Satow's perception of the Meiji revolution |
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Between 1853 and 1868, Japanese society underwent a profound and violent societal, economic, and cultural upheaval, the likes of which it had not seen in over 200 years. The ruling military government of Japan, the clan-pure Tokugawa Shogunate and its ancient feudal system of governance, disintegrated under internal pressure to reform to meet the challenges of the Industrial Age, embodied by foreign interests, particularly that of the United States and England, which used the threat of their military and technological superiority to force the Japanese to accept trade agreements. In doing so, the Shogunate wrote its final chapter and set the state for a return to power of the Emperor, a quasi-religious position which since the 1600s had been relegated to ceremonial duties as the spiritual godfather of Japan, while the Shogunate and its samurai warrior culture administered the country’s affairs. The British Empire of the time was preoccupied initially with wars with Russia and China, but observed with keen interest the initial rumblings of discontent and reform within Japan, precipitated by the bold moves of the United States to establish relations with Japan. Once the British wars had been concluded and Americans had done the proverbial dirty advance work of opening Japan up, the British established their own presence within Japan as it underwent a rapid societal metamorphosis. Over time, various representatives of foreign governments, most notably the eminent British interpreter and diplomat Ernest Satow, went beyond active interest to active involvement in the internal affairs of the Japanese transformation from Tokugawa Shogunate rule to restoration of the power of the Emperor, known as the Meiji Revolution. Some of this involvement was self-serving and destructive; some of it was noble, altruistic, and reflected a genuine appreciation and compassion for the Japanese and their unique, noble, and astonishingly complex culture. As with most chapters in history, it is often difficult to discern in retrospect where altruism and self-interest intersected and diverged; the history of Japan’s wrenching introduction into the modern age is particularly messy, but only more fascinating for being as such.
 In order to explore this era, some chronological narrative is of course required, but a strictly linear structure is not necessarily the most effective way to approach the issues. Therefore, this dissertation will alternate between historical narrative and cultural explication, sometimes moving backwards and forwards in time, and indulging in anecdotal tangents as well as delvings into the personal histories of some of the players in question, all in hopes of painting a full and complex picture of the interlocking forces – Japanese, American, and British, which turned this tiny country upside down in the short space of 15 years and set the stage for its rise to global power. (A full investigation of the Japanese relations with Russia, China, and the Dutch could easily comprise a dissertation of its own, but we will limit most of our focus here to the often tragic, but often edifying interaction of the Japanese with the two aforementioned Western powers.) Lastly, it is important to note that no exploration of Japan’s relations with the West during the Tokugama Shogunate / Meiji Revolution era, or any era for that matter, is complete without dwelling occasionally in details of Japanese culture, which are alternately arcane and compelling. Such moments will be interwoven with the historical narratives and observations as required.
In 1854, the United States and Japan signed the Treaty of Kanagawa
,which opened up Japan economically and culturally to the West for the
first time. Up until this point in time, ancient Japanese law forbade
trade with any foreign nations other than China and the Dutch, the
latter of which were allowed to visit Japan twice a year to do business
solely at the port of Nagasaki; even then, the foreigners’ presence was
confined to the small island of Deshima. The signing of the treaty was
a momentous occasion for both the United States and Japan, but it was
not necessarily an egalitarian or mutually beneficial agreement, nor
did both parties come to the signing ceremony of their own free will.
Commodore Matthew Perry, representing the United States, essentially
forced the Japanese into signing the treaty by virtue of the threat of
his heavily armed four-warship fleet which arrived in Edo Bay (Tokyo’s
harbor; Tokyo was known as Edo during Tokugawa Shogunate dynasty) – a
port forbidden to foreigners -- in July 1853 and refused to depart
until the Japanese consented to enter into a trade and peace agreement
between the two nations. Perry was acting under orders from the
highest authority in the United States, his Commander in Chief,
President Millard Fillmore. Perry arrived bearing a letter from
President Fillmore to Emperor Kōmei (who reigned from 1831-1867 and was
the 121st imperial ruler of Japan). The letter was an eager one, and
contained several passages full of obsequious language:
However, the letter also contained notable amounts of braggadocio
regarding the economic and technological might at the disposal of the
United States: The subtext was clear. Though polite and solicitous to almost a comic fault, Fillmore made it clear that it was in Japan’s best interests to cooperate with the United States in opening itself up to foreign trade, or Japan might meet the same fate as Mexico, which the United States had obliterated and territorially eviscerated in a war ending just four years prior to Perry’s visit to Japan. To punctuate the subtext of his letter, Fillmore did not send Perry across the Pacific Ocean in a yacht armed only with flowers; Perry sailed into Yedo Bay with an unmistakable symbol of United States might, his state-of-the-art mini-fleet. Why the particular interest in Japan, a relatively small nation? It was strategically located, a gateway to the Far East, and influence over/in, and/or control of Japan would greatly expand American’s military and economic power. Japan was also a nation of important natural resources that could be used to feed the hungry monster of the West’s burgeoning Industrial Revolution. As samurai scholar Marcel Thach notes, “after the colonization of China, the Western Powers -- America in particular -- turned their eye towards Japan and saw a country rich with coal deposits, one which they could colonize and exploit as they had China and other East Asian nations such as India.” (Thach, 2002)
The Japanese were initially unmoved by President Fillmore’s letter,
leaving Commodore Perry to stew in the harbor with the expectation that
he would simply tire and go home. This was not to be the case,
however, as Perry quickly saw fit to turn up the proverbial heat on the
Japanese by sending a letter of his own to the Emperor. In it, Perry
reiterated some of the niceties expressed by President Fillmore, but
then delivered some language of a level of candor to which the Japanese
were not accustomed:
The Japanese remained unmoved, provoking Commodore Perry’s temper.
Diplomatic subtleties were abandoned, and on July 14, 1853, he
delivered an imperious admonishment accusing the Japanese of a sin
against God, in effect, and threatened to fire upon the harbor: At this juncture, the virulent and ingrained xenophobia of the Japanese culture was forced to yield to common sense. The Japanese had no navy to speak of, and though Perry’s four ships were unlikely to comprise enough force to cause the Japanese to comply, the threat of an imminent arrival of a bona fide armada induced the Japanese to capitulate and sign the treaty of Kanagawa. (In the wake of the capitulation, the Japanese dispatched an order to their Dutch trading partners to commission the building of a warship, which was named the Kanrin-maru and was 49 meters in length, with 12 canons and three masts. It was delivered somewhat belatedly in 1857, but was put to good use as a military training vessel.) It is important to pause here to explicate the amorphous term “the Japanese.” At the time of Perry’s arrival in Tokyo, Japan was indeed technically ruled by an Emperor, but he was largely a spiritual and traditional figurehead who wielded minimal political power. The locus of decision-making was controlled by a chief shôgun (which in Japanese means “great general”), a direct descendent of Tokugawa leyasu, who in 1603 defeated rival warlords to bring a semblance of organizational coherence to a Japanese society dominated by the fractious conflicts between feudal warlords. (In fact, the Tokugawa Shogunate, as the organization came to be known, ruled in relative peace for the next 250 years in what was called the Edo Period, after the ancient name for the city of Tokyo.) From 1603 on, the chief shôgun henceforth always carried the Tokugawa clan title, and maintained power by executing rivals and replacing them with family members and trusted allies, who were forbidden to marry outside the Tokugawa clan and allowed to rule their individual local dominions with a relatively free and arbitrary hand as long as they loyally served the chief shôgun. Furthermore, all other shôguns and feudal lords were forced to attend a grand gathering in Tokyo / Edo every other year under the watchful eye of the Tokugawa shôgun, where loyalties were reinforced and tested, and suspected traitors ferreted out. Additionally, other lords were required to keep heirs or wives in Tokyo while they were administering to their duties in their respective feudal domains, which was another powerful tool of the Tokugawa clan to maintain its control. A strict hierarchical caste system had also established by the Tokugawa Shogunate; atop this pyramid was the infamous warrior class of the samurai, the subjects of much awe and reverence among Western cultures. Below the samurai were farmers, artisans, and traders. Meanwhile, the Emperor himself resided in Kyoto, accompanied by a few servants and bureaucrats to tend to his ceremonial needs, but he exercised virtually no governing power at all. It was under this repressive cloak that the xenophobic culture of Japan was cultivated and its restrictive trade policies enacted into law. The third in the Tokugawa shôgun lineage, Tokugawa Iemitsu, established the rules forbidding almost all foreign trade and interaction. Only inbound trading ships were permitted, and of these visitors the Dutch and the Chinese were the only ones allowed. This was not merely an exercise in preserving Japanese culture purity, however. Tokugawa Iemitsu was keenly concerned with maintaining his clan’s power over the opposing feudal warlords, and he knew that cultural, religious, military, and economic influences from other countries could destabilize the already precarious balance of power. The economic and cultural modernization and maturation within the large cities was, by the 19th century, starting to create conflict within the caste system, which began to teeter under the weight of its own stubborn antiquity. This was the complex environment into which Commodore Perry sailed his four ships in July 1853: a paranoid, secretive, and warlike culture steeped in Byzantine traditions but also militarily and technologically steeped in the past, and thus unable to defend its sovereignty. The forced signing of the treaty was the beginning of a long road of resentment towards the United States and the West that culminated in Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. In the immediate meantime, however, the Treaty of Kanagawa was finally signed on March 31, 1854 after Commodore Perry’s return to Japan. It stipulated that the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate would be opened to American ships seeking supplies, that American sailors who had been shipwrecked would be rescued and well-treated, and agreed that an American consulate would be established in Shimoda for the purposes of negotiating a further and more comprehensive trade agreement. This treaty was the beginning of a succession of agreements forced upon the Japanese that brought about a great influx of foreign investment, trade, and business into Japan, but the economic effects of this phenomenon were not all salutary. One such deleterious effect was massive inflation of the Japanese currency. The caste system under the Tokugawa Shogunate mandated a rigid system of taxation on the peasantry; the taxes were fixed and not fairly tied to inflation or other economic vagaries, and thus the taxes gathered by the ruling shôguns fell steeply in the wake of the Treaty of Kanagawa, causing ironic clashes between the well-to-do working class and their rulers. Arguably better warriors than macro-economists, the shôgun were unable to curtail this inflation, and the resultant economic instability and hardships inflicted on the Japanese people caused a popular unrest that could not be quelled for very long, and fact led to civil war. By 1867, the Shogunate had been overthrown in what became known as the Meiji Rebellion, which restored the Emperor to true power beyond the ceremonial, and brought about a thorough reform of the organization of Japanese government and society. One of the intermediary steps on the way to the weakening of the Shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor’s rule was another treaty between the United States, The Treaty of Amity and Commerce Between the United States and Japan, better known historically as the Treaty of Townsend Harris, named after the persistent American diplomat who persuaded the Japanese to sign it. As alluded to previously, the Treaty of Kanagawa had stipulated the creation of an American Consulate in Japan, which would open up negotiations on the specifics of trade negotiation. President Franklin Pierce, who had replaced President Fillmore in March 1853, dispatched Townsend Harris from New York in November 1855 to establish the Consulate and coax the Japanese into actual trade, not simply the intent to trade. Harris arrived in Shimoda in August 1856, having cannily brought along a Dutch-speaking secretary and interpreter named Henry Heuksen to facilitate the difficult and delicate nuances of discourse with the Japanese. However, the Japanese, in a typical stalling maneuver, asked Harris to leave and return in a year. He refused; the Japanese asked him to proceed to Nagasaki, which he declined to do; then, in a final – and rather creative – attempt to rid themselves of Harris, they asked him to write a letter back to the President James Buchanan (who had succeeded Pierce in the November 1856 election) requesting a cancellation of his diplomatic mission. The indefatigable Harris refused this request as well, and eventually the Japanese allowed him to set up an office at the port of Shimoda. Nonetheless, they continued to stonewall Harris by referring any request or question, whether trivial or consequential, to the Emperor’s palace in Edo. Harris demanded an audience with the shôgun in the capital, but over a year passed before Harris received permission to travel to Edo. Harris did not sit idly by, however; he used the intervening time to cultivate favor and good will with the powers-that-were in Shimoda, the local members of theTokugawa bafuku. (Bafuku is a Japanese word loosely translated to mean “tent government” and is an arm, during this historical period, of the Tokugawa Shogunate) Harris was well aware that the British had paid a visit to the Japanese in 1854 that did not go well and left a bitter taste in the proverbial mouths of both parties. The British, mired in a conflict with the Russians that led to the Crimean War (1854-1856) had dispatched Sir James Stirling from China in 1855 to request that the Japanese deny Russian ships access to their ports and attempt to secure some sort of initial trade understanding with the Japanese. Stirling did conclude a treaty, but it was hopelessly vague and of limited utlity, in part because of an incompetent translator (a hitch keenly noted by Harris) and was sent on his way. The British lurched from the Crimean War to the Second Opium War with China in 1856, distracting them from immediate focus on Japan, but Harris correctly surmised it would only be a matter of time before the British turned their attention to Japan again, and used it, albeit with some fictional license, as leverage in his negotiations against the Japanese.
Despite managing to offend the chief shogun, the aged Tokugawa
Iesada, and his Court by wearing shoes during his visit to the Palace
in Edo in December 1857, Harris’ otherwise impeccable statesmanship
impressed the Shogunate sufficiently that they gave their blessing for
the treaty negotiations, and they gave permission for Bakufu Grand
Councillor Hotta Masayoshi, with whom Harris had been negotiating, to
continue working with Harris to complete the treaty. Harris
immediately set to work convincing Masayoshi with a combination of
exaltations of American good intentions and fears of an inevitable
British arrival on Japanese soil which would demand treaty terms far
less generous than that ‘suggested’ by the American. Specifically,
Harris preyed on the fears of the Japanese that the only thing standing
between Japan and the imperial pressure of the British was their
soon-to-be-concluded war against China. The Japanese had long held
China in a place of cultural reverence in the Far East and had been
profoundly shocked at the relative ease with which the French and
British were defeating the Chinese in the Second Opium War. Aware of
this, naturally, Harris used it to his advantage. In his December 12,
1857 audience with Masayoshi, Harris had this to say: In another dramatic touch, Harris also asserted that the British intended to addict the entirety of the Japanese population to opium: It appears that the English think the Japanese ... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also. If a man use opium once he cannot stop it, and it becomes a life-long habit to use opium; hence the English want to introduce it into Japan. The President of the United States thinks that for the Japanese opium is more dangerous than war. (Harris, 1857)
What Harris neglected to mention was that in truth, the British were
loathe to try to force an opening into Japan at this particular
juncture in time. They had squandered vast military and political
capital in pursuit of their war with China, and there was domestic
unrest to contend with as well: Nonetheless, Harris then went on to claim that the United States had studiously avoided joining Britain in the war against China, despite the fact that newly elected President Buchanan was a veteran diplomat and former Secretary of State who, in his former diplomatic position, and now, as President-elect, was actively working towards mending old grievances with Britain. Harris suggested that if the Japanese come to mutually satisfactory terms with the United States, particularly with respect to the issue of opium trade – Harris suggested that the Japanese could burn any opium which American traders might bring to ports in the future – then in effect, the United States would form a de facto protective buffer between Japan and the European powers, and at the very least, treaty terms with Britain or France could be no worse for the Japanese than the benevolent terms of a treaty with the United States. In fact, the treaty proposed (in Article II) that in any dispute between Japan and European powers, the United States president would serve as mediator. Hotta Masayoshi was no fool, and despite the fact that the Shogunate had responded to Commodore Perry’s presence by commissioning military vessels from its Dutch trading partners, Masayoshi knew the Japanese had little choice at this particular juncture in time but to accede to Harris’ terms. Negotiations on Treaty of Townsend Harris were concluded in February 1858 and the treaty was signed on July 29, 1858. (Ironically, Commodore Perry died in New York City the same day.) Harris, never one to miss an opportunity for some patriotic public relations, ensured that the treaty was stipulated to take effect on July 4, 1859, on American Independence Day. Little did the Japanese know that they had taken another ominous step towards the erosion of their own cultural-economic independence. The treaty provided for the opening of four additional ports to American trading ships: Kanagawa and Nagasaki, on July 4, 1859; Niigata, on the January 1, 1860; and Hyogo, on the January 1, 1863; the port of Shimoda would be closed to American beginning in January 1860. Starting on July 4, 1862, Americans would also be allowed to take up residence in Edo. It provided for tariffs to be applied to American goods imported into Japan and exported to the United States, and forbade the trade of opium between the Unites States and Japan. The tariffs – unsurprisingly -- favored imported American products with a five percent tax on most goods and raw materials. The treaty stipulated that this tariff was fixed until the treaty came up for revision and renegotiation in 1872, sowing the seeds for the economic instability, alluded to above, that led to the downfall of the Shogunate. In particularly surprising concession, the treaty stipulated that Americans in Japan would be allowed free exercise of their religious beliefs, which extended to permission to construct places of worship. This was a significant break with Japanese tradition, which had long been steeped with animosity towards Christianity. In fact, Christianity was essentially forbidden, and Harris had taken a considerable personal risk by making a show of his Christian beliefs when he visited the Shogunate in Edo in 1858. Despite a clause in the treaty that seemed to forbid Christian proselytizing (“The Americans and Japanese shall not do anything that may be calculated to excite religious animosity” (Article VII), the influx of Christianity into the Japanese homeland was deeply offensive to many traditionalist and contributed to the erosion of support for the Shogunate.
Another interesting stipulation of the treaty is that diplomatic
envoys from Japan would be sent to the United States for the purposes
of cultural exchange and for a ‘formal’ treaty-signing ceremony. Three
Japanese were selected for the journey: Shimmi Masaoki, the senior
ambassador, who was only 35 years of age; Oguri Tadamasu, who carried
the title of ‘official inspector’ for the diplomatic mission; and
Murgaki Norimasa, who kept a detailed diary of the delegation’s visit.
Each were samurai warriors, consistent with the ruling class from which
they came, and knew next to nothing of American culture or the
peculiarities of Western culture, much less the American government;
for example, the Japanese found it bizarre that the Americans had gone
through three elected leaders in a peaceful transition of power between
the time Commodore Perry had paid his infamous visit and the Japanese
delegation left to visit the United States. In an attempt to show
strength and regal power, the three Japanese did not travel alone –
their party numbered 77, including six cooks, 51 guards and servants,
three doctors, and three interpreters. It was quite a showcase: The America into which the Japanese were received in May 1860, was teetering on the precipice of a civil war which would forever alter its destiny, mirroring the dark seeds of revolution which were germinating back home in Japan. To say that the Japanese experienced culture shock was an understatement; it was a precursor to the shocks that would reverberate through Japanese culture in their homeland due to the floodgates of external Western cultural influence that were being opened by the Harris Townsend Treaty that the Japanese envoys signed with President Buchanan on May 18. Upon their return home in November 1860, the Japanese delegation was greeted coolly, as the elements in the Shogunate that had approved the treaty had begun to fall from favor. Murgaki Norimasa and Shimmi Masaoki received promotions but were soon forced into retirement. Oguri Tadamasu went on to become a powerful military leader for the Shogunate, but he refused to accept their downfall and the eventual re-ascension of the Emperor; he and and his son were executed in 1868. The interior map of Japanese political and cultural power was a tumultuous mess by the time the delegation returned to Japan. The Tokugawa Shogunate had splintered into two warring factions due to the controversy regarding the signings of the two treaties with the United States and fears of imminent meddling by the British into Japanese affairs. Tokugawa Iesada had become an old and infirm man and was barely able to carry out his duties during the negotiations over the Townsend Harris Treaty. Compounding the fractious debate over whether or not to agree to the treaty was a struggle brewing over who would succeed Iesada, as Iesada had no natural heir. The two leading contenders were Tokugawa Yoshinobu (aka Keiki), and a 12-year old boy, the Daimyo of Kii. In an attempt to solidify the ebbing power of the Tokugawa clan and to end the debate over the the treaty signings, the latter of which he had brokered, Hotta Masayoshi broke with precedent and traveled to Kyoto to visit Emperor Komei to seek his approval for the Harris Treaty and for the ascension of the Daimyo of Kii to head the Shogunate. Unfortunately for Hotta, his gamble backfired. The Emperor communicated his unhappiness with the treaties and refused to offer his support for Tokugawa Yoshinobu / Keiki. Hotta was humiliated and was replaced in April 1858 by Ii Naosuke, who was appointed Tokugawa Regent, making him the effective military leader of Japan and head of the shogun council. Ii immediately approved the Townsend Harris Treaty, effectively snubbing the Emperor, which caused a widespread rebellion amongst Imperial Japanese loyalists who literally revered the Emperor as a god and who viewed action against his wishes to be a mortal sin. Undaunted, Ii then proceeded to arbitrarily appointed the boy Daimyo of Kii as the Shogunate heir, spawning a massive rebellion. Those who opposed his sanctioning of the Treaty and/or his appointment of the Shogunate heir were executed en masse, in a bloodbath dubbed the Ansei Purge. Being of tender age, naturally, the Daimyo of Kii – who assumed the name Tokugawa Iemochi -- was unable to assert his sovereign will or assume his duties, leaving Ii firmly entrenched in power, or so he thought. His rule did not last long; he was beheaded by anti-foreigner, pro-Emperor elements in March 1860. After Ii was assassinated, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who had been Tokugawa Iemochi’s earlier rival for the position of Shogun, assumed effective control of the Shogunate by assuming a position of power similar to the one held by Ii and Hotta before him. After Tokugawa Iemochi’s death in 1866, Tokugawa Yoshinobu assumed the official ceremonial title and power of Shogun. He was to be the fifteenth and last Shogun in Japanese history.
Certainly, the arrival of the Americans and the treaties they forced
upon the Shogunate were a leading cause of their downfall, but the
Shogunate was already weakening under its own antiquated weight by the
time Commodore Perry arrived in Japan in 1853. Though very stable and
consistent, the philosophy and structure of the Shogunate government
was change-averse to a fault; it was 200 years old, and had simply
outlived its usefulness: To some degree, the nationalism of the Japanese was reflective of the psychology of isolation, i.e., the Japanese, knowing nothing other than their own culture, naturally viewed it as superior. The appearance and encroachment of a culture, such as Americans’, which was technologically superior, was a profound shock to the Japanese. The Shogunate, at a time when putting forth a unified and strong front was key, blundered initially by putting Commodore Perry’s initial treaty proposal up for public debate, which was an unusual move for the Japanese, signaling to the population that it was weak. Hotto’s ill-fated attempt to persuade the Emperor to support the treaty, and to involve him in the family succession issue within the Tokugama clan, was also a nail in the proverbial coffin, furthering the perception that the Shogunate was weak. Slowly, an unlikely coalition of anti-bafuku entities coalesced to undermine the power of the Shogunate. Not all parties were necessarily advocates of the ending of the Tokugawa dynasty, but all agreed that the Shogunate’s indecisiveness, stalling, and inconsistent policymaking since 1853 had greatly weakened Japan’s strength as a nation both internally and externally. The coalition, over time, came to include middle-to-lower class samurai, mostly from the western clans of Tosa, Hizen, Satsuma, and Choshu; the kuge, or the Emperor and his court, who after centuries of staying out of the mechanics of governance, had come to believe that the Shogunate had not only usurped the power of the Emperor, but stained its dignity and divinity; merchants, from cities such as Osaka and Kyoto, whose support went beyond the moral and helped fund revolutionary forces; and lastly, the peasants, whose economic discontent led them to provide moral support and also, quite literally, bodies – towards the end of the Shogunate dynasty, they were enlisted as soldiers to fight in the revolution, a break from Japanese tradition which relied on the samurai class to engage in Japan’s wars.
It is important to note here that the socio-cultural and economic
forces that led to the disintegration and overthrow of the Shogunate
did not resemble those of other notable modern revolutions, such as the
French or American. The Meiji Revolution, as it came to be known
(after the name of the Emperor who assumed rule over Japan after the
15th Shogun), was not revolution for democracy, or a revolution in
which the lower classes bound together to overthrow the repressive yolk
of an indolent and tyrannical ruling class: Nor was the discontent with the Shogunate necessarily an issue of hatred of foreigners; many within the Imperial Court and other anti-Shogunate forces (and even within the Shogunate itself), despite their loathing of the ‘barbarians,’ as many termed foreigners, reasoned that the best way for Japan to ensure its survival was to embrace useful Western technologies and military tactics; the temporary distaste for Western influences the majority of Japanese may have had to endure for a time would be ameliorated by the Japanese eventually co-opting the Westerners’ own superiority and using it against them. This is in fact exactly what eventually occurred.
Having obtained word of the favorable outcome, at least from the
British perspective, of Townsend Harris’ negotiations with the
Japanese, James Bruce, the 8th British Earl of Elgin, included in his
Far East trip to China a diplomatic stop in Edo on August 17, 1858.
He had little idea of what his chances would be to make any trade
headway with the Japanese. He was personally loathe to engage in any
hardball tactics against the Japanese, having grown weary of the
brutality utilized against the Chinese: Sir Rutherford Alcock arrived in Edo in 1859, to assume the position of British consul to Japan; he was soon promoted to the title of Minister. Alcock began his career as a doctor, then joined the military to serve as a surgeon for the marines in the First Carlist War with Spain. He was later appointed deputy inspector-general for hospitals, a position from which he retired in 1837. In 1842, however, he responded to his government’s call and went to Fuchow, China, to become consul there. He distinguished himself under difficult circumstances, mastering the intricacies of a culture as ancient and complex as that of the Japanese, and was hence awarded his assignment to Japan in 1858. However, given the fact that the British position in Japan was not one of inherent power, as de facto conquerors, as it was in China – the British were at best uneasily tolerated guests – Alcock quickly found himself struggling to execute his responsibilities. “His biggest problems arose from the weakness, vacillations, prevarications and deceptions of the Japanese authorities with whom he had to deal, but he was also not helped by the greed of, and sleaze prevailing among, the first British merchants who came to Japan.” (Cortazi, 1999) Many of the merchants were unfamiliar with and uninterested in the Japanese culture, and focused primarily on maximizing their trading profits and exiting. This did not help their cause with the local Japanese who regarded the British as rude, uncouth, and lacking in civility. As the power of the Shogunate over its local principalities began to disintegrate during their internecine squabble, British diplomatic personnel in Edo and in the local ports became increasingly unsafe. None of the treaties signed with the West contained any stipulations for protection of the foreign diplomats or traders; either this was naively overlooked, or the provisions in the treaties regarding prosecution of Japanese or British/American criminal activities were thought to adequate. They were not. On July 5, 1861, the British Legation at Shinagawa was attacked by a large party of ronin, or renegade samurai warriors. Alcock narrowly escaped with his life, and members of his party were wounded. Another attack occurred the following year while Alcock was vacationing back home in England. It was widely believed that the would-be assassins were rebellious members of the Satsuma clan.
It is worth pausing here to explain the concept of the ronin. They
were samurai who had lost their masters – princes or other dignitaries
higher up on the Shogunate food chain -- either because their masters
had been killed or fallen into disrepute. Under Japanese cultural code
at the time, samurai could not enter into the employ of a new master
without permission from the previous one, which in the case of an
untimely master’s death made it difficult to secure such permission.
These ronin often committed suicide or became seedy, ruthless
mercenaries desperate for survival. The increasing instability and
infighting of the Tokugawa Shogunate during the American and British
‘opening’ of Japan resulted in many samurai being forced into ronin
status, and many blamed the influx of foreigners for their unfortunate
fates. Henry Heusken, Harris Townsend’s secretary and interpreter,
made a prophetic observation about them: Heusken was immensely popular amongst many Japanese for his kindness and respect of them, and his willingness to learn their language and immerse himself in their culture. He enjoyed spending his free time mingling with common Japanese citizens. For this reason he made an easy target, both symbolically and literally, for those elements who loathed the foreigners’ presence on Japanese soil. Huesken was warned on January 7, 1861, by Oguri Tadamasu, the inspector general who had visited the United States the previous year, of rumours of an imminent, large-scale attack on the American Legation by rogue forces. On the night of January 15, Heusken was attacked by seven ronin while returning from the Prussian embassy, and mortally wounded. He managed to survive for a day, despite laying on the road without medical attention for almost 90 minutes in the aftermath of the attack. Townsend Harris was so shocked and distraught by Heusken’s murder that it was rumoured that he went temporarily insane. He submitted his resignation to President Lincoln on July 10, 1861, and shortly before year’s end, he left Japan forever despite pro-American factions in the Shogunate’s entreaties to President Lincoln that he stay on as ambassador.
In the aftermath of Huesken’s murder and the first attack on the
British Legation, Alcock made the decision to withdraw the bulk of the
British diplomatic corps to Yokohama. Within months, the British sent
troops to Yokohama, as did the French (who had signed their own treaty
with the Japanese in 1858) – an action not sanctioned by Lord Elgin’s
treaty and a move which, though reasonable in terms of self-defense,
did little to endear the British to the Japanese. Alcock was becoming
progressively disillusioned with the situation in Japan after having
been initially entranced and possessing charitable and respectful
feelings for the Japanese: These were no mere diplomatic niceties. Seward was keenly aware that the Confederacy, the rebel South which had seceded from the Union (the North) to prompt the Civil War, had been actively soliciting the support of England and France in the war, to such an extent that the entreaties went beyond simple economic and military assistance to formal requests that England and France enter the war on the side of the Confederacy. Cotton, which was the number one export of the American South, was also a lucrative source of revenue for Europe, and the British and French were loathe to consider the economic consequences of a potential disruption or outright loss of this commodity. The first 18 months of the war had gone disastrously for the Union, and such intervention on the part of either England or France would have likely tipped the scales fatally in favor of the Confederacy. Seeking to shore up Union support with the British, Seward essentially was signaling his approval, on behalf of President Lincoln, for the British to take the lead in Japan and sort the matter out as they saw fit, with enthusiastic Union support. Beyond that, the Union simply did not have the military resources to send additional ships and men to Japan to attend to the problem. Harris was surely aware of this, and between his grief for the murder of Heusken and the deteriorating internal Japanese situation – not incidentally, he personally disliked Alcock -- he elected to end his diplomatic career at its zenith and return to the United States, effectively ceding control of diplomatic leadership to Alcock and the British.
In 1862, Alcock accompanied a group of Japanese dubbed the Japanese
Mission, to Europe and to England as part of the original treaty
stipulations signed by Lord Elgin. One of the official purposes of the
portion of the visit to London was to make progress in further trade
negotiations with the Japanese. An agreement was signed there on June
6, 1862, which came to be known as the London Protocol. Given the
security concerns, and as a gesture of help to the ever-faltering
Tokugawa Shogunate to modulate British influx into Japan, Alcock and
the British Foreign Secretary agreed that the opening of the ports of
Niigata and Hyogo (also known as Kobe), as well as the establishment of
British residences in Edo and Osaka, would be deferred for five years.
In exchange, and perhaps under duress due guilt over the violence
against the British, the Japanese agreed to:
The penalty for failure to comply with any of these treaty
provisions was that the delays on opening of ports and residences would
be negated. This, particularly combined with the language facilitating
cultural interchange, set up an impossible Catch-22 that only served to
exacerbate the steadily deteriorating situation in Japan. One of the most important Western figures in all of modern Japanese history happened to arrive, by coincidence or synchronicity, one week before the Namanugi Incident. He was a 19-year old student interpreter named Ernest Satow. Mr. Satow was cut from the same mold as Henry Heusken, in the sense that he did not possess condescending, pitying, or superioristic attitudes towards the Japanese, personality flaws that plagued the vast majority of Westerners who had lived and worked in Japan in the years before Satow arrived. He took an active interest in the intricacies of Japanese culture and mastered the immensely difficult Japanese language (no small feat given that at the time of his arrival in 1862, there was no such thing as a Japanese-English dictionary!); he was arguably the first serious Western scholar of Japanese literature, and amassed a stunning collection Japanese books. He more than intermingled with the Japanese people – he took a common-law Japanese wife, Takeda Kane, with whom he had two sons, named Eitaro and Hisayoshi. He became an intimate confidant of the key power players who engineered the transition from the Tokugama Shogunate to the restoration of the rule of the Emperor, and in fact became a major power player himself in this process, as we will explore later. To this day, he is still a celebrity in Japan, though ironically, he is by comparison largely forgotten in England. Satow was on board one of the British warships that bombed the Satsuma city of Kagoshima, and memorialized the occasion in his widely admired 1921 book A Diplomat in Japan: A Diplomat in Japan: The Inner History of the Critical Years in the Evolution of Japan. (Though not present during the Namanugi Incident, Satow was of the opinion that Richardson and his party were not at fault, as he narrates in the book: “They were now ordered to turn back, and as they were wheeling their horses in obedience, were suddenly set upon by several armed men belonging to the train, who hacked at them with the sharp-edged heavy swords.” (Satow, 1921, p. 48)) Even at this early juncture in his diplomatic career, Satow’s personal feelings about the disproportional savagery of the British punishment were indicative of his sympathy for the Japanese. Satow claims that during the bombardment, Vice Admiral Kuper knew exactly how much damage was being inflicted on Kagoshima and seemed to almost be enjoying himself. “…rockets were fired with the object of burning the town… Admiral Kuper took credit for the destruction.” (Satow, 1921, p. 84) Satow then goes on, in the book. to make a specific point of agreeing in retrospect with Lord Bright from the British House of Commons, saying he “called attention to this unnecessary act of severity.” (p. 85) Details of Final collapse of the shogunate … Satow’s role in shogunate collapse, as pseudonymous author of editorials in Japanese newspapers in which he boldy asserts that the shogunate was never the rightful heir to the rulership of japan and that it is time for the emperor to step back in. …1867 as the Shogunate was about to collapse, people took to the streets across the nation in a massive, collective expression of relief tinged with exhaustion. “Some difficulty was experienced in making our way through the crowds of people in flaming red garments dancing and shouting over and over ‘ii ja nai ka.’ [loosely translated as, ‘oh, what the hell!’] They were so much taken up with their dancing that we passed along almost unnoticed.” (Satow, 1921, p. 252) Meiji restoration, Satow’s relationship with the new imperial court / government. Changes in Japanese society. Satow’s departure from japan. Historical ramifications into war with Russia and into aggressive Japanese behavior in the 20th century.
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