Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (144 page)

That year, natural disasters occurred in various parts of the world. There was a major earthquake in Taiwan on March 27 in which more than 1,100 people died. On April 11 Mount Vesuvius erupted in Italy with considerable loss of life. And on April 21 there was the celebrated San Francisco earthquake. The imperial family, as they always did in the case of major disasters, contributed money for the relief of the victims—10,000 yen for the victims in Taiwan and 200,000 yen for those in San Francisco.
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Possibly the size of the latter gift was meant to reflect Japanese gratitude for American support in the negotiations after the Russo-Japanese War.

In July the emperor was faced with a decision of somewhat less than earthshaking importance. It was vigorously debated at the time whether the boundary stone between Japanese and Russian territory in Sakhalin should be decorated with a rising sun or a chrysanthemum. On July 5 the emperor offered his decision: it should be a chrysanthemum.
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Nothing much happened for the rest of the year until December 11, when a Korean delegation was granted an audience with the emperor. They brought a letter from the Korean emperor and verbal messages of eternal friendship between the two countries. The Korean emperor also expressed the deepest trust in It
ō
Hirobumi and deplored rumors that It
ō
would be replaced as governor general. A change of governor general would not only be untimely but cause the government and the people to lose heart for the future. He begged the emperor not to replace It
ō
.
¹⁹
At this distance from the events, we can only marvel that the Korean emperor, who detested It
ō
, was capable of such politic lies.

On December 28 the emperor officially opened the Diet. An American visitor to the Diet that day, Professor George Ladd of Yale University, recorded his impressions:

The occasion was the opening of the Diet by the emperor in person…. None might enter the House later than ten o’clock, although His Majesty did not leave the palace until half-past this hour.

As soon as His Majesty arrived, all those who had been waiting were conducted to their proper chambers in the gallery of the Peer’s House,… Not more than five minutes later His Majesty entered, and ascending to the throne, sat down for a moment; but almost immediately rose and received from the hand of Marquis Saionji, the Prime Minister, the address from the throne inscribed on a parchment scroll. This he then read, or rather intoned, in a remarkably clear but soft and musical voice. The entire address occupied not more than three minutes in the reading. After it was finished, Prince Tokugawa, President of the Peers, went up from the floor of the House to the platform, and then to a place before the throne; here he received the scroll from the Emperor’s hand. After which he backed down to the floor again, went directly in front of His Majesty and made a final bow. The Emperor himself immediately descended from the throne and made his exit from the platform by the door at which he had entered, followed by all the courtiers.
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Ladd characterized himself:

I am only a teacher; and I have had no ambition for any higher title than that of “teacher,” no desire for any more imposing kind of service. But His Majesty’s painstaking to recognise, and to signalise with his favour before the nation, his appreciation for any service rendered to the “moral education” of his people, has been as unmistakably sincere as it has been distinctive. And there is abundant reason to believe that this painstaking regard for the moral and other welfare of his people, irrespective of considerations of diplomatic policy, or rank, or expectation of similar favours in return, characterises throughout the Imperial rule of the present Emperor of Japan. One would have to search hard among the world’s present day rulers to find another so affectionate, so solicitous, so self-sacrificing, where the interests of his people are concerned, as Mutsuhito.
²¹

The fortieth year of Meiji’s reign, 1907, opened without special celebrations of the anniversary. As had been true for many years, the emperor did not perform the prescribed worship of the four directions, and he had a deputy perform other traditional acts of reverence.

On January 8 the emperor went to the Aoyama parade grounds to review the troops. He had always performed the review on horseback, but this time an order was issued to open the hood of his carriage, and he reviewed the troops without leaving the carriage. It had also been customary for him to grant audiences to elder statesmen, ministers, and foreign diplomats who had come to witness the review, but this year the practice was discontinued, and the reception of visitors was left to the Ministry of War. It has been suggested that the change was made because so few foreign visitors attended the review this year,
²²
but perhaps the emperor, whose state of health was unknown because of his dislike of being examined by doctors, was feeling the fatigue of age or of incipient illness.

Another sign of a deterioration of the emperor’s health may be found in his decision, because of bad weather, not to attend, as planned, the graduation ceremonies at the military academy.
²³
In the past, the emperor had always been indifferent to even the worst storms.

A curious, and similar, incident occurred just before the emperor’s visit to the Special Festival of the Yasukuni Shrine on May 3 of the same year. The weather was fine that day, and the emperor was dressed in full regalia for the occasion. Tanaka Mitsuaki, the imperial household minister, hoped that the emperor would allow the families of men killed during the war (and other spectators) to see his “dragon countenance” as his carriage passed along the streets to and from the Yasukuni Shrine. With this in mind and without asking permission beforehand, Tanaka ordered the master of the horse to open the hood of the carriage. The day was hot and humid, but the emperor had not asked to have the windows of the carriage, much less the hood, opened. On two or three occasions in recent years when he was to pass through the foreign settlements or was on his way to an exposition, he had granted the pleas of officials that the hood be removed so that people could see him; but this time, when he was about to leave the palace, he noticed that the hood was open. He called to Chief Chamberlain Tokudaiji and ordered him to shut the hood, standing by the carriage until this was done.
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The officials, needless to say, were petrified at the thought they had acted in contravention of his wishes. Probably the emperor was simply annoyed that the hood had been opened without his permission. But the fact that despite the heat, he had not wanted the carriage windows opened suggests that it was not solely annoyance that made him insist that the hood be closed; he may have had an old man’s fear of the cold.

At the beginning of February 1907, in response to an inquiry from the emperor, the chiefs of the army and navy general staffs prepared a memorandum on national defense. The first and most important point was that Japan must be ready to attack any country that infringed on its rights. They claimed that apart from the Tokugawa period, when a retrogressive policy was followed, a forward-looking policy—meaning a readiness to attack—had always been typical of Japan and exemplified the Japanese character.

In drawing up defense plans, the chiefs considered probable enemies. Ever since its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia had been steadily building up its military in the Far East. It also had plans to rebuild its navy and seemed to be watching for an opportunity to take revenge. Russia therefore ranked as the prime hypothetical enemy.

Next came the United States. Although America seemed to wish to maintain friendly relations with Japan, Japan could not be sure that at some time in the future there would not be a violent clash caused by geographic, economic, racial, and religious factors. Again, the alliance with England was a basic part of national defense, but in accordance with the renewed treaty, Japan was still obligated to send military assistance in the event of Russian aggression against India.

The conclusion was that the Japanese army must be able to attack its hypothetical enemy, Russia, and the Japanese navy its hypothetical enemy, the United States. To this end plans must be put into effect, beginning in the following year, to build army strength to nineteen divisions and navy strength to eight 20,000-ton battleships and nine 18,000-ton armored cruisers.
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The emperor’s reactions were not stated, but he may well have pondered the great cost of these ambitious plans at a time when Japan had yet to recover economically from the Russo-Japanese War.

A week after receiving this report, the emperor had word that miners at the copper mine in Ashio in Tochigi Prefecture had rioted, demanding better conditions and higher wages. The revolt was suppressed at the request of the governor of Tochigi by soldiers of the Fifteenth Infantry Regiment. This was not the first time the emperor had heard of the Ashio mine. In March 1897 a cabinet committee had been established to study copper poisoning of the soil resulting from the Ashio mine’s operation.
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At that time improvements in the mine’s conditions were ordered, and the owner was warned that if the orders were disobeyed, he would henceforth be forbidden to engage in mining. Enforcement of the orders, however, was lax. The pollution continued, and the miners were increasingly dissatisfied with the conditions under which they worked.

The emperor was also reminded of the deplorable situation at the mine when in December 1901, Tanaka Sh
ō
z
ō
, who had resigned from the House of Representatives to protest its indifference to his pleas to end copper poisoning, in desperation attempted to push a petition into the emperor’s carriage as it was returning from the Diet to the palace. Tanaka was stopped by members of the police escort and arrested, but this did not end protests over pollution.

The protests were amply justified, but they came too early to be effective: the period was marked by desperate attempts to make Japan a major industrial power, and the harm suffered by the miners and farmers of the Ashio region probably seemed of only minor national significance to the emperor and others in the government. In the course of suppressing the violence in 1907, eighty-two miners, convicted of inciting a riot and damaging mine property, were sent to prison. In June of the same year, violence by miners at a copper mine in Ehime Prefecture over a reduction in wages was also suppressed by the militia. In July a gas explosion at a coal mine in Fukuoka Prefecture caused the deaths of more than 420 men. The emperor and empress gave 1,200 yen to the prefecture for the relief of those who suffered in the disaster, and the emperor sent a chamberlain to examine the circumstances.
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Each of these incidents contributed to the general somber mood of the times.

Relations with foreign countries, however, were generally good. A trade treaty was signed with Russia in March, the first step toward reconciliation between the two countries. In August, on a visit to the Privy Council, the emperor delivered a rescript looking forward to removing the causes of conflict with Russia and returning to peaceful relations. A new treaty was signed with Russia that included a secret protocol in which each nation promised to respect the rights of the other north or south of a line in Manchuria.
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This was followed by a directive proclaiming renewed friendship with Russia.

In August, It
ō
Hirobumi, temporarily back in Japan from Korea, received a rescript from the emperor praising his achievements in Korea. The emperor said that It
ō
had, by virtue of his diligence and hard work, succeeded in perfectly realizing his own desire to maintain peace in East Asia and assist Korea. In September It
ō
was promoted to
k
ō
shaku
.
²⁹

On August 27 Sunjong, the new emperor of Korea, was officially crowned. His younger brother, the extremely handsome but dissolute Prince Yi Kan (known in Japan as Gi Shinn
ō
), should have became crown prince, but his behavior was so outrageous that he was replaced on August 7 by Yi Eun (Ei Shinn
ō
), his younger brother. Once Yi Eun had been installed as crown prince, It
ō
Hirobumi proposed that the ten-year-old boy be sent to Japan for his studies. Although he was never so described, the prince served as a hostage, as the Korean emperor realized.
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It
ō
also requested that the Japanese crown prince travel to Korea in the interests of promoting friendly relations between the two countries. Although Emperor Meiji was enthusiastic about Yi Eun studying in Japan, he at first opposed sending Yoshihito abroad because of security risks, but It
ō
swore on his life he would safely escort the prince. The emperor finally consented, provided that Prince Takehito accompanied the crown prince.

It
ō
hurried back to Seoul, where he had an audience with Emperor Sunjong at which he disclosed the crown prince’s forthcoming visit and presented specific plans for the Korean crown prince’s study in Japan. Prince Yoshihito arrived in Seoul on October 16, accompanied by both Prince Takehito and former Prime Minister Katsura Tar
ō
, Admiral T
ō
g
ō
Heihachir
ō
, and other high dignities. The effect of this visit, interpreted as a great gesture of friendship toward Korea, was to make it impossible for the Korean emperor to refuse to allow Yi Eun to study in Japan.
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Later that year, at the request of Emperor Sunjong and with the approval of Emperor Meiji, It
ō
became the grand preceptor of the Korean crown prince, and it was he who escorted Yi Eun to Japan in December 1907.
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