyasu, had been 
 almost continuously desolated by civil war, fought 
 with no less bitterness and savage cruelty than those 
 which characterised the wars of Europe in the same 
 periods, enjoyed profound and unbroken peace, and 
 its people, according to the descriptions of European 
 writers, who saw and studied them, should have been 
 one of the happiest in the world. 
 
 To this picture there was another side. During 
 the last hah of the sixteenth and the first quarter of 
 the seventeenth centuries Japan fi-eely admitted to 
 her harbours European ships, which found their way 
 to the Far East, and Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch 
 and English traders were in turn welcomed by her. 
 Jesuit and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic
 
 8 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Church followed the first Portuguese and Spanish 
 traders and their proselytising efforts, carried on 
 with equal zeal and ability, met with such success 
 that, within one century from the landing of the first 
 missionary, there were said to have been over a million 
 native converts to Christianity of all classes of the 
 people. Unfortunately the zeal of the missionaries 
 outran their discretion and gave rise to the suspicion 
 that proselytism was merely an antecedent step to 
 territorial aggression threatening the political inde- 
 pendence of the Empire, and as the suspicion grew 
 to certainty, the whole attitude of the Government 
 changed both to Christianity and to Europeans. 
 Christianity was extirpated by persecution as ruthless 
 as that of Nero. Missionaries were put to death or 
 expelled. Traders too were expelled, an exception 
 being made only in favour of the Dutch, a small colony 
 of whom were permitted to remain under the most 
 humiliating conditions, closely interned in the little 
 island of Desima in the harbour of Nagasaki, where 
 they carried on a trade which, though hampered by 
 vexatious restrictions, brought them enormous profits. 
 All other Europeans were forbidden to approach the 
 shores of Japan or to land on pain of death. And 
 not only were Europeans forbidden to land in Japan, 
 but Japanese were, under equally severe penalties, 
 forbidden to go abroad. None who did so was 
 permitted to return. Throughout the middle ages
 
 i] HISTORICAL SKETCH 9 
 
 the Japanese had shown themselves bold and ad- 
 venturous seamen, making their way both as pirates 
 and traders not only to China and Siam, but in some 
 instances across the Pacific to Mexico. Now they 
 were forbidden by their own authorities to build any 
 ship larger in burthen than 500 Koku (50 tons) and 
 from the day on which the edict which forbade them 
 was issued their traditional maritime spirit was gone, 
 and the national seclusion, which it was the policy of 
 the early Tokugawas to effect, was complete. 
 
 For 220 years Japan was cut off from all the 
 world. She had her own high degree of social and 
 artistic civilisation, refined and picturesque in all its 
 elements, but while Europe was advancing with giant 
 strides in industrial, military and political science, 
 Japan stood still and her internal state in the middle 
 of the nineteenth century showed no material advance 
 on what it had been in the early part of the seven- 
 teenth. She was contented in herself and with her 
 own acquirements and neither knew nor cared for 
 aught that was happening in the outer world. 
 
 Internally the country was crushed under one of 
 the most iron systems of feudalism that the world has 
 ever seen. The Shogun was the feudal superior, 
 though nominally only as the mandatory of the 
 Emperor. A third of the whole Empire was under 
 his direct rule and the revenues were paid into his 
 Treasury. The remainder was shared among 260
 
 10 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 feudal lords, all of whom varied in strength, wealth 
 and influence in proportion to the extent of their 
 domains, but all alike enjoyed complete legislative 
 and executive autonomy within their own boundaries, 
 an autonomy which did not even exclude the right of 
 coinage. All maintained armies of hereditary soldiers 
 samurai whose allegiance was due only to their 
 own immediate feudal lords, for whose sake every 
 samurai was always ready to sacrifice without a 
 murmur life, liberty, name, family or property. Each 
 lord, in his turn, owed allegiance to the Shogun, 
 from whom he received his investiture on succession, 
 whose approval he had to obtain in marriage and 
 adoption, and to whom he was obliged to render 
 military service when called upon. All lived in regal 
 splendour and independence in fortified castles on 
 their own estates, and in no less splendour in great 
 palaces in Yedo, where they were obliged to pass 
 part of each year. The sole occupations of the 
 samurai were those of arms, literature and the ad- 
 ministration of their lords' estates and revenues, and 
 both daimio and samurai combined to form the 
 governing and aristocratic class and with their 
 families numbered some two million souls. Beneath 
 them, divided by an unfathomable social gulf, across 
 which none could pass, was the subject and plebeian 
 class, divided into three orders, farmers, artisans and 
 traders, in number about thirty millions, whose sole
 
 i] HISTORICAL SKETCH 11 
 
 lot in life was to minister to the well-being and 
 luxury of their superiors. 
 
 The general characteristics of the Japanese people 
 were then such that there is scarcely a word which 
 Buckle wrote in the second chapter of his History of 
 Civilization on the physical and moral conditions of 
 the ancient peoples of India, Egypt, Mexico or Peru, 
 which mutatis mutandis might not have been applied 
 to those of the people of Japan. On the part of the 
 upper class there was the most autocratic use of 
 despotic power ; on that of the lower the most servile 
 subservience in every incident of life. Slavery, ex- 
 cept perhaps in prehistoric times, never existed as 
 a recognised institution in Japan, but practically 
 speaking, less than sixty years ago, slavery, abject 
 slavery, was the natural state of the great body of 
 the" people. They counted for nothing. They not 
 only had no voice in the management of the public 
 affairs of the state, the province, or the city, but their 
 liberty, their property, and even their lives were held 
 at the absolute disposal of their immediate rulers. 
 Their occupations, their dress, their residences were 
 all rigidly prescribed for them ; on them fell the 
 entire financial burthens of the state and their sole 
 functions were to labour for the comfort and luxury 
 of the upper classes and to render to them an ab- 
 solute and unquestioning obedience. The " habits of 
 tame and servile submission were generated among
 
 12 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 them" and extended through successive generations 
 had their invariable result in that the history of the 
 world affords no more striking instance of an abjectly 
 spiritless race than that of the Japanese lower classes 
 only sixty years ago. They spoke in subdued tones, 
 with bent backs and eyes on the ground : they would 
 scarcely dare to strike a blow even in the defence of 
 their own lives and families, and all the history of 
 Japan does not furnish one single instance of their 
 having "turned upon their rulers, of any war of 
 classes, of any popular insurrection, of even one 
 great popular conspiracy." 
 
 As subjection made the lower classes abjectly 
 servile so did despotic power and immunity from all 
 the burthens of life render the aristocratic class 
 tyrannical and cruel. The samurai of Japan have 
 been quoted in England as models of everything that 
 is most noble in man, as chivalrous, frugal, brave, 
 courteous, loyal, patriotic, self-sacrificing. They were 
 all that theoretically, and actually so in many in- 
 dividual cases, but foreigners in Japan, fifty years 
 ago, conceived very different ideas of them as a class. 
 Sir Rutherford Alcock, our first minister to Japan, a 
 keen observer, a man of the world, a careful student, 
 who knew the Japan of his day, calls them " Swash- 
 bucklers, swaggering blustering bullies, many cowardly 
 enough to strike an enemy in the back or cut down 
 an unarmed and inoffensive man, but ever ready to
 
 I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 13 
 
 fling their own lives away in accomplishing a revenge 
 or carrying out the behests of their chief." Even 
 contemporaneous writers of their own class in Japan 
 described them as ignorant, cruel, dissolute and idle. 
 They treated the classes below them with the utmost 
 contempt and brutality. Their patriotism and loyalty 
 were local not national, were given entirely to their 
 immediate feudal chiefs and not to the sovereign, and 
 jealousy among rival clans would always have been a 
 serious obstacle to national union, even in defence of 
 the country against foreign aggression. 
 
 Such were the conditions of the people of Japan 
 in the closing years of the Tokugawa regime. They 
 were all, daimio, samurai and plebeians, entirely 
 segregated from their legitimate sovereign, the 
 Emperor, who, living in the sacred seclusion of his 
 palace at Kioto, maintained intact the divine prestige 
 which had been transmitted to him from his an- 
 cestors but was utterly powerless to assert himself 
 in the administration of the Empire of which he was 
 the nominal head. The Shogun was his Mayor of the 
 Palace, the major-domo, who carried on the Govern- 
 ment and who alone of all his subjects enjoyed the 
 right of access to him. So great was the power of 
 the Shogun, so complete its outer manifestation, both 
 at the beginning and at the close of the Tokugawa 
 regime, that Europeans who came to Japan invariably 
 termed him " His Majesty." The learned Jesuits of the
 
 14 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 16th and 17th centuries, the equally learned Dutch 
 savants of the 18th century, and the diplomatists of 
 the 19th century all erred alike. They heard vaguely 
 of another Emperor who was never seen either by his 
 own subjects or by them, not even when they visited 
 the holy city of Kioto in which he lived, of whom they 
 were told as a sacred being of divine origin, vested 
 with divine prerogatives and shrouded in impene- 
 trable mystery, but powerless as a political factor 
 in the state, so much so that neither the Jesuit 
 missionaries nor the Dutch traders seem ever to 
 have made the smallest effort to enlist his influence 
 in their favour. 
 
 On the other hand, what they termed "the 
 Emperor," but who was in reality the Shogun, the 
 Mayor of the Palace, was very vividly present to 
 the eyes and thoughts of both. His authority over 
 all the realm was undisputed. All the feudal lords, 
 both great and small, rendered homage to him, and 
 though exercising almost unlimited autonomy in their 
 own domains accepted his orders with unquestioning 
 obedience. He had great wealth of his own, the 
 yearly revenue from his family estates amounting to 
 eight millions sterling in an age when the purchasing 
 power of money was manifold what it now is. He 
 had at his call an immense army of devoted samurai, 
 he had a council of able ministers and he lived in 
 imperial splendour, that was apparent to all, both
 
 The Emperor Komei
 

 
 I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 15 
 
 natives and foreigners, in the great city of Yedo 
 which in size, wealth and population far outshadowed 
 the ancient and venerated capital of Kioto. To the 
 Jesuits, fresh from the splendours of Rome, Madrid or 
 Lisbon, his palace seemed in its grandeur, glittering 
 with gold, "like an enchanted palace," and when 
 attended by a great and stately escort he made royal 
 progresses beyond its walls, the streets were all 
 cleared of everything that could offend his sight ; 
 the upper windows of all houses closed so that none 
 could look down on him ; no fires could be lighted 
 for two days beforehand lest the sky should be ob- 
 scured, and all people humbly prostrated themselves 
 on the ground as he passed by. 
 
 When Europeans once more made their appear- 
 ance on the shores of Japan, no longer as abject 
 suppliants like the Dutch, but demanding ingress as 
 a right and prepared to support their demands with 
 irresistible force, the Emperor was still a myth in 
 their eyes. The Shogun was the de facto sovereign 
 with whom they had to deal and as far as they knew, 
 in their ignorance of the history and institutions of 
 Japan, he was also the dejure sovereign. In Perry's 
 treaty he was described as "the August Sovereign 
 of Japan," and in the first English treaty that of 
 Admiral Stirling concluded in 1854 as "His Imperial 
 Highness, the Emperor " : in Lord Elgin's Treaty of 
 1858, as "His Majesty the Tycoon," and in the
 
 16 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Prussian Treaty of 1861, as "Seine Majestat der 
 Taikun." The title "Tycoon" or more properly 
 "Taikun" was a new one adopted from China. Its 
 literal signification is "Great Lord." 
 
 The new treaties came into force in 1858. The 
 ports of Yokohama, Nagasaki and Hakodate were 
 opened to foreign trade and residence. Diplomatic 
 representatives of the Treaty Powers took up their 
 residence in Yedo and their countrymen began to 
 live and trade at the opened ports. The Shogun 
 apparently retained all his power and influence and 
 the country was governed by his ministry with whom 
 alone the foreign diplomatists had any direct re- 
 lations. But a revolution had already begun which 
 was destined within one decade to destroy utterly 
 the political fabric that had lasted for more than 
 seven centuries and to restore to the legitimate 
 Emperor all the executive functions that were his 
 undoubted constitutional prerogative. 
 
 IYEYASU in his old age devoted himself to the 
 study and encouragement of literature. His grand- 
 son, the feudal lord of the province of Mito and the 
 chief of one of the Go Sankei, the three families in
 
 II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 17 
 
 which was vested the succession to the Shogunate in 
 the event of failure of the direct line, inherited all 
 his grandfather's literary tastes and, unlike him, was 
 able to devote his whole life to their cultivation, 
 lyeyasu favoured the study of the Confucian classics 
 and other masterpieces of the ancient literature of 
 China. The Lord of Mito, on the other hand, was 
 attracted by the ancient records of Japan which told 
 the story of the creation and of the divine descent 
 of the Emperors. Under his patronage, the great 
 scholars whom he gathered around him in his pro- 
 vince from all parts of the Empire compiled the 
 Dai-Nihon-Shi, the History of Great Japan from 
 the accession of the mythical Emperor Jimmu in 
 660 B.C. to the abdication in 1414 A.D. of Go Komatsu, 
 the ninety-ninth Emperor of the line. This great 
 work was completed in 1715, and it was followed, 
 one hundred years later, by the Nikon Guaishi, the 
 External History of Japan, which told the true 
 history of the Shogunate, from its foundation by 
 Yoritomo in the 12th century down to the accession 
 of lyeyasu. Both works were eagerly read by scholars 
 throughout the Empire. Their whole spirit was that 
 the Emperor is the true and only legitimate sovereign, 
 the lineal descendant of the Gods of Heaven by whom 
 Japan was created, the first and best of all the lands 
 on earth ; that to him alone the unquestioning alle- 
 giance of every loyal Japanese is due ; and that the
 
 18 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Shoguns were usurpers, who, themselves of no higher 
 degree than the other feudal lords, had vested them- 
 selves with the supreme executive authority by the 
 power of the sword. 
 
 These doctrines were eagerly imbibed by the 
 greatest of the feudal lords, who were traditional 
 enemies of the House of Tokugawa but had yielded 
 to its superior strength and to the irresistible military 
 and political genius of lyeyasu. Prominent among 
 them were the chiefs of the great southern fiefs of 
 Choshiu and Satsuma. They were themselves he- 
 reditary foes but both had been long fretting under 
 the domination of the Shogun with all its attendant 
 disabilities, and their impatience was intensified by 
 the incapacity and sloth of several of lyeyasu's later 
 successors. Both hated each other but both hated 
 their Tokugawa oppressor still more, and only awaited 
 a plausible cause and a favourable opportunity for 
 combining their arms against him and enlisting the 
 aid of other feudal chiefs w r ho were in the same 
 position as themselves. Both cause and opportunity 
 were furnished by the arrival of Europeans and their 
 demand that the country should be opened to them. 
 
 While the great sea Powers of Europe were too 
 fully occupied in their own international jealousies 
 and in the acquisition and expansion of colonies 
 comparatively near at hand to bestow even a thought 
 on a remote and unknown island Empire of whose
 
 n] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 19 
 
 people and resources they were entirely ignorant, 
 Japan had acquired interest and importance in the 
 eyes of the United States of America. The Western 
 States of the Union were growing in commercial 
 value, and it was already foreseen that the Pacific 
 might become a highway of trade between America 
 and the rich and populous Empire of China. Japan 
 lay in the ocean fairway between the two countries 
 and it was of vital interest to American shipping, 
 trading between them, that it should have the right 
 of access to. Japanese harbours. The United States 
 Government, entirely unhampered by either domestic 
 or foreign complications, determined therefore to 
 establish intercourse with the Japanese, to induce 
 them to enter into treaty relations, by persuasion if 
 possible, if not by force, and thus secure guarantees 
 for the future protection and assistance of United 
 States ships when in Japanese waters. The mission 
 was entrusted to Commodore Perry and successfully 
 carried out by him, and on the 31st of March 1854, 
 Japan signed her first formal treaty with a Western 
 Power. 
 
 Along with the revival of loyalty to the Emperor 
 another doctrine, ancillary to it, had also won many 
 disciples. This was that Japan is the Land of the 
 Gods, and only those who are children of the Gods 
 are worthy to dwell in it, that the presence of outer 
 Barbarians is sacrilege to be avoided at all cost and 
 
 22
 
 20 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 at all risks. When Perry arrived, " Peace and Pros- 
 perity of long duration had," it was said, " enervated 
 the spirit, rusted the armour and blunted the swords 
 of the Samurai " and incapacitated them for military 
 service against the Barbarians in their heavily-armed 
 ships. The Shogun, only too conscious of the national 
 impotency to resist the demand that was made in no 
 uncertain language, yielded, and by doing so at once 
 became a traitor to the Emperor and the country. 
 The cry was raised "Sonno Joi," "Honour the Emperor 
 and expel the Barbarians," and it was eagerly taken 
 up by the leaders and clansmen of the Satsuma, 
 Choshiu and other great southern fiefs, and made by 
 them a pretext for initiating hostilities against the 
 hated Government beneath which they had so long 
 cowered. 
 
 The Emperors had, as already explained, been, 
 with a very few striking exceptions, political nullities 
 throughout the whole existence of the Shogunate. 
 It happened that the Emperor Komei, the 120th 
 of his line, who occupied the throne at this period, 
 formed one of these exceptions. He had never fallen 
 into the physical and mental incapacity of his fore- 
 runners and was now in the very prime of early 
 manhood. All the revived traditions of his house 
 and country had entered deeply into his heart, and 
 he hated both the Shogunate, by which he knew he 
 had been despoiled of his Imperial prerogatives* and
 
 ii] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 21 
 
 with a still more mastering passion the foreigners, who 
 were now polluting his country with their presence. 
 His hatred against both Shogun and foreigner was 
 intensified by the thought that the treaties which 
 the former had traitorously signed, under which the 
 foreigners lived within his dominions, were a new 
 and further outrage on his prerogatives, a violation 
 of the constitutional principle, which had existed 
 throughout all ages, that great national changes 
 required the formal sanction of the Emperor, nominal 
 though his authority was. The indignation of both 
 Emperor and Court was strong, and all their sympathy 
 was with the great feudal chiefs who were now in 
 open rebellion. 
 
 We need not enter into the details of the civil 
 war, a war which was fought with great bitterness, 
 much bloodshed and varying fortune. In the end, 
 the revolutionaries were completely successful, but 
 before that climax was reached the deaths occurred 
 within a very short interval of the two principal 
 figures of the times. In September 1866, lyemochi, 
 the fourteenth Shogun of the Tokugawa line, died 
 and was succeeded by Yoshinobu, who was destined 
 to be the last of the dynasty. lyemochi was little 
 more than a boy, who was entirely in the hands 
 of his ministers and vassals. Yoshinobu, on the other 
 hand, had already, on his accession, arrived at man- 
 hood, and was fully capable of forming his own
 
 22 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 opinion and exercising his judgment on the changing 
 conditions of Japanese life and politics. The death 
 of lyemochi was followed within six months by that 
 of the conservative and bigoted Emperor Komei, and 
 the reverse of what had occurred in the case of the 
 Shogunate happened in regard to the succession to 
 the Imperial throne. 
 
 While Perry's mission was being organised at 
 Washington an event took place in Kioto which was 
 destined to have even a greater influence on Japan's 
 history than Perry's eventful mission. On the 3rd of 
 November, 1852, a son was born to the Emperor, his 
 mother being the Lady Nakayama, the daughter of a 
 cadet branch of the Fujiwara family, one of the Jugo 
 (morganatic wives) who, from time immemorial, have 
 been united to the Emperor by ties only one degree 
 less formal and no less binding than those which unite 
 him to the Empress. In accordance with custom and 
 law, the child at once became the legitimate son of 
 the Emperor and of the Empress, but it was not till 
 he was eight years old, and all hope had gone of the 
 Empress bearing a son of her own, that he was pro- 
 claimed Imperial Crown Prince and heir-apparent to 
 his father's throne. The Emperor Komei, as already 
 indicated, was a man of strong character and will, 
 saturated with political convictions which he was 
 determined to enforce in so far as his circumstances 
 permitted. His successor was the boy whose birth
 
 The Emperor Yoshi Hito
 
 n] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 23 
 
 has just been described, and who was not yet fifteen 
 years of age. He had been brought up in the rigidly 
 conservative atmosphere of the Court, subject to the 
 influence of his father and of the courtiers in the 
 closest attendance on him, but he had had the ad- 
 vantage of personal tutors, one at least of whom 
 already saw that Japan's days of isolation were over 
 and that a new era had dawned. Whatever his own 
 boyish sentiments may have been, he was of necessity 
 dependent on the advice of his ministers during the 
 earlier years of his reign. They were at his accession 
 still all outwardly devoted to the policy of his father, 
 the expulsion at all costs of the hated foreigners from 
 the divine land of the Gods, but two events which had 
 occurred during the lifetime of the Emperor Komei 
 had already convinced even the most bigoted among 
 them that in Japan's condition at the time, ignorant 
 as she was of all the modern science of war and 
 divided by bitter feuds among her own people, 
 the successful accomplishment of this policy was 
 hopeless. 
 
 The two events were the bombardment of Kago- 
 shima, the capital city of the great Satsuma fief, by 
 the British fleet in 1863, and the bombardment of 
 Shimonoseki, the stronghold of the equally great 
 Choshiu fief, by the allied fleets of Great Britain, 
 France, the United States and Holland in 1865. The 
 object of the first was to exact reparation for the
 
 24 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 murder of a British subject; of the second to open 
 to foreign shipping the Straits of Shimonoseki which 
 the ruler of the fief had determined to keep closed. 
 Satsuma and Choshiu were the two most powerful 
 fiefs in the Empire. Both had warmly and enthusi- 
 astically adopted the exclusionist policy though from 
 different motives, Choshiu being a sincere and whole- 
 hearted advocate of it, while Satsuma used it mainly 
 as a means of embarrassing the Tokugawa Govern- 
 ment. Both suffered severely, Satsuma in the loss 
 of ships and men, and in the destruction of a great 
 part of the capital it may be mentioned that the 
 British fleet did not come out of the action scathe- 
 less and Choshiu in the silencing of all the forts on 
 the narrow straits which he had fondly believed to be 
 impregnable, and in the defeat of the flower of his 
 army by the allied forces landed from the fleets after 
 the silencing of the forts. The results were the same 
 in both cases. The feudatories recognised Japan's 
 military impotency against the great Powers of the 
 West, and thinking men learned the great lesson that 
 national unity was essential to national safety, and 
 that one of the first requisites to national unity was 
 the abolition of the dual form of government of 
 Emperor and Shogun. 
 
 The lessons learned at such cost by Satsuma and 
 Choshiu were soon imbibed, not only by other great 
 feudatories, but even by some of the Imperial courtiers
 
 n] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 25 
 
 at Kioto. They could not however as yet be openly 
 acknowledged. The civil war was still in progress. 
 The Emperor Komei was still obstinate in his old con- 
 victions, and the old cry of " Expel the Barbarians " 
 was still the most potent charm for all the enemies 
 of the Shogunate, few of whom were even yet en- 
 lightened enough to understand, still less to acknow- 
 ledge, the new position in which Japan found herself. 
 Two years later, the death of the Emperor removed 
 one great obstacle, and then a far-reaching step was 
 taken by a third feudatory, the lord of Tosa, a fief 
 that was inferior in wealth and strength only to 
 Satsuma and Choshiu. He addressed a memorial to 
 the new Shogun, pointing out Japan's helplessness 
 in the face of foreigners and its own internal dis- 
 organisation, urging as the only remedy the com- 
 plete restoration of the executive authority to the 
 Imperial Government in whom alone it could be 
 legally vested 
 
 The memorial expressed only what was in the 
 Shogun's own thoughts, and urged a course of action 
 which he himself had already seen to be inevitable. 
 On the one side were the Court and the great majority 
 of the feudatories plotting for his fall, many of the 
 latter in arms against him, and all outwardly clamor- 
 ing for the expulsion of the foreigners. On the other 
 were the diplomatic representatives of the Foreign 
 Powers, pressing him to fulfil the obligations he had
 
 26 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 undertaken in the treaties, and, in their ignorance 
 of the political conditions of Japan, utterly unable to 
 appreciate or make any allowance for the domestic 
 difficulties which surrounded him. The lessons taught 
 by the bombardments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, 
 though the most bitter domestic enemies of his own 
 house had been the sufferers in both cases, had not 
 been wasted on him. He saw that a country divided 
 as Japan was into local principalities, no one of which 
 interested itself in any calamities that might befall 
 its neighbour, among whom there were no common 
 interests, where all patriotism was local and not 
 national, could have no hope of being able to with- 
 stand foreign aggression, and he knew enough of the 
 fate of India and of the spoliation of China to be 
 assured that foreign aggression was an imminent 
 danger so long as Japan was helpless to defend her- 
 self. No national unity could be attained while the 
 dual system of government continued, and yielding 
 to the teaching of his youth, while he \vas still a cadet 
 of the house of Mito, in which the doctrine of loyalty 
 to the Emperor had its birth, to the experience of his 
 manhood, and to the high ideal of self-sacrificing 
 patriotism which was the product of both, worn out 
 too by the helplessness of his position and all the 
 heart burnings and humiliations entailed by his in- 
 ability to coerce his domestic enemies on the one side 
 or to carry out the engagements his Government had
 
 n] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 27 
 
 made with foreign powers on the other, he resigned 
 his office of Shogun and restored the national execu- 
 tive to its proper source, the Emperor. 
 
 By doing so he not only surrendered the supreme 
 executive authority of the Empire, which had been 
 held by his family for 260 years, but ended the dual 
 system of government, which had lasted from the 
 12th century. All this occupied little more than 
 one year. It was on the 19th of September, 1866, 
 that the fourteenth Shogun died, and on the 6th of 
 January, 1867, Yoshinobu was nominated his suc- 
 cessor. The Emperor Komei died and was succeeded 
 by his only son, Mutsu Hito, on the 3rd of February, 
 1867, and it was on the 9th of November in the same 
 year that the new Emperor received the Shogun's 
 resignation and assumed in its complete reality the 
 authority which had belonged to his remote ancestors. 
 It was on the day he did so that the foundation stone 
 of modern Japan was laid. Much was yet to be 
 accomplished, more blood was to be shed before 
 Japan entered on the paths of social, political and 
 industrial reform on which she was destined to make 
 such great advances, but the first step had been 
 accomplished and the promoters of the revolution 
 were free to take in the name of the boy Emperor, 
 who had just ascended the throne, such measures 
 as were incumbent to ensure the consolidation and 
 permanency of the new Government.
 
 28 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 REFORMS IN FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 
 
 THE reader will have gathered from the preceding 
 chapters that while the main object of the promoters 
 of the Restoration was the destruction of the Shogun- 
 ate and the revival of the Imperial regime, they had 
 utilised the cry of " expel the barbarian," in order to 
 cement in one common bond of union all the fighting 
 forces of the Empire not bound to the Tokugawa 
 cause by ties of consanguinity or material interest. 
 They had encouraged the fanatics who abounded 
 everywhere in the exercise of their hatred to the 
 foreigner, seeing how much it contributed to the 
 complications of the sorely-harassed Shogunate in 
 its last years. The late Emperor had, in formal 
 rescripts, conveyed his unqualified approval to the 
 Satsuma and Choshiu fiefs, when they fought against 
 the fleets of Great Britain and the allied Powers, and 
 public sentiment had no less approved of the deeds 
 of the many assassins by whom unoffending Euro- 
 peans were over and over again cruelly and savagely 
 murdered. Twice, almost in the very heart of the 
 Shogun's capital, the British Legation was attacked 
 at night by large bands of armed samurai, with the 
 avowed object of murdering all its inmates, and the
 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 29 
 
 assailants were regarded as devoted patriots by all 
 their compeers. The officials of the Foreign Legations, 
 the only foreigners who resided in Yedo, had all to 
 be closely guarded both when within their Legations 
 and when they ventured outside the walls, and so 
 insecure was the position of all Europeans in Japan, 
 that large garrisons of English and French troops 
 were quartered by their governments in Yokohama 
 to afford to the traders resident there the protection 
 which it was believed the Shogunate had not the 
 power to secure. 
 
 All who had shared the anti-foreign sentiment and 
 had fought for their beliefs, fondly believed that the 
 moment the Emperor regained his own an anti-foreign 
 campaign would be at once instituted under the 
 Emperor's banner, and they were as ready to give 
 their swords to it as they had been to the over- 
 throw of the Shogun. But while the cry of " expel 
 the foreigner " had been openly used to the very last, 
 so long as the Shogun was a power to be feared, a 
 change had during the last years of the struggle taken 
 place in the minds of the leaders of the movement. 
 The two most powerful fiefs who took an active part 
 in it had received severe lessons of the consequences 
 of indulging in armed resistance to European powers. 
 Some of the courtiers had also imbibed more liberal 
 sentiments, under the influence of the leaders of the 
 fiefs, and there was a sufficiently influential body of
 
 30 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 capable men around the young Emperor to mould his 
 opinions and to develop in his name, while he was 
 still too young to take the direct personal control of 
 state affairs which was his right, the policy that they 
 now believed was essential to the future integrity 
 and progress of Japan. This policy meant a complete 
 subversal of all that they had hitherto openly advo- 
 cated, but it was at once boldly and publicly adopted. 
 
 On the 8th of February, 1868, a nobleman of high 
 rank in the Court delivered to the Diplomatic Repre- 
 sentatives of the foreign powers a formal document 
 bearing the sign manual of the Emperor and sealed 
 with " The Seal of Great Japan " for transmission to 
 their Governments, in which the Emperor announced 
 his intention of thenceforward exercising supreme 
 authority both in the internal and external affairs of 
 the country and of substituting in the treaties his 
 own title for that of the Tycoon. This was followed 
 a week later by a public rescript in which it was pro- 
 claimed that " intercourse with foreign countries shall 
 in future be carried on in accordance with the public 
 law of the whole world," and, as a first onward step on 
 this path, an invitation soon followed to the Repre- 
 sentatives to visit Kioto and be received in audience 
 by His Majesty. 
 
 Kioto had been for more than a thousand years 
 the sacred city of the Empire. It had been visited 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the
 
 Sign Manual and Seal of the Emperor Mutsu Hito

 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 31 
 
 Jesuit missionaries, and Xavier and many of his 
 disciples had openly preached the Christian doctrine 
 in its streets. The Dutch traders had passed through 
 it when on their way from Desima on their com- 
 pulsory annual missions to the Shogun's court at 
 Yedo. But neither had ever approached the palace 
 or dreamt of audience with its holy occupant, and 
 the Dutch always passed through the city closely 
 guarded as though they were prisoners. Now the 
 foreigners, who a very few years before had been 
 publicly designated by the late Emperor as "Sea 
 pirates," " Ugly Barbarians," and " Foul beasts," were 
 not only to be admitted to the holy city but were to 
 be received in person by the direct descendant of 
 the Gods of Heaven ; they were to approach him 
 erect and not humbly on their knees with foreheads 
 touching the ground, and to gaze upon him with no 
 intervening screen between him and them, such as 
 had hitherto veiled his sacred person from the eyes 
 even of the highest and noblest of his own people, 
 even of the Great Lord, the Shogun, when at the very 
 summit of his might and grandeur. 
 
 It is difficult even for a thinking Japanese of 
 modern days to appreciate the significance of this 
 event or to realise the profound impression which 
 it created on those who had fought and schemed for 
 the renewal of Japan's time-honoured seclusion. The 
 ceremony was destined not to pass without its tragedy,
 
 32 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 one of the many which darkened those days of our 
 intercourse with Japan. When Sir Harry Parkes, the 
 British representative, who had been the first among 
 his colleagues to recognise the new Government and 
 to give it his strong moral support, was on his way 
 to the palace, two fanatics, maddened at the desecra- 
 tion of the Emperor and of the city, suddenly attacked 
 his English escort and inflicted severe wounds on ten 
 of the men composing it, before they were themselves 
 killed or disabled. 
 
 The audience had to be postponed till the follow- 
 ing day, but the incident, unhappy and tragic as it 
 was, was not without its good results. It gave the 
 young Emperor, who was receiving Europeans for the 
 first time, not only in his own life but in all the long 
 history of his dynasty, and whose mind was no doubt 
 full of curiosity, an opportunity for expressing, with 
 the sympathetic tact and dignity which characterized 
 him in after life, his regret at what had happened and 
 of manifesting his desire to prevent its recurrence. 
 Hitherto every samurai who murdered a European 
 thought that he was putting his sword, his most 
 treasured possession, to the noblest use he could 
 make of it and that he was performing a service to 
 his gods, his Emperor and his country. If he was 
 brought to justice and had to pay the penalty of his 
 act, both law and custom permitted him to be his 
 own executioner and to find death in a way that
 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 33 
 
 brought no dishonour on either him or his relatives, 
 which was in fact the consummation of martyrdom. 
 An Imperial rescript was issued within a few days 
 ordering the nation : 
 
 to obey His Majesty's will in the fulfilment of the Treaties with 
 Foreign Countries in accordance with the rules of International Law, 
 
 and declaring that : 
 
 all persons in future guilty of murdering foreigners or of committing 
 acts of violence towards them will be acting in opposition to His 
 Majesty's express orders and be the cause of national misfortune. 
 They will therefore be punished in proportion to the gravity of their 
 offence, and their names, if samurai, will be erased from the roll. 
 
 The last clause involved not only social degrada- 
 tion to the offender and his family, but a humiliating 
 death to the former at the hands of the public execu- 
 tioner. Thenceforward the murderer of a foreigner 
 lost the character of a martyr and became a common 
 criminal like any robber or thie From that day 
 outrages of this nature entirely ceased. Europeans 
 have, it is true, since been murdered by natives in 
 Japan, but these have been cases of sordid crime 
 such as occur in any country, and in none were the 
 murderers actuated solely by political or religious 
 motives. 
 
 Amidst all these indications of the new policy of 
 peace within and of good will to all men without the 
 Empire, one dark spot was allowed to continue. It 
 
 L. 3
 
 34 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 was an element of the domestic policy of the Toku- 
 gawas to conceal the provisions of the criminal laws 
 from the nation. They believed that people were 
 more likely to abstain from crime when they were 
 ignorant of, than they would be if they knew, the 
 utmost penalty by which their crime was punishable. 
 One exception was made in the observance of this 
 policy. In all the principal streets of every great 
 city, in every village and at intervals along every 
 high road, public notice-boards were erected in con- 
 spicuous form and places on which the great standing 
 laws of the Empire, the laws which are the foundation 
 of society and government, were proclaimed to all 
 who passed. They were very few in number. They 
 prohibited insurrection, conspiracy, murder, arson 
 and robbery, and enjoined the observance of the five 
 social relations which are the basis of all morality 
 according to the Confucian code. But the most 
 prominent prohibition, which stood at the very front 
 of the notice boards, was : 
 
 The evil sect called Christian is strictly prohibited. Suspicious 
 persons should be reported to the proper officers and rewards will be 
 given. 
 
 These notices, including the prohibition of Chris- 
 tianity, were retained. The memories of the terrible 
 persecution at the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century and of the awful sufferings which it entailed 
 on tens of thousands of native converts had been
 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 35 
 
 handed down from father to son through all the 
 intervening years and made the very name of Chris- 
 tianity a subject of loathing and terror to Japanese 
 of all classes. No anxiety to cultivate European good 
 will or to fulfil the professions of friendship which 
 were constantly in the mouths of the members of the 
 new government could induce them to abolish or 
 modify the old practice. 
 
 The foreign policy of the Emperor having been 
 fully manifested to his people, the domestic policy 
 remained to be declared, and it was soon seen that it 
 was to be no less revolutionised than the foreign. As 
 a first step the Emperor was to see and be seen by 
 his people. He was no longer to be an Imperial 
 Hermit, surrounded with mystic sanctity in a palace, 
 'Svhere he lived behind a screen, far from the outward 
 world, from which nothing could penetrate his sacred 
 ear." He was to leani the condition of his people 
 by his own direct observation and as an absolute 
 monarch to take an active share in all measures for 
 their government and education. His first public 
 appearance was made in a visit to Osaka, the great 
 commercial city of Japan, twenty miles from the 
 capital. Even then his presence among the people 
 was more fictitious than real. Attended by an escort 
 of over 10,000 men, he was carried in a palanquin, 
 the bamboo blinds of which enabled him to see with- 
 out himself being seen. From the shore he reviewed 
 
 32
 
 36 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 the beginning of the Japanese fleet. It consisted of 
 but six ships, all converted merchant steamers, not 
 one of which exceeded 1000 tons or 300 horse power, 
 and not one of them could yet be called his, all being 
 owned by one or other of the great fiefs. The Toku- 
 gawas possessed other and more formidable ships, 
 manned by officers and men who had already had 
 some professional training from British officers, but 
 these still lay at Yedo and they never became Imperial 
 property. They were destined to perish at Hakodate 
 in the last fight that was made by the Tokugawa 
 partisans. 
 
 The task of forming the new system of administra- 
 tion was vigorously pursued. A council of state was 
 formed, seven departments were founded for the 
 administration of the various branches of the Govern- 
 ment, and all the feudal lords (daimio) having been 
 summoned to Kioto, the Emperor in their presence 
 and in that of all the Court nobles, assembled in 
 solemn conclave, took what is known as the " Charter 
 Oath," which as the foundation of modern constitu- 
 tional liberty holds the same position in the history 
 of Japan that the Magna Charta does in that of 
 England. He promised, in the Oath, which consisted 
 of five articles, that : 
 
 a deliberative assembly should be formed and all measures decided by 
 public opinion ; that civil and military government should no longer 
 be separated and that all classes of the people should with one mind
 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 37 
 
 devote themselves to the national welfare; that the rights of all 
 classes should be assured ; that the uncivilized customs of antiquity 
 should be abolished and impartiality and justice administered accord- 
 ing to universally recognised principles ; and that intellect and learning 
 should be sought for throughout the world, so that the foundations of 
 the Empire might be firmly established. 
 
 The programme thus outlined was both extensive 
 and ambitious and formulated a task which could only 
 be carried to a successful accomplishment by earnest, 
 courageous and able statesmen. Fortunately such 
 were not wanting. At their head were some of the 
 Court and feudal nobles, but their aggregate did not 
 exceed half a dozen. The rest, about fifty in all, 
 were samurai of the four great fiefs, Satsuma, 
 Choshiu, Tosa and Hizen, men whose ability and 
 courage had brought them to the front ; who, though 
 of gentle birth, were low in rank, with no advantages 
 of birth, means or education to differentiate them 
 from tens of thousands of their fellows. Associated 
 with them as their guides in foreign affairs were a 
 few young students of their own class who had the 
 advantage of a short education in Europe. Of the 
 first class the most prominent were Sanjo, a scion of 
 a cadet branch of the illustrious Fujiwara family, and 
 Iwakura of the Minamoto family, both nobles of the 
 court, and Shimadzu Saburo, father of the Lord of 
 Satsuma, and Yodo, Lord of Tosa, great feudal nobles. 
 Among the samurai, the most distinguished in after 
 life were Okubo and Saigo, samurai of Satsuma ;
 
 38 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Kido, a samurai of Choshiu, Okuma of Hizen and 
 Itagaki of Tosa : while the students included Ito and 
 Inouye of Choshiu, the first of whom may be called the 
 constructor of Modern Japan, and the second has 
 been one of its most distinguished statesmen and 
 administrators. Both were mere youths in subordinate 
 positions at the Restoration. The buttress on which 
 all leant was the Emperor, and the new decrees, all 
 of which were issued in his name, received from the 
 nation the unquestioning obedience that was due to 
 his divine prerogative. 
 
 Further reforms were soon made. A new classifi- 
 cation of the people was adopted. The old distinction 
 between the court and feudal nobility was abolished 
 and both were merged in one class under the title of 
 Kwazoku or nobles, literally Flower Families. The 
 remainder of the samurai, irrespective of the many 
 gradations of rank in their own fiefs, were grouped 
 under the title of Shizoku or gentry, and the rest 
 of the people under that of Heimin or commoners. 
 Kioto was the acknowledged capital of the Empire, 
 but in the last three centuries Yedo had been the 
 seat of the executive government, and the nation had 
 grown accustomed to regard it as the source of all 
 active authority. It was thought that the new 
 Imperial executive would be more readily recognised 
 if it were administered from the same seat as had 
 been the old, and it was therefore decided that Yedo
 
 in] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 39 
 
 should in future be the Imperial capital, its name 
 being changed to Tokio or Eastern capital, by which 
 it has since been known. 
 
 This change was great and impressive, but it was 
 thrown completely into the shade by one more 
 profound and far-reaching which soon followed it. 
 The Restoration had not yet entailed the abolition of 
 feudalism. The feudal lords still continued to ad- 
 minister their fiefs, to exercise the same imperium 
 in imperio as they had done tinder the Tokugawas 
 for many preceding centuries and to retain their local 
 autocracy unimpaired. No complete unification of 
 the Empire under one supreme ruler could be hoped 
 for while they did so. The lords of the four great 
 fiefs that had been foremost in the Restoration 
 again took the lead, and in a memorial signed by all 
 four they voluntarily surrendered their fiefs to the 
 Emperor and where they led all others had perforce 
 to follow. 
 
 The memorial appeared in the Official Gazette on 
 the 5th of March, 1869. It was at once accepted, but 
 the mediatisation of the fiefs was not yet complete. 
 At first their former lords were appointed Governors 
 of what they had hitherto owned, and while they 
 acted in the name of the Emperor they continued to 
 collect and administer their own revenues, paying, 
 however, a contribution to the Imperial treasury, and 
 to retain many of their old privileges. To deprive
 
 40 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 them of all at one stroke would have been too drastic 
 a step for a Government which at the time had 
 neither army nor money and had to rely entirely on 
 the goodwill of these feudatories for the enforcement 
 of its decrees on any among them who might prove 
 recalcitrant, and it was not till two years later that 
 the step was finally completed in its fullest measure. 
 Then the last blow was given to the system of 
 feudalism. On the 29th of August, 1871, all the 
 daimio were ordered to quit their fiefs and take up 
 their residences for the future as private gentlemen 
 in Tokio, without either administrative or executive 
 authority, without even titles to distinguish them 
 from the common herd. Ten per cent, of their former 
 revenues were assigned to them for their support, 
 but they were at the same time relieved from the 
 maintenance of the armies of samurai who had 
 hitherto depended on them. Their castles, muni- 
 tions and ships were handed over to the Government. 
 Their fiefs were converted into prefectures adminis- 
 tered by officials, with no local prejudices, appointed 
 by the central Government ; all their revenues were 
 paid into the Imperial Treasury, from which in turn 
 all expenses both for their own and their samurai's 
 pensions and for administration were defrayed. 
 Uniform systems of law and currency were estab- 
 lished, and at last a national Government, both in 
 name and fact, was firmly consolidated in the hands
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 41 
 
 of the Emperor and the ministers who acted for 
 him. Then in reality began the modern Empire of 
 Japan. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SOCIAL REFORMS 
 
 THE civil war was terminated and peace estab- 
 lished throughout the Empire by the subjugation of 
 the last adherents of the Tokugawas at Hakodate 
 in July 1869. The Emperor was firmly seated on 
 his throne at Tokio and the acknowledged executive 
 head of the nation, whose will none would dare to 
 dispute. The statesmen who, supported by his divine 
 authority, acted in his name had, throughout the 
 long civil and military struggles which preceded his 
 Restoration, already shown that they possessed not 
 only determined courage but considerable political 
 judgment They had the sympathy, so far as it 
 could be given without detriment to the interests 
 of their own countries, of the foreign diplomatic 
 representatives and therefore of the great powers 
 of the West But the task before them was enough 
 to daunt the boldest courage. It was one that could 
 only be carried to success by iron will, unflagging 
 industry and unruffled patience. None more difficult 
 has ever faced the statesmen of any country in the
 
 42 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 world's history. None has ever in its triumphant 
 issue more completely realised the greatest ambitions 
 of those who initiated it. 
 
 The social condition of the people until the aboli- 
 tion of feudalism has been already described. The 
 masses, sunk in ignorance and political degradation, 
 had to be educated and raised to the status of self- 
 respecting citizens, equitably sharing both the obli- 
 gations and privileges of their superiors. Many of 
 the samurai still cherished their old ideas as to the 
 expulsion of foreigners, still more the retention of 
 their caste privileges, and they had to be taught 
 that they must in future assume a share in the 
 burthens of life, and become producers as well as 
 consumers. The Government had neither army nor 
 navy. Its treasury was empty and it had no settled 
 revenue. The national industry was capable of little 
 more than supplying domestic necessaries. Internal 
 communications were destitute of all but the most 
 primitive facilities. Neither railways, telegraphs, 
 posts nor mercantile marine existed. Foreign trade 
 already annually amounted in value to some millions 
 sterling, but it was entirely in the hands of foreign mid- 
 dlemen, and carried on under such disabilities that the 
 cost of conveying a bale of goods fifty miles between 
 the seaport at which it was landed and the interior 
 where it was consumed exceeded that of its freight 
 between Europe and Japan, though ocean freights
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 43 
 
 were then on a far higher scale than they are at the 
 present day. Of all modern sciences, the people 
 were almost entirely ignorant. The only exceptions 
 were surgery and medicine, of which some knowledge 
 had been acquired through the physicians of the 
 Dutch factory at Nagasaki. One at least of the 
 Western Powers pressed or threatened claims which, 
 if yielded, would impair the territorial integrity of 
 the Empire, and one and all insisted on the retention 
 of the extra-territorial clauses in the treaties, which, 
 it was now known, were a slur on Japan's prestige 
 as a civilised and independent Power. The solution 
 of all these problems had to be undertaken simul- 
 taneously by a ministry whose members, notwith- 
 standing their courage and judgment, were as yet only 
 students in domestic or international statescraft, 
 who, in carrying out reform, had to overcome the 
 most bigoted conservative prejudice and to face con- 
 stantly the risk of assassination, a risk which, in many 
 instances, culminated in realisation. 
 
 Fortunately for themselves and for their country, 
 the ministers had, at this period, the aid and council 
 of one of the ablest representatives that have served 
 Great Britain in the Far East. Sir Harry Parkes, 
 after a long career in China, was appointed H. M. 
 Minister in Japan in 1865. Throughout all the 
 political crises antecedent to the Restoration he 
 had given his sympathy to the Imperialists and was
 
 44 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 therefore entitled to their confidence and gratitude 
 when they came into power. Great Britain was then, 
 both as a political and economic factor, predominant 
 over all other Western Powers in the Far East. Her 
 military and naval prestige had been amply vindi- 
 cated both in China and in Japan. British troops 
 guarded Yokohama, and both her naval and mer- 
 cantile flags were seen in every port. Her consular 
 service was specially organised for service in Japan. 
 All its members were specially trained from youth 
 and it is to many among them that we owe the 
 knowledge we now possess of the language, literature, 
 history and economics of Japan. Her merchants were 
 far above those of other countries in number, wealth, 
 enterprise and honesty. The minister was in every 
 way worthy of the status of his country. He was 
 a man of untiring and unflagging industry, of irre- 
 sistible strength of will and character, of indomitable 
 moral and physical courage, and of far-seeing poli- 
 tical intelligence. His methods were often hard and 
 apparently tyrannical and enforced by the mailed fist 
 rather than gently carried through with velvet gloves, 
 and his object in promoting Japan's progress was 
 frankly avowed to be the interests of his own country- 
 men rather than the welfare of Japan. Great Britain 
 had no territorial aims. Her sole object in cultivating 
 intercourse with Japan was trade. The conception 
 of Japan as a valuable political and military ally of
 
 nr] SOCIAL REFORMS 45 
 
 Great Britain had not then even entered into the 
 thoughts of either Japanese or British statesmen, 
 but the more Japan advanced in her own material 
 welfare, the more was she likely to require and buy 
 from Great Britain, then the workshop of the world, 
 and that consideration was in itself sufficient to 
 induce the British Minister to use his best efforts 
 in starting and urging Japan on her career of pro- 
 gress according to the standards of modern European 
 civilisation. In every reform that she undertook, 
 the British Minister was consulted. His advice was 
 freely and honestly given, and throughout the first 
 decade of the Imperial Government's existence there 
 was scarcely one detail in all the great reforms that 
 were undertaken in which he had not a share, very 
 often in its initiation, always in its progress. 
 
 In another respect, the Government were equally 
 fortunate, though that they were so was largely 
 owing to the first. It is a common text with super- 
 ficial English writers on Japan, that Japan reformed 
 herself : that her own statesmen saw of themselves the 
 immense material superiority of Western civilisation 
 to that which she owed to China and converted their 
 people to the same view : that all she has since 
 achieved in material progress is due not only to the 
 initiation but to the industry and perseverance of 
 her own sons. Nothing could be further from the 
 truth. Her entry into the paths of Western civilisation
 
 46 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 was largely owing to the persistent goading of Sir 
 Harry Parkes : her subsequent achievements to the 
 tuition of the large band of foreign experts whom 
 she had the good fortune to enlist in her service, 
 and who served her as loyally and whole-heartedly 
 as they did efficiently. Most of them were still 
 young men when they entered her service but they 
 were the best products of their own countries, in 
 which many of them subsequently rose to high 
 eminence in their respective professional spheres. 
 Great Britain gave her the naval officers who 
 founded her navy and first trained its personnel. 
 It also gave her the engineers who constructed her 
 first railways, lighthouses, waterworks, mines and 
 telegraphs, and the founders of her mint, her bank- 
 ing system and her press. The United States con- 
 tributed in like way to her postal and educational 
 systems : France to her army and dockyards and 
 to legal reform : Germany to her medical science 
 and to the creation of her constitution : and Italy 
 to her military arsenals. All these nations contri- 
 buted their quotas to the modern development of 
 Japan, and to their sons is due, in no small degree, 
 the eminence which she has since attained in all 
 spheres of human life and civilisation. The teachers 
 had apt and industrious students, not only keen 
 for their own personal advancement but inflamed with 
 patriotic enthusiasm to serve their country and to
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 47 
 
 contribute all their best abilities in realising their 
 Emperor's oath " to establish firmly the foundations 
 of the Empire," but their ability, industry and 
 enthusiasm would have had little result had they not 
 been fortunate in their teachers. 
 
 Another class must not be overlooked if due 
 credit is given to all who have contributed to the 
 creation of modern Japan. From the first there was 
 a large body of European and American missionaries 
 in Japan, and in recent years they have increased to 
 what may be called a small army. They include 
 members of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches 
 and of several scores of sects of the Protestant 
 church, and are of all nationalities. Their success 
 as religious propagandists has not been very great, as 
 might naturally be expected from the obstacles they 
 have to overcome, both of tradition and present dis- 
 couragement. The statistics of the several missionary 
 societies show numbers of converts that appear large 
 on paper, but taken at their most favourable estimate 
 they constitute but a drop in the great ocean of the 
 people. But on the other hand missionaries have 
 rendered great educational services in their schools 
 and by the example of their lives, faithful and self- 
 denying, have exercised no inappreciable influence 
 on the moral regeneration of the people among whom 
 they live. 
 
 The first step that was taken in social reform was
 
 48 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 one that augured a new spirit of humanity in the 
 government. It dealt with criminal law and prison 
 administration. The criminal law of the Empire was 
 codified and published and though it still continued 
 to be based on its original Chinese models and tor- 
 ture was still retained as an incident in trials, great 
 mitigations were made in the cruel and vindictive 
 punishments which had hitherto characterised it. 
 Prisons had hitherto been infernos of medieval 
 horror. A commission was sent to visit and report 
 on the prisons in the English colonies of Hong Kong 
 and Singapore, and on its return, new prisons were 
 at once constructed in which all that the commission 
 had learnt from the English system as regards food, 
 clothing, sanitation, cleanliness, and segregation of 
 accused and convicted, was put in practice. In both 
 cases these steps were only the beginning of greater 
 and far more vital changes. The prison system was 
 gradually improved until it reached a standard of 
 efficiency that places it at the present day on a far 
 higher plane of social civilisation than that of Great 
 Britain. The duty of punishing the criminal is not 
 lost sight of, but punishment is made subordinate 
 to reformation. The first criminal code was only 
 retained until a new one, compiled by a distinguished 
 French jurist, with the assistance of Japanese experts 
 in their own laws, could be completed. Civil codes 
 of law were in the same way compiled by German
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 49 
 
 jurists. In both, Western principles were adapted 
 to the social conditions of Japan. Executive and 
 judicial functions ceased to be vested in the same 
 officials. Courts of Law were established, presided 
 over by independent judges. A legal profession, 
 manned by highly-educated practitioners, came into 
 being and the change that was accomplished in little 
 more than a quarter of a century was as great as 
 that of England from the 16th century to the present 
 day. 
 
 Other great reforms came, as did those from 
 China in the 6th century, "with a rush." A begin- 
 ning was made in railway construction and the first 
 railway between Yokohama and Tokio was opened 
 in 1873. The dangerous and stormy coasts were 
 lighted with the best modern appliances, postal 
 and telegraphic services introduced, medical and 
 engineering colleges founded, the first newspapers 
 made their appearance, joint stock banks began to 
 be a feature in commercial life, and a national mint 
 was established, which provided an honest uniform 
 coinage to replace the debased tokens previously in 
 circulation. All had their beginning either in or 
 about the year 1871, and though their progress 
 towards the completeness and efficiency that now 
 characterize them was spread over many years and 
 only accomplished in the face of many disheartening 
 difficulties and obstacles, their way has ever been
 
 50 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 onwards, unmarked by as much as one retrograde 
 step. The members of the Government showed them- 
 selves to be capable and far-seeing leaders. They 
 were willingly followed by a people who were of 
 quick intelligence, accustomed to obey and willing to 
 be taught. Here and there, throughout the country, 
 spasmodic insurrections from time to time occurred, 
 instigated by a few surviving fanatics of the old 
 school of seclusion and Chinese bigotry, but with 
 one exception they were insignificant and easily 
 quelled, with little loss of life on either side, and 
 all changes were brought about in national peace, 
 with the hearty co-operation of the people. 
 
 Very early in her modern history it became 
 Japan's avowed ambition to be in the Far East what 
 England is in the West as a naval and commercial 
 power, and English example encouraged her to create 
 her present fine commercial marine and to start on 
 the career of industrial and commercial progress 
 which she now hopes, not without reason, will ere 
 another generation has passed give her the com- 
 mercial hegemony of the East. The efficiency and 
 strength of the Japanese navy at the present day are 
 known to all, and her mercantile flag is now seen in 
 all the great harbours of the world. The Emperor 
 had at first no army. His restoration to the throne 
 and his security on it during the first years of his 
 reign were due to the samurai of the feudatories who
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 51 
 
 supported him. A national army, maintained by and 
 owing obedience to the central Government alone, 
 had to be created, and the duty imposed on the entire 
 population of sharing in the military service hitherto 
 monopolised by the samurai. In 1872, the intro- 
 duction of a system of universal conscription was 
 announced in an Imperial rescript. Under it, every 
 male, without distinction of rank or class, was called 
 on attaining the age of 20 years to serve with the 
 colours for three years, followed by two periods, each 
 of two years, in the first and second reserves, and 
 then to continue enrolled in the territorial reserve 
 until his fortieth year. The military machine which 
 was thus instituted has since had four great tests. 
 The first was in civil war, in the suppression of the 
 Satsuma rebellion in 1877, when a well-equipped 
 and well-trained force of 46,000 men of all arms was 
 placed in the field. The second was in the war with 
 China in 1894, when the full strength of the mobilised 
 forces of 220,000 men was engaged. The third was in 
 the Boxer campaign of 1900, when the Japanese had 
 their first opportunity of comparing themselves with 
 European soldiers, and the last and greatest in the 
 war with Russia, when fully one million men were 
 mobilised for active service. The army emerged from 
 all these tests with triumphant success. 
 
 In Japan popular education has always been 
 general, and though the use of the heart-breakingly 
 
 42
 
 52 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 difficult Chinese script rendered the acquisition of 
 the arts of reading and writing infinitely more diffi- 
 cult, the proportion of illiterate Japanese was smaller 
 than in any European country. Education was, how- 
 ever, notwithstanding the high value placed on it, 
 carried on without state aid or supervision, almost 
 entirely in private or temple schools, and its extent 
 depended entirely on the means or will of the parents 
 of the children. After the Restoration an entirely 
 new departure was made. A Ministry of Public 
 Education was one of the departments in the newly 
 organised Government and with the aid of American 
 experts a national and compulsory system of general 
 education was initiated in the year 1871, under which 
 every form of instruction was gradually provided, 
 from that of the elementary schools where children 
 are taught the principles of morality, foremost among 
 them being loyalty and patriotism, and to read, write 
 and cypher, up to that of the universities with faculties 
 for the teaching of literature, philosophy and every 
 branch of advanced science. It was the aim of the first 
 reformers "that there should not be a village with 
 an ignorant family nor a family with an ignorant 
 member," and that aim has been nobly carried out, 
 so much so that, just as Japan's naval and military 
 efficiency falls behind that of no great power in the 
 world, the educational facilities which she provides 
 for her people are on a level with and in many of
 
 iv] SOCIAL REFORMS 53 
 
 their incidents above those of the most enlightened 
 nations, and the people are worthy of what the 
 Government has done for them. Educational authori- 
 ties and teachers are alike entirely immune from one 
 of the obstacles that has to be overcome by their 
 colleagues in the West. Thirst for knowledge of 
 every kind is a national characteristic, manifested 
 even in young children, and no compulsion is required 
 to ensure the most intense application on their part 
 or the sacrifice to unremitting industry of the pleasures 
 that are natural to children, youths and girls. The 
 idler is unknown in Japanese schools and colleges, 
 and as industry is a remedy for deficiency in aptitude, 
 the dunce is rare. 
 
 Other reforms that can only be mentioned here, 
 made either in 1871 or very shortly afterwards, were 
 the adoption of the Gregorian in place of the Chinese 
 calendar ; the abolition of all sumptuary laws, and 
 of all the old restrictions that limited men to the 
 occupations of their fathers and their residence to 
 the districts in which they were born ; the emancipa- 
 tion of the peasants ; their release from forced labour, 
 and their conversion from hereditary life-tenants into 
 owners of the soil they tilled, paying to the Govern- 
 ment an annual tax based on the value of their land, 
 a tax which fell far below the heavy burthens they 
 had borne under their old feudal lords but which 
 formed the main source of the Imperial revenue till
 
 54 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 after the China war ; and the withdrawal of all pro- 
 hibitions to go abroad for purposes of study, business 
 or pleasure. 
 
 The Emperor was still little more than a boy, but 
 not only was his name used in every reform that was 
 made, but each at its initiation and throughout the 
 succeeding stages of its progress was countenanced 
 by his presence in public. Reforms were devised and 
 put into operation by his ministers, but that they 
 were able to convince their countrymen of their 
 wisdom and to carry them through all their early 
 stages to ultimate success was mainly due to the 
 public approval that was given to them by their 
 Emperor and to the personal interest which he in- 
 variably manifested in them. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 THE first clause of the Emperor's Charter Oath 
 declared that : 
 
 The practice of discussion and debate shall be universally adopted 
 and all measures shall be decided by public opinion. 
 
 This clause is the foundation stone of the edifice 
 of constitutional Government in Japan. The full 
 extent of the Emperor's promise was at the time far
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 55 
 
 from being realised by its framers. All the leaders of 
 the Restoration were still imbued with the principles 
 of feudalism and its class distinctions when the oath 
 was taken, and there was no idea of extending the 
 privileges which it foreshadowed beyond the class of 
 samurai, the only class in the nation who had then 
 any consciousness of political rights, or who were by 
 their circumstances and education capable of exer- 
 cising them. This was clearly evidenced in the first 
 attempt that was made to carry out the promise. A 
 national council, to which the title of " Shugiin " or 
 " Assembly of Legislative Discussion " was given, was 
 convened at Tokio in 1869, almost exactly a year 
 subsequent to the date of the oath. It consisted of 
 276 representatives of the feudal clans, which had not 
 yet been mediatised, all samurai nominated by their 
 compeers in each clan. It was vested with no legisla- 
 tive authority and was in fact nothing more than a 
 debating club, whose discussions might take the form 
 of advice, but had no likelihood of influencing legisla- 
 tion, and its whole spirit testified the strong conserva- 
 tism which was natural in its members. The assembly 
 met both in 1869 and in 1870, and then died a natural 
 death. 
 
 The Government was during the two ensuing 
 decades an arbitrary bureaucracy, the most prominent 
 factors of which were members of the Satsuma and 
 Choshiu fiefs, whose services at the Restoration
 
 56 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 entitled them to claim the majority of the most 
 important executive and legislative offices. Umbrage 
 was naturally taken at their favoured position by the 
 clansmen of Tosa and Hizen, who considered their 
 own services no less deserving of recognition than 
 those of their Satsuma and Choshiu compeers, and 
 who felt that that recognition would have been given 
 to them if the nation had been enabled to make ite 
 voice heard. Their discontent found a mouthpiece in 
 Itagaki, a Tosa samurai who had been prominent 
 throughout all the incidents of the Restoration and 
 had filled one of the cabinet offices in the new 
 Government. Along with other members he resigned 
 his office in 1873, on the question of declaring war 
 against Korea, which is described in a subsequent 
 chapter, and thenceforward he used his freedom from 
 all official trammels to foment an agitation, which 
 was especially vigorous in his own province of Tosa, 
 in favour of a parliamentary system, and was recog- 
 nised as the leader of national radicalism. 
 
 In 1873 the spirit of the people was already 
 greatly changed from what it had been in 1869 and 
 political knowledge had begun to make its appearance 
 among certain sections of the commoners. The press 
 had grown in ability and influence, and, as yet un- 
 fettered by any legal restrictions on its utterances, 
 was outspoken in favour of constitutional monarchical 
 government and in condemnation of a tyrannical
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 57 
 
 oligarchy such, as it was alleged, the Government of 
 the Satsuma and Choshiu combination had become. 
 Many students, who had been sent to England and 
 the United States, were at this time returning to 
 Japan on the completion of their studies. While 
 abroad they had seen the prosperity and strength of 
 the great countries of the West, and they ascribed 
 both to the constitutional forms of government 
 enjoyed in those countries, entirely failing to see that 
 constitutional Government was the consequence and 
 not the cause of what had aroused their admiration 
 and wonder. Both in press and on platform they 
 assailed the Government in writings and speeches of 
 incendiary violence for its failure to carry out the 
 pledge given by the Emperor, which they construed 
 to mean a deliberative assembly, vested with full 
 legislative powers, freely elected by and from the 
 people. A situation was created which, in more 
 recent times, has found its parallel in India and in 
 Egypt. On the one side was a large and numerous 
 party, principally composed of hot-headed and un- 
 disciplined young men, with exaggerated ideas of 
 their own knowledge and experience but strong in the 
 leadership of a respected statesman, clamouring for 
 a great political reform on the other, the established 
 Government, which, if autocratic in its methods, had 
 earned the gratitude of the nation for steering it 
 safely through the stress of revolution and for
 
 58 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 successfully initiating a new era of progress and im- 
 provement, one of whose most marked features was 
 the extension of individual liberty without which the 
 agitator's methods would have been impossible. 
 
 The Government, conscious of the utter unfitness 
 of the people, only recently emancipated from the 
 fetters of feudalism, for the intelligent exercise of the 
 rights that were claimed for them, endeavoured to 
 stem the agitation by issuing drastic laws for the 
 control of the press and public meetings, but the laws 
 were openly defied. The agitators, cheerfully and 
 proudly, went to prison for long terms in scores, and 
 their places were immediately filled by new men who 
 continued their methods. Assassination was not only 
 advocated but practised, and several distinguished 
 members of the Government became its victims, while 
 their surviving colleagues, guarded by fully-armed 
 policemen both night and day, in the council chamber 
 as well as in the public streets and in their own 
 homes, led lives that were sufficient to shatter the 
 most iron nerves. This condition of affairs continued 
 until a temporary lull was occasioned by the great 
 domestic crisis of the Satsuma rebellion in 1877, the 
 last effort made by the champions of aristocratic 
 conservatism to stem by force of arms the tide of 
 democratic progress on which the Government was 
 fully launched, notwithstanding its uncompromising 
 opposition to the national agitation for a parliamentary
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 59 
 
 system. The rebellion tested the strength of the 
 Government to the utmost, but, while it lasted, political 
 agitation ceased in face of the danger which threatened 
 both to overthrow the Government and to restore 
 some of the worst features of feudalism and of the 
 dual executive of the Shogunate. 
 
 When the rebellion was quelled, after a campaign 
 that was costly both in life and treasure, the agitation 
 that had been temporarily stilled broke out afresh 
 and with intensified defiance of law and contempt of 
 both life and liberty. Okubo, the ablest and most 
 influential minister in the Government, fell by 
 assassins' hands in 1878. Then a sop was given by 
 the creation of elective local assemblies vested with 
 some powers of administrative finance, but, welcomed 
 though it was as the first step towards popular 
 enfranchisement, it was for from satisfying the agita- 
 tors. They not only continued to increase in numbers 
 and in the violence of their methods, but received 
 a new leader, equal in ability, in the distinguished 
 service he had rendered at the Restoration, in the 
 respect in which he was held by his countrymen, and 
 far superior in his experience as a statesman and in 
 administrative ability to Itagaki, in the person of 
 Okuma, a samurai of Hizen, who seceded from the 
 Government in 1881 and enrolled himself and his 
 personal followers among the advocates of " Constitu- 
 tional Government " in the widest sense of the term.
 
 60 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 The Government at last yielded and shortly after 
 Okuma's secession an Imperial rescript appeared, in 
 which the promise was given in the Emperor's name 
 and under his sign manual that a national parlia- 
 ment should be convened in 1 890 " in order that 
 the Imperial purpose of gradually establishing a 
 constitutional form of Government might be carried 
 out." All reason for further agitation was now gone. 
 No one dared doubt the fulfilment of the Emperor's 
 promise, but the hatred of the bureaucratic oligarchy 
 whose power was still unlimited was not appeased. 
 Outcries against it continued and had to be stifled 
 with the same means of imprisonment, police sup- 
 pression of public meetings, arbitrary suspension of 
 newspapers, and expulsion of dangerous characters 
 from the capital under drastic Peace Preservation 
 Acts. A large number of the most prominent agi- 
 tators suifered imprisonment or expulsion, but the 
 Government, undisturbed by all the uproar around 
 it, calmly continued on its way. The reforms, 
 initiated in 1871, for the material and social im- 
 provement of the nation were steadily advanced and 
 the national finances, which seemed at one time to 
 presage inevitable bankruptcy, were rehabilitated 
 and placed on a sound basis. Ito, who, after Okubo's 
 death and Okuma's secession, was by far the ablest 
 member of the Government, was sent to Europe to 
 investigate the constitutional models which it afforded,
 
 Prince Ito
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 61 
 
 and soon after his return the whole administrative 
 system of the Government was changed and recast 
 so as to resemble in some degree that of Great 
 Britain. A cabinet was created consisting of ten 
 ministers of state, nine of whom were chiefs of the 
 principal executive departments with a Minister 
 President or Prime Minister, who held no portfolio, 
 at their head. All held their appointments solely 
 at the will of the Emperor, were nominated by and 
 directly responsible to him. The change was made 
 so as to render the form of government more suitable 
 to a country which was shortly to have parliamentary 
 institutions, and, to prepare still further for these 
 institutions, another step was taken which made a 
 great change in social life. Ito had learned in 
 Europe that a House of Peers was a necessary part 
 of any parliamentary system and a peerage was 
 created from which the House could be formed. 
 
 The old nobility of Japan has been described in 
 a previous chapter. None in any country in the 
 world exceeds it either in the long, unbroken gene- 
 alogy of its members or in the distinguished position 
 they occupied in their country, whether as the retinue 
 of the Imperial court or as great feudal lords who 
 were quasi-sovereigns in their own domains. When 
 the mediatisation of the fiefs was completed in 1871, 
 the old individual titles of both court and feudal 
 nobles were taken away and, as no new ones were
 
 62 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 given, they had no longer names or titles to distinguish 
 them from their fellow subjects. This continued 
 until the year 1884, when the Emperor established 
 the "Five orders of Nobility," the titles of which 
 were taken from China, and are translated as Prince, 
 Marquis, Count, Viscount and Baron. All the heads 
 of the old noble houses were included in one or other 
 of these ranks according to their former degrees, but 
 with them were associated many who, born simple 
 samurai, merited the Emperor's recognition by their 
 services to the state at or since the Restoration. 
 Since its first creation, less than thirty years ago, 
 the peerage has largely increased in numbers. The 
 first list comprised 504 names. The present contains 
 923, all the new creations being those of men who 
 have distinguished themselves in the military or civil 
 service of the Government, or as scientists, bankers 
 or merchants, and no bar of birth or descent has 
 been permitted to interfere with the social advance- 
 ment of those who eminently merited it. Many 
 commoners of plebeian descent, whose fathers were 
 little better than abject serfs, are now peers. 
 
 It was in 1884 that Ito returned from Europe. 
 He was created a Count in the new peerage and 
 nominated by the Emperor as the first Minister 
 President under the new regime. Recurring com- 
 plications with Korea and China were added to the 
 domestic burthens of his office, but they did not
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 63 
 
 prevent him from personally presiding over a com- 
 mission which for the next five years was engaged 
 in the framing of the new constitution. This task 
 was completed and the constitution was promulgated 
 in 1889 with impressive ceremonial and amidst uni- 
 versal national rejoicing, and in the following year 
 the first Parliament that was ever seen in any 
 Oriental state was duly elected and met. 
 
 The Parliament, or, to use its proper title, The 
 Imperial Diet, consists of two Houses, a House of 
 Peers of 300 members, who are partly hereditary, 
 partly elective and partly nominated by the Emperor, 
 and a House of Representatives, at first of 300 mem- 
 bers but since increased to 379 members, elected for 
 a maximum of four years on a high franchise. The 
 House of Peers has always discharged with dignity 
 ite function of acting as a barrier against hasty or 
 drastic reform and has never allowed any licence to 
 tarnish its own proceedings, but it soon became 
 evident that the lower House was to be made the 
 instrument of a new and more persistent and violent 
 agitation against the Government than that which 
 had characterized the preceding two decades. The 
 constitution was from the first a disappointment to 
 those who had so strenuously fought for it. They 
 had hoped to receive as their reward one founded on 
 that of Great Britain. Instead of that they received 
 one based on the model of Germany by which the
 
 64 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 cabinet is rendered independent of the Parliament 
 and is responsible to and holds its office at the will 
 of the Emperor alone. Considerable powers were 
 at the same time conferred on the Parliament and 
 great privileges secured to the people, but the pre- 
 dominant feature in the constitution is the precise 
 reservation of Imperial prerogatives that can be used 
 at any time to delay or nullify the legislation of the 
 Parliament. 
 
 Numerous political parties had been founded 
 during the antecedent decades of agitation, and 
 when the House of Representatives first met no 
 less than seven were represented among its mem- 
 bers, all more or less antagonistic to each other, 
 but all united in one common bond of opposition 
 to the Government. Their object was to establish 
 party government, with a ministry that must take 
 its mandate from and owe its existence to their 
 House, and the methods which they adopted to that 
 end were those of rendering bureaucratic govern- 
 ment impossible, of obstructing by every device 
 that could be taken without distinct violation of 
 the rules of the House all measures whether of 
 finance or legislation that were brought before it 
 by the Government. 
 
 The Government, on its part, showed no disposi- 
 tion to bend before either vituperation or obstruction. 
 It, too, availed itself to the utmost of the principles
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 65 
 
 of the constitution that were in its favour. Suspen- 
 sions and dissolutions of the House were frequent. 
 There were no less than three dissolutions in less 
 than four years. One occurred after a single session 
 lasting only eighteen days, but when bitterness was 
 at its very worst and it almost seemed as if the 
 government could not be carried on, war broke out 
 with China. In a moment, everything was changed. 
 Patriotism united the people, high and low, when 
 they had to face a foreign foe. All domestic dif- 
 ferences were forgotten and, while the war lasted, 
 supplies were cheerfully voted and not a murmur 
 of opposition was heard, even from the most violent 
 agitators, against any measure that was taken by the 
 Government in the national interests. Nor did this 
 spirit entirely die after the war was over. Some of 
 the parties no longer invariably ranged themselves 
 alongside the extremists and the Government was, 
 in some of its most important measures, supported 
 by a majority of the House, while purely factious 
 opposition was confined to a steadily decreasing 
 minority. But by none of the parties was the old 
 aim, though its vigorous expression was suppressed 
 in some, ever abandoned and the story of the long 
 struggle which they maintained is in many of its 
 aspects not a pleasant one. Throughout it has been 
 one rather of persons than of principles. It has 
 at times been tainted with open and shameless 
 
 L. 5
 
 66 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 corruption and votes were, it was known, freely sold 
 and bought, while the Government on its side re- 
 warded those who supported it with subordinate 
 appointments or with honours. 
 
 It was not till 1900, after the House had been 
 in existence for ten years, that a marked change 
 occurred. Then Ito, who had been advanced to the 
 dignity of a Marquis after the China war, the great 
 Prime Minister, the creator of the constitution and 
 of the Parliament, was induced to enter into the 
 ranks of politicians and to become the head of a 
 newly formed party which assumed the title of 
 "Rikken Seiyukai," "Association of Friends of Con- 
 stitutional Government," and the great influence 
 and personal magnetism of its head soon enabled 
 this party to obtain a commanding majority in the 
 House. Its guiding principle is avowed to be not 
 that of party government, for which the majority 
 of its members had been strenuously fighting for 
 ten years, but the conservation of the Imperial pre- 
 rogative of nominating the ministry regardless of 
 party while at the same time giving due consideration 
 to the expressed will of the people. Some of its 
 members entered the cabinet and from this time 
 a political party became a distinct power in the 
 executive. Its members gradually acquired a greater 
 sense of their responsibility to the nation and sounder 
 judgment in the exercise of. their rights, and as they
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 67 
 
 did so they gained more and more the confidence of 
 the people whom they represented. 
 
 Among all parties the Seiyukai has retained 
 the predominance which it acquired at its inception. 
 Its founder and great leader has passed away, and 
 has been succeeded by Marquis Saionji, the head of 
 an old family of the Court nobility, a cadet branch 
 of the Fujiwara, and as such the natural inheritor 
 of the most ultra-conservative and aristocratic in- 
 stincts. He had a comparatively long tenure of the 
 Premiership, during the whole of which the Seiyukai 
 was naturally the Government party, in close alliance 
 with the elder statesmen (Genro) as they are called, 
 the survivors of the great constructive statesmen and 
 soldiers who took an active part in the Restoration 
 and who created New Japan, as distinct from those 
 who rose to eminence in later years. He again ac- 
 cepted the Premiership in 1912 when his party held 
 a commanding majority in the House. But this time 
 his tenure of office was short. The avowed policy of 
 himself and his party was that of national economy 
 and retrenchment in the public services. He was 
 at once met with a demand by his own Minister of 
 War for two additional divisions of the Army (a 
 mobilised division consists of about 18,000 men) for 
 service in Korea, and when this demand was rejected, 
 with the full approval of the leading representatives 
 of business and finance, the Minister resigned and 
 
 52
 
 68 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 no one could be found to take his place. The terms 
 of the Constitution require that both the Ministers 
 of War and of the Navy shall be members of the ser- 
 vices, and the Government was in fact boycotted by 
 all the senior officers of the army. The Premier, 
 though at the head of an overwhelming majority in 
 the House and confident of the approval of the 
 country, was helpless and had no choice but to 
 resign. 
 
 He was succeeded by Prince Katsura, who had 
 previously held the Premiership during some of the 
 most eventful years in Japan's modern history, the 
 years which witnessed the conclusion of the Anglo- 
 
 4|Japanese alliance, the triumphant war with Russia, 
 and an immense development of trade and industry, 
 but w r hich also witnessed an equally immense increase 
 of national debt and taxation. Prince Katsura is 
 a distinguished soldier as well as a statesman and 
 an ex-samurai of the Choshiu clan, the members of 
 which have held a supremacy in the army ever since 
 its formation. He is also one of the elder statesmen, 
 and as such a champion of bureaucracy and an 
 
 inflexible opponent of any concession to party 
 government. It seemed therefore as if his return 
 to political leadership had secured a double triumph, 
 one for the old system of bureaucracy as against 
 political parties, and the other for the militarists, 
 consisting almost exclusively of men of Choshiu origin,
 
 v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 69 
 
 as against both their colleagues in the executive and 
 the nation in general. 
 
 But Prince Katsura's tenure of the Premiership 
 on this occasion was even shorter than that of his 
 immediate predecessor and might be numbered by 
 days rather than by months. A storm of opposition 
 was aroused not only in the House but throughout 
 the country. The Constitutionalists (Seiyukai) were 
 firm and united and uncompromising in their deter- 
 mination to refuse all sanction to the proposals of 
 the military party. They were not only of themselves 
 in an overwhelming majority in the House, quite 
 sufficiently so to be able to wreck any budget of which 
 they disapproved, but were supported both by the 
 sympathy and the active co-operation of members of 
 other parties, and repeated suspensions of the session 
 entirely failed to modify their attitude. Political 
 mass meetings, held all over the country and attended 
 by crowds, whose interest in politics had hitherto 
 been dormant, enthusiastically endorsed what they 
 had done and in not a few cases the meetings were 
 followed by serious riots and by the mobbing of the 
 few members of the House who were supporters of 
 the Government. The bureaucratic Premier had to 
 yield to the voice of the nation, and Prince Katsura 
 resigned. 
 
 He has been succeeded by Admiral Yamamoto, 
 who has had a long official career as Minister of the
 
 70 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 Navy in many cabinets. He is not himself a member 
 of the Seiyukai nor has he ever committed himself to 
 any party in politics. But the members of his new 
 cabinet are almost exclusively also members of the 
 Seiyukai, and the cabinet may therefore be said to 
 represent the principles of that party and its formation 
 to herald the nearer approach of the. time when the 
 constitution will be interpreted or amended as they 
 claim it should be. The Emperor will continue to 
 be paramount but he must exercise his authority in 
 accordance with the will of the nation as expressed 
 by its chosen representatives and not solely by the 
 advice of a small ring of statesmen of conservative 
 prejudices, no matter how great their experience or 
 how distinguished their past services. Prophecies 
 are dangerous in any country, more so perhaps in 
 Japan, where the unexpected has always happened, 
 than in others, and they would be especially so if 
 made as to the immediate future of domestic politics. 
 Members of the Seiyukai were prominent in Ito's 
 cabinet of 1900 and the party had then also a majority 
 in the House. Then also it seemed as if the attain- 
 ment of party government was within measurable 
 view, but failure was the result and bureaucracy had 
 a new lease of life. The political education of the 
 people has, however, since made great progress, 
 and the national apathy with which the first failure 
 was received has changed into a vivid and almost
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 71 
 
 universal excitement, which causes the problem of 
 the future government of Japan to be one that is full 
 
 of interest 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 RECOVERY OP NATIONAL AUTONOMY 
 
 THROUGHOUT the whole period during which the 
 Government were struggling with their own people 
 to resist the premature demand for parliamentary 
 representation, they were at the same time engaged 
 in a diplomatic struggle with Western Powers which 
 taxed their ability, courage, and determination to no 
 less a degree than did the first. 
 
 The system of extra-territorial jurisdiction was 
 introduced into all the original Treaties concluded be- 
 tween the Government of the Shogun and the Western 
 Powers. Under this system, foreigners residing in or 
 visiting Japan were exempted from the jurisdiction 
 of Japanese law and were answerable, both in civil 
 and criminal matters, only to their own authorities, 
 administering the laws of their own countries. The 
 framers of the treaties in stipulating for it, only 
 followed an invariable precedent in all intercourse be- 
 tween Western and Oriental nations, ever since the es- 
 tablishment of the Ottoman Empire at Constantinople,
 
 72 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 one which is still jealously guarded in the case of 
 every non-Christian country in the world except 
 Japan. Even without these precedents, it would 
 have been impossible to contemplate the subjection 
 of Europeans to the jurisdiction of a nation whose 
 laws were unkhown but who, it was known, practised 
 torture, persecuted Christians, and recognised no 
 rights of personal freedom or security. The Shogun's 
 ministers, on their side, were entirely ignorant of all 
 principles of international law and custom and, un- 
 conscious that they were placing their country on 
 any lower level than those with which they were 
 forming new relations, they willingly agreed to the 
 surrender of their sovereign rights of judicial and 
 tariff autonomy. 
 
 In the first decade which elapsed after the con- 
 clusion of the treaties, while the Shogunate was still 
 in power, no attempt was made to alter the situation 
 which was thus created. The internal condition of 
 Japan and the complications with foreigners to which 
 it gave rise were sufficient to absorb all the attention 
 of the tottering Government without adding to its 
 difficulties that of attempting to obtain any relaxation 
 of the bonds that had been willingly signed. When 
 the Emperor's Government came into office it had to 
 assume all the obligations of these bonds and accept 
 the situation which had been created by its prede- 
 cessors. But, in the meantime, Japan had grown in
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 73 
 
 knowledge and had learned both theoretically and 
 by very bitter experience that the extra-territorial 
 provisions of the treaties were a national stigma, 
 derogatory to the prestige of a civilised and indepen- 
 dent state. 
 
 The disabilities imposed on her by the treaties 
 were sufficiently glaring to justify her utmost dis- 
 content. Identical treaties were made with no less 
 than eighteen Western Powers, each one of which 
 had its own system of consular jurisdiction and ad- 
 ministered its own national laws, and only one among 
 them all ever made provision for their full and 
 effective administration. Great Britain, almost from 
 the very first, established not only consular courts at 
 every port at which foreigners were permitted to 
 reside, presided .over by highly-trained officers, 
 qualified for the discharge of the important judicial 
 duties that were entrusted to them and vested with 
 very extensive powers of both civil and criminal 
 jurisdiction, but founded a court of appeal in Japan 
 and a still higher court at Shanghai, both of which 
 exercised unlimited jurisdiction and were administered 
 by judges whose professional ability and experience 
 were unquestionable. The British Minister was also 
 vested with legislative powers under the Sovereign's 
 Orders in Council which enabled him at his discretion 
 to give legal sanction, so as to make them enforceable 
 in the local English courts, to any Japanese laws and
 
 74 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 ordinances that could equitably be applied to his 
 countrymen. 
 
 The case was very different with all other Powers. 
 No other ministers were vested with the law-making 
 prerogative of their British colleague. None could 
 render Japanese ordinances enforceable on their 
 countrymen, who might therefore violate with im- 
 punity regulations, such as those of quarantine, which 
 were essential for the general welfare of Japanese 
 and foreigners alike. The consuls of most were 
 trading consuls, quite incompetent to exercise judicial 
 functions, not always honest in the exercise of such 
 capacity as they possessed, and even consuls de earriere 
 were very limited in the extent of the jurisdiction 
 that was conferred on them by their own governments, 
 so that capital and other serious offences committed 
 by their countrymen generally went entirely un- 
 punished. There were no courts of appeal nearer 
 than Leipzig, Paris or Washington, which were 
 entirely inaccessible to Japanese prosecutors or 
 plaintiffs, and gross miscarriages of justice in serious 
 cases, even when facts and law were entirely beyond 
 dispute, were the rule rather than the exception. 
 
 Very early in its career the Emperor's Govern- 
 ment attempted to procure a revision of the treaty 
 clauses which they felt inflicted so great a wrong on 
 their country. In 1871, a great embassy was sent to 
 Europe for the purpose, but as was natural it totally
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 75 
 
 failed in its object. The laws and system of punish- 
 ment in Japan, though greatly modified from what 
 they had been when the treaties were made, were 
 still founded on the old Chinese models and entirely 
 inapplicable to Europeans. Torture was still prac- 
 tised. Not only was the offensive prohibition of 
 Christianity still in public existence, but native 
 Christians were actually being cruelly persecuted at 
 the time when the Embassy was on its mission. The 
 chief result that ensued from it was the enforcement 
 of the lesson on Japan that there was no prospect of 
 the realisation of her desire until she reformed her 
 legal system and penal codes on European standards. 
 
 It is not an exaggeration to say that the recovery 
 of the full national rights with which she had parted 
 in her ignorance was the motive which mainly in- 
 spired all Japan's great reforms. It was that which 
 urged her to reform her legal system ; to withdraw 
 the prohibition of Christianity and make all religion 
 free ; to raise the material and educational status 
 of her people to the level of the most enlightened 
 nations of the West, so that their claim might be- 
 come morally unanswerable ; and to develop her 
 great military system so that her claim, if refused 
 on moral grounds, might be backed by force. 
 
 Long years of wearisome diplomatic negotiations 
 passed away and Japan had given the most ample 
 evidence of her own advance in all the elements of
 
 76 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 internal civilisation before her aspirations were at 
 last realised. At first the negotiations were carried 
 on in Tokio, where two conferences were held, the 
 first in 1882 and the second in 1886, between the 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs and the assembled 
 Diplomatic Representatives of all the Treaty Powers. 
 Under the treaties, foreigners enjoyed the rights to 
 reside and trade only at certain cities on the coast, 
 specified in the treaties and known as the open 
 ports, and in Tokio ; but from the middle of the 
 seventies they had also been permitted as a privilege 
 to travel in the interior for purposes of health or 
 pleasure. This concession, it may be remarked, 
 speedily became the source of very considerable gain 
 to Japan from the money spent both by residents 
 and travellers, which steadily increased with the 
 development of travelling facilities and of the know- 
 ledge of all the great natural beauties of the country. 
 The opening up of the whole country to both trade 
 and residence was offered in return for the abolition 
 of the objectionable clauses in the treaties, but 
 even this concession, with all its possible commercial 
 advantages, was not sufficient to overcome the re- 
 luctance of Great Britain to submit her citizens to 
 the jurisdiction of laws that were neither as yet 
 tolerable in themselves nor furnished with complete 
 machinery for their administration. 
 
 The difficulties which the Japanese negotiators
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 77 
 
 had to overcome were enough to dishearten ttye most 
 optimistic among them. They had to deal with the 
 representatives of eighteen Powers, all of whom were 
 of equal rank, all with equal rights to a hearing, so 
 that the British representative, with the duty of safe- 
 guarding immense commercial and shipping interests 
 and the persons and property of a large resident 
 British population, surpassing at that time in both 
 cases the aggregate of those of all other nationalities 
 in Japan, had only the same voting power in the 
 conferences as the representatives of Austria and 
 Spain, who had neither trade nor citizens to protect, 
 or of such insignificant Powers as Portugal and 
 Belgium, whose captiousness was not infrequently in 
 inverse ratio to their legitimate influence. All the 
 treaties contained "most favoured nation" clauses 
 which entitled all the Powers to claim any special 
 concessions that were made to any one without sub- 
 mitting to the conditions that accompanied them. 
 All the Powers were supposed to be acting in har- 
 mony, but their representatives had each different 
 axes to grind. Russia's interests in Japan were 
 entirely political and she cared nothing for trade 
 nor for the protection of European residents in 
 Japan among whom few of her own subjects were 
 included. Great Britain carried on a great import 
 trade and it was her object to prevent that trade 
 from being burthened with oppressive duties. The
 
 78 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 United, States on the other hand, though the largest 
 purchaser of Japan's exports, had then practically no 
 import trade and were therefore able, without any 
 cost to themselves, to give full indulgence to a 
 sentimental friendship and their warmest support 
 to Japan's claim to .omplete tariff autonomy. And 
 similar differences were apparent in the cases of all 
 the other great Powers, while as to the smaller, 
 with no material interests whatsoever, without either 
 moral influence or any pretence of military strength, 
 it was within the prerogative of any one to render 
 nugatory formal concessions even if they were unani- 
 mously made by all the others. 
 
 When further progress had been made in legal 
 reform, Great Britain withdrew in some degree from 
 the rigid attitude she had hitherto preserved, and 
 in conjunction with Germany and the United States 
 gave a modified acceptance to the Japanese pro- 
 posals. But then a new difficulty arose. The political 
 intelligence of the people had advanced in ratio with 
 their material progress. The press had grown in 
 influence and ability, and it was now openly declared 
 by the people and in the press that no half measures 
 could be tolerated and that no revision of the treaties 
 could be accepted that was limited with conventional 
 restrictions of any kind, or that failed to confer on 
 Japan the fullest rights of an independent and civi- 
 lised nation. A violent agitation spread throughout
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 79 
 
 the whole country and it was accompanied by a 
 dangerous outbreak of anti-foreign prejudice, one 
 incident in which was the attempted assassination of 
 the present Czar of Russia, who as Czarewitch was 
 then visiting Japan. An attempt was also made to 
 assassinate Count Okuma, at that time Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs, and when the first Parliament met 
 under the new constitution, its members were no less 
 persistent and outspoken than their constituents in 
 urging upon the Government its duty to obtain, 
 without further procrastination, the realisation of 
 the national aspirations in their widest sense. 
 
 Nearly twenty years had elapsed since Japan had 
 made her first essay towards procuring a revision 
 of the obnoxious Treaties and she seemed at this 
 juncture, notwithstanding all the evidence she had 
 given of material progress and of her desire to har- 
 monize her institutions with those of the West, to 
 be no nearer the end than she had been at first. 
 European residents in Japan of nearly all nation- 
 alities still contemplated with the strongest aversion 
 their unconditional subjection to the jurisdiction of 
 the native judicial and executive officials and were 
 strong enough to bring pressure that could not be 
 ignored to bear on their Diplomatic Representatives 
 on the spot. And the Japanese people were still 
 more adamant in their insistence that no revision 
 which was not entirely unconditional would solace
 
 80 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 their long-outraged national dignity or be in keeping 
 with the terms of the constitution they had just 
 obtained. Then, when matters were at their very 
 worst and a hopeless impasse seemed to have been 
 reached, the Japanese Ministers gave one more proof 
 of the marked diplomatic talent which they had 
 already displayed on several occasions in inter- 
 national affairs and have since so frequently testified 
 both in war and peace. 
 
 They suddenly terminated all discussion in Tokio, 
 disregarded the representatives of the Powers with 
 whom they had so long been vainly arguing, and 
 transferred all their activities to Europe where they 
 dealt not with the Powers in conference but with 
 each separately and under the pledge of secrecy. 
 Great Britain was still the Power whose consent it 
 was most important to win, though she no longer 
 held the predominant moral, commercial or military 
 prestige in the Far East which she did throughout 
 the earlier negotiations. Both Germany and the 
 United States were now beginning to show them- 
 selves as commercial rivals and to display their 
 naval flags where they had been seldom seen before. 
 Sir Harry Parkes, the masterful minister of long 
 Eastern experience, had gone and had been followed 
 by successors who had neither experience nor know- 
 ledge of Japan, and whose last idea in their own 
 interests was to criticise or oppose any steps that
 
 Sir Harry S. Parkes
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 81 
 
 might be taken by the Department at home under 
 which they served and which would be the arbiter 
 of their future careers. In the Foreign Office in 
 London, the astute Japanese Minister accredited to 
 Great Britain had an easy task. Its officials, both 
 ignorant and badly advised as to the interests they 
 were sacrificing, yielded to all his proposals and on 
 July 18, 1894, a treaty was signed in London which 
 unconditionally conceded everything that was neces- 
 sary to realise the most extravagant Japanese claims. 
 The other Powers gradually, though in some instances 
 slowly and reluctantly, followed Great Britain's ex- 
 ample, not however without securing as a quid pro 
 quo some slight concessions for the benefit of their 
 trade and countrymen in Japan to which the British 
 Foreign Office had been loftily indifferent, and on 
 June 30, 1899, the operation of all the old treaties 
 came simultaneously to an end and for the first time 
 in history, large, rich, and intelligent European com- 
 munities became subject to the unfettered jurisdiction 
 of an Oriental and non-Christian Power. 
 
 It was naturally a day of universal rejoicing 
 throughout Japan, even more so than that of the 
 promulgation of the constitution. The ambition per- 
 sistently cherished and fought for throughout more 
 than a quarter of a century had at last been attained 
 and Japan had won her entry on terms of abso- 
 lute equality into the comity of nations. European 
 
 L. 6
 
 82 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 residents in Japan looked, however, to the future 
 with profound misgivings. They thought that their 
 personal liberty, hitherto securely guarded by their 
 own authorities, was endangered, that their trade 
 was threatened with ruin, and that their lives would 
 become intolerable under the petty persecutions to 
 which they would be always liable at the hands of 
 the lower classes of the Japanese officials. Their ex- 
 perience as plaintiffs or prosecutors in the Japanese 
 civil and criminal courts filled them with dismay 
 when they thought of what it would be when they 
 were forced to appear in the roles of defendants or 
 accused. Hitherto they had been immune from 
 taxation ; they would henceforth be liable to what- 
 ever burthens a parliament, in which they were 
 entirely unrepresented, whose members bore them 
 no goodwill, might impose on them. The feel- 
 ings with which they contemplated the new order 
 of affairs to which they would thenceforward have 
 to bow their heads, may be aptly compared to those 
 of the most implacable Ulster Orangeman, when he 
 thinks of his future under Home Rule, with the 
 single exception that they anticipated none of the 
 interference with their religion on the part of heathen 
 governors of another race which the Orangeman 
 professes to dread from his Roman Catholic fellow- 
 countrymen. The voteless British residents in Japan 
 had no one to voice their grievances in Parliament,
 
 vi] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 83 
 
 and the new conditions, harsh though they seemed, 
 had to be accepted. When that was recognised, all 
 the European communities at once united as practical 
 business men to make the best of what was irretriev- 
 able and they were aided in doing so by a new spirit 
 which developed itself among the Japanese. 
 
 All lingering traces of the old anti-foreign pre- 
 judices seemed to disappear at once. That this was 
 so was primarily due to the Emperor who issued a 
 special rescript to his people, declaring : 
 
 his earnest wish that all his subjects should unite with one heart to 
 associate cordially with the people from far countries and that his 
 officials of all classes should observe the utmost circumspection in the 
 discharge of their duties, so that Japanese and Foreigners might 
 enjoy equal privileges and advantages. 
 
 The Emperor's wishes are received by his subjects 
 as divine commands, and as such they were now un- 
 reservedly obeyed. The instances in which Japanese 
 officials have made arbitrary or unjust use of the 
 powers with which they are now vested have been 
 of rare occurrence, and few of the forebodings of the 
 Europeans have been realised, natural as they were 
 at the time. They have had to submit to regulations, 
 many of which are inconsistent with their conceptions 
 of personal freedom, to heavy personal taxation, to 
 oppressive duties on their trade, and in some in- 
 stances to inequitable decisions in the local courts 
 of justice. But their trade, so far from being ruined, 
 
 62
 
 84 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 has more than doubled in its volume if not in its 
 profits, and they have enjoyed a greater degree of 
 personal liberty and of security of life and property 
 than is accorded to foreigners in many Christian 
 countries. Japan has not shown herself to be un- 
 worthy of the trust that has been reposed in her, 
 hazardous as it was thought by the most com- 
 petent authorities to be at the time at which it was 
 conferred. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 TRADE AND INDUSTRY 
 
 IT was in 1858 that the first European traders 
 began to take up their residences at Yokohama, then 
 a mere fishing village but the nearest available port 
 to the Shogun's capital, and that Japan became 
 open to the commerce of the world. 
 
 The story of the beginning of her commercial 
 intercourse is not a pleasant one to recall. The 
 earliest foreign traders, like the Dutch at Desima 
 during the years of Japan's seclusion, acquired very 
 large profits principally owing to the differences in 
 the relative values of gold and silver in Japan and 
 in the rest of the world. In Japan the ratio was as 
 one to four, and in the rest of the world one to fifteen,
 
 VH] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 85 
 
 and a silver dollar obtainable for 4s. 6d. in China, 
 distant only a few days' steaming, could in Japan be 
 exchanged into a gold token that was worth over 
 eighteen shillings in all the rest of the world. Trade 
 conducted under such conditions was in itself suffi- 
 ciently profitable to dazzle the most extreme optimism, 
 but still greater profits were to be obtained from 
 dealings in the currency itself without even a pretence 
 of trade. Gold was exported in such quantities as to 
 threaten the country with the denudation of its whole 
 supply, and when the only possible remedy was taken 
 in altering the relative values in Japan, all internal 
 finance and economy were completely dislocated. 
 Prices rose to a degree hitherto undreamt of, and 
 the only persons to profit by the rise were the pro- 
 ducers of silk, tea and vegetable wax, the only 
 commodities to appear among Japan's original ex- 
 ports, while the rest of the people suffered intense 
 distress. 
 
 Trade had always been despised, always regarded 
 as the lowest in the scale of honour of all human 
 vocations. It is not to be wondered at that their first 
 modern experience of its conduct with the outward 
 world should have tended not only to intensify the 
 contempt previously felt for it by the Japanese, but 
 to add hatred almost for its very name. It brought 
 nothing to them that they wanted, except firearms, 
 which were used during the succeeding years in
 
 86 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 slaughtering each other, while it enormously enhanced 
 the cost of their own products that were in most 
 general consumption. 
 
 Throughout the remaining years of the Shogunate, 
 after the original difficulties of the currency had been 
 overcome, trade continued to be hampered by vexa- 
 tious difficulties and restrictions. That carried on 
 with the Dutch had been always subject to the 
 strictest Government control, and though the new 
 treaties provided that it should be entirely free in 
 this sense, old customs could not be eradicated in a 
 day and it was still subject to constant official inter- 
 ference. The foreign merchants and the Japanese 
 dealers Avere ignorant of each other's languages and 
 customs, and of the values of what each had to sell. 
 Both were full of mistrust, and, owing to the national 
 odium \vhich rested on all trade, only a very low 
 class of Japanese, outcasts of their own people, with- 
 out capital or sense of honour, at first entered upon 
 that which was foreign. Their dishonesty and trickery 
 brought upon their class an unsavoury reputation 
 which still clings to their present-day representa- 
 tives, some of whom, now millionaires, are the direct 
 descendants of the early pioneers. On the other side, 
 there were not wanting among the foreigners many 
 who took advantage of their native clients' ignorance 
 and inexperience to carry out transactions that could 
 only be characterised as shameful frauds.
 
 vii] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 87 
 
 Notwithstanding all its difficulties, trade ad- 
 vanced even under the Shogunate, and in the first 
 year of Meiji was estimated to have reached a value 
 of about seven millions sterling. The Japanese had 
 by this time learned to appreciate the quality and 
 cheapness of English cottons and bought them largely, 
 though firearms and old and obsolete steamers most 
 appealed to them among all that Europeans could 
 supply. The value of their exports was then very con- 
 siderably in excess of that of the imports. During 
 the sixties the silk husbandry of France and Italy 
 was brought to the verge of ruin by an epidemic of 
 pebrine plague in the silkworms. The worms died in 
 multitudes, and the cocoons of those that survived 
 furnished only a fraction of the normal quantity of 
 silk. It was at this time that the raw silk of Japan 
 became known in Europe, and its excellent quality 
 immediately caused it to be in such demand that, in 
 1868, the value of its export was nearly three millions 
 sterling. Japan might then have laid the foundation 
 of a trade which would ultimately have given her the 
 command of all the silk markets of the world. But 
 French and Italian graineurs, while eager to buy her 
 raw silk, were still more eager to buy the eggs of her 
 healthy silkworms in order to replenish their own 
 exhausted stock, and the prices which, during a few 
 years, they were willing to pay for them tempted the 
 native farmers, who were incapable of looking to the
 
 88 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 future, to devote themselves to the rearing of silk- 
 worms for the sake of their eggs rather than to the 
 production of silk. The best eggs were sold and ex- 
 ported to Europe, where by their means the plague- 
 stricken industry was soon recuperated, while that in 
 Japan, where only inferior eggs with diminished pro- 
 ductive power had been left, for a time declined. 
 The Japanese farmer had killed the geese which laid 
 the golden eggs. When a healthy race of worms 
 could again be reared in Europe, he found that there 
 was no further demand for his eggs ; his raw silk had 
 lost much of its original excellence, and he had a 
 long struggle before he was able to repair the dam- 
 age which he suffered from his own short-sighted 
 greed. Tea was the export that was next in value 
 to silk and silkworm's eggs. Its peculiar flavour 
 commended it to the American taste and, from the 
 first, it found a market there which it retains to the 
 present. These three staples represented nine-tenths 
 of the whole export trade of the year. Some copper 
 and vegetable wax were also exported, but the only 
 articles to which the term "manufactures" could 
 possibly be extended were curios of porcelain, bronze 
 or lacquer ware, and their whole value did not exceed 
 50,000. 
 
 The Imperial Government was in its early years 
 too absorbed in both domestic and foreign politics 
 to be able to give much attention to the direct
 
 vii] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 89 
 
 encouragement of trade and industry, and Japanese 
 traders were too deficient in enterprise and self- 
 reliance, to venture, unled and unaided, into new 
 spheres except in the most timorous and tentative 
 fashion. The national finances, too, were in a state 
 of utter disorganisation. A mint, under the manage- 
 ment of English experts of high standing, was founded 
 and the coins which issued from it were unim- 
 peachable in quality and appearance, but from 1869 
 onwards till 1881 the balance of foreign trade was 
 steadily against Japan with the exception only of 
 1876, when exceptional circumstances for once turned 
 it the other way. The coins issued from the mint 
 went abroad to pay for the balance, and the only 
 currency in domestic circulation was paper. 
 
 The new Government was, from the first, hampered 
 by serious financial embarrassments. It succeeded 
 to an empty treasury and while, in its early years, 
 its expenditure was large, its revenue was collected 
 slowly and with difficulty, and the only method that 
 could be found of discharging its liabilities was by 
 the issue of inconvertible paper notes. Recurring 
 annual deficits in the budgets necessitated continuous 
 increases in these issues, and an equally continuous 
 depreciation in their exchange value for specie natur- 
 ally followed, until the climax was reached shortly 
 after the suppression of the Satsuma rebellion, the 
 cost of which had been defrayed by a further large
 
 90 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 issue of paper, when the inconvertible notes fell to 
 a discount of over 80 per cent. Specie continued to 
 flow out of the country. Within it, there was an 
 abnormal appreciation of prices and rates of interest, 
 and the most competent European authorities be- 
 lieved it was on the verge of national bankruptcy. 
 In such circumstances, the wonder is rather that 
 trade showed any increase at all its value nearly 
 doubled in the period of twelve years than that it 
 did not develop with the leaps and bounds that we 
 grew accustomed, in later years, to associate with 
 Japan's commercial progress. For the progress which 
 it did make at that time Japan is entirely indebted 
 to the resident European merchants, among whom 
 those of British nationality w r ere far predominant, 
 whose honesty, capacity and enterprise remedied, 
 vis-a-vis buyers and consumers in Europe, the de- 
 ficiencies that were universally characteristic of the 
 native traders. In 1882, the Government woke up 
 to the necessity of drastic financial reform. European 
 expert advisers had suggested various remedies, in- 
 cluding foreign loans and national lotteries. But 
 a foreign loan could only have been obtained at very 
 high interest and some reliable item of the revenue 
 must have been earmarked to meet it, while gam- 
 bling, in any shape or form, has in all ages been 
 forbidden by Japanese law. The Government had 
 to rely on its own efforts to get Japan out of the
 
 vii] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 91 
 
 financial morass into which she had been driven by 
 her early necessities. 
 
 Sweeping economies were effected in the public 
 expenditure and simultaneously a substantial increase 
 was made in taxation. Industrial and agricultural 
 undertakings which had been established during the 
 preceding decade, with the double purpose of afford- 
 ing educational models to the people and bringing 
 some revenue to the Government, were sold. By 
 these means a large surplus was obtained in the 
 annual budget which was applied to the redemption 
 of the paper currency in circulation. Then the 
 Government itself practically became a trader. Two 
 Banks were established under its auspices, the Bank 
 of Japan, to act as the agent of the Government in 
 its domestic finances, and the Yokohama Specie 
 Bank, to serve in a similar capacity in its foreign 
 financial affairs. Native produce was bought through 
 the first and paid for with paper and sold abroad 
 through the second for specie which was collected 
 and stored in the Treasury. The balance of trade 
 now turned in favour of Japan, and during the three 
 years 1882 1884 there was a surplus of exports 
 over imports of more than 20 million yen, so that the 
 Government measures were considerably facilitated. 
 Their result was that soon after the close of the year 
 last mentioned, the paper currency in circulation 
 was reduced by 80 million yen, and the Government
 
 92 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 had at its disposal a specie reserve of 42 million 
 yen. Confidence was restored. The currency, which, 
 in 1882, was at a discount of eighty per cent, was 
 early in 1885 almost at par, and in the autumn of 
 the same year the Government was able to announce, 
 that the hitherto purely fiduciary paper would be 
 exchanged at the Bank of Japan for its face value 
 in specie. 
 
 It was in 1885 that Japan, in the confidence 
 engendered by the restoration of her financial sta- 
 bility, began to furnish omens of her coming com- 
 mercial and industrial progress. The value of her 
 foreign trade in 1874, when her customs service had 
 been thoroughly organised and its statistics had 
 become unimpeachable, was 42 million yen. In 1884, 
 the value had only grown to 53 million yen. Ten 
 years later it was 230 million yen, and in yet another 
 decade (1904) it had reached 690 million yen. Its 
 movement was still onwards, and in 1912 its value 
 amounted to 1145 million yen. The population of 
 the Empire also largely increased. In 1884, it was 
 37| million, and in 1912 it was estimated at 52^ 
 million, exclusive of Formosa and Korea. In 1884, 
 the ratio of the value of her foreign trade to the 
 population was 1*67 yen per head ; in 1894, 5 '52 yen; 
 in 1904, 14-63 yen, and in 1911, 18*65 yen. 
 
 In 1884, Japan's exports were still confined to 
 agricultural, mining and marine products silk, tea,
 
 vn] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 93 
 
 coal, copper and dried fish. The only manufactured 
 articles included amongst them, to any substantial 
 extent, were matches, an industry acquired from the 
 West, and such indigenous products as porcelain, 
 lacquer and bronze ware, and plaited straw ware. 
 The cotton spinning industry had been initiated and 
 raw cotton was imported for its requirements, but 
 with that exception almost all the imports were highly 
 finished manufactures. It was already recognised, 
 however, by her statesmen that her future industrial 
 prosperity depended rather on the development of 
 her manufacturing than of her agricultural industry. 
 The capacity of the latter had its limits, and while it 
 would no doubt remain, as it had always been, the 
 greatest of all national industries, there was no hope, 
 even with the intensive system of culture that was 
 universally followed throughout the whole country, of 
 its being able to provide for the future support of 
 a population increasing with such rapidity as was 
 that of Japan, where it was foreseen that the time 
 was within measurable view when 100 million people 
 would have to be supported, and that too in a land 
 which in the past had on many occasions in years of 
 dearth been unable to provide the absolute neces- 
 saries of life for less than a third of that number. 
 The intelligence, docility and deftness, which the 
 people possessed in an eminent degree, must be 
 directed into new channels of industrial skill and
 
 94 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAX [OH. 
 
 activity, and Japan made in the progress of time the 
 workshop of the Far East, just as Great Britain was 
 of the West. 
 
 Every natural advantage existed to aid in the 
 attainment of this end. Japan not only possessed, 
 like Great Britain, an ample supply of coal, but had 
 also at her disposal what Great Britain had not, an 
 immense water-power in her lakes at high altitudes 
 and her rapidly-flowing rivers. Her coasts were 
 everywhere indented by capacious harbours, and 
 close to her was the great Empire of China, with 
 whose people she had many common ties, whose 
 tastes and requirements she had opportunities and 
 means of studying that were wholly lacking in Euro- 
 pean competitors for her great markets. To acquire 
 a control, in the first instance, of the foreign trade of 
 China and subsequently to extend her commercial 
 activity even as far as India was an ambition that 
 presented itself to Japanese statesmen as one that 
 was not beyond the capacity of their people to realise 
 in the process of time. 
 
 No measure that could train and stimulate the 
 people to that end was neglected. A department of 
 Agriculture and Commerce was organised in the 
 Government and the best officials and experts were 
 employed in it. Commercial and technical training 
 schools were established throughout the Empire. 
 Liberal subsidies were granted to infant industries,
 
 vn] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 95 
 
 and the press and the platform were freely used both 
 for teaching and encouragement. Banks, both for 
 general and specific business, were founded so that 
 credit facilities at moderate interest could be obtained, 
 and they have had careers of almost unbroken success. 
 The two great wars in which Japan was engaged and 
 the Anglo-Japanese alliance had each their eflect in 
 promoting commercial prosperity. The indemnity 
 that was obtained from the war with China was in 
 part used to foster commercial activity and to esta- 
 blish her currency, hitherto of silver, on a gold 
 standard. The enhanced national prestige which^he 
 acquired as the result of the war with Russia and of 
 the alliance with Great Britain enabled her to become 
 a borrower on moderate terms in the money markets 
 of Europe, so that the heavy burthen thrown upon the 
 nation by the cost of the war with Russia was met 
 without a particle of financial disorganisation or 
 distress. 
 
 One great obstacle to ultimate success was the 
 insufficiency of internal transport facilities. This 
 was overcome by the steady advance of railway con- 
 struction until every district in the country was 
 within easy reach of a line, and it became possible to 
 travel from the extreme north to the extreme south 
 of the Empire without leaving a station, except to 
 cross the straits that separate Hokkaido, the northern, 
 from Hondo, the main island, and Hondo from
 
 96 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Kiusiu. It was in 1873 that the first railway was 
 opened to the public, a line of less than 20 miles 
 between Yokohama and Tokio. In 1911, there were 
 no less than 5355 miles in operation, all the property 
 of the state. A great mercantile marine was also 
 fostered by large subsidies both for the construction 
 and navigation of ocean-going steamers of the highest 
 class, not only for service in Eastern waters, but to 
 carry the mercantile flag to the west coast of America, 
 to India, Australia and England, and liners, managed 
 with no less efficiency than those of the best known 
 steamship companies of Great Britain, now regularly 
 ply between the ports of those countries and of Japan 
 and successfully carry on a large passenger and cargo 
 trade. 
 
 The people have responded to the efforts of their 
 Government. From the time that they could rely on 
 the stability of their currency, they have shown a 
 spirit of enterprise that was previously, with every 
 reason that was founded on experience, believed to 
 be entirely wanting in them. Numerous joint-stock 
 companies for industrial purposes have been founded 
 with ample capital, and have contributed much to the 
 development of the spinning, weaving, engineering 
 and ship-building industries. The working classes, 
 among whom, as in England, there has been a large 
 influx from the country to the towns, have adapted 
 themselves to the new conditions of organised labour
 
 vii] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 97 
 
 in large establishments, all industry in Japan in 
 former days was entirely domestic, carried on in a 
 small way in separate households by members of the 
 same family and the descendants of the samurai, 
 whose fathers despised the very name of trade and 
 thought the smallest association with it contamina- 
 tion, now eagerly seek for employment in banks, in 
 merchant houses and in factories, where they often 
 serve under the orders of and are paid by commoners, 
 whom their fathers would scarcely have deigned to 
 admit to their presence, and where their higher ideals 
 of probity in some degree remedy the lack of in- 
 tegrity which is still a prominent characteristic among 
 those who have been born into the manufacturing and 
 commercial classes. 
 
 Japan, which forty years ago could in one year 
 only send abroad manufactured goods in the shape 
 of a few articles de luxe to the value of less than 
 50,000, exported in eleven months of the year 1912, 
 partly manufactured goods to the value of 23 millions 
 sterling and wholly manufactured to the value of 
 14| millions. They included cotton yarn, cotton 
 and silk piece goods and handkerchiefs, clothing, 
 umbrellas, matches, refined sugar, paper, floor matting, 
 carpets, straw plaiting and cigarettes, and, to a minor 
 extent, machinery, electric fittings, stoves, bicycles, 
 boots, saddlery, truuks, cement, soap, tooth powder 
 and brushes, chemicals, beer, mineral waters, clocks, 
 
 L. 7
 
 98 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 lamps, stationery, glass ware and a hundred other 
 miscellaneous articles, all of which she has learned to 
 make from Europe and all of which find a ready 
 market in China and in the Straits Settlements, where 
 they are sold at prices with which even German 
 makers cannot compete. The import of raw material 
 and of machinery has kept pace with the development 
 of manufacturing industry, and though a heavy pro- 
 tective tariff has now replaced the conventional 
 tariffs of her early days of commercial intercourse 
 with foreign countries, under which only an average 
 ad valorem duty of 5 per cent, was levied on all im- 
 ports, she bought over twenty million pounds worth 
 of goods from Europe in 1912, nine-tenths of which 
 may be said to have been fully manufactured. Great 
 Britain no longer enjoys her former monopoly of this 
 trade, but the value of British products is still two- 
 fold that of the products of Germany, her greatest 
 competitor, and if the purchases that Japan makes 
 from the overseas dominions are added to those made 
 from the parent country, the import trade of the 
 British Empire to Japan represents more than 40 per 
 cent, of the whole trade. 
 
 The present industrial position of Japan is, how- 
 ever, not all couleur de rose nor is its future so well 
 defined as to place the realisation of the hopes of its 
 founders beyond the realms of .doubt. One of her 
 early advantages was the abundance of cheap and
 
 vii] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 99 
 
 docile labour that was at her command. Labour is 
 no longer either so cheap or so contented to take 
 what it is offered as it was. The standards of life 
 have risen and what the fathers of the present 
 workmen regarded as luxuries are now demanded by 
 their sons as common necessaries. Wages have, in 
 thirty years, increased three-fold, and if the relative 
 productive capacity of the Japanese workman is fairly 
 compared with that of his English confrere, it may 
 be doubted if there is now a very marked difference 
 between the cost of labour in Japan and in England. 
 It is still cheaper, probably less than half, but its 
 quality is still far inferior and in factories the 
 aggregate of employees is still fully three-fold of 
 what would be considered necessary for the same 
 work in England. The old docility is no longer 
 a conspicuous element among the working classes. 
 They are still unorganised and have no trades unions 
 or combinations for the protection and advancement 
 of their class interests, but the men have learned 
 something of the rights of labour, and the craven 
 humility which feudal oppression engendered in them 
 has been replaced to no small extent by truculent 
 and offensive aggressiveness and by an intolerance of 
 any discipline other than that of the drill sergeant 
 during the period of military service. No ideas of 
 personal loyalty now bind them to their employers, 
 and socialism is not without its apostles though as 
 
 72
 
 100 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 yet it has found few disciples. Wages have risen, 
 but the cost of living following on more requirements, 
 far higher prices even of the necessaries of life, and 
 a heavy burthen of imperial and local taxation, has 
 done so to a still greater degree. Workmen in Japan 
 have not yet votes and have therefore no political 
 influence. The benevolence of the legislature has as 
 yet failed to benefit them either by factory acts 
 regulating their hours of labour, or by Insurance or 
 Compensation acts, and while feeling themselves the 
 increasing strain of the struggle for life, they see 
 very substantial dividends regularly paid by the 
 companies they serve to rich and comfortable share- 
 holders. The spirit already present and growing in 
 them is not such as will induce them to submit 
 indefinitely to this condition of aifairs and the day 
 may not be very far distant when the conflict between 
 capital, though supported by a sympathetic legisla- 
 ture, and labour, though politically powerless, may 
 assume some of the aspects which it already presents 
 in Europe. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS. 1867 1895 
 
 IF the questions of Treaty Revision and Trade 
 are excluded, Japan's Foreign Relations, from the 
 Restoration down to the close of the Russian War,
 
 vin] FOREIGN RELATIONS 101 
 
 may be said to have been confined to her three 
 nearest neighbours, China, Russia and Korea, and 
 the last named was the pivot on which the most 
 important controversies depended which she had 
 with the other two. 
 
 From the dark ages in which Japan, under the 
 leadership of her. mythical Empress Jingo, claimed to 
 have conquered Korea, the latter acknowledged the 
 suzerainty of her conqueror in the usual Oriental 
 fashion by the payment of annual tribute. The 
 custom was at no period observed with absolute 
 regularity and it fell into total abeyance in the 
 anarchy that prevailed throughout Japan during the 
 long civil wars of the middle ages, but it was revived 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth century subse- 
 quent to Korea's second invasion and conquest by 
 Hideyoshi, the great military dictator of Japan, and 
 it thenceforward continued to be regularly observed 
 throughout the whole of the Tokugawa regime. 
 " Payment of tribute," it may be mentioned, was only 
 in form. It did not involve the transfer of any sums 
 of money, and was signified by the despatch of a 
 mission to the superior Power bearing certain specified 
 offerings of no great value. On the occasions of 
 Lord Macartney's mission to China in 1793 and of 
 Lord Amherst's in 1816 as ambassadors of George III, 
 the usual complimentary presents which they offered 
 to the Emperor were described in the Chinese official
 
 102 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 gazette as "tribute," and the ambassadors themselves 
 as tribute bearers to a superior Power. 
 
 Throughout all time, Korea, while thus outwardly 
 acknowledging herself as a tributary of Japan, also 
 not only admitted herself but claimed to be the 
 vassal of China, to which she was bound by ties of 
 gratitude, reverence and propinquity which had no 
 existence in her relations with Japan. So far from 
 that, the memories of all the sufferings she had 
 undergone during Hideyoshi's ruthless invasion and 
 of the national ruin which followed it, made the very 
 name of Japan an object of bitter hatred to all her 
 people, high and low. Korea also conserved her 
 national isolation, even more rigidly than Japan had 
 done prior to Perry's arrival. Her sole connections 
 with the outward world were with Japan and China 
 and all attempts by Europeans to enter the country 
 were repulsed. The few French missionaries, who 
 secretly made their way there, and all their converts 
 were cruelly tortured and killed, and even the use of 
 European goods was forbidden under pain of death. 
 So conservative were the court and officials that they 
 adhered to the dress and customs which they had 
 adopted from China when under the Ming dynasty 
 (1368 1644) and made no change in them throughout 
 all the succeeding years in which they professed to 
 be the obedient vassals of the Manchu Emperors. 
 
 After the Restoration, Japan sent letters to the
 
 VIH] FOREIGN RELATIONS 103 
 
 Korean Court informing it of the change of govern- 
 ment. The letters were answered with contemptuous 
 insult and the overtures of friendship which they 
 contained were haughtily rejected. When, in 18/3, 
 this fact became public in Japan, the whole nation 
 was in a ferment of indignation and angrily demanded 
 that war should at once be declared. War with 
 Korea would, however, almost certainly have ulti- 
 mately involved war also with China, a task for which 
 Japan was quite unfitted, and the Emperor, young 
 as he then was, showed his wisdom and prudence by 
 supporting the members of his ministry who had the 
 courage to resist both the national outcry and their 
 own colleagues in sympathy with it. Then occurred 
 the first split in the Ministry, involving the resigna- 
 tions among other ministers of Itagaki and Saigo, 
 but peace was preserved and the country permitted 
 to continue without foreign complication in its great 
 tasks of domestic reform and reorganisation. 
 
 Japan was, however, only biding her time. She 
 did not forget Korea's insult. She also fully re- 
 cognised the danger to her own territorial integrity, 
 perhaps even to her continued independent ex- 
 istence, if Russia, then in her full career of Asiatic 
 expansion, took possession of Korea, whose north- 
 eastern boundaries were already conterminous with 
 those of Russia's Far Eastern province of Primorski 
 on the Pacific littoral. Korea, in her national
 
 104 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 ignorance and debility, consequent on her long 
 seclusion from the outer world, could make no 
 resistance against a great European military Power, 
 while the magnificent ice-free harbours on her southern 
 coast provided a bait for Russia that would in time 
 prove irresistible. Japan resolved to take upon 
 herself the mission, which the United States had 
 accomplished in her own case, of dragging Korea out 
 of her isolation, hoping thereby both to bring her 
 into the sphere of international intercourse and to 
 induce her to shake off the fetters of her effete Chinese 
 civilisation and educate herself in Western science, 
 as Japan was doing. Korea's immunity from foreign 
 aggression might then be secured. 
 
 In 1875, a Korean fort fired on a Japanese gunboat 
 which was surveying the mouth of the River Han, 
 the river on which the capital lies about 20 miles 
 from its mouth. It was a very insignificant occurrence, 
 the action of a subordinate and ignorant officer, and 
 it might be said to have been provoked by the gun- 
 boat, which was in Korean waters, access to which 
 on the part of any foreign vessel for any reason was 
 forbidden by Korean law. The most ample punish- 
 ment for it was inflicted at the time, the gunboat 
 having first shelled the fort and a landing party, 
 against which the Koreans, armed only with bows 
 and arrows and old matchlocks, could offer no effective 
 resistance, having completed its destruction and
 
 vm] FOREIGN RELATIONS 105 
 
 slaughtered the entire garrison. But the insult to 
 the flag provoked a new ferment in Japan and once 
 more war was demanded by hot-headed patriots. 
 There was no division in the Government on this 
 occasion. They were unanimous in taking a more 
 sober view than some of their predecessors had done 
 in 1873 and they were for once supported by the 
 press. War was not declared but an armed expedi- 
 tion was sent to Korea early in the following year. 
 Its object was peaceful, to induce Korea to enter into 
 a treaty of friendship, but following Perry's example 
 in Japan, it was quite prepared to use force if its 
 peaceful overtures failed. 
 
 The Koreans yielded and the treaty was signed 
 on February 26, 1876, the first step being thus taken 
 to end Korea's isolation. The provisions of the 
 treaty were in almost every detail precisely similar 
 to those in the treaties which Japan had herself, 
 when ignorant of international law and custom, 
 originally concluded with Western Powers and which 
 she afterwards so bitterly resented as a stain on her 
 national dignity. As the Western Powers had done 
 with herself, so did she now, without one particle of 
 compunction, induce Korea to sign away her sovereign 
 rights of executive and tariff autonomy and to confer 
 on Japanese residents within her borders all the extra- 
 territorial privileges which were held to violate equity 
 and justice when exercised by Europeans in Japan.
 
 106 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 The history of Japan in the early days of her 
 foreign intercourse was repeated with strange simi- 
 larity in that of Korea, where Japan played the part 
 that in her own case had been performed by the 
 Western Powers. As in Japan, in those days, so in 
 Korea, the nation was divided into two factions. One 
 was saturated with conservative bigotry, and claimed 
 that the old traditions of national isolation should, 
 notwithstanding the treaty, be restored and main- 
 tained in their integrity. The other, less numerous 
 and less influential in rank and reputation, influenced 
 by what had been seen of the material progress which 
 Japan had already made after twenty years of foreign 
 intercourse, urged that Korea should follow Japan's 
 example and endeavour like her to assimilate Western 
 civilisation. In the capital, Seoul, the conservative 
 faction was all-powerful and the people, cherishing 
 the hatred of the Japanese that was transmitted to 
 them from their fathers, were easily aroused. Just 
 as the British Legation in Yedo was twice attacked 
 by Japanese fanatics in the early sixties, so twenty 
 years later was the Japanese Legation in Seoul twice 
 attacked by infuriated mobs, with the same object 
 of murdering all its inmates. On both occasions in 
 Seoul, the inmates were able to fight their way out 
 of the city and escape to the coast, but the Legation 
 buildings were utterly destroyed. After both, the 
 Koreans were forced to pay heavy indemnities and
 
 vm] FOREIGN RELATIONS 107 
 
 to make national apologies, as were the Japanese by 
 the British Government, after the assaults in Yedo. 
 And just as the British and French established 
 garrisons of their own troops in Japan, so Japan after 
 the first outrage stationed a contingent of troops in 
 Korea. Her action was even more humiliating to 
 Korea than that of the Western Powers to herself. 
 Their troops were quartered in Yokohama, twenty 
 miles from the capital, which they never entered. 
 Those of Japan in Korea were posted in the heart 
 of the capital, almost in the shadow of the King's 
 palace. 
 
 Japan in the treaty recognised Korea as " an in- 
 dependent state, enjoying the same sovereign rights " 
 as herself, and Korea by assuming this status theo- 
 retically terminated her vassalage to China. Similar 
 provisions were inserted in all Korea's later treaties 
 with Western Powers, including Great Britain, in all 
 of which Korea was dealt with as "an independent 
 nation free in her foreign relations from all control 
 by China." But the ties between the great Empire 
 and "The Hermit Kingdom" were too close and of 
 too long duration to be ended by a stroke of the pen. 
 China showed no inclination to part with her old 
 tutelage, Korea equally little to cease to rely on her 
 suzerain for both protection and advice. Li Hung 
 Chang, the great Viceroy, was at this time the 
 director of China's foreign policy. He had neither
 
 108 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 
 
 fear of nor respect for Japan and he was determined 
 that the interests of his own country in Korea should 
 not be those of sentiment only. His ablest and most 
 trusted lieutenant, Yuan Shi Kwai, who has since 
 become the first President of the Chinese Republic, 
 was sent to Korea early in the eighties as Resident- 
 General, and there during the next ten years he was 
 the de facto ruler of the country. The Japanese were 
 all this time urging reform on the Korean Govern- 
 ment, but all their efforts were rendered nugatory by 
 the paralysing interference of Yuan Shi Kwai, and 
 by the administrative incompetence and gross cor- 
 ruption of the native officials. At the end of the 
 ten years, Korea had made no progress in the path 
 which had been marked out for her by the Japanese 
 at the beginning of their modern relations. She was 
 still incapable of defending herself against foreign 
 aggression. Her Government retained all its worst 
 vices ; the people sunk in abject and hopeless poverty, 
 spiritlessly cowering under official tyranny, indolent, 
 and thriftless, were the most wretched in the world, 
 as wretched under their own authorities as were the 
 Irish in the darkest periods of British maladminis- 
 tration, or the Bulgars when enduring the utmost 
 cruelties of Ottoman oppression. 
 
 In 1894, the people of southern Korea, maddened 
 by suffering, rose in rebellion with the avowed object 
 of removing from the side of their King " the corrupt
 
 vni] FOREIGN RELATIONS 109 
 
 ministers and officials who were indifferent to the 
 welfare of the country." The ill-equipped and half- 
 hearted soldiers who were sent to quell the rebels were 
 repeatedly defeated and the Government, thoroughly 
 alarmed at the result of its own tyranny and in- 
 capacity, appealed to Yuan Shi Kwai for help. China 
 and Japan had covenanted in a treaty, defining their 
 respective positions in Korea, that neither should 
 send troops there without notice in advance to the 
 other. At this time domestic politics in Japan were 
 at one of their worst stages. The parliament was in 
 the full career of obstruction that marked the early 
 years of its existence and Li Hung Chang had been 
 advised by the Chinese minister in Tokio that Japan, 
 divided into bitterly antagonistic factions, was so 
 fully occupied with her own internal affairs, that she 
 could spare neither thought nor action for whatever 
 occurred abroad. As it proved, the minister com- 
 pletely misjudged the spirit of the nation, but at the 
 time it seemed that China could do as she pleased in 
 Korea without fear of further complication, and Li 
 Hung Chang, relying on the disastrous advice that 
 was given to him, decided to revive the old obliga- 
 tions of a suzerain and assume the task of restoring 
 order in the vassal kingdom. A force of 3000 troops, 
 all well drilled and armed, was sent from Tientsin 
 and landed at Asan, a port on the Korean coast 
 within striking distance of the headquarters of the
 
 110 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 rebels. Formal notice of this step was given to 
 Japan and she promptly replied by sending a force 
 of 8000 men, complete in every detail of cavalry, 
 artillery and infantry, which instead of remaining on 
 the coast, as did the Chinese, at once entered the 
 capital. 
 
 Some diplomatic negotiations ensued. Japan pro- 
 posed that the reform of Korea should be jointly 
 undertaken by herself and China. The proposal 
 was flatly refused, whereupon Japan laid before the 
 Korean Government an independent programme of 
 reform and demanded its unqualified acceptance. 
 Korea, encouraged by Yuan Shi Kwai, refused to 
 discuss this programme so long as a Japanese army 
 was in her capital, and when friction was at its 
 height, an incident that might almost be called an 
 accident occurred on the seas which rendered war 
 inevitable. Li Hung Chang determined to reinforce 
 his troops in Korea, and for that purpose chartered 
 the "Kowshing," a British steamer, to transport 
 1500 men from Tientsin. When she was on her 
 voyage, under the British flag, manned by British 
 officers and a crew who, though of Chinese race, 
 were British subjects, she was intercepted by the 
 Japanese cruiser "Naniwa" under the command of 
 the officer, then a post captain, who has since become 
 world-famous as Admiral Togo and called upon to 
 surrender and follow the "Naniwa" to a Japanese
 
 YIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 111 
 
 port. The Chinese officers of the troops on board 
 forcibly prevented the master from complying with 
 this demand : a signal was made from the " Naniwa " 
 for Europeans to save themselves by jumping over- 
 board, a torpedo was discharged, and in a moment 
 the " Kowshing " was sinking. The master and some 
 of his deck officers saved themselves by swimming 
 until they were picked up by the " Naniwa's " boats, 
 but everyone else on board, most of the engine-room 
 staff of British engineers, the crew of British subjects, 
 and all the Chinese soldiers perished, the boats re- 
 fusing to save a single soul of Chinese race. 
 
 This occurred on the 25th of July 1894 and seven 
 days later war was formally declared by both Powers. 
 Two battles were fought on Korean soil and a naval 
 engagement took place in Korean waters off the 
 mouth of the Yalu river. Then, Japan having se- 
 cured the command of the sea, the scene of the war 
 was transferred to Manchuria, where a campaign 
 ensued which lasted for six months. The perfection 
 of Japanese military organisation, which had pro- 
 vided every requisite that human foresight could 
 suggest for a winter campaign amidst the Arctic 
 rigours of the Manchurian mountains, and the bravery 
 of her officers and soldiers were equally manifested, 
 and victory, unbroken by a single reverse, though 
 tarnished on some occasions by cruel excesses, at- 
 tended her arms both by sea and land throughout
 
 112 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 the whole war. The great fortress of Port Arthur, 
 its approaches both from land and sea guarded by 
 heavily armed forts that had been constructed at 
 great expense by European engineers according to 
 the most modern principles of military science, was 
 taken by storm, and the victorious army was on the 
 high road to Peking, when China, beaten to her 
 knees, made overtures for peace. Li Hung Chang 
 had to swallow the bitter pill of proceeding to Japan, 
 and after discussions which lasted nearly a month, 
 a treaty of peace was signed at Shimonoseki on 
 April 17, 1895. Assassination has, it has been men- 
 tioned before, been a recurring incident in all 
 Japanese politics both ancient and modern. It was 
 not wanting in the peace negotiations. While they 
 were in progress an attempt to assassinate Li Hung 
 Chang was made by a Japanese fanatic indignant 
 at the thought that peace prevented the crowning 
 triumph of the military occupation of Peking. That 
 the old samurai spirit of Japan was not yet dead was 
 manifested by the fact that fully a score of officers 
 with the army in the field committed suicide in the 
 orthodox method of hara-kiri for the same reason. 
 
 The principal terms of the treaty of peace pro- 
 vided that the Liao Tung peninsula, at the southern 
 extremity of which lies the fortress of Port Arthur, 
 and Formosa, together with the Pescadore islands 
 which are adjacent to it, should be ceded to Japan ;
 
 vni] FOREIGN RELATIONS 113 
 
 that a war indemnity of 200,000,000 taels should be 
 paid to her in eight instalments ; that Wei Hai Wei, 
 another fortified harbour, directly facing Port Arthur, 
 which had also been taken in the war, should be held 
 by her until the last instalment of the indemnity was 
 paid ; and that China should for ever forego all claims 
 to suzerainty over Korea. Some valuable commercial 
 privileges were also secured, in the benefits of which 
 all Western Powers shared equally with Japan under 
 the most favoured nation clauses in their treaties. 
 
 Japan's triumph seemed to be complete. Her 
 diplomatists had been no less successful than her 
 generals and admirals. Her losses in life during the 
 war had been insignificant and the monetary cost 
 was recouped two-fold by the indemnity. She had 
 impressed all the world by her military capacity. 
 She had obtained a large accession of territory of 
 great strategic importance and of equally great po- 
 tential commercial value ; and above all she had 
 attained, in the fullest extent, the ostensible object 
 for which she fought and had finally ousted China from 
 Korea, where thenceforward she could anticipate a 
 free hand in whatever measures she might see fit to 
 adopt, either for the regeneration of Korea or the 
 promotion of her own material interests. But her 
 triumph was soon impaired by a blow as unexpected 
 as it was crushing. 
 
 Hardly had the ratifications been exchanged in
 
 [CH. 
 
 less than a month after the signing of the treaty, 
 when, one morning, the chief diplomatic representa- 
 tives in Tokio of Russia, France and Germany called 
 without notice on the Minister for Foreign Affairs 
 and presented to him a joint note in which Japan 
 was advised, in the interests of the permanent peace 
 of the East, to forego the cession of any Chinese 
 territory on the mainland. The note contained no 
 threats, but it was verbally intimated, in terms which 
 left no doubt, that the three Powers were prepared 
 if necessary to enforce the acceptance of their advice. 
 Japan was exhausted by the war : her military 
 stores and money had been all used ; her ships were 
 in urgent need of extensive repairs ; and her military 
 authorities declared that she was incapable of re- 
 sisting the new coalition which faced her. The 
 national pride was bitterly wounded, but once more 
 the Emperor took upon himself the responsibility of 
 impressing on his people the necessity of accepting 
 what was inevitable. None but he could have suc- 
 ceeded. In his rescript, he declared that : 
 
 he bad taken up arms for no other reason than his desire to secure 
 for the Orient a lasting peace, that the friendly recommendations of 
 the three Powers were equally prompted by the same desire, and that 
 he therefore did not hesitate to accept them as in no way impairing 
 the honour and dignity of his Empire. 
 
 The peninsula was restored to China, Japan re- 
 ceiving as a solatium an additional indemnity of
 
 vin] FOREIGN RELATIONS 115 
 
 30,000,000 taels. She asked for a pledge that no 
 portion of the retroceded territory should ever be 
 given to any foreign Power, but it was categorically 
 refused, and from that day she saw that war with 
 Russia was inevitable in the future and she began 
 to prepare herself so that when the time came she 
 could enter on it with no less confidence in its result 
 than that which had animated her when she flung 
 down the gauntlet to China. 
 
 In the meantime she quickly testified her in- , 
 tention of honourably endeavouring to accomplish 
 the aims which were the avowed object of the war. 
 Her troops were withdrawn from both Korea and 
 Manchuria as rapidly as transport could be found for 
 them, and the reform of Korea, the task of leading 
 or driving her into the path of progress, was en- 
 trusted to the veteran statesman, Count Inouye, who 
 took up his new post as Minister at the Court of 
 Seoul without delay. He had, as a cabinet minister, 
 been long and closely associated with Sir Harry 
 Parkes. No one knew better the share which Sir 
 Harry Parkes had in the reform of Japan and he had 
 now before him the role in Korea which Sir Harry 
 Parkes had so successfully performed in Japan. 
 
 As one of the elder statesmen (Genro), Count 
 Inouye held a position that was only second to that 
 of Marquis Ito in the estimation of his countrymen. 
 He was, like Ito, a Choshiu clansman, and was, like 
 
 8?.
 
 116 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 him, one of the earliest of the clansmen to be con- 
 verted to the policy of opening the country and 
 adopting Western civilisation. When five youths of 
 the clan, braving the penalty of death or of life-long 
 banishment, secretly left their country in May 1863, 
 in order to study in England, Ito and Inouye were of 
 their number, but while their companions made their 
 journey from Shanghai to England in a mail steamer, 
 Ito and Inouye shipped in a sailing ship and both 
 worked their passages as ordinary seamen on the 
 long voyage round the Cape, sharing throughout it 
 the same food, accommodation and work as the rest 
 of the crew. This they did in order to learn navi- 
 gation, a knowledge of which they thought was a 
 primary essential to Japan's material development. 
 They had been in England only one year, during 
 which they acquired a sound knowledge of the English 
 language which neither ever lost in after life, when 
 they heard of the complications between their feudal 
 lord and the Western Powers which eventuated in 
 the bombardment of Shimonoseki. They knew that 
 the anti-foreign policy of Japan could only bring 
 disaster, and both abandoned their studies and hastily 
 returned home in order to stop their lord's folly even 
 at the sacrifice of their lives, which were liable to 
 legal forfeiture for having secretly left their country. 
 Their efforts were in vain and the bombardment of 
 Shimonoseki took place. Both nearly met their deaths
 
 Ito 
 
 Inouye (Viscount) Endo 
 
 Inouye (Marquis) Yarnao 
 
 The five Choshiu Students in England 1864
 
 vin] FOREIGN RELATIONS 117 
 
 at the hands of their fellow-clansmen, who regarded 
 them as traitors to their clan and to their country, 
 and Inouye, who is happily still alive, bears many 
 scars of the terrible wounds he received at the time. 
 Both afterwards took an active share in all the 
 struggles of the Restoration, and when it was ac- 
 complished both became subordinate officials of the 
 new Government to which their knowledge of Western 
 affairs and of the English language, then a very rare 
 accomplishment, was of inestimable value. The rise 
 of both was rapid. Ito, as already stated, became 
 Minister President within sixteen years from the 
 Restoration. Inouye filled many high offices in the 
 Cabinet, including that of Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
 and always showed himself to be possessed of a high 
 degree of courage, firmness and tact, as well as of the 
 fertility of resource, and the foresight and adminis- 
 trative ability that are essential in a great statesman. 
 It was to this Minister that the Emperor entrusted 
 the task which Japan had set herself in Korea. 
 
 The difficulties which confronted Inouye on his 
 arrival were very great China had been driven out 
 of the peninsula and her active influence on its affairs 
 eradicated, but the spirit of Chinese conservatism 
 remained, and it found its exponent in the Queen, 
 a woman of strong and vigorous character, scarcely 
 less so than Tsu Hsi, the great Dowager Empress of 
 China. She completely dominated her weak and
 
 118 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 vacillating husband, and was herself an inflexible 
 opponent of reform and progress, and a champion 
 of the venality and tyranny that had hitherto been 
 the chief characteristics of the Court and Govern- 
 ment. From the first Inouye found in her an effective 
 barrier to the most important of his measures, and he 
 was scarcely less handicapped by the conduct of his 
 own countrymen in Korea. The worst rogues and 
 bullies of Japan and Japan produces abundance of 
 both types poured into the unfortunate country, 
 and robbed and browbeat the terrified natives in 
 a way that filled European witnesses with indignation 
 and horror, and increased tenfold the traditional 
 hatred of the natives to the very name of Japan. 
 And Inouye himself made the one serious error in 
 judgment that is apparent in the long record of his 
 great career. He estimated the assimilative capacity 
 of the Koreans by that of his own countrymen, and 
 just as the latter were in 1871, apparently in a moment, 
 converted from disciples of conservative bigotry into 
 apostles of wholesale reform, so he thought could be 
 the Koreans. He forgot that his great British proto- 
 type in Japan had spent five years of earnest propa- 
 gandism before Japanese statesmen were induced to 
 enter whole-heartedly on the paths into which he was 
 now anxious to lead the Koreans. 
 
 He succeeded in reorganising the military system 
 and the local administration. But a host of other
 
 vni] FOREIGN RELATIONS 119 
 
 reforms, which descended from national legislation 
 and finance down to the smallest details of domestic 
 life, bewildering to a people whose customs had 
 remained unchanged through centuries, could only 
 be kept alive by his own commanding influence. 
 When, after a year, he left Korea and was replaced 
 by a successor, who, though a Lieutenant-General in 
 the army and a Viscount in the peerage, proved to 
 be lacking in every quality of constructive and ad- 
 ministrative statesmanship, all that he had done was 
 quickly undone and all the worst features of Korean 
 maladministration revived. Then occurred the most 
 shocking incident of the reign of the Emperor, one 
 that for its atrocity and cruelty in our own time 
 finds its only parallel in the murders of the King and 
 Queen of Servia. Viscount Miura, the new Japanese 
 Minister, saw in the Queen the principal obstacle to 
 the success of Japan's policy. She was hated by a 
 faction of the upper classes of her own people, who 
 knew that her influence would exclude them from all 
 share in the Government. Miura, equally forgetful 
 of the civilisation which his country claimed to have 
 acquired, of the mission which he had undertaken as 
 the apostle of order and legality, of the dignity of his 
 office, and of his own reputation, entered into a con- 
 spiracy with the leader of the Korean faction for the 
 murder of the Queen, and the object of the conspiracy 
 was accomplished during the night of October 7, 1895.
 
 120 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 A mixed band of Koreans and Japanese, the latter 
 including not only police and military officers, but 
 even some members of the staff of Miura's Legation, 
 surprised and overpowered the palace guards and, 
 having made their way into the royal apartments, 
 " slashed to death " the Queen and many of the ladies 
 and officials of her court who tried in vain to hide or 
 protect her. The corpses were saturated with paraffin 
 and burnt in the courtyard. 
 
 When the incident, with its details of revolting 
 cruelty, became known in Tokio, Miura and all his 
 satellites were at once recalled and brought to trial, 
 but all escaped through legal technicalities and 
 suffered no other punishment than the dismissal of 
 those who were in Government service. But even 
 if they had paid the penalty of their savagery with 
 their lives, the mischief they had done could not 
 have been undone. Japan, at one blow, lost all the 
 influence in Korea which her success in the war with 
 China had won for her, and it was not regained until 
 she had fought another and a greater war. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS. 1895 1913 
 
 IN 1884, Russia concluded a commercial treaty 
 with Korea, and from that time was represented in 
 Seoul by one of the ablest members of her diplomatic
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 121 
 
 service. So long as China's influence was predominant, 
 and afterwards during the regime of Count Inouye, 
 he was content to play an unobtrusive part in local 
 politics, but the murder of the Queen gave him a 
 new opportunity. The terrified King and the Crown 
 Prince fled from their palace and took refuge in the 
 Russian Legation, where they remained for two years. 
 There they were completely under the control of the 
 astute minister, who became the de facto ruler of 
 the country just as Yuan Shi Kwai and Inouye had, 
 in their turns, previously been. He cared nothing 
 for the internal reform of Korea; so far from that, 
 the more chaotic her Government became, the more 
 likely was she to be a helpless prey whenever Russia 
 might think the time had come to grasp it, and that 
 time would come with the completion of the Trans- 
 Siberian railway. In the meantime, every step that 
 could consolidate Russian influence was taken. 
 Russian officers were appointed as instructors to the 
 Korean army, financial officials to the control of the 
 treasury, civil advisers to the other administrative 
 departments, and commercial concessions, involving 
 substantial territorial rights that afforded plausible 
 excuses for placing Russian troops and colonists in 
 northern Korea, were easily obtained. 
 
 Japan endeavoured to repair the terrible blunder 
 she had made in entrusting her representation to one 
 so unfitted as Miura by sending, in his place, Baron
 
 122 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Komura, who was as conspicuous for the possession 
 of all the qualities that fitted him for a difficult 
 diplomatic post as Miura was the reverse, who was, 
 in later years, the negotiator of the Portsmouth 
 Treaty, Ambassador to Great Britain and Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs, but even his great abilities could 
 achieve nothing. Numerous eiforts were made to 
 come to an understanding with Russia, both at 
 St Petersburg and in Tokio, but while Russia was 
 willing enough to sign any conventions, she showed 
 by her actions that she had no intention of abiding 
 by them one moment longer than it suited her to 
 do so. 
 
 It was not in Korea alone that her activity was 
 manifested. She had in 1895, with the help of France 
 and Germany, compelled Japan to restore to China 
 the Liao Tung peninsula and the fortress of Port 
 Arthur. Within less than three years she induced 
 China to cede to her, on a so-called lease, the southern 
 part of the peninsula and the fortress, in cynical dis- 
 regard of all the alleged reasons for depriving Japan 
 of what had been legitimately won in war. She thus 
 acquired a fortress that was believed, when in capable 
 hands, to be impregnable, whose situation rendered 
 it of immense strategic importance, which furnished 
 what she had been so long desiring, an ice-free port 
 for her fleet on the Pacific. It was notified to the 
 world that the right of entrance to the harbour would
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 123 
 
 henceforth be limited to the warships of Russia and 
 China, the latter, since the Japan war, being a non- 
 existing quantity, and it soon became evident that the 
 acquisition of Port Arthur was only a stepping-stone 
 to that of the three rich provinces of China which 
 combine to form Manchuria. Russia obtained from 
 China the right of carrying her trans-Siberian rail- 
 way through Manchuria, both to Port Arthur and to 
 Vladivostok, and of guarding the line by her own 
 troops. As no limit was placed on the number of 
 the latter, or on the extent of territory they were 
 supposed to guard, Russian garrisons soon became 
 conspicuous throughout the three provinces, and even 
 the capital Mukden, the birth-place of the Imperial 
 Manchus, was not exempt. The Boxer rising in 1900 
 gave the opportunity for the undisguised annexation 
 of a large strip of land on the right bank of the 
 river Amur, which till then had been the boundary 
 of Siberia and northern Manchuria, and a further 
 plausible opportunity, with the military strength to 
 take advantage of it, was only awaited to extend this 
 annexation to the whole territory. 
 
 With a fortified naval base at Vladivostok on 
 the East of Korea, another even stronger at Port 
 Arthur on the West, and all Manchuria on the North 
 in Russian hands, the ultimate fate of Korea would 
 be sealed. Russia could take possession of the whole 
 peninsula whenever she wished and Japan would
 
 124 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 then have on her sea borders, only a few miles from 
 her own shores, a greedy and unscrupulous Power 
 of overwhelming military strength. Korea in the 
 Russian grasp more than realized to Japan all the 
 possibilities that the most advanced Unionists profess 
 to foresee in a hostile Ireland under Home Rule and 
 in active sympathy with a strong naval Power at 
 war with Great Britain. Or to take another parallel, 
 equally applicable to ourselves, she regarded such 
 an eventuality as equally pregnant with danger to 
 her own national existence as we should the absorp- 
 tion of Belgium and Holland by the German Empire. 
 The completion of the trans-Siberian Railway en- 
 abled Russia to make large increases in her troops, 
 her Pacific fleet was reinforced by battleships of the 
 first class and the fortifications of Port Arthur and 
 Vladivostok were strengthened by every means that 
 military engineering could devise to render them 
 impregnable. 
 
 Japan on her side was not idle. Through all 
 these years, she was steadily developing her material 
 and military resources and both advanced by leaps 
 and bounds. She was gradually but surely moving 
 towards the time when she could calmly contemplate 
 the results of a conflict even with Russia. But 
 France was Russia's ally and it was known that the 
 alliance was not confined to Europe. Germany had 
 already shown that she would not be indisposed to
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 125 
 
 act with Russia in the Far East, and however ready 
 Japan might be to face Russia single-handed, she 
 could not risk a conflict in which Russia could rely 
 on the active co-operation of one and at least the 
 sympathy of another great military Power. Her 
 difficulty was solved when the Treaty of Alliance 
 with Great Britain, signed in London on January 30, 
 1902, gave her the assurance that if the juncture 
 arose, she would, in her turn, not be left to meet it 
 alone. 
 
 Two more years of diplomatic negotiation followed 
 without change in Russia's methods. Her represen- 
 tative in Japan and her other agents in the East 
 blundered much as the Chinese Minister had done 
 ten years previously. They did not underestimate 
 Japanese patriotism, but they entirely misjudged 
 the completeness of Japan's military preparations 
 and took little pains to conceal the contempt they 
 felt for her as an adversary on either sea or land. 
 Acting on their information Russia thought she could 
 continue to flout, with the same cynical effrontery 
 as before and with absolute impunity to herself, 
 every effort that was made by Japan to provide 
 the safe-guards that were thought to be essential for 
 the independence of Korea and her own territorial 
 integrity. 
 
 Patience, no matter how long-suffering, has its 
 limits, and those which Japan had prescribed for
 
 126 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 herself in this case were transgressed in 1904, and 
 on the 10th of February war was formally declared 
 in Tokio. The date was one of great historical 
 associations. It was one day earlier than that on 
 which Jimmu, the first Emperor, ascended the throne 
 more than 2,500 years before, and than that on which 
 the reigning Emperor had promulgated, in 1889, the 
 constitution to his people. It was two days earlier 
 than that on which the Anglo-Japanese alliance was 
 published to the world. 
 
 The command of the sea was essential to the 
 accomplishment of Japan's plan of campaign. She 
 had a powerful fleet in full commission under the 
 supreme command of Admiral Togo, the officer who, 
 as captain of the "Naniwa," struck the first blow 
 in the war with China, but that of Russia was, on 
 paper, somewhat stronger, and it could in time be 
 reinforced from the Baltic, while Japan had neither 
 reserves to fall back upon nor possible means, while 
 the war lasted, of acquiring new ships of the first 
 class to replace any that were lost. She could not 
 therefore afford to stake everything on one general 
 engagement, but her difficulty was solved by the 
 enterprise of Togo and the supineness of the Russians 
 in their avowed contempt for their enemy. The 
 main Russian fleet was at anchor in the roadstead 
 outside the harbour of Port Arthur, but four first- 
 class cruisers were far away at Vladivostok and
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 127 
 
 one, with a gunboat, was at Chemulpo. Not only 
 was no attempt made to unite these scattered ships, 
 but so little belief was felt in the possibility of Japan 
 venturing on war that the most ordinary precautions 
 were neglected by the fleet at Port Arthur. On the 
 night of the 8th of February most of the officers 
 were actually on shore at a ball. Those left on 
 board were probably thinking of nothing less than 
 a coming attack, when suddenly the Japanese 
 flotilla of torpedo boats swooped down and, at the 
 most trifling cost to themselves, inflicted such damage 
 on the Russian fleet that three of its most formidable 
 fighting units were incapacitated for further service. 
 On the following day, the two vessels at Chemulpo 
 were destroyed by an overwhelming force, after an 
 attempt at resistance in which, gallant as it was, 
 not a particle of damage was done either to the men 
 or the ships of the Japanese. Both these events took 
 place before the formal declaration of war. They 
 gave Japan the undisputed command of the sea, and 
 when the declaration was made she knew that she 
 could land her troops when and where she would. 
 Russia tried to redeem her first naval failure by 
 fitting out a great fleet in the Baltic, but when it 
 arrived in Japanese waters, manned with half-trained 
 crews and its ships foul after the long voyage round 
 the Cape, it was totally destroyed in one afternoon. 
 The battle was fought on May 28, 1905, near the
 
 128 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 island of Tsushima, from which it takes its name, and 
 it was in its results the most decisive and complete 
 since Trafalgar. 
 
 Space permits us to devote but a few words to 
 the campaign on land. There, too, victory attended 
 the Japanese arms but it was gained at heavy cost. 
 The great fortress of Port Arthur was once more 
 taken after a siege which lasted six mouths, and six 
 great battles were fought, one of which (Liao-Yang) 
 lasted for nine and another (Mukden) for fourteen 
 days. The end of all was a deadlock. The Russian 
 armies, though repeatedly defeated, still presented 
 a bold front and Japan was coming to the limit of 
 her resources both of men and money. Then the 
 President of the United States intervened and peace 
 was established by the Treaty of Portsmouth (New 
 Jersey, U.S.A.) which was signed on August 29, 1905. 
 
 The provisions of the treaty were in some degree 
 a repetition of those of the treaty of Shimonoseki. 
 Japan's preponderating influence in Korea, political, 
 military and economic, was once more admitted. The 
 southern extremity of the Liao Tung Peninsula and 
 Port Arthur were once more ceded to her. Russia 
 also undertook to evacuate Southern Manchuria, and 
 as China had ceded Formosa so did Russia now cede 
 the southern half of Saghalin. Japan also obtained 
 control of the southern section of the Manchurian 
 Railway for a length of 521 miles from the terminus
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 129 
 
 at Port Arthur together with all the collateral privi- 
 leges that Russia had extorted from China. Those 
 were her fruits of the war, which had cost her 
 more than 170 millions sterling and 230,000 of her 
 soldiers, killed or wounded. No war indemnity 
 was paid and while Japan had secured in the fullest 
 degree the objects for which she had fought, she had 
 now to face all the burthens of what was, relative 
 to her resources, an enormous national debt and to 
 assume the obligation of safe-guarding her new 
 possessions and interests on the mainland of Asia. 
 Provision had to be made for the interest and 
 amortisation of the national debt, but this necessity 
 did not deter the Government from immediately 
 adopting measures to ensure the large increase in 
 the fighting strength of the nation that was demanded 
 by its new responsibilities. 
 
 Six divisions were added to the army, raising the 
 total from thirteen, the number before the Russian 
 War, to nineteen. Each division is in itself a com- 
 plete fighting unit, comprising infantry, cavalry, 
 artillery, engineers /and transport, and greater rela- 
 tive increases were made in the latter branches of 
 each division than in the infantry. Improvements 
 were effected in the arms, organisation and general 
 equipment of the whole army. The conscription 
 law was altered and the period of service with the 
 colours reduced from three to two years, but that 
 
 L. .9
 
 130 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 in the reserve was simultaneously extended from 
 four to ten years, the results of the two measures 
 being that it became possible to enrol annually a 
 much larger number of conscripts than formerly, 
 while the first reserve was increased from 200,000 
 to 500,000 men. The total strength of the army 
 on its peace footing is now close upon 250,000 and 
 it is estimated that, in little more than ten years, 
 Japan will be able to put into the field for foreign 
 service, should occasion require it, not less than 
 1,500,000 men, all fully trained soldiers, while 
 another million men of the "reinforcing reserve" 
 (Hoju), conscripts who, though physically fit, are 
 not called to the colours and receive only a short- 
 training of a few months' duration spread over two 
 years, will be available both for the defence of the 
 country against invasion and also for filling up 
 vacancies in the first fighting lines. Every man 
 cheerfully undergoes all the sacrifices that are 
 necessary to make him efficient and he is ready 
 whenever called upon. 
 
 No less care was given to the extension of the 
 navy than to the army. Before the Russian War 
 Japan possessed, exclusive of torpedo boats, 79 war 
 vessels with a total displacement of 274,000 tons, 
 of which six were first-class battleships, the whole 
 being manned by a personnel of 46,000 officers and 
 men. Two battleships and eight cruisers were lost
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 131 
 
 during the war, but five battleships and eleven 
 cruisers were captured from the Russians. An 
 extensive building programme was initiated after 
 the war, the result of which is that the navy now 
 consists of 124 ships with a displacement of over 
 500,000 tons, including 16 battleships and 13 armed 
 cruisers of the first class, manned by a personnel 
 of over 48,000 officers and men. Arsenals, dock- 
 yards, powder factories and land fortifications were 
 also increased in size and efficiency, and all the 
 measures necessary for naval construction completed 
 so as to render Japan absolutely independent in 
 the construction and arming of ships of the largest 
 size and most modern design. 
 
 These increases in the fighting strength required 
 equally large increases in the national expenditure. 
 The annual budget which, previous to the war, pro- 
 vided for an army expenditure of about five millions 
 sterling and for the navy of less than three millions 
 rose to eleven millions and eight millions respec- 
 tively, and these charges added to the interest on 
 the national debt, necessitated an immense increase 
 in taxation. The national revenue before the war 
 was twenty-six millions sterling. It is now nearly 
 fifty-eight millions, the yield from taxation alone 
 having been increased from fourteen to thirty-two 
 millions sterling. 
 
 Industry and trade have developed and the 
 
 92
 
 132 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 general economic conditions of the country im- 
 proved to an extent that has enabled the people 
 to bear the new financial burthens without distress, 
 and though retrenchment has been one of the 
 principal planks in the platform of the leading 
 political parties, the Government has been able to 
 maintain the foreign credit and policy of the nation 
 unhampered by the dread of serious financial em- 
 barrassments at home. The Anglo-Japanese alliance 
 was re-ratified and extended in 1905. An entente 
 was established with Russia and France two years 
 later and the bonds thus created were morally 
 strengthened when the trend of European politics 
 brought Great Britain into close association with 
 the two latter Powers. Japan has been able to 
 proceed on the path which she had marked out for 
 herself in Korea without fear of further complica- 
 tions in the future, of which the possibility would 
 never have been wholly wanting had Russia con- 
 tinued to adhere to her old policy of expansion 
 southwards in the Far East and to cherish feelings 
 of one day recovering by her arms all that she had 
 lost in the war. 
 
 At the very outset of the war, when Japan had 
 secured command of the sea but before the first land 
 battle had been fought on the banks of the Yalu, 
 a new treaty was concluded between Japan and 
 Korea, by which the latter pledged herself to adopt
 
 Marquis Inouye
 

 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 133 
 
 the advice of the former in regard to the improvement 
 of the administration, while Japan in return under- 
 took to secure both " the external and internal peace 
 and the independence and integrity of Korea," as 
 well as "the safety and repose of the Imperial House" 
 the King had, in 1897, assumed the title of and 
 been recrowned as Emperor, an act which emphasized 
 his complete freedom from vassalage to China. A 
 supplement to this treaty, signed in 1905, gave to 
 Japan the control of Korea's foreign relations and 
 Prince Ito he was advanced to the highest rank in 
 the peerage after the war, and Count Inouye was at 
 the same time advanced to the Marquisate was 
 appointed Resident-General, and his great abilities 
 and experience were thenceforward devoted to the 
 task, which he had accomplished with such brilliant 
 success in his own country, of effecting the complete 
 political and social reform of Korea. His position 
 was, however, in some degree similar to that of 
 Marquis Inouye. He was still only an adviser, and 
 though the Korean Government had pledged itself to 
 accept his advice, when it failed to do so, as was 
 often the case, he had no means of enforcing the 
 measures he thought necessary. A strong step was 
 unavoidable. In July 1907, the Emperor was forced 
 to abdicate, after a reign of 40 years, in favour of his 
 son and simultaneously a new convention was signed, 
 which practically vested the Resident-General with
 
 134 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 supreme legislative and executive authority. He 
 was now no longer an adviser but an administrator 
 able to enforce his will, and a sweeping campaign of 
 reform was at once instituted, which affected not only 
 every branch of the Government, from the court to 
 the most remote local prefectures, but the whole 
 social system of the nation. 
 
 A great measure of success was achieved not only 
 in administrative and legislative reforms, but also in 
 the development of education, industry, sanitation and 
 communications, but Prince Ito was not fated to see 
 the results of his work. On October 26, 1909, he was 
 assassinated by one of the people whom he was trying 
 to benefit, and his great career came to an end, 
 a career which, both in the service he rendered to 
 his country and in the world-wide reputation as a 
 statesman which it brought to him, is only paralleled 
 in modern times by those of Lincoln, Bismarck and 
 Cavour. The pride in which his memory is held in 
 his own country may well be shared by Great Britain. 
 The short education which he received in his youth 
 in England and the knowledge that he then acquired 
 of the foundations of the political and commercial 
 greatness of the British Empire were the mainsprings 
 of all the great efforts of his manhood, by which he 
 transformed his own country from a puny and in- 
 significant Asiatic despotism, torn by internecine 
 strife and fettered by the iron shackles of feudalism,
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 135 
 
 into one of the great constitutional, military and 
 commercial Powers of the world. 
 
 With his death the last hopes faded of preserving 
 even the nominal independence of Korea. The regime 
 of a protectorate which, through him, Japan was 
 endeavouring to render effective, threatened to 
 collapse when the great guiding hand was taken 
 away, and before another year had passed, on Au- 
 gust 29, 1910, the last step was taken and Korea was 
 formally annexed to the Japanese Empire. The step 
 had been under consideration even before Ito's death, 
 and it is possible that he may have seen its ultimate 
 necessity as the only means of Japan attaining in its 
 completest sense all she had fought for in her two 
 great wars. She had persistently disclaimed any 
 desire for territorial aggression. She had in her 
 treaty of 1904 with Korea unequivocally pledged 
 herself to secure the independence and integrity of 
 the Korean Empire, and when she did so she honestly 
 intended to observe her undertaking to its uttermost 
 limits. But facts had proved too strong for her. All 
 the sacrifices she had made which included a very 
 large direct outlay on Korea's behalf had failed to 
 furnish definite prospects of the effective regeneration 
 of the unhappy, ill-governed kingdom, or of the 
 permanent reform of glaring social abuses that 
 had lasted for centuries. The only hope for the 
 future lay in Japan openly assuming the full
 
 136 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 responsibility of the administration in name as 
 well as in deed. 
 
 Her colony of Formosa has been successfully 
 exploited and, by good government, order has been 
 maintained and the great natural resources of the 
 island so well used that it now promises to become 
 a valuable commercial asset to the Empire. What 
 has been achieved in Formosa will no doubt in due 
 time be also achieved in Korea, when all the black 
 records of the past have been erased from the 
 memories of its people by the just and humane 
 treatment which the Emperor ordered his officials to 
 extend to them and by a security of life and property 
 that they never knew when under their own au- 
 thorities. 
 
 The long Korean chapter in the history of Japan's 
 Foreign Relations is now closed and the main source 
 of her external complications is gone. Neither Great 
 Britain nor Russia, the two Powers most materially 
 interested, raised one word of protest against the 
 annexation. Great Britain was Japan's ally and the 
 entente with Russia facilitated the specific delimita- 
 tion of the future spheres of both in the Far East of 
 the Asiatic continent. Russia has abandoned all her 
 old projects of territorial expansion to the South, 
 and Japan has acquired a free hand in South Man- 
 churia, where she has opened for herself a path not 
 unlike that which was the object of Russia before the
 
 ixl FOREIGN RELATIONS 137 
 
 war. The rights which she obtained by the treaty 
 of Portsmouth, subsequently ratified by a convention 
 with China, have not only been utilised to the fullest 
 extent, but even attempts on the part of other nations 
 to share in the development of railway construction, 
 with its consequent commercial advantages in Man- 
 churia, have been successfully resisted. Japanese 
 troops are now in Southern Manchuria for the same 
 ostensible purpose of guarding the existing railway 
 lines as were formerly the Russian. Japanese immi- 
 grants have been flocking into and settling in the 
 province, and though parliament has recently put its 
 veto on the large increase of the army in Korea that 
 the military authorities demanded as a necessary 
 measure for the maintenance of Japan's interests, 
 every present indication leads to the assumption that 
 the control which is now exercised over Southern 
 Manchuria is intended to be permanent and that 
 continued political unrest in China may even afford 
 plausible grounds for open annexation. 
 
 Since the war, Japan's only external controversies 
 have been with the United States of America, the 
 country on which, throughout the early years of the 
 Imperial Government, she relied as her best political 
 friend, the one in strongest sympathy with all her 
 national aspirations. Her action in Manchuria has 
 been one subject of these controversies, but their 
 beginning is to be found in more domestic incidents.
 
 138 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 Large numbers of Japanese traders, artisans and 
 skilled agriculturists emigrated to the Pacific slope 
 both of the United States and of Canada, attracted 
 not only by the high wages that were obtainable for 
 their very efficient labour, but also by the commercial 
 and agricultural openings that could be profitably 
 exploited by those who either brought a small capital 
 with them or afterwards acquired it while in service. 
 As small tradesmen, as skilled mechanics, and as 
 fruit growers, living and carrying on their occupations 
 at far less cost than was possible for their competitors 
 of European descent, they were always able to under- 
 sell the latter and acquired therefore a very consider- 
 able degree of prosperity. 
 
 They were not welcome either in British Columbia 
 or in California, but their numbers continued to 
 increase through the facilities provided for them by 
 large emigration companies in Japan, and the result 
 was an outburst both in British Columbia and in 
 California of anti- Asiatic prejudice, which, in 1907, 
 attained to such dimensions that the local legislatures 
 were forced to pass Immigration Acts generally 
 restricting the further ingress of Asiatics, but in 
 both cases mainly directed against Japanese. The 
 California!! legislature added insult to injury by 
 debarring the children of Japanese, who were already 
 resident in the State, from the privilege of attending 
 the State schools.
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 139 
 
 These measures provoked intense indignation in 
 Japan and were a cause of great embarrassment to 
 the Governments of Canada and the United States. 
 Under the treaties, Japanese had clearly the right of 
 entering and residing in the territories of both with- 
 out limitation of any kind as to occupations or 
 districts, and an obligation lay on the Governments 
 to see that the provisions of the treaties were not 
 violated by individual State legislatures which, what- 
 ever was the extent of the local autonomy enjoyed 
 by them, were subordinate to the central Govern- 
 ments in all Imperial affairs. A serious international 
 difficulty was threatened, but it was happily averted 
 by the good sense and conciliatory disposition of the 
 Government of Japan. No abatement was made of 
 the admitted treaty rights, but in Japan restrictions 
 were placed on emigration which were effective in 
 limiting that across the Pacific to a very moderate 
 scale and in confining the emigrants to persons who 
 were not likely to become industrial competitors with 
 Europeans. This question was thus settled, for the 
 time being, but it has, at the time of writing, ap- 
 parently been revived in California in a somewhat 
 acute form, one which, if it continues, must cause 
 serious friction between the two Governments. That 
 of the United States cannot, under the constitution, 
 interfere with the sovereign autonomy which each indi- 
 vidual State enjoys in its local affairs. That of Japan is
 
 140 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 in no mood to brook any infraction of its treaty rights 
 or any derogatory discrimination against its people. 
 
 Their growing trans-Pacific trade caused the 
 United States to give increased attention to affairs 
 in China and to lend their diplomatic support to the 
 preservation both of China's territorial integrity and 
 of the principle of the "open door," by which all 
 nations enjoy equal commercial opportunities through- 
 out the whole Empire. Japan's actions in Manchuria, 
 with their possible eventualities, were not unnoticed 
 in the States. An effort was made in 1910 to 
 counteract them in the proposal of the Secretary 
 of State (Mr Knox) that all the railways in Man- 
 churia should be neutralised, but its only direct result 
 was the conclusion of a further agreement between 
 Japan and Russia for the defence of their mutual 
 interests and the maintenance of the status quo. The 
 rebuff has not diminished the active interest of the 
 United States in the future of China, which in her 
 turn, under her new republican Government, evinces 
 a growing desire to rely on the United States for 
 both political and financial support. The mutual 
 attitudes of the United States and Japan across the 
 Pacific are now not unlike those of the German 
 Empire and Great Britain in Europe, outwardly 
 friendly but with a strong undercurrent of mistrust 
 in the militant sections of both nations. Both are 
 aspirants for the hegemony of the Pacific.
 
 ix] FOREIGN RELATIONS 141 
 
 The controversies between the United States and 
 Japan gave rise to serious apprehension in Great 
 Britain as to the obligations of the alliance in the 
 event of a war between the two Powers and the com- 
 plications which might arise under the General Treaty 
 of Arbitration, then being negotiated with the United 
 States, on the one side and the Treaty of Alliance 
 with Japan on the other. A new Treaty of Alliance, 
 to continue in force for ten years, was therefore con- 
 cluded in 1911, by which modifications, intended to 
 remove this apprehension, were introduced into the 
 old, and in the same year a new commercial treaty 
 was also negotiated and signed, the latter containing 
 a special tariff clause under which the customs dues 
 are fixed on the principal British imports to Japan. 
 These had been so largely increased by the Japanese 
 legislature in 1910 as to threaten a very serious 
 diminution of British trade, and a commercial was 
 therefore superimposed on the political grievance 
 created by the Alliance. The former, if not removed 
 in its absolute entirety, was so materially softened 
 by the new treaty as to leave no reasonable ground 
 for discontent on the part of the manufacturer in 
 Great Britain. The customs dues now levied in Japan 
 are much heavier than they were, but the aggregate 
 value of British imports has substantially increased, 
 and by the Alliance Great Britain is, at a time when 
 it is advisable for her to concentrate her whole naval
 
 142 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 strength in home waters, freed from the obligation of 
 maintaining a strong fleet in the Far East. Great 
 Britain can pride herself in the knowledge that her 
 example originally fired the ambition of Japan. She 
 has her material reward in being able to count upon 
 the faithful support of an ally, whose own military 
 strength and natural advantages constitute an im- 
 pregnable defence against all the world. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE EMPEROR MEIJI 
 
 THE Emperor Mutsu Hito (Gentle Pity) died on 
 the 30th of July 1912, and, in accordance with im- 
 memorial custom, with him died the personal name 
 that he had borne in life. He will be known in 
 history by his posthumous title, the Emperor Meiji 
 (Enlightened Government), the year name so happily 
 chosen at the beginning of his reign and since amply 
 vindicated in all the great administrative changes 
 that have combined to render the name eminently 
 applicable to the reign. In taking the year name as 
 the posthumous title of the Emperor, a new departure 
 was made, but it is possible that the precedent thus 
 created will be followed in future ages. The posthu- 
 mous titles of all the former Emperors were founded
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 143 
 
 on the quality that most favourably characterised the 
 holder in his lifetime, such as " Divine Valour," 
 "Honour the Gods," "Modesty" (in the case of an 
 Empress), "Pious Enlightenment," or were taken 
 from a locality in or in the neighbourhood of Kioto 
 with which the Emperor had some personal connec- 
 tion. Year periods were formerly never synchronous 
 with reigns. New ones were not begun at the begin- 
 ning of a reign but more or less frequently during its 
 continuation. The late Emperor's father, for example, 
 ascended the throne in the third year of Kokwa (great 
 transformation), and three years passed before a new 
 period was begun, while, though his whole reign only 
 lasted for twenty years, it comprised no less than 
 seven year periods. The period of Meiji began in the 
 second calendar year of the late reign and continued 
 unchanged till its close, and there was therefore a 
 reason for giving its title to the Emperor that did 
 not exist in the case of any of his predecessors. Apart 
 from that, no previous sovereign of Japan ever 
 merited, in his personal character or in his govern- 
 ment, the title chosen to honour his memory more 
 than did he to whom that of Meiji has been given. 
 
 The Emperor Meiji was the 121st member of the 
 dynasty which, in an unbroken line of succession, 
 claims to have occupied the throne of Japan since 
 the Emperor Jimmu first ascended it in the year 
 660 B.C. Modern research has reduced to pure
 
 144 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 mythology the first ten centuries of the so-called 
 history of Japan, and it is only from the sixth century 
 of the Christian era that the national annals are such 
 as to bear the light of scientific criticism. Thence- 
 forward they may justly be called authentic history 
 and, however visionary may be the claim of the 
 Imperial House of Japan to the more ancient descent, 
 there is no doubt that from the sixth century it has 
 consecutively occupied the throne, and it is therefore, 
 beyond all cavil, the oldest reigning family in the 
 world. Imperial rescripts emphasize the duration 
 and immutability of the dynasty : " We, sitting on 
 the throne that has been occupied by our Imperial 
 ancestors for 2,500 years " : " The throne of our 
 ancestors of a lineal succession unbroken for ages 
 eternal " : " We, by the grace of Heaven, seated on 
 a throne occupied by the same dynasty from time 
 immemorial," are the ordinary opening words of im- 
 portant rescripts, and they are reverentially accepted 
 by the Emperor's subjects with the same unquestion- 
 ing faith that devout and orthodox Christians tender 
 to the most sacred utterances in Holy Writ. 
 
 No other Sovereign or Pontiff on earth occupies 
 the same position as the Emperor of Japan. In the 
 eyes of his subjects he is the vicegerent on earth of 
 the gods in Heaven, vested with their divine attri- 
 butes of love, benevolence and all-seeing wisdom. In 
 his earthly functions he is both sovereign and pope,
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 145 
 
 who reigns equally in the love and veneration of his 
 people. All the achievements of his statesmen and 
 generals are believed to be due to the virtues which 
 he has inherited from his ancestors and which, in his 
 lifetime, he practises as the Father of his people. It 
 was no spirit of empty flattery that prompted Oyama 
 and Togo, the respective commanders-in-chief of all 
 the military and naval forces in the Russian War, 
 to ascribe to him all the merit of their great victories 
 nor Ito that of his domestic and foreign statesman- 
 ship. They only voiced, in doing so, the faith that 
 was deeply implanted in their own hearts and in 
 those of all their fellow-subjects and was the founda- 
 tion of the fervent loyalty that rendered death for his 
 sake a glorious martyrdom. 
 
 The birth of the Emperor Meiji has been already 
 mentioned in this volume. His early years were 
 passed in the well-guarded seclusion of the Court 
 at Kioto, but when he was little beyond the threshold 
 of his boyhood he had direct experience of the civil 
 war that preceded the Restoration. The Imperial 
 palace was guarded by the forces of the Shogunate, 
 and Choshiu, who had thrown down the gauntlet of 
 rebellion, determined to drive them from their post, 
 and to obtain direct access to the Emperor and his 
 countenance of the revolt against the Shogun. For 
 a whole day and night the battle continued around 
 the palace with varying fortunes ; the gates were 
 
 L. 10
 
 146 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 taken and retaken, bullets fell thickly within the 
 precincts of the palace, many reaching the innermost 
 Imperial apartments, and the din of musketry and 
 artillery was incessant. Choshiu was defeated and 
 the palace was saved, but the city, " surrounded by 
 a ninefold circle of flowers " (flames), was destroyed, 
 and " nothing was left of it but a burnt and scorched 
 desert" 
 
 Before this battle the Emperor had already, when 
 he reached the eighth year of his age, been declared 
 to be the heir-apparent to the throne, and in his 
 fifteenth year he succeeded his father. It cannot 
 be supposed that, at that tender age, he can have 
 exercised a direct influence on the early political 
 events of his reign, but it would have been within 
 his capacity to have withheld his sanction from the 
 ministers who were subverting the most sacred tradi- 
 tions of the Empire, and inflicting what his father 
 would have considered the most degrading humilia- 
 tions on the Imperial dignity when they declared, in 
 his name, that foreign friendship should be cultivated 
 and the Court opened to the diplomatic representa- 
 tives of Foreign Powers. Fortunately, he had had 
 the benefit of tutors more enlightened and liberal- 
 minded than the majority of the courtiers, and the 
 results of their teaching were sufficient to counteract 
 the reactionary sentiments that might have been 
 imbibed from his bigoted father. The germs of the
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 147 
 
 good sense and sound judgment, which he displayed 
 in manhood, must, however, have been active while 
 he was still a boy, and without those qualities it is 
 not likely that any tutors, no matter how capable 
 or how secure in the affections of their pupil, could 
 so speedily have overcome all the prejudices that 
 were founded on filial love and respect, the strongest 
 of all obligations in the Japanese code of morality. 
 It has been already told that the first Europeans 
 admitted to his presence were impressed by his tact 
 and readiness. It is not an extravagant supposition 
 that his own ministers may have had equal reason to 
 appreciate and benefit by the more sober qualities 
 which enabled him to be in full sympathy with their 
 reforms. 
 
 The historians of those days relate no instance 
 in which the ministers found him an obstacle to 
 their measures. He received the hitherto hated and 
 despised foreigners without demur. When he was 
 advised that the future government of his Empire 
 might be facilitated by the transfer of his residence 
 from Kioto to Yedo, he left the home of his child- 
 hood and youth, and of all his ancestors for more 
 than a thousand years, and, resisting the entreaties 
 of devoted disciples of the old school who implored 
 him not to forsake the venerable city that was 
 hallowed by so many sacred memories, he uncom- 
 plainingly made a new home in the mushroom capital 
 
 102
 
 148 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 of the Shoguns, the seat of their government which 
 had usurped all the prerogatives of his Imperial fore- 
 fathers. And when he was farther advised that he 
 should no longer be a hidden mystery to his people, 
 though remembering how his own father in his lifetime 
 had been shrouded from them, he freely and unosten- 
 tatiously showed himself in public, driving about the 
 streets of Tokio, with a small escort, without disturb- 
 ing the daily avocations of the citizens, and taking 
 part in functions and ceremonies where he could be 
 seen by all who cared to look upon him. 
 
 How great this change was may be easily esti- 
 mated from the description already given of his first 
 journey to Osaka, and from that of his first journey 
 to Tokio. In was in October 1868 that he left Kioto 
 for his new capital, 300 miles away. He was 28 days 
 on the road, carried in a palanquin in which he was 
 screened from all onlookers, and on both sides of 
 which double lines of courtiers, all in the stately 
 silken robes of old Japan, walked in slow and solemn 
 step. An escort of 2,000 courtiers and guards at- 
 tended him throughout the entire route. All by- 
 standers fell upon their knees as his procession 
 approached and, as he passed, remained with 
 heads bent reverentially to the ground and in pro- 
 found silence that was only broken by the triple 
 clapping of the hands that prefaces all Japanese 
 prayers. No one dared to lift the eye even to the
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 149 
 
 level of the palanquin that bore him. "All seemed 
 to hold their breaths for very awe as the mysterious 
 Presence, on whom few are privileged to look and 
 live, was passing slowly by." 
 
 Early in the following year he returned to Kioto 
 to celebrate the third anniversary of his father's death 
 (a sacred duty marking the close of the period of deep 
 mourning that has to be performed by Japanese sons 
 of all classes in life) and his own marriage, which took 
 place on March 9, 1869. The lady chosen to share 
 his throne was Haruko, a daughter of the Ichijo 
 branch of the Fujiwara family. The origin of this 
 family, like that of the Imperial House, is shrouded 
 in myth, but an unimpeachable lineage can be traced 
 back to the 7th century. Six hundred years later 
 the family was divided into five branches, of which 
 the Ichijo was one. All of these still exist, their 
 respective heads holding the highest rank in the 
 modern peerage. The marriage, although childless, 
 proved eminently fortunate. The Empress did not 
 begin to take part in public functions so early as her 
 husband. The old traditions that had to be over- 
 come in her case were even more severe than in his, 
 but from the time she did so, she played a true 
 woman's part in all works of charity, and above all 
 in the promotion of female education and in raising 
 the general social conditions of her countrywomen. 
 Women, prior to the Restoration, except in the
 
 150 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 lower agricultural and trading classes, had no other 
 functions than to be the humble and uncomplaining 
 servitors of their husbands and the mothers of their 
 children. They enjoyed more freedom than in other 
 Oriental countries, but they were taught from infancy 
 that their lot in life was obedience, to their fathers 
 while maidens, to their husbands while wives, and to 
 their eldest sons while widows, and no education 
 fitted them to become the intellectual companions 
 of men. It is mainly to the Empress that they owe 
 the emancipation from these conditions which is one 
 of the most marked features in the modern life of 
 Japan. 
 
 After his marriage the Emperor returned to Tokio 
 where he was soon followed by his bride. There both 
 afterwards lived continuously till they were parted 
 by death. Both occasionally visited other parts of 
 the Empire, and the Emperor made many state pro- 
 gresses through all parts of his dominions, but Tokio 
 was always their home, and neither showed any 
 inclination to leave it, even to seek temporary refuge 
 from its oppressive heat in summer or from its bitter 
 winter cold. Their presence did much to restore the 
 prosperity of the city under the Tokugawas, when in 
 wealth, population, industry and intelligence it was 
 by far the foremost in the Empire. When the Toku- 
 gawas fell, Yedo fell with them, and for a time it 
 seemed as if all its former glory was gone for ever.
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 151 
 
 But Tokio sprang from its ruins, and, before many 
 years had passed, had not only regained but far sur- 
 passed the most imposing acme of the old prosperity. 
 To compare Tokio of the present day with Yedo 
 as it was, even when the present writer first knew it 
 little more than forty years ago, when the Tokugawas 
 had just surrendered their sceptre, would be like 
 comparing London of the days of Charles II with 
 London as we now daily see it. Yedo was a lovely 
 city, one in which it was a joy to live, with its 
 spacious parks and temple gardens, its great orchards, 
 even in its very heart, of cherry, plum and pear trees, 
 each in turn bright with their masses of fragrant 
 blossom ; its stately palaces of the daimio, with their 
 massive gateways and granite bastions ; and its 
 streets, with never a sound to break the rigid de- 
 corum of their silence, thronged with silk-clad, 
 sword-girded samurai, on foot or on horseback, but 
 in either case proceeding gravely and solemnly as 
 became their rank and dignity. The masses of the 
 people, if serfs, were contented and happy and not 
 a trace of squalid poverty was to be seen even in the 
 poorest quarters. But the city had another aspect. 
 It was equally wanting in sanitation and police. At 
 night it was in its outward appearance a vast solitude, 
 shrouded in Cimmerian darkness, and if there were 
 no foot-pads to be dreaded by the few belated way- 
 farers, drunken samurai returning from wild orgies
 
 152 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 in brothels or taverns, ready to use their terrible 
 swords, with or without provocation, either on their 
 humble fellow-countrymen or on any European who 
 was unfortunate enough to cross their path, or in 
 brawls, that were only ended by death, with others 
 of their own rank, were a terror from which peaceful 
 citizens were never free. The samurai in his dignity, 
 in the day-time, was as stately and picturesque as 
 a courtier of Louis XIV. At night, the dissolute 
 members of the same class, of whom there were 
 many, were as quarrelsome and dangerous as the 
 clansmen in the streets of Edinburgh at the be- 
 ginning of the 18th century. 
 
 Tokio of the present day has all the amenities of 
 the London of George V. It is a more comfortable, 
 convenient, safe and healthy place in which to live, 
 but all that made Yedo so picturesque has gone. 
 Only one feature of its medieval and feudal splendour 
 has been preserved. The deep moats, massive walls 
 and turf-clad glacis that encircled the palace of the 
 Shogun still surround the palace of the Emperor and 
 have lost none of their old grandeur. The pine and 
 cherry trees still line the moat edges and the walls, 
 and myriads of water fowl still find a sanctuary in 
 the moats. Everything else is gone. Even the parks 
 have been disfigured by architectural monstrosities 
 in glaringly-red bricks, and the son of the stately 
 silk-robed samurai now hurries, in a tweed suit and
 
 xj THE EMPEROR MEIJI 153 
 
 a felt hat, to his desk in a bank in a noisy, crowded, 
 electric tram-car. At night the main streets are as 
 brilliant, populous, noisy and safe as Piccadilly ; 
 they are entirely exempt from Piccadilly's plague 
 spot in that there is no open display of female vice, 
 and the danger that confronts the peaceful pedestrian 
 is no longer the sword of the samurai but the motor 
 of the road-hog. 
 
 It is difficult for a foreigner to attempt to estimate 
 the direct share which the Emperor had in all the 
 marvellous progress of his Empire. No sovereign in 
 the history of the world has ever been better served 
 in every department of his government, whether 
 military or civil. None has ever commanded so de- 
 voted a people. But that the Emperor was well 
 served was largely owing to himself. He possessed, 
 in an eminent degree, what is perhaps the most 
 precious attribute of a sovereign, the faculty of 
 judging men, of selecting the best among them as 
 his advisers, and he gave to those whom he selected 
 his complete confidence and a support that never 
 wavered in its loyalty. It is known that he was not 
 only industrious, but industrious even to a degree that 
 would not misbecome a man who had to make his 
 name and earn his livelihood in an arduous pro- 
 fession. He presided in person at important meetings 
 of his cabinet, when vital affairs of state had to be 
 discussed and decided, and read not only the official
 
 154 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 
 
 reports of his ministers and the minutes of his parlia- 
 ments, but the leading journals in the press. He had 
 occasionally to decide between conflicting views of 
 those whom he most trusted, and did so with firm- 
 ness that brooked no contradiction, and without 
 reservation of any kind. When only 21 years of 
 age, as has been already told, he prevented war with 
 Korea, though nearly the whole nation demanded it, 
 and by his decision he had to sacrifice the future 
 services of some of those who had done much to 
 establish him on his throne. Twenty years later, it 
 was he again who decided that Japan must accept 
 the humiliation of yielding to the three Powers, and 
 it was only his decision that reconciled the nation to 
 the sacrifice of what had been fairly won in war. 
 When a refractory parliament rejected the naval 
 estimates that were considered essential for the 
 national safety, he publicly declared that the parlia- 
 ment must give way and it did, awed into prompt 
 submission and shamed perhaps by his sacrifice of 
 a substantial portion of his own civil list. Many 
 other incidents might be quoted, and it may be 
 assumed that the firmness he showed in great was 
 not wanting in less important aflfairs and that at no 
 period of his reign did he ever permit himself to fall 
 into the role of a dummy ruler. 
 
 His interest in both his army and navy was mani- 
 fested by his presence at all manoeuvres and reviews
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 155 
 
 that were held on a large scale. No inclemency of 
 weather ever deterred him, and he was equally 
 assiduous in the performance of the more orna- 
 mental functions of a sovereign. Hospitals were 
 visited, railways, docks and other great public under- 
 takings were opened by him in person, and even 
 jails knew his presence. No work of public benefit, 
 charity or mercy ever sought his personal interest 
 in vain, and his private purse was always open for 
 the relief of the national distress that ensued on fire, 
 earthquake, flood or pestilence, calamities from which 
 his country suffered often and heavily. The rapidity 
 and extent of the purely material advance of Japan, 
 military, industrial and commercial, has thrown into 
 the shade the progress she has made in the domain 
 of science. She may be said to have been absolutely 
 ignorant of even the elements of Western science 
 prior to the Restoration. Now there are few branches 
 in which her sons, if they have not won distinction 
 beyond their own borders, have not, at least, proved 
 themselves capable experts, fully competent both to 
 practise and to teach. That this is so is due to the 
 encouragement which the Emperor gave to higher 
 education in Japan and to the continuation in 
 Europe of the studies of the best pupils of the 
 home universities. 
 
 He had only two amusements, horse riding and 
 the composition of poetry. He rode both boldly and
 
 156 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [OH. 
 
 well, better than most of his subjects who have not 
 had a special training. Verse-making is a necessary 
 accomplishment of every educated Japanese gentle- 
 man and not an uncommon one among women. It 
 holds the place that Latin versification did in England 
 in the days of Addison. The beauties of nature 
 beauties such as trees bending beneath a weight of 
 snow or an autumn moon reflected in a placid lake, 
 to which the English sense is often blind but which 
 appeal strongly to the Japanese and the vicissitudes 
 of human life are its chief themes. In this art the 
 Emperor excelled. Many of his poems have been 
 published and they confirm the estimate of his 
 character that is founded on his public actions, 
 breathing as they do the most tender sentiments 
 of compassion and pity. He had his own full share 
 of human sorrow. The Empress was childless but 
 fourteen children were born to him from the four 
 ladies who were united to him as Jugo. Nine died 
 in infancy or childhood, leaving one son, who is now 
 the Emperor, and four daughters who have grown to 
 womanhood. Two of his nearest relatives sacrificed 
 their lives in the China war, and of the devoted minis- 
 ters and generals who served him at the Restoration, 
 to all of whom he was attached by ties of gratitude 
 and affection, only five survived him. 
 
 His reign was the longest in the authentic history 
 of Japan. It lasted 45 years, and its end came with
 
 x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 157 
 
 grief and sorrow to all his people. His active life 
 was spent in Tokio, where he died in his modern 
 palace, but his last resting place is in a mausoleum 
 at Kioto, built in the old style of Japan, amid the 
 solemn and silent groves where rest also the remains 
 of his ancestors during more than a thousand years. 
 With his death ended the period of Meiji, during 
 which the evolution of New Japan was begun and 
 carried to its end. In all the history of the civilisa- 
 tion of the world there is nothing that can compare 
 with its rapidity and completeness. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 In 1897 Japan adopted a gold standard of currency, the unit 
 being the yen, the sterling equivalent of which is 2*. OJd. Prior to 
 1897, the yen was a silver coin, the sterling value of which fluctuated 
 in ratio with the market price of silver. Silver was a steadily 
 depreciating commodity and the sterling value of the yen gradually 
 fell from about 4s. 2d. in 1874 to less than half that amount in 1894. 
 Allowance must be made for this fall in estimating in sterling the 
 progress of the foreign trade of Japan which is described on page 92, 
 but the yen has been retained in the text as the only available common 
 denominator. The value of the Chinese tael, a silver token, else- 
 where mentioned, at the close of the Japan-China war was roughly 
 about 3s. 
 
 "Hara-kiri," literally "belly-cut" suicide by disembowelling, 
 was the prerogative of the Samurai class. It was instituted in the 
 middle ages in order that Samurai who had committed crimes 
 which, though meriting the punishment of death, were not in them- 
 selves disgraceful, should by putting an end to their own lives escape 
 the indignity of dying by the hands of the common executioner. In
 
 158 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 
 
 these cases, it was carried out in the presence of witnesses, with 
 much formality, in accordance with a very rigid code of etiquette, on 
 the command either of the Government or of the suicide's superiors 
 in his own Fief. Death in this way involved no degradation either 
 to the sufferer or his family. In time, it came to be committed 
 voluntarily, either when a Samurai had, for any reason, lost all 
 interest in life, or when (by far the more common cause) he desired 
 to make the strongest protest that was in his power against some act, 
 conduct, or policy of his superiors. Every Samurai carried two 
 swords, a long and a short one. The first was to be used against 
 enemies, the second on himself. He never parted from either. When 
 abroad, they were both worn in his girdle; when indoors, both lay 
 close beside him, whether by day or night, and he was trained from 
 his infancy to be ready to use either for its specific purpose at a 
 moment's notice. When the act was performed by command, the 
 short sword was thrust into the belly by the suicide, but he was then 
 immediately decapitated by a "Second," who stood beside him with 
 drawn sword, and who was generally either a relative or a close friend. 
 The physical agony was, therefore, momentary. But, in voluntary 
 cases, there was no ' ' Second " and the belly was^cut completely open by 
 the suicide himself, so that the act was prolonged and excruciatingly 
 painful. A full description of it is given in Lord Redesdale's Tales of 
 old Japan, Lord Eedesdale having himself witnessed the completion 
 of a judicial sentence of this nature. Women of the Samurai class 
 imitated their husbands, but in their case the throat and not the 
 belly was cut. The last instances were the suicides of General Nogi 
 and his wife on the death of the late Emperor. 
 
 Considerations of space have necessitated the omission of the 
 Kurile Islands from the map of the Japanese Empire. These Islands, 
 called by the Japanese "Chi-shima" or "the thousand isles" are 
 31 in number, and extend in a continuous chain from the north-east 
 of Hokkaido to Cape Lopatka, the southern extremity of Kamchatka.
 
 POSTSCRIPT 
 
 BOOKS ON JAPAN 
 
 The task heralded in the Introduction is now completed. The 
 prescribed limits of space have confined it to a skeleton outline, but 
 none of the great events of a great reign have been omitted and what 
 has been told is, it is hoped, sufficient to enable the reader to form a 
 logical conception of the forces which gave rise to the evolution of 
 new Japan and of their results. 
 
 Some readers may desire to pursue the subject, and if they do, 
 there is the most abundant material for their purpose. Books dealing 
 with Japan, from every conceivable point of view, can be numbered 
 by thousands and both their number and variety are sufficient to 
 bewilder the seeker for knowledge, who has no expert guide to direct 
 him in his choice. To such afone, we venture to submit the following, 
 all of which are easy to read arid are written by recognised authorities. 
 
 1. "Tales of Old Japan." 2 vols. Lord Redesdale. Tales, direct 
 from Japanese sources, vividly illustrating life in the good old days of 
 feudalism, told in the most graceful English. London, 1871. 
 
 2. " The Capital of the Tycoon." 2 vols. Sir Rutherford Alcook. 
 A picturesque description of Japan and of life in Yedo, during the 
 closing years of the Shogunate. London, 1863. 
 
 3. "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan." 2 vols. Miss Bird. Fourth 
 edition. London, 1885. 
 
 4. "East and West." Sir E. Arnold. This and Miss Bird's are 
 the two best of the many hundreds of books that have been written by 
 travellers. London, 1896. 
 
 5. " Classical Poetry of the Japanese." Chamberlain. London, 
 1880. 
 
 6. "A History ot Japanese Literature." Aston. London, 1897. 
 
 7. "Shinto. The Way of the Gods." Aston. An esoteric 
 exposition of the indigenous religion of Japan, appealing only to the 
 serious student. This and the two preceding works are the best in 
 their respective subjects. London, 1905.
 
 160 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 
 
 8. "Things Japanese." Chamberlain. An encyclopedia of 
 information on a vast variety of interesting topics, arranged in 
 alphabetical order. Fourth edition. London, 1902. 
 
 9. "The Mikado's Empire." Griffis. New York, 1876. 
 
 10. "Japan." Story of the Nations series. Murray. This and 
 the preceding are histories from the earliest times, by American 
 authors, the first also containing a description of the author's 
 personal experiences in Japan. London, 1904. 
 
 11. "Japan and China." 12 vols. Brinkley. The author was 
 one of the greatest of English scholars, a profound expert on every 
 subject connected with Japan, and the work is worthy of his reputa- 
 tion. London, 1903-4. 
 
 12. " Japan." Encyclopaedia Britannica. By the same author, 
 equally worthy of his reputation and sufficiently comprehensive to 
 satisfy those who have neither time nor opportunity to read his larger 
 work. Eleventh edition. London, 1911. 
 
 13. "Europe and the Far East." Douglas. Describes the modern 
 history, and especially the relations with China. Cambridge, 1913. 
 
 14. Lafcadio Hearn. All his works. A graceful writer, a keen 
 observer, a philosophic critic, who loved Japan and knew as no other 
 European has ever done its inner life to the core. 
 
 A score of other books might be named, on art, industry, travel, 
 life, history, etc., both of old and recent date, but this list will 
 probably be sufficient. The reception given by reviewers and the 
 public to previous works by the present author tempts him, even at the 
 risk it involves, to add their names, "The Story of Old Japan," "The 
 Story of Korea," and "Japan of the Japanese." In the two first 
 named, he endeavoured to tell the histories of the two countries, which 
 are as closely interwoven as those of England and France, in a style 
 that rendered their perusal no greater task than that of an ordinary 
 novel, and in the third he describes the social and economic progress 
 of Modern Japan. The dates of publication of " Japan " in the Story 
 of the Nations series and of " Europe and the Far East " are those of 
 the latest editions, both of which contain additional chapters, also by 
 the present author.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Agriculture and Commerce, de- 
 partment of, 94 
 
 Agricultural industry, 93 
 
 Ainu, 4 
 
 Alcock, Sir Eutherford, 12 
 
 Amherst, Lord, 101 
 
 Amur, River, 123 
 
 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 68, 95, 
 132 
 
 Army, 50, 51, 67, 129 
 
 Asan, Korean port, 109 
 
 Assassination, 28, 43, 58, 59, 79, 
 112 
 
 Austria, 77 
 
 Baltic fleet, 127 
 
 Bank of Japan, 91, 92 
 
 Belgium, 77, 124 
 
 Bismarck, 134 
 
 Boxer Campaign, 51, 123 
 
 British Legation, attacks on, 28, 
 
 106 
 British troops in Yokohama, 44, 
 
 107 
 Buckle, History of Civilisation, 
 
 11 
 
 Budget, Annual, 131 
 Bulgars, 108 
 
 Cabinet, 61, 70 
 L. 
 
 Calendar, 1, 53 
 
 California, 138 
 
 Cavour, 134 
 
 Charles II, 151 
 
 Charter Oath, Emperor's, 36, 
 
 47, 54 
 
 Chemulpo, Korean port, 127 
 China, 9, 26, 62, 65, 94, 95, 99, 
 
 chaps, vin. and ix. passim 
 Choshiu, fief of, 18, 20, 23, 24, 
 
 25, 28, 37, 38, 55, 56, 57, 68, 
 
 115, 145, 146 
 
 Choshiu students, the five, 116 
 Christianity, prohibition of, 34, 
 
 75 
 Christians, persecutions of, 8, 34, 
 
 72, 75, 102 
 Civil Law, 48 
 Columbia, British, 138 
 Confucian classics, 17 
 Confucian code, 34 
 Conscription, 51, 129 
 Constitution, promulgated, 63 
 Constitutional Eeformers, 57 
 Consuls and Consular Courts, 
 
 44, 73, 74 
 
 Converts to Christianity, 8, 47 
 Criminal Law, 48 
 Currency, 40, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92, 
 
 95, 96 
 
 11
 
 162 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Customs Dues, 77, 98, 141 
 Czarewitch, attempted assassina- 
 tion, 79 
 
 Daimio, feudal nobles, 6, 10, 
 
 13 
 Dai-Nihon-Shi, History of Great 
 
 Japan, 17 
 
 Desima, island, 8, 31, 84 
 Dutch traders, 7, 8, 14, 31, 84, 
 
 86 
 
 Education, 51, 52 
 
 Egypt, 11 
 
 "Elder Statesmen" (Genro), 17, 
 
 67, 68, 115 
 Elgin, Lord, 15 
 Embassy to Europe, 74 
 Emigration to America, 138, 139 
 Emperor's Bescripts, 30, 33, 51, 
 
 60, 83, 114, 144 
 Empress Haruko, 145, 146, 156 
 English traders, 7 
 Entente with Bussia and France, 
 
 132, 136 
 Ex-territorial jurisdiction, 43, 71, 
 
 73, 74, 81, 105 
 
 Feudalism, 5, 9, 39, 40, 58, 59 
 
 Feudal Lords, 10 
 
 Financial Beform, 90 
 
 Fleet, allied, bombards Shimono- 
 
 seki, 23 
 Fleet, beginning of Japanese, 
 
 36 
 Fleet, British, bombards Kago- 
 
 shima, 23 
 
 France, 23, 114, 122, 124 
 French troops in Yokohama, 107 
 Formosa, Island, 112, 128, 136 
 Fujiwara, family of court nobility, 
 
 4, 22, 37, 67 
 
 Gambling, 91 
 
 Genro, vide Elder Statesmen 
 
 George III, 101 
 
 George V, 152 
 
 Germany, 63, 80, 114, 122, 124, 
 
 140 
 
 Go Komatsu, Emperor, 17 
 Gold and Silver, ratios of, 84 
 Go Sankei, " The three families," 
 
 16 
 Great Britain, 23, 44, 45, 63, 77, 
 
 78, 80, 94, 95, 96, 98, 124, 134, 
 
 136, 140, 141, 142 
 
 Hakodate, 16, 36, 41 
 Han, Biver in Korea, 104 
 Hara-kiri, 112, 157 
 Haruko, Empress, vide Empress 
 Hegemony of the Pacific, 140 
 Heimin, commoners, 38 
 Hermit Kingdom, 107 
 Hideyoshi, Dictator, 101, 102 
 Hizen, fief of, 37, 38, 56, 59 
 Hoju, "Beinforcing reserve of 
 
 army," 130 
 Hokkaido, 95 
 Holland, 23, 124 
 Home Bule, 82, 124 
 Hondo, 95 
 House of Bepresentatives, 63, 64 
 
 Ichijo, branch of Fujiwara family, 
 
 149 
 Immigration Acts, Anti- Japanese, 
 
 138 
 
 Imperial Diet, vide Parliament 
 Import trade, 87, 93, 98, 141 
 India, 11, 26 
 Industrial development, 93, 96, 
 
 98 
 Inouye, Marquis, statesman, 38, 
 
 115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 133
 
 INDEX 
 
 163 
 
 Irish, 108 
 
 Itagaki, statesman, 56, 59, 103 
 
 Ito, Prince, statesman, 38, 60, 
 
 61, 62, 67, 115, 116, 117, 133, 
 
 134, 145 
 
 Iwakura, statesman, 37 
 lyemochi, 14th Tokugawa Sho- 
 
 gun, 21, 22 
 lyeyasu, 1st Tokugawa Shogun, 
 
 7, 16, 17 
 
 Japanese Legation in Seoul, 
 attacks on, 107 
 
 Jesuit Missionaries, 7, 13, 14, 
 15, 31 
 
 Jimmu Tenno, first Emperor, 3, 
 17, 126, 143 
 
 Jingo, Bmpress, 101 
 
 Jugo, morganatic wives of Em- 
 perors, 22, 156 
 
 Kagoshima, Satsuma capital, 
 
 23 
 
 Kamakura, town, 5, 6 
 Eatsura, Prince, soldier and 
 
 statesman, 68, 69 
 Kido, statesman, 38 
 Kioto, ancient capital, 4, 5, 6, 
 
 13, 14, 15, 22, 24, 30, 36, 38, 
 
 145, 147, 148, 149, 157 
 Kiusiu, 96 
 Enox, Mr, Secretary of State, 
 
 140 
 
 Eokwa, year name, 143 
 Eomei, Emperor, 20, 22, 23, 
 
 25 
 
 Eomura, Baron, 122 
 Korea, 56, 62, 67, chaps, vm. and 
 
 ix. passim, 154 
 Korea, Imperial Crown Prince, 
 
 121 
 Korea, Eing of, 121, 133 
 
 Eorea, Queen of, 117, 119, 120, 
 
 121 
 Kowshing, British steamer, 110, 
 
 111 
 
 Kuge, Court nobles, 6 
 Kwazoku, nobles, 38 
 
 Labour, 99 
 
 "Land of the Gods," 19 
 
 Leipzig, 74 
 
 Liao Tung, peninsula, 112, 122, 
 128 
 
 Liao Yang, battle of, 128 
 
 Li Hung Chang, Chinese states- 
 man, 107, 109, 110, 112 
 
 Lincoln, 134 
 
 London, 151, 152 
 
 Louis XIV, 152 
 
 Macartney, Lord, 101 
 Manchu Emperors, 102, 103 
 Manchuria, 111, 115, 123, 128, 
 
 136, 137, 140 
 Manufactures, 88, 93, 97 
 Mayor of Palace, 13, 14 
 Meiji, year name, 2, 3, 87, 143, 
 
 147 
 
 Meiji, posthumous title of Em- 
 peror Mutsu Hito, 142, 143, 
 145 
 
 Mercantile Marine, 50, 96 
 Mexico, 9, 11 
 
 Minamoto, family of court no- 
 bility, 37 
 
 Ming, dynasty of China, 102 
 Ministers of War and Navy, 67, 
 
 68 
 Mint, foundation of, 46, 49, 
 
 89 
 Missionaries, 7, 8, 13, 31, 47, 
 
 102 
 Mito, feudal lord, 16, 17, 26
 
 INDEX 
 
 Miura, Viscount, Minister to 
 Korea, 119, 120, 121, 122 
 
 Most favoured nation clause in 
 treaties, 77, 113 
 
 Mukden, 123, 128 
 
 Mutsu Hito, Emperor, 3; birth 
 of, 22, 145; accession, 23, 146; 
 assumption of Government, 27, 
 30 ; first reception of foreigners, 
 30 ; visit to Osaka, 35 ; removal 
 to Tedo (Tokio), 38, 147, 148; 
 death, 142 ; marriage, 149 ; chil- 
 dren, 156; amusements, 155, 
 156 ; burial, 157 ; et passim 
 
 Nagasaki, 8, 16, 43 
 Nakayama, the Lady, 22 
 Naniwa, Japanese cruiser, 110, 
 
 111, 126 
 
 National Expenditure, 131 
 Navy, 50, 70, 130, 131 
 Nengo, year names, 1 
 Nihon Guaishi, The External 
 
 History of Japan, 17 
 Nobility, the five orders of, 
 
 62 
 
 Nobility, the old, 61 
 Nogi, General, 158 
 
 Okubo, statesman, 37, 59, 60 
 Okuma, statesman, 38, 59, 60, 
 
 79 
 
 Open door, the, 140 
 Opening of Japan, 16 
 Open ports, 76 
 Orders in Council, 73 
 Osaka, 35 
 Oyama, General, 145 
 
 Pacific littoral, 103, 138, 140 
 Pacific Ocean, 9, 19, 140 
 Paris, 74 
 
 Parkes, Sir Harry S., 32, 43, 46, 
 
 80, 115 
 Parliament (Imperial Diet), 61, 
 
 63, 64 
 
 Patriotism, 52, 65 
 Peace Preservation Acts, 60 
 Peerage, 62 
 
 Peers, House of, 61, 63 
 Peking, 112 
 Perry, Commodore, 15, 19, 20, 
 
 22, 102, 105 
 Peru, 11 
 
 Pescadores, Islands, 112 
 Piccadilly, 153 
 Population, 92, 93 
 Port Arthur, 112, 122, 123, 124, 
 
 126, 127, 128, 129 
 Portugal, 77 
 Portuguese traders, 7, 8 
 Posthumous titles of Emperors, 
 
 142, 143 
 Prefectures, 40 
 Press, 46, 49, 56, 78, 105 
 Primorski, Russian province, 103 
 Prisons, reform of, 48 
 
 Railways, 49, 95, 96 
 Railway, trans-Siberian, 121, 124 
 Redesdale, Lord, 158 
 Reforms, general, 49, 53 
 Revenue, national, 131 
 Revolution, beginning of, 16 
 Rikken-Seiyu-Kai, political party, 
 
 66, 67, 69, 70 
 Russia, 77, 95, 101, 103, 104 and 
 
 chap. ix. passim 
 
 Saghalin, Island, 128 
 
 Saigo, General and statesman, 
 
 37, 103 
 
 Saionji, Marquis, Premier, 67 
 Samurai, 10, 12, 14, 20, 32,
 
 INDEX 
 
 165 
 
 38, 42, 55, 97, 151, 152, 157, 
 158 
 
 Sanjo, statesman, 37 
 
 Satsuma, fief of, 18, 20, 23, 24, 
 25, 28, 37, 55, 56, 57 
 
 Satsuma, rebellion, 51, 58, 89 
 
 Seclusion of Japan, 9 
 
 Seiyu Kai, tuVie Rikken-Seiyu-Kai 
 
 Seoul, 106, 115, 120 
 
 Shanghai, 73 
 
 Shimadzu Saburo, statesman, 37 
 
 Shimonoseki, 23, 24, 112, 116, 
 128 
 
 Shipbuilding, restrictions on, 9 
 
 Shizoku, gentry, 38 
 
 Shogun, chaps, i. and n. passim, 
 84, 145, 148 
 
 Shugiin, "Assembly of Legisla- 
 tive Discussion," 55 
 
 Siam, 9 
 
 Siberia, 123 
 
 Silk industry, 87, 88 
 
 Slavery, 11 
 
 Sonno Joi, party cry, 20 
 
 Spain, 77 
 
 Spanish traders, 7, 8 
 
 Stirling, Admiral, 15 
 
 Straits Settlements, 99 
 
 Sun Goddess, Tensho Daijin, 3 
 
 Taikun, vide Tycoon 
 
 Tariffs, customs, 16, 98 
 
 Tea, export of, 88 
 
 Tientsin, 109, 110 
 
 Togo, Admiral, 110, 126, 145 
 
 Tokio, 5, 38, 49, 114, 126, 148, 
 
 150, 151, 152, 157 
 Tokugawa, dynasty of Shoguns, 
 
 7, 13, 18, 24, 34, 36, 101, 150, 
 
 151 
 
 Torture, 48, 72, 75 
 Tosa, fief of, 25, 37, 56 
 
 Trade, 8, 42, chap. vm. passim 
 
 Transport, development of, 95 
 
 Treaties, first with Europeans, 
 
 16, 19, 21, 26; disabilities of, 
 
 73; attempt at revision, 74; 
 
 most favoured nation clauses, 
 
 77, 113; new, 81; new com- 
 mercial, 141 
 
 Treaties with Korea, 105, 106, 
 
 132 133 
 Treaty of Alliance, 95, 125, 126, 
 
 132, 141 
 
 Treaty of Arbitration, 141 
 Treaty of Portsmouth, 122, 128, 
 
 137 
 
 Treaty of Shimonoseki, 112, 128 
 Treaty with China, 112 
 Treaty with Eussia, 120 
 Tribute, payment of, 101 
 Tsu Hsi, Empress of China, 
 
 117 
 Tsushima, Island, 128 
 
 Ulster Orangemen, 82 
 
 United States of America, 19, 23, 
 
 78, 80, 104, 128, 137, 138, 139, 
 140, 141 
 
 Verse making, 156 
 Vladivostok, 123, 124, 126 
 
 Wages, 99, 100 
 
 War Indemnity, 95, 113, 115, 
 
 129 
 
 Washington, 22 
 Wei Hai Wei, 113 
 Women, status of, 150 
 Working classes, 96, 99, 100 
 
 Xavier, Jesuit missionary, 31 
 Yalu, River in Korea, 111, 132
 
 166 INDEX 
 
 Yamamoto, Admiral, Prime Mi- Yokohama Specie Bank, 91 
 
 nister, 69 Yodo, statesman, 37 
 
 Yedo, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 29,, 31, Yoritomo, first Shogun, 5, 6, 7, 
 
 36, 147 17, 38, 106 
 Yen, unit of currency, 157 Yuan Shi Kwai, Chinese states- 
 Yokohama, 16, 29, 49, 84, 151, man, 108, 109, 110, 121 
 152 Yoshinobu, last Shogun, 21, 27 
 
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 ment of a good school as is an encyclopaedia... -We can conceive 
 no better series of handy books for ready reference than those 
 represented by the Cambridge Manuals." School World 
 
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