# Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 3/Chapter 6

Chapter VI
THE FALL OF THE TOKUGAWA
Thus far this record has spoken mainly of the aspect under which aliens presented themselves to Japan by the light of tradition. It is now necessary to inquire whether, on the renewal of intercourse in the nineteenth century, the alien's demeanour and doings were of such a nature as to erase or confirm the traditional impressions of the Japanese.
Looking at the facts to-day, after the lapse of forty years has furnished a true perspective, the historian is struck by the distrust that pervaded the whole attitude of foreigners towards the Japanese at the outset of renewed intercourse. The worst possible construction was generally put by the former upon the latter's acts, whether official or private. Even the Foreign Representatives, when recording the adoption of some liberal course by the Yedo Government, were wont to qualify their approval by a hope that no trickery or abuse was intended. That they had strong reason for some want of confidence is unquestionable. The Yedo Government, while ​truly willing to implement its treaty engagements, was compelled by the exigencies of domestic policy to simulate an attitude of unwillingness; and many of the samurai, honestly solicitous for the national safety, endeavoured to restore the traditional isolation by throwing obstacles in the path of smooth intercourse, and by acts of violence against the persons and property of foreigners. Such conditions were not calculated to inspire trustfulness. But it must be admitted that there was little inclination to be trustful. The Foreign Representatives and foreigners in general seem to have approached the discussion of Japanese problems with all the Occidental's habitual suspicion of everything Oriental. It will readily be conceived, for example, that after the assassination of the Tairō, Ii, no little concern was felt by the Yedo Government. They perceived a strong probability that the desperate men who had wrought the deed, or their equally desperate comrades, might turn their swords against foreigners. The danger of such a contingency was made real by intelligence that six hundred rōnin had banded themselves together, and, led by the Mito samurai, were about to attack the foreign settlement at Kanagawa and the Legations in Yedo. All possible precautions were at once taken by the Japanese officials. New barriers were erected, additional guards were posted, and warnings were conveyed to ​the Foreign Representatives, accompanied with a request that, during the acute stages of the crisis, they would move abroad as little as possible. From the Japanese point of view the peril was very vivid and very disquieting. But the Foreign Ministers convinced themselves that a deliberate piece of chicanery was being practised at their expense; that statecraft rather than truth had dictated the representations made to them by the Japanese authorities, and that the alarm of the latter was simulated for the purpose of finding a pretext to curtail the liberty enjoyed by foreigners. Therefore the suggestion that the inmates of the Legations should show themselves as little as possible in the streets of the capital, where at any moment a desperado might cut them down, was treated almost as an insult. Then the Japanese authorities saw no recourse except to attach an armed escort to the person of every foreigner when he moved abroad. Even this precaution, which certainly was not adopted out of mere caprice or with any sinister design, excited fresh suspicions. The Representative of one of the Great Powers, in reporting the event to his Government, said that the Japanese had taken the opportunity to graft upon the establishment of spies, watchmen, and police officers at the several Legations, a mounted escort to accompany the members whenever they moved out.
It has been shown above—to cite another ​example of this distrust—that the question of choosing a successor to the Shōgun Iyesada caused a political crisis which resulted in the removal of some of the chief officials of the Yedo Court and the accession of Ii Kamon-no-Kami to power. It has further been shown that Ii was a man of singular enlightenment and liberality, and that to his fearless action were due the conclusion of the first commercial treaty and the definite inauguration of foreign intercourse. Yet, three years later, the Foreign Representatives, in a memorandum explaining the state of affairs in Japan, saw in the crisis which called Ii to office nothing but "the disgrace and removal of the men who had been engaged in the original negotiation of the treaty," and the transfer of the administrative power to the anti-foreign party.
On January 16th, 1861, Mr. Heusken, Acting Secretary and Interpreter of the United States Legation in Yedo, was set upon and assassinated by a band of rōnin in a suburb of the city. Ando was then charged with the conduct of foreign affairs on behalf of the Yedo Government—the same Ando whose habitual caution was that, if the rōnin wanted to shed blood, they should kill him, or kill even the Shōgun, rather than raise their hand against foreigners. Ando's statement to Mr. Townsend Harris, the United States Representative, after the murder of Heusken was: "It is a source ​of profound regret to me that Heusken fell under the hand of lawless men, for a long work still lay before him to promote peace between Japanese and foreigners by making the latter acquainted with the truth about the former. I fear that his death means not only failure on our part to protect foreigners, but also the loss of one who was a connecting link between Japan and America. It is not his misfortune alone: it is Japan's misfortune. My sorrow is not less than yours." The sincerity of this speech was beyond all doubt. Heusken's death pained the chief officials of the Shōgun's Government as much as it shocked the Foreign Representatives. Yet the latter subsequently recorded their suspicion that the assassination had been contrived by the Shōgun's Government as part of a system of terrorism and intimidation planned with the object of driving foreigners out of Yedo.
As a page of history read now without any of the emotions or prejudices that distorted its text at the time, this record assumes an almost comical character. The foreigner, having forced his companionship upon the unwilling Japanese, found it an insult that they should seek to protect him against the perilous consequences of his own obtrusiveness; the Yedo statesmen, grappling desperately with difficulties which seemed likely to produce a political revolution involving their ​own destruction, saw themselves suspected of exaggerating and even manufacturing those difficulties by the very men that had caused the whole trouble; the Shōgun's ministers, knowing that the purpose of their enemies, the exclusionists, was to embroil them with foreigners by attacks upon the persons and properties of the latter, and having adopted all possible precautions to avert such deeds of violence, found themselves credited, not with any solicitude for the safety of the Foreign Representatives' lives, but with instituting, under plea of zeal for that safety, "a system of isolation, restriction, and petty tracasserie, in order to make the residence of diplomatic agents as disagreeable and hateful as possible;" the Japanese administrators, earnestly striving to bring the nation to a sense of the necessity and advantages of foreign intercourse, saw themselves accused of having for their chief object the restriction of that intercourse, and declared to be harbouring an intention, should less violent means fail, "of bringing about a simulated popular movement in which foreign lives would be sacrificed;" the progressive politicians, whose propaganda of inter-state commerce encountered a serious obstacle in the general discontent caused by the appreciation of prices that followed the inauguration of that commerce, found it declared by foreign diplomatists that the discontent was artificial in its source, and that it had been ​"brought about by the direct action of the ruling classes with a view to make out their case" against international trade; the Shōgun's councillors, who naturally shrunk from exposing to the gaze of strangers all the intricate, scarcely explicable, and in many respects humiliating complications of their domestic policy, were charged with "sparing no efforts to keep from the Foreign Representatives all sources of exact or reliable information," and with "misleading and deceiving them as to the real state of things;" and, finally, Japan, seething with elements of unrest that defied the analysis even of her own statesmen, was denounced as a country "where it was difficult to obtain even a modicum of truth" because her condition could not be readily made clear to strangers ignorant of her history and out of all sympathy with her perplexities.
The reader is invited to consider this retrospect, not as reflecting injuriously on the procedure of the foreign diplomatic agents, but merely as illustrating the aspect their moods and methods presented to the Japanese. It must not be forgotten that the enigma of Japanese affairs seemed quite insolvable to foreigners in the early days; that the mysteries surrounding them were well calculated to excite suspicion; and that the murderous outrages of which they were the victims could not fail to provoke passionate resentment.
What has thus far been written applies chiefly ​to foreign officials, diplomatic and consular, serving in Japan. It is necessary now to consider the impression conveyed to the Japanese by the incidents of foreign trade and by the behaviour of those engaged in it.
From the very outset a troublesome complication occurred in the field of commerce. In order to conduct tradal operations in a country with an altogether special monetary system such as Japan had, some arrangements were necessary with regard to tokens of exchange. The plan pursued by the Dutch at the Deshima factory in Nagasaki from the seventeenth century had been based on the weight of precious metal contained in Japanese coins, independently of their denominations, and without any attempt to bring about the circulation of foreign monetary tokens. The same system, so far as concerned weight, was adopted in 1858, but was supplemented by a provision that foreign coins should have currency in Japan. Foreign coins, the treaty said, must pass current for corresponding weights in Japanese coins of the same kind,—gold for gold, silver for silver,—and, during a period of one year after the opening of the ports, the Yedo Government was pledged to furnish to foreigners Japanese coins in exchange for foreign, equal weights being given and no discount taken for recoinage. This arrangement altogether ignored the ratio between the precious metals in the Japanese coinage ​system, and as the ratio stood at five to one, whereas the ratio then in Europe was fifteen to one, it resulted that the foreigner acquired the right of purchasing gold with silver in Japan at one-third of the former metal's silver price in the Occident. To state the facts more explicitly: the treaty enabled foreigners to buy with one hundred and twenty-five dollar-cents—or six shillings worth of silver—four Japanese silver tokens (called bu), which, in the Japanese coinage system, were exchangeable for a gold coin (called koban) intrinsically worth eighteen shillings. Of course the treaty could not have been framed with the deliberate intention of securing to foreigners such an unjust advantage. As a result, partly of long isolation and chiefly of currency debasements made to replenish the Treasury, the precious metals were not connected in Japan by the relation governing their inter- changeable values in Europe, and foreign statesmen, when negotiating commercial treaties with her, cannot be supposed to have had any idea of holding her to that particular outcome of her isolation and inexperience. Indeed, the treaty did not create any explicit right of the kind, for although it provided that foreign coins should be exchangeable against Japanese, weight for weight, it contained no provision as to the denominations of Japanese coins or the ratio of the precious metals in the Japanese monetary system. The Japanese Government, ​then, seeing the country threatened with speedy exodus of all its gold, adopted an obvious remedy. It issued a new silver coin of the same denomination as the old but weighing three times as much. In short, it exercised a right which belongs to every independent nation, the right of so modifying its currency, when suddenly brought into circulation with foreign coins, as to preserve a due ratio between gold and silver, and thus prevent the former's being drained out of the country at one-third of its intrinsic value. Nevertheless this equitable view of the case did not commend itself to the men who looked to profit by the old conditions. They raised a vehement protest against what they called "a gross violation of treaty right," and "a deliberate attempt on the part of the Japanese authorities to raise the prices of all native produce two hundred per cent against the foreign purchaser." There is documentary evidence that the Foreign Representatives appreciated the difficulties of Japan's position. None the less they held her to the unfair version of her agreement. She had to revert to coins of the old standard, and though she bowed to the necessity, the result of this complication was an abiding sense of injustice on her side, and an impression on that of the foreign resident that she had dishonestly sought to evade her engagements.
The trade, then, did not recommend itself to ​the Japanese. Nor was the case of the trader much better. Testimony upon this point is furnished by a despatch of the British Representative, written to his Government at the close of 1859:—
Looking at the indiscreet conduct, to use the mildest term, of many, if not all the foreign residents, the innumerable and almost daily recurring causes of dispute and irritation between the Japanese officials of all grades and the foreign traders, both as to the nature of the trade they enter into, and the mode in which they conduct it, open in many instances to grave objection, I cannot wonder at the existence of much ill-feeling. And when to those sources of irritation and animosity among the official classes, are added the irregularities, the violence, and the disorders, with the continued scenes of drunkenness, incidental to seaports where sailors from men-of-war and merchant ships are allowed to come on shore, sometimes in large numbers, I confess, so far from sharing in any sweeping conclusions to the prejudice of the Japanese, I think the rarity of retaliative acts of violence on their part is a striking testimony in their favour. … Our own people and the foreigners generally take care that there shall be no lack of grounds of distrust and irritation. Utterly reckless of the future; intent only on profiting if possible by the present moment to the utmost; regardless of treaties or future consequences, they are wholly engaged just now in shipping off all the gold currency of Japan. … Any coöperation with the diplomatic agents of their respective countries in their efforts to lay the foundations of permanent, prosperous, and mutually beneficial commerce between Japan and Western nations is out of the question. ​On the contrary, it is the merchants who, no doubt, create the most serious difficulties. It may be all very natural and what was to have been anticipated, but it is not the less embarrassing. And in estimating the difficulties to be overcome in any attempt to improve the aspect of affairs, if the ill-disguised enmity of the governing classes and the indisposition of the Executive Government to give practical effect to the treaties be classed among the first and principal of these, the unscrupulous character and dealings of foreigners who frequent the ports for the purposes of trade are only second, and scarcely inferior in importance, from the sinister character of the influence they exercise.
Of course the foreign merchant found many causes of legitimate dissatisfaction. Prominent among them was official interference in business matters. From the very earliest times the country's foreign commerce had been subject to close and often vexatious supervision by officials. The trade with Korea had been controlled by one great family; the trade with China by another, and the trade with the Dutch factory in Nagasaki by governors whose interference tended only to hamper its growth. Even a statesman of such general breadth of view as the Tairō, Ii Kamon-no-Kami, entertained a rooted conviction that all goods imported from abroad should pass through official hands on their way to Japanese consumers. A tendency to act upon that conviction caused vexatious meddling with the course of ​commerce, elicited frequent complaints from foreigners, and helped to confirm their rooted suspicion that the Government sought to place every possible obstacle in their way, with the ultimate object of inducing them to turn their backs upon Japan, as the first English colonists had turned their backs on it early in the seventeenth century. In short, all the circumstances of Japan's renewed intercourse with foreign nations tended to accentuate the traditional conservatism of one side and the racial prejudice of the other.
The death of the Prince of Mito, which took place in the autumn of 1860, gave another blow to the already frail fabric of the Shoguns Government, for although this remarkable nobleman had acted a part inimical to the Yedo Court, his influence upon the turbulent samurai had been wholesome. He had succeeded in restraining them from acts of violence, especially against the persons of foreigners, and when his powerful hand was withdrawn, the situation became more uncontrollable, and the lives and properties of foreigners began to be exposed to frequent perils. A brief gleam of sunshine fell upon the Shōgun's cause when he received the Emperor's sister in marriage in 1861. But in order to effect this union of the two Courts, the Yedo statesmen had fresh recourse to their dangerous policy of duplicity and temporising; they pledged themselves to comply with the ​wishes of the Kyōtō conservatives by expelling foreigners from Japan within ten years. The embarrassments resulting from such a promise were more than sufficient to counterbalance any advantage that might have accrued from the reconciliation of the two Courts, and a further element of unrest was created by a widely entertained suspicion that the marriage represented the beginning of a plot to dethrone the Emperor. In truth, the situation was rapidly assuming a character that defied the feeble adjustments and compromises of the Shōgun's ministers. Kyōtō became the centre of disaffection. Thither flocked not only the genuinely anti-foreign agitators—the "barbarian expelling party" (jōi-tō), as they were called,—but also the leaders of a much more formidable movement, which, having for its prime object the overthrow of the Shogunate, saw in the anti-foreign commotion an instrument capable of being utilised to that end. It would be an error to conclude that the promoters of the anti-Shōgun agitation were actuated solely by an intelligent perception of the evils of the dual system of government. Many of them assuredly detected its nationally weakening effects, their appreciation of that point having been quickened by a sense of the country's helplessness to resist the advent of foreigners. But the ruling motives with a large number were restless desire of change and hostility to ​the Yedo Court. The continuous monopoly of administrative power during nearly three centuries by a small section of the nation had naturally educated the former feeling; and as for the latter, it was entertained partly by men disgusted with the feeble, vacillating methods of the Shogunate in recent times, and partly by men who had been driven from office or otherwise punished in connection with the vicissitudes of the era and with the Yedo Court's frequent changes of policy. On the whole, the enemies of the Shogunate were much more numerous and influential than the enemies of foreign intercourse, though both united in the "barbarian expelling" clamour,—these from sentiment, those from expediency.
Murderous attacks upon foreigners now became frequent; a party of samurai proceeded to Yokohama and threatened with death any Japanese merchant doing business with aliens, and a doctrine was propounded in Kyōtō that the Shōgun's title—Sei-i, or "barbarian expelling"—pointed plainly to the expulsion of foreigners, and convicted him of failure of duty in admitting them to any part of Japan. It need scarcely be said that the title had no such significance. Devised originally with reference to the subjugation of the uncivilised aborigines of Japan, it had never been applied to foreigners, and could not possibly have been applied to them, seeing that its first bestowal had long antedated the ​occurrence of foreign complications. So crushed, however, was the spirit of the Yedo officials that instead of stoutly repudiating this extravagant interpretation of their Prince's title, they advised him to apologise for his failure to discharge the duty it indicated; and they carried their placating system to the length of removing from the governing body any ministers disapproved by the Kyōtō Court.
Throughout all their temporising simulations of anti-foreign purpose, the Shōgun's advisers placed their trust in time. They believed that before the necessity arose to give practical effect to their pretended policy, some method of evasion would present itself. But the Kyōtō conservatives resolved to defeat that scheme of procedure. They induced the Emperor to issue an edict in which, after alluding to the "insufferable and contumelious behaviour of foreigners, to the loss of prestige and honour constantly menacing the country," and to the sovereign's "profound solicitude," His Majesty openly announced the Shōgun's promise to make full preparations for expelling foreigners within ten years, and declared that, in order to secure the unity required for achieving that purpose, an Imperial Princess had been given to the Shōgun in marriage. This edict was in effect a commission warranting every Japanese subject to organise an anti-foreign campaign. It publicly committed the Yedo Court to a policy which the latter had neither power ​to carry out nor any real intention of attempting to carry out.
The two most powerful fiefs of Japan at this epoch were Satsuma and Chōshiu. Satsuma, owing to its remote position at the extreme south of the Japanese Empire, had never been brought within the effective sphere of the Yedo Court's administrative control. Chōshiu, though less remote, was somewhat similarly circumstanced, and both had strong hereditary reasons for hostility to the Tokugawa Shogunate, These two clans were permeated with a spirit of unrest and disaffection. There were differences, however. In Chōshiu the anti-foreign feeling dominated the anti-Tokugawa, and the whole clan, lord and vassal alike, were convinced that loyalty to the Throne could not be reconciled with a liberal attitude towards foreign intercourse. In Satsuma the prevailing sentiment was anti-Tokugawa, the "barbarian-expulsion" cry being regarded as a collateral issue only. But as yet the Satsuma samurai had not openly associated themselves with either the anti-foreign or the anti-Tokugawa movement, nor had they given any evidence of the ambition that undoubtedly swayed them, the ambition of occupying a prominent place in a newly organised national polity. On the contrary, their chief, Shimazu Samuro, and his principal advisers maintained a neutral attitude toward the question of foreign intercourse, and were disposed to befriend the Shogunate, though the bulk ​of the clansmen would have gladly seen the administrative power wrested from the hands of the Yedo Court.
In Kyōtō a corresponding difference of opinion began to declare itself. The clamour and turbulence of the anti-foreign party produced a reaction, which strengthened the hands of the men by whom the marriage between the Shōgun and the Emperor's sister had been promoted. Two factions, therefore, gradually assumed distinct shape: the extremists, led by Princes Arisugawa and Sanjo, who advocated immediate expulsion of foreigners and overthrow of the Shogunate; the moderates, led by Princes Shishi-o, Konoye, and Iwakura, who urged less drastic measures with regard to foreigners and favoured the maintenance of the Shōgun's administration. To the first of these factions the Chōshiu men naturally attached themselves; to the second the Satsuma leaders. It had been generally supposed that the Satsuma chief would place himself at the head of the extremists. But his accession to the ranks of the moderates gave the ascendency at once to the latter. They utilised it to contrive that an envoy should be sent to Yedo with an Imperial rescript indicating three courses of which the Shōgun was invited to choose one; namely, first, that the Shōgun himself should repair to Kyōtō, and there hold a conference with the principal feudatories as to the best method of securing national tranquillity; secondly, that the five ​principal feudatories who possessed littoral fiefs should be charged with the responsibility of coast defence, as had been done in the time of the Taikō; and thirdly, that Prince Keiki and the feudal chief of Echizen should be appointed to high office in the Yedo administration.
The Yedo Court was thus confronted by the most serious crisis that had yet menaced its autocracy. Not only were the feudatories openly violating the fundamental law of the Tokugawa,—the law which strictly vetoed all intercourse between them and the Imperial Court,—but, further, the Shōgun was required to accept Kyōtō's dictation in important matters of administration. To obey the Imperial mandate would be practical surrender of governing power; to disobey it would put a deadly weapon into the hands of the extremists. Reason suggested immediate surrender of the executive functions to the sovereign, on the ground that their efficient discharge under a system of divided authority was impossible, and it is not improbable that a courageous course of that kind would have rehabilitated the Shogunate, for the Kyōtō Court could not have ventured to accept the responsibility thus suddenly thrust upon it.
But the Shōgun's advisers failed to grasp the significance of the crisis. No policy suggested itself to them except one of craven complaisance. They signified their intention of complying with the first and third of the Emperor's conditions, ​and they carried submissiveness to the length of punishing many of their ablest officials and stanchest partisans on the ground that the serenity of the Imperial mind had been disturbed by their procedure. Historians indicate the year 1867 as the date of the fall of the Shogunate, because the administrative power was then finally restored to the Emperor. But it may be asserted with greater accuracy that the Shogunate fell in the year 1862, when the Yedo Court made the radical surrender here indicated. Nor was that the only mistake. The Shōgun's ministers, underestimating the value of the Satsuma chief's friendship, paid no attention to his advice, nor took any care to strengthen his good disposition by courteous treatment. He recommended that the Shōgun should decline to proceed to Kyōtō, and should reject all proposals pointing to the expulsion of foreigners; but the Yedo Court neither heeded his counsel nor showed towards him the same consideration that they had displayed to the Chōshiu chief, with whom his relations were notoriously strained.
It was thus with feelings considerably estranged that the Satsuma chief set out on his return journey to Kyōtō. On the way an incident happened which was destined to have far-reaching consequence. A party of British subjects, three gentlemen and a lady, persisted in an attempt to ride through the Satsuma chief's cortège, ignorant that the custom of the country ​prescribed death as the penalty for such an act. Samurai of the body-guard drew their swords, killed one of the Englishmen (Mr. Richardson), and wounded the two others, the lady alone escaping unhurt, Probably no incident of that troublous era excited more indignation at the time or was more discussed subsequently. But while a custom so inhuman as that obeyed by the Satsuma samurai merits execration, the fact must not be forgotten that to any Japanese behaving as these English people behaved, the same fate would have been meted out in an even more summary manner. For the rest, the outrage differed essentially from those of which foreigners had previously been victims, inasmuch as it was in no sense inspired by the "barbarian expelling" sentiment. Nevertheless, the immediate consequence was that since Satsuma refused to surrender the implicated samurai, and since the Shōgun's arm was not long enough to reach this powerful feudatory, the British Government sent a squadron to bombard his capital, Kagoshima. The remote and most important consequence was that the belligerent operations of the British ships effectually convinced the Satsuma samurai of the hopelessness of resisting foreign intercourse by force, and converted them into advocates of liberal progress towards which their previous attitude had been at best neutral.
Meanwhile the Yedo Court was steadily ​pursuing its suicidal policy. Under the influence of the new advisers whom, in compliance with its pledge to Kyōtō, it had summoned to preside at its councils, measures were taken that could serve only to weaken its authority. Many of the time-honoured forms and ceremonies which contributed to lend dignity to official procedure and held a high place in popular esteem for the sake of their spectacular effect, were abolished, or curtailed, on grounds of economy, and for the same reason the rule was greatly relaxed which required the feudatories to live in Yedo every second year and to leave their families there in alternate years. This law had been one of the strongest buttresses of the Shōgun's power. It was abrogated precisely at the moment when the feudatories were disposed to abuse every access of liberty.
Nor did the almost abject submissiveness of the Yedo statesmen have the effect of appeasing their enemies. On the contrary, the extremists in Kyōtō were so emboldened by these evidences of weakness that, without waiting for the Shōgun to fulfil his promise of proceeding to Kyōtō, they obtained from the Emperor a new edict requiring the Yedo Court to announce to all the feudatories the definite adoption of the "alien-expelling" policy, and further directing that a date for the practical inception of that policy be fixed and communicated to the Throne. A few months previously it had been commanded that ​the Shōgun should come to Kyōtō to discuss the question of the nation's attitude towards foreigners; now he was directed to accept an undiscussed policy, proclaim it, and give a promise as to the time for putting it into execution.
Even to be thus flouted did not provoke the Yedo statesmen to adopt a manly and dignified course. Instead of protesting against the second edict and declining to receive it, they duly acknowledged it, and promised that its contents should be debated when the Shōgun reached Kyōtō.
In the early spring of 1863 the Shōgun set out for the Imperial city. As his cortège passed along the seashore near Kanagawa, he could see a strong squadron of British war-vessels assembled in Yokohama harbour. Being a mere boy, he probably gave himself no concern about the purpose of these vessels' presence, nor was he told that they were a demonstration to obtain from his own Government redress for the assassination committed by the Satsuma samurai, or that he himself would have travelled by sea had not his ministers apprehended the seizure of his person by the British ships. Fate could scarcely have been more ironical than she was when she contrived that the Shōgun should be cited to Kyōtō to answer for not driving out intruders by whom his own capital was openly menaced and his own movements were restricted.
This journey to Kyōtō was not undertaken in ​accordance with any definite policy. Even the course to be pursued on arrival there had not been mapped out. The Shōgun's ministers consoled themselves with vague hopes: they trusted to the chapter of accidents. Very different was the conduct of the extremists. By methods little short of intimidation, they extorted from Prince Keiki, the Shōgun's guardian, who was then in Kyōtō, a promise that immediately on the Shōgun's return to Yedo, measures to terminate foreign intercourse should be commenced. They even required a pledge as to the number of days to be spent by the Shōgun in Kyōtō and on his journey back to Yedo. These engagements confronted the Shōgun when he reached the Imperial capital. From the position of an autocrat, he had fallen to that of a mere subordinate. Instead of issuing orders, it had become his duty to receive and obey them. For the moment the extremists, under the leadership of Mori, chief of Chōshiu, had command of the situation. Though headed by such men as Princes Konoye (the Regent), Iwakura, and Chigusa, and the feudal chiefs of Echizen, Aizu, and Tosa, the moderates could not make head against the tide in the absence of Shimazu of Satsuma, whom the Tokaidō assassination (described above) had compelled to return to his fief. Slights and even insults were conspicuous in the treatment accorded to the Shōgun at the Imperial Court. From Yedo, at the same ​time, couriers arrived almost daily, urging that unless the Shōgun returned at once to settle the complication with the British, war could not be avoided. The extremists welcomed the prospect. Nothing could have suited them better than that a British fleet should demolish the last vestiges of the Yedo administration. They have just been seen stipulating that the Shōgun should return to his capital within a fixed number of days for the purpose of expelling foreigners. But now that there was a prospect of his destruction being furthered by holding him in Kyōtō, they held him there. An Imperial decree was published directing that if the "English barbarians" wanted a conference, they should be invited to repair to Osaka harbour, there to receive a point-blank refusal; that the Shōgun should remain in Kyōtō to assume the direction of defensive operations, and that he should accompany the Emperor to the shrine of the God of War, where a "barbarian-quelling sword" would be handed to him.
Under such circumstances, the Shōgun had recourse to the last refuge of the helpless: he fell sick; and Yedo, being thus left to its own resources, chose the only practicable route, paid the indemnity demanded for the Richardson murder, and left the British to exact from Satsuma whatever further redress they deemed necessary. This the British did so effectually, in July (1863), that all idea of measuring strength with the Occident disappeared completely from ​the minds of the Satsuma samurai, and their chief, Shimazu, already imbued with moderate views, now finally adopted the resolution of opposing the anti-foreign extremists with his entire strength.
But in the mean while several important events had occurred.
Among the various edicts obtained from the sovereign by the extremists, there was one which fixed the 11th of May, 1863, as the date for practically inaugurating the anti-foreign policy. Copies of this edict were distributed among the feudatories, without the intervention of the Shōgun, a course flagrantly opposed to administrative precedents. The Chōshiu chief alone rendered immediate obedience. In fact his zeal outran his orders, for without awaiting the appointed day, he opened fire on foreign vessels passing through the strait of Shimo-no-seki, which his batteries commanded. Ships flying the flags of the United States, of France, and of Holland having been thus treated, vigorous remonstrances were addressed to the Yedo Government by the representatives of those three Powers.
Meanwhile, the Shōgun's ministers in Yedo, observing that their master was detained in Kyōtō against his will, and that, unless a bold stroke were struck, his authority must be permanently impaired, sent two battalions of picked samurai by sea to Osaka, and marched them to the ​immediate vicinity of Kyōtō. Such a display of wellnigh reckless resolution on the part of statesmen who had hitherto shown themselves submissive almost to pusillanimity, astounded the public. Had the troops been allowed to enter the city, the extremists could not have made any effective resistance. But the Shōgun's officials in Kyōtō persuaded the samurai to retire. The opportunity was lost, and nothing resulted from this bold move except the Shōgun's speedy return to Yedo.
The extremists now had full mastery of the situation in Kyōtō. It seemed that nothing could check them. Yet at this moment of apparent supremacy, their cause received a blow from which it never recovered. They had the audacity to forge an Imperial edict, declaring the Emperor's firm resolve to drive out the barbarians, and announcing that His Majesty would make a pilgrimage to the great shrines to pray for success. They doubtless imagined that their influence at Court would enable them to secure the Emperor's post-facto endorsement of this edict. But they were mistaken. At the instance of the moderates, an order was issued that Mori of Chōshiu, leader of the extremists, should withdraw from the capital with all his vassals and with the nobles who had supported his views.
The only credible explanation of this marked change of attitude in Kyoto was that the ​bombardment of Kagoshima by a British squadron had furnished a conclusive proof of Japan's helplessness to stand in arms against foreigners. It is true that the Court did not openly disavow its anti-foreign policy; but it never again attempted to enforce it. Shimazu of Satsuma was summoned to Kyōtō, and at his instance the Shōgun repaired thither again, receiving now a gracious welcome and finding an opportunity which might have been utilised to put an end for ever to anti-foreign agitation and to restore the administrative authority of Yedo. His advisers, however, seemed in those days to be entirely without capacity to take a wise step. They saw no course except to continue their simulated arrangements for terminating foreign intercourse, though public opinion had evidently begun to change towards that problem.
Two events now occurred which finally deprived the anti-foreign movement of all mischievous power. The Chōshiu samurai, seeking to recover their influence by force, made a raid against Kyōtō, and were not driven back until a large section of the city had been destroyed by fire. Their alleged object was to present a petition to the Throne; but their real and well-understood purpose was to destroy the leaders of the moderates. This attempt and its signal failure not only involved the national disgrace of the Chōshiu men, but also discredited the cause they espoused. The Emperor had ​previously been regarded as the leader of the anti-foreign policy, but its most vehement advocates now began to be classed as rebels. Shortly afterwards, the three Powers whose merchantmen had been fired on by the Shimo-no-seki batteries, together with England, sent a joint squadron which demolished Chōshiu's forts, destroyed his ships, and without any apparent effort scattered his fighting men. This "Shimo-no-seki expedition," the theme of endless discussion in later times, had for direct result a national conviction that to resist foreigners by force was quite hopeless; and for indirect, an universal inference that the Shogunate instead of wielding the power of the country, constituted a fatal obstacle to national unity. Of all the factors that operated to draw Japan from her seclusion and to overthrow feudalism, the most powerful were the shedding of Richardson's blood at Namamugi on the Tokaidō, and the resulting "Kagoshima expedition," the shelling of foreign vessels by Chōshiu's forts at Shimo-no-seki, and the abortive attempt of the Chōshiu samurai to recover their influence in Kyōtō, by force. The year 1863 saw the "barbarian expelling" agitation deprived of the Emperor's sanction; the two principal clans, Satsuma and Chōshiu, convinced of their country's impotence to defy the Occident; the nation almost fully roused to a sense of the disintegrating and weakening effects ​of the feudal system; and the traditional antipathy to foreigners beginning to be exchanged tor a desire to study their civilisation and to adopt its best features.
As for the Shogunate, evil fortune continued to attend all its doings. It began to be a house divided against itself. Its Yedo officials conceived a strong distrust of their Kyōtō colleagues, and even of the Satsuma chief, Shimazu Samuro, whose influence had hitherto been loyally exerted in the Shōgun's cause. The consequences of this discord were speedily apparent. When the Chōshiu batteries began to fire upon foreign vessels navigating the Shimo-no-seki Strait, a commissioner was sent from Yedo to remonstrate against such lawless action. The Chōshiu folk replied that they were obeying the sovereign's orders, which did not concern the Shōgun, and they capped their contumacy by killing the commissioner. A military expedition then became inevitable. Thirty-six feudatories furnished contingents, and an overwhelming force moved against the rebellious noble. The Chōshiu chief made no resistance. He took steps to prove his contrition, and then appealed to the clemency of the invading generals, who justified his confidence by leaving him in undisturbed possession of his fief and withdrawing their forces unconditionally. Intelligence of these doings provoked much indignation among the Yedo statesmen. They concluded that such leniency must have been ​inspired by a treacherous purpose on the part of the Kyōtō officials who had endorsed it, and on the part of the Satsuma chief whose troops formed a large part of the expeditionary force. Preparations were therefore made for a second attack upon Chōshiu, the Shōgun himself leading his army. It was confidently believed that the rebellious clan would submit without a struggle, and that the expedition would be nothing more than a pleasant picnic. Possibly that forecast would have proved correct had a semblance of earnestness been imparted to the operations. But the army of invasion halted at Osaka and envoys were sent to pronounce sentence upon Chōshiu. These proceedings soon assumed a farcical aspect. On the one side, penal proclamations were solemnly addressed to the offending clan; on the other, the clan paid not the smallest attention to them. A swift, strong blow was essential. The Shōgun could have delivered it and the Chōshiu men could not then have resisted it in the immediate sequel of their defeat by a foreign squadron. But the Shōgun hesitated, and in the meanwhile the proximate cause of all his troubles became again active.
Great Britain happened to be represented at that time in Japan by Sir Harry Parkes, a man of exceptional perspicacity and of military methods. He foresaw that the days of the Yedo Court were numbered; he believed that the interests of his own country as well as those of ​Japan would be furthered by the Emperor's resumption of administrative power ; and the abundant energy of his disposition made it difficult for him to trust the consummation of these things to the slow processes of time. The Emperor had not yet ratified the treaties. They were understood to have his sanction, but the diplomatic formality of ratification was still wanting. Further, it appeared eminently desirable from the British merchant's point of view that the import duties fixed by the treaties should be reduced from an average of fifteen per cent ad valorem to five per cent, and that the ports of Hyōgō and Osaka should be opened at once to foreign trade, instead of nearly two years hence, as originally agreed. Now the Shōgun owed a sum of two million dollars to the four Powers which had undertaken the Shimo-no-seki expedition. They had imposed a fine of three million dollars on Chōshiu, and the Yedo Government had undertaken to pay the money. Two millions were still due. It occurred to Sir Harry Parkes that a good bargain might be struck by offering to forego this debt of two millions in exchange for the ratification of the treaties, the reduction of the tariff, and the speedy opening of Hyōgō and Osaka. The proposition, being in the nature of a peaceful offer, might have been preferred without the cooperation of war-ships. But Sir Harry Parkes had learned to think that a display of force should occupy the ​foreground in all negotiations with Oriental States, and he possessed the faculty of persuading himself that a naval demonstration might be represented to the European public as a perfectly friendly prelude to a conference. He got together a fleet of British, French, and Dutch men-of-war, and sailed with them to Hyōgō for the purpose of setting forth his project of amicable exchange.
It will be remembered that the two crucial stages of the early treaty negotiations were the passage of foreign vessels into the Bay of Kanagawa and the admission of an American Envoy to the Shōgun's capital. Hyōgō stood in the same relation to the imperial city of Kyōtō that Kanagawa occupied towards Yedo. The arrival of a foreign squadron at Hyōgō could not fail to disturb the nation even more than the apparition of Commodore Perry's vessels at Kanagawa had disturbed the Shōgun's officials. Thus, when eight foreign war-ships cast anchor off Hyōgō in November, 1866, and when the Foreign Representatives, speaking from out of the shadow of fifty cannon, set forth the details of their "friendly" exchange, all the troubles of foreign intercourse seemed to have been revived in an aggravated form. Here were the "barbarians" at the very portals of the Imperial Palace, and it did not occur to any one to suppose that such pomp and parade of instruments of war had been prepared for the mere amusement of ​Japanese sightseers, or that a refusal of the amicable bargain proposed in such terms would be followed by the quiet withdrawal of the menacing squadron, which, as the Japanese had fully learned at Kagoshima and Shimo-no-seki, could raze their towns and shatter their ships with the utmost ease. Chōshiu rebels and all other domestic troubles were forgotten in the presence of this peril. The anti-foreign agitators, who had been virtually reduced to silence, raised their voices again in loud denunciation of the Shōgun's incompetence to preserve the precincts of the sacred city from such trespasses. The Emperor himself shared the general alarm, and in a moment the Shogunate was confronted by a crisis of the gravest nature. A resolute attitude towards either the Imperial Court or the foreigners could alone have saved the situation. But the Shōgun's ministers pursued their usual temporising tactics. They sought to placate the Foreign Representatives by half-promises, and they urged the Imperial Court to concede something.
The Emperor, brought once more under the influence of the anti-foreign party, took an extraordinary step at this stage. He dismissed from office and otherwise punished the ministers to whom the Shōgun had entrusted the conduct of the negotiations with the Foreign Representatives. That was an open violation of the Yedo Government's administrative rights. ​Nothing remained for the Shōgun except to resign. He adopted that course, submitting to the sovereign two addresses; in one of which Prince Keiki was recommended as his successor; in the other, the necessity of ratifying the treaties was set forth in strong terms. The Court, however, shrank from the responsibiHties involved in accepting this resignation. Answer was made to the Shōgun that the treaties had the Imperial assent and that the Shōgun was empowered to deal with them, but that since they contained many objectionable provisions, steps must be taken to revise them, after consultation with the feudatories, and that, under no circumstances, should Hyōgō and Osaka be opened. It was an impracticable compromise, but the Shōgun lacked courage to reject it. His ministers conceded the tariff changes proposed by the Foreign Representatives and further promised that Hyōgō would be opened speedily. The Representatives therefore sailed away with a pleasant consciousness of success. They had come in their war-ships to propose a friendly exchange, the conditions being that in return for remitting two million dollars of an indemnity excessive from the outset they should obtain three important concessions. They went away having obtained two of the concessions and without having remitted a dollar of the indemnity.
The Shōgun was now free to prosecute his ​interrupted expedition against Chōshiu. But the opportunity to carry it to a successful issue no longer existed. The Chōshiu men had found time to organise their defences, and to receive a large accession of strength from quarters permeated with dissatisfaction against the Yedo Government. Every operation undertaken by the Shōgun's adherents ended in failure, and the Chōshiu samurai found themselves in a position to assume the offensive.
While the nation was watching this display of impotence and drawing conclusions fatal to the prestige of the Yedo Government, the Shōgun died and was succeeded by Prince Keiki (1866).
It has been shown that Prince Keiki was put forward by the anti-foreign conservatives as candidate for the succession to the Shōgun's office in 1857, when the complications of foreign intercourse were in their first stage of acuteness. Yet no sooner did he become Shōgun in 1866 than he remodelled the army on French lines, engaged English officers to organise a navy, sent his brother to the Paris Exposition, and altered many of the forms and ceremonies of his Court so as to bring them into accord with Occidental fashions. This contrast between the politics he represented when a candidate for office and the practice he adopted on succeeding to power nine years later, furnished an apt illustration ​of the change that had come over the spirit of the time. The most bigoted of the exclusionists were now beginning to abandon all idea of at once expelling foreigners and to think mainly of acquiring the best elements of their civilisation.
Pressing for immediate settlement when Keiki became Shōgun were two questions, the trouble with Chōshiu and the opening of Hyōgō to foreign trade. In the eyes of the great majority of the feudatories, notably the Satsuma chief, the former problem was the more important; in the eyes of the Shōgun, the latter. Twice the Emperor was memorialised in urgent terms to sanction the convention providing for the opening of Hyōgo at the beginning of 1868, and at length he reluctantly consented. At the same time an edict was obtained imposing severe penalties on Chōshiu. The former provoked a fresh ebullition among the anti-foreign politicians; the latter had a result still more disastrous to the Tokugawa, for it united against them the great clans of Satsuma and Chōshiu.
This is one of the turning-points of Japan's modern history. A few words are needed to make it intelligible.
In spite of the generally hostile sentiments entertained towards each other by the Satsuma and Chōshiu clans, each comprised a number of exceptionally gifted men whose ambition was to join the forces of the two fiefs for the purpose of ​unifying the Empire under the rule of the Kyoto Court. Prominent among these reformers on the Satsuma side were Saigo and Okubo, while on the Chōshiu side were Kido and Sanjo,—all four destined to play great parts in the drama of their country's new career. Saigo and Okubo, in common with the bulk of the Satsuma samurai, entertained, at the outset, strongly conservative ideas with regard to foreign intercourse, but such views, as has been shown, were not shared by the Satsuma chief and his principal vassals. The Satsuma leaders, in fact, tended to liberalism. Chōshiu, on the contrary, was permeated by anti-foreign prejudice. Hence anything like hearty coalition between the two clans seemed impossible, and the breach grew wider after 1863; for the bombardment of Kagoshima by a British squadron in that year having finally convinced all classes in Satsuma of the hopelessness of resisting foreign intercourse, they made no secret of their progressive principles, and were consequently regarded as unpatriotic renegades by the Chōshiu samurai. Events accentuated the difference. The Chōshiu batteries in 1863 fired on and destroyed a Satsuma steamer laden with cotton for foreign markets; the Satsuma men took a leading part in resisting Chōshiu's attempt to reenter Kyōtō in 1864. Nothing seemed less likely than a union of such hostile elements. But Chōshiu's turn to receive a convincing object lesson came in 1865, when a foreign fleet attacked ​Shimo-no-seki and demonstrated Japanese helplessness to resist Western weapons. At the same time two youths of the Choshiu clan, Ito and Inouye returning from England, whither they had been sent to study means of expelling foreigners, began to propagate vigorously among their clansmen the liberal convictions acquired on their travels. Choshiu, in short, was converted, as Satsuma had already been, and the advocates of national unification found at length an opportunity to bring the two clans together. They could not have succeeded, however, in engaging Satsuma to espouse any scheme hostile to the Tokugawa had not the latter's leading officials alienated the Satsuma chief, first by a display of groundless suspicion, and afterwards by deciding to send a second expedition against Choshiu, although Satsuma had been one of the leaders of the former expedition and had endorsed its results. These things had gradually cooled Satsuma's friendship towards the Yedo Court, and when, in 1867, the Shōgun Keiki obtained a rescript authorising the severe punishment of Choshiu, Satsuma secretly entered into an alliance with the latter. Capital as the incident was, its importance escaped the knowledge of the Yedo Court. But the Shōgun soon had ample evidence that among all the feudatories he could no longer count certainly upon the loyalty of more than three or four, the whole of ​the rest having been estranged either by his treatment of the Chōshiu question or by his radical innovations.
It was at this juncture that Yōdō, chief of Tosa, a clan scarcely less important than either Satsuma or Chōshiu, addressed to the Shogun a remarkable memorial, setting forth the helplessness of the position in which the Yedo Court now found itself, and urging that, in the interests of good government and in order that the nation's united strength might be available to meet the contingencies of its new career, the administrative power should be restored to the Emperor. Yōdō was one of the great men of his time. Reference has been frequently made in these pages to the action taken or the attitude assumed by the "feudatories" at such and such a juncture. But it must be noted that the feudatories themselves—in other words, the feudal chiefs—exercised little influence on the current of events in Tokugawa days. From the Shōgun downward, the nobles were enervated, incompetent, and often semi-imbecile individuals, educated in such a manner as to be without perception of the world of men and things, and sedulously taught to indulge their sensuous proclivities at the sacrifice of every useful capacity or wholesome impulse. There were exceptions, of course. Nariaki and Rekkō of Mito, Shimazu Samuro of Satsuma, Shungaku of Yechizen, Kanso of Nabeshima, ​and Yōdō of Tosa deservedly rank among the illustrious statesmen that prepared the way for the radical change of later days, or took an active part in promoting it. But it would be most erroneous to suppose that the Revolution of 1867 and all the reforms growing out of it were conceived, initiated, or furthered by the feudal chiefs. Among their immediate authors and promoters, numbering in all about threescore, not more than half a dozen names of great territorial magnates are to be found, and even these half-dozen acted a subordinate part. The makers of new Japan were samurai of comparatively low rank, men of extraordinary courage and almost reckless daring; swayed by a passionate desire to see their country take an honourable place among the nations, but not uninfluenced by motives of personal ambition and not hampered by hostages already given to fortune. The only sense in which the nobility can be said to have assisted the Revolution was that their intellectual helplessness rendered them practically indifferent to their own selfish interests, and thus prevented them from opposing changes which certainly did not make for their advantage. Yōdō of Tosa belonged to the very small minority of feudal chiefs who saw clearly whither events were tending; yet he, too, owed much of his progressive ideas to the influence of ardent young reformers among his vassals.
​The Tosa memorial, carried to Kyōtō by Goto and Fukuoka, gave definite form to a conviction which had already begun to present itself vaguely to the intelligence of the Shogun. He summoned a council of all the feudatories and high officials then in Kyōtō, announced to them his decision, and, the next day, presented his resignation to the Emperor.
This happened on the 14th of October, 1867. It must be ranked among the signal events of the world's history. During nearly three centuries the Tokugawa had wielded supreme administrative authority in Japan, holding in Yedo a Court which lacked no attribute of stately magnificence or autocratic strength. It is not the custom of humanity to voluntarily surrender the highest prizes attainable by brilliant statesmanship and military genius. No reason can be found, however, to doubt that Keiki's resignation was tendered in good faith, or that, had it been accepted in the same spirit, the great changes it suggested would have been consummated without bloodshed or disorder. But the clansmen of the south distrusted the Shogun's intention. A similar act on the part of his predecessor had resulted in restoring the autocratic power of the Yedo Court. They resolved, therefore, to give such prompt and decisive effect to Keiki's offer that the possibility of its withdrawal should be completely obviated. The ​Emperor being then only fifteen years of age, Imperial edicts were easily obtained by those having friends at Court. Secretly there was issued to Satsuma and Chōshiu the following rescript:—
   Inasmuch as Minamoto Keiki, relying on the merits of his ancestors and on the power and dignity bequeathed to him, has grown arrogant and disloyal, doing to death our good and faithful subjects and often refusing to observe our commands; and inasmuch as he did not hesitate to alter and even reverse orders issued by the late Emperor; and inasmuch as without compunction he has led the people to the edge of an awful abyss; and inasmuch as the Divine Nation, because of his crimes, is on the eve of a great disaster; now, therefore, we, who are the father and mother of our people, since we cannot choose but punish this traitor, so that the spirit of the late Emperor may be appeased and vengeance done upon the nation's worst enemy, hereby declare our will that the traitor Keiki be destroyed, and that you, to whom this command is addressed, accomplish the great deed and replace the national affairs on a firm foundation of lasting peace and glory.
The secrecy in which the Shōgun's enemies were able to envelop their proceedings indicates the strength of their position. Not only did the alliance between Satsuma and Chōshiu escape the observation of the Yedo authorities, but even the issue of the above edict remained unknown to the public for several years. It was a document obviously dictated by unreasoning hostility: ​none of its charges could have been substantiated, nor can any meed of disinterested patriotism be accorded to those that compiled it.
The procedure of a Court capable of framing such harsh edicts can easily be inferred. All officials connected with the Tokugawa or suspected of sympathy with them were ruthlessly expelled from office in Kyōtō, and the Shōgun's troops were deprived of the custody of the Palace gates by methods which verged upon the use of armed force. In the face of such provocation, Keiki's earnest efforts to restrain the indignation of his vassals and adherents failed. He was obliged to lead them against Kyōtō. One defeat, however, sufficed to restore his resolution against bloodshed. He retired to Yedo, and subsequently made unconditional surrender to the forces of his enemies, now known as the "Imperial Army." This part of the story need not detain the reader. The Yedo Court consented to lay aside its dignities and to be stripped of its administrative authority, but all the Tokugawa vassals and adherents did not prove equally placable. There was resistance in the northern provinces; there was an attempt to set up a rival candidate for the Throne in the person of an Imperial Prince who presided over the Uyeno Monastery in Yedo; and there was a wild essay on the part of the admiral of the Shōgun's fleet to establish a republic in the island of Yezo. But these were mere ripples on the surface of the broad stream which set towards ​the peaceful overthrow of the dual system of government and ultimately towards the fall of feudalism itself.
It will be observed that in the edict quoted above no explicit reference is made to the question of foreign intercourse. A seclusionist, reading between the lines, might have detected some covert allusion to the subject; but, at the same time, the contrast between such marked reticence and the outspoken denunciations of the previous Emperor's rescripts, must have forced itself upon the attention of every one perusing the document. The anti-Shogun movement had seemed originally to derive its main force from the nation's anti-foreign mood. Yet the alien-expelling" sentiment did not figure at all upon the stage whereon were acted the last episodes in the drama of the Shogunate's destruction. The reader has doubtless traced the gradual differentiation that took place with regard to this sentiment. On the one hand, those whose position and strength invested their judgment with serious responsibility, as the Satsuma and Chōshiu clans, had been taught by vivid object-lessons the futility of open resistance to foreign intercourse. On the other, the camp-following class, which consisted of unemployed samurai and ignorant adventurers without any stake in the preservation of public peace, had ceased to wield appreciable influence, though they clung tenaciously to the traditional prejudice against everything alien, and stood ready ​to sacrifice their own lives or the lives of other people in the cause of "patriotism" as they interpreted it. As for the Imperial Court, it reflected at any given time the convictions of the coterie of nobles that happened to be then paramount. Had the Emperor Kōmei lived a few years longer, it is possible that the views to which he had been committed by various edicts issued in his name while the "alien-expelling" party dominated the situation in Kyōtō, might have hampered any departure in a liberal direction. But he died early in 1867, and was succeeded by a youth of fourteen, who neither owed obligation to continuity of record nor took direct part in the management of State affairs. Seven noblemen, representing the Imperial nucleus of the anti-foreign element, had fled to Chōshiu in the immediate sequel of the intrigue of the forged rescript mentioned above, and had been effectually converted to liberalism by the events that occurred during their sojourn in the south. These men, on their return to Kyōto in 1867, supported the moderate policy of their former opponents, and it resulted that the Court fell completely under the sway of liberal views.
Another reason for conciliating foreigners was found in the difficulties and embarrassments that faced the organisers of the new Japanese polity. They had to unravel such troublesome domestic ​problems that they not only shrank from supplementing them by foreign complications, but were even disposed to place some reliance on the good will of Great Britain and of the United States as a means of strengthening their position. One of the first acts of the newly organised Government was to invite the Foreign Representatives to Kyōtō, where they were received in audience by the Emperor, and shortly afterwards a decree was promulgated, announcing the sovereign's resolve to have amicable relations with foreign nations, and declaring that any Japanese subject thereafter guilty of violent behaviour towards a foreigner would not only act in opposition to the Imperial command, but also be guilty of impairing the dignity and good faith of the nation in the eyes of the Powers with which His Majesty had pledged himself to maintain friendship. A more signal reversal of the anti-foreign policy could not have been accomplished. Two years previously the appearance of foreign vessels off Hyōgō had thrown the nation into consternation and tumult lest the precincts of the sacred city of Kyoto should be invaded by alien feet. Now, the Emperor actually invited foreigners to the Palace, and, with unprecedented condescension, allowed them to see him face to face.
Some element of abruptness must always be suggested by a signal metamorphosis of sentiment. ​The conversion of Japan's Court and aristocracy to pro-foreign doctrines usually perplexes readers of her annals. They find its methods sudden and its motives obscure. The facts have therefore been set down here with minuteness somewhat disproportionate to the general scheme of these volumes' historical retrospect. Perhaps the most intelligible and comprehensive statement of the change is that whereas, in 1867, the nation's unique impulse was to reject foreign intercourse absolutely and unconditionally, its absorbing purpose in 1867 was to assimilate the material elements of Western civilisation as rapidly and thoroughly as possible. The ultimate bases of the two policies were preservation by isolation and protection by mimicry. But no Japanese of the liberal school admitted any idea of imitation for the sake of safety. He saw only what his country had lost by seclusion, and he thought only of employing every energy to repair the injury she had suffered and to equip her for recovering her due place among the Powers of the world. There remained, it is true, a small party still anchored to the old faith that to admit the foreigner was to welcome a plotter against the Empire's welfare. But to the principal of these conservatives the wholesome medicine of foreign travel was subsequently administered, working an effectual cure. As for the still smaller section, the men who had imagined that if they acquired the foreigner's proficiency in building and navi-​gating ships, organising and equipping armies and manufacturing and utilising weapons of war, they might again close the treaty ports and revert to the old isolation, they soon perceived that there is no element of finality in civilisation, and that to turn their backs upon the Occident after brief acquaintance would be to fall behind it again in the race of progress and become as impotent as ever to resist alien aggression or dictation.
There will never again be in Japan, so far as human judgment can discern, any effective reaction against Occidental civilisation or Occidental intercourse. In fact, it may be asserted that from the day when the Shogunate fell, Japan ceased to be an Oriental nation. The term Oriental" is not used here in a disparaging sense. So far as Japan is concerned, the reader of these pages knows that she possessed a civilisation of her own; a refined, elaborate, and highly developed civilisation, many phases of which suffer nothing, if indeed they do not gain, by comparison with the civilisation of the foremost Western nations. Therefore this epithet "Oriental" is employed with reference solely to the conservatism which has come to be regarded as a distinctive feature of East-Asian peoples; the conservatism that makes them cling to their old institutions, their old methods, their old laws, their old judicial procedure, their old means of communication, their old social organisations, and ​their old administrative machinery. From the trammels of such conservatism Japan shook herself finally free in 1867. The soundness of her instincts does not seem to have been impaired by long exile from international competition or by long lack of invigorating contact with foreign intellects. She knew the good when she saw it, and she chose it without racial prejudice or false shame. It is possible, of course, to set forth an imposing catalogue of achievements verifying these assertions; a catalogue of laws compiled, of judicial tribunals organised, of parliamentary institutions introduced, of railways built, of telegraphs erected, of postal services established, of industrial enterprises developed, of lines of steamers opened, of an educational system started of a newspaper press created, and so forth. There will be occasion presently to make special allusion to some of these things. But it is not to statistics that the reader's attention is invited here so much as to the broad fact that Japan has differentiated herself completely from "Oriental Nations" in the usually accepted sense of the term, and that her aspirations, her modes of thought, her impulses, her ideals, and her tests of conduct must now be classed, not altogether indeed but certainly in the main, as Occidental. She may be regarded as a Western nation situated on the confines of the Far East; a nation now, for the second time in its history, giving free play to the instincts of progress, of ​enterprise, and of daring which, conspicuously displayed three centuries ago, were thereafter paralysed by causes for which the Christian Occident, not the "pagan Orient," was primarily responsible.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 37.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 38.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 39.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 40.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 41.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 42.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 43.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 44.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 45
* ↑ See Appendix, note 46.
* ↑ See Appendix, note 47.
* ↑ ​Note 37.—Foreigners settled originally at Kanagawa and subsequently moved to Yokohama, two or three miles down the bay.
* ↑ ​Note 38.—It is just to note that their suspicion was never shared by the United States Representative, Mr. Townsend Harris. His belief in the sincerity of the Japanese officials never wavered, and when, after the murder of Mr. Heusken, which Mr. Harris must have felt more keenly than any of his colleagues, they decided to move their Legations from Yedo to Yokohama as a protest against the supposed duplicity and inefficiency of the Shōgun's officials, the American Representative remained at his post, and his declared view of the circumstances of the time showed a clearness of insight that contrasts forcibly with the ignorance of other foreigners.
* ↑ ​Note 39.—Joint Note on the Political Situation and State ​of Affairs in Japan, drawn up at two conferences of the Foreign Representatives held in Yedo on the nineteenth and twenty-first of January, 1861.
* ↑ ​Note 40.—British State Papers 1855–70.
* ↑ ​Note 41.—The lady was not purposely spared. A sword-stroke aimed at her neck shore off a feather in her hat. This attempt to kill a woman excited much indignation among foreigners. But the writer of these pages has been assured by two of the samurai directly concerned in the affair, that the idea of a female being among the party of foreigners did not present itself for a moment to the men of the Satsuma escort. A foreign woman in a riding habit and a foreign man in a coat offered no points for discrimination to Japanese soldiers entirely without knowledge of aliens and their costumes.
* ↑ ​Note 42.—The foreign public knew nothing of these things. They imagined that the Shōgun had gone to Kyōtō to receive investiture at the Emperor's hands.
* ↑ ​Note 43.—The principal objection urged against it is that as the Straits of Shimo-no-seki are Japanese inland waters, foreign ships had no right to be there, and consequently could not justly complain of the treatment they received. But even if it be admitted that to open fire on a vessel flying a friendly flag is a legitimate method of remonstrating against her illegal presence, the reader will have seen, from what has been recorded above, that the act of the Chōshiu gunners was not a simple protest against trespass, but the deliberate inauguration of an attempt to terminate foreign intercourse.
* ↑ ​Note 44.—Now Marquis Ito and Count Inouye, two of the leading statesmen of Japan.
* ↑ ​Note 45.—Afterwards Count Goto and Count Fukuoka, prominent statesmen of the Meiji era.
* ↑ ​Note 46.—The most prominent among these seven nobles was Prince Sanjō, afterwards prime minister under the Meiji Government.
* ↑ ​Note 47.—France had always shown herself particularly friendly to the Tokugawa, and was therefore regarded with some distrust by the founders of the new system.
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