Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (42 page)

During this period little is recorded concerning the emperor’s activities besides his frequent displays of horsemanship. His studies of the Chinese classics had progressed; he was now reading with his tutors the
Book of Poetry
and
Mencius
.
¹⁶
On occasion he reviewed troops and observed cannon practice. When the long-sought victory over Enomoto at last came, he gave an audience to senior naval and army officers. It is not clear whether Meiji was kept informed of all developments, but he was definitely involved in the most significant event of this time, the return by the daimyos of their lands and people to the emperor.

On July 25 the emperor issued an edict accepting the request of various domains that they be permitted to return their registers (
hanseki
). Domains that had not made this request were now commanded to return them. Four major domains (including Satsuma and Ch
ō
sh
ū
) had announced their intention of returning their registers in the first month of the year, and their example had been followed by others. In the end 274 daimyos surrendered their lands and people to the central government and were rewarded by being appointed as governors of their domains.
¹⁷
The titles of “nobles” (
kuge
) and “daimyos” (
shok
ō
) were abolished, both henceforth being known as “peers” (
kazoku
). The administrative unification of Japan had taken an immense step forward.

On August 15 the government was further reorganized with the establishment of additional ministries. Sanj
ō
Sanetomi was appointed as minister of the right, and Iwakura Tomomi and Tokudaiji Sanetsune (1839–1919) as major counselors. The emperor’s maternal grandfather, Nakayama Tadayasu, was appointed as head of the Ministry of Shint
ō
. Other men who had figured prominently in the restoration of imperial authority were granted posts of importance in the new government.

Meanwhile the ground was being prepared for another important development in the emperor’s activities. In the early summer of 1869, the British minister, Sir Harry Parkes, received word that the duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria, planned to visit Japan in command of the warship
Galatea
. In the previous year the duke had sailed around the world aboard this ship. Although most of his visits to various countries had been largely ceremonial, in Australia he had been wounded and nearly killed by an Irish patriot. His brief visit to Japan would hardly be worth remembering except for the fact that he was the first member of European royalty ever to visit Japan.

When word reached the court of the intended visit, a contemporary account records:

The “progressivists” desired that His Majesty should once and for all resolve to conform as far as possible to the usages of other sovereigns on such occasions; but a very strong “opposition” denounced, in strong terms, the Mikado’s lowering his dignity by making any advance which could be regarded as an admission of equal rank between a foreign Prince of the Blood Royal, and the Imperial and heaven-descended family of Japan.
¹⁸

It took several months before the British minister received a reply from the court. It stated that the emperor was “delighted beyond measure” by the news of the forthcoming arrival of the English prince and added that “His Majesty would be intensely pleased if your Prince would consent to take up his abode in the gardens of O Hama-go-ten, the seaside palace of His Majesty.” John Black, whose
Young Japan
gives the most detailed account of the background of the visit, considered it particularly important that after the formal reception of the English prince in the palace, “His Majesty should receive the prince accompanied by the English minister, and a gentleman of the English legation who should act as interpreter, in one of the Garden houses in the Imperial domain and converse with him on equal terms.”
¹⁹

The manner of treatment of the visiting English prince was of the highest importance to Parkes, the English minister, who insisted that “the Mikado will be receiving a scion of royalty as his
equal
in point of blood.” He also noted that “if at the last moment I see anything derogatory in their [the Japanese] arrangements, I can decline the reception.” The Chinese government had already refused to give the duke of Edinburgh “a proper reception,” and he was therefore to visit China incognito. Iwakura Tomomi told Parkes that the

reception of the prince had caused the Government much anxious consideration; for when the subject was first mooted, opinion was by no means uniform as the course to be pursued. An intelligent majority, however, had seen that the occasion was one that should be profited by to mark their friendly feelings toward foreign Powers, and their readiness to promote more intimate relations with them, although at a sacrifice of old ideas and usages. In order, therefore, to receive the prince in a manner that would be acceptable to England, the Mikado would have to adopt a new etiquette.
²⁰

The duke’s reception by Emperor Meiji at the castle in T
ō
ky
ō
was without precedent. Black commented, “Since that day other princes and distinguished men have been even more familiarly received; but that was after the Court and the country had become so used to these innovations that they ceased to discuss them.”
²¹

The audience took place on September 4. Every step was carefully planned, beginning with prayers to Kan-jin for his safe arrival.
²²
A salute of twenty-one guns would be offered to the duke on his landing in Yokohama. Before his departure from Yokohama, the roads would be cleaned and repaired, and prayers for his safe journey offered to the god of roads. The security arrangements for the duke when he traveled by road from Yokohama to T
ō
ky
ō
would be similar to those observed when the emperor traveled. According to A. B. Mitford, “The shutters of the upstairs rooms in the houses by the wayside were hermetically sealed with bits of paper stuck across them so that no Peeping Tom should look down upon the august person.”
²³
Prayers would also be offered at his destination: “On the day on which His Royal Highness may be expected to arrive in Yedo, religious ceremonies will take place at Shinagawa, to exorcise all evil spirits. On His Royal Highness’ arrival, a Prince of the Blood will visit him, to inquire after his health.”
²⁴

The eighth of the nine points in the program of the reception that was planned for the duke of Edinburgh was “When His Royal Highness is about to enter the gate of the castle, the ceremony called ‘Nusa’ will take place.” Mitford in his memoirs explained that “nusa is a sweeping away of evil influences with a sort of flapper with a hempen tassel.”
²⁵
None of the British objected to this ceremony, but the acting American minister, A. L. C. Portman, prepared a report for the president of the United States entitled “The Purification of the Duke of Edinburgh.” According to Fukuzawa Yukichi’s autobiography, the report declared:

Japan is a small secluded country, very self-respecting and very self-important. It is customary, therefore, for its inhabitants to regard foreigners as belonging to the lower order of animals. Actually, when the English prince arrived to be received by the emperor, they held a ceremony of purification over the person of the prince at the entrance to the castle…. Such being the ancient rite in the land, they employed this method on the person of the Duke of Edinburgh, because in the eyes of the Japanese, all foreigners, whether of noble lineage or common, are alike impure as animals.
²⁶

Probably Portman intended these provocative statements as no more than a means of catching the president’s eye, but he may have been close to the truth. In the second month of 1868, when the matter of the propriety of the emperor’s giving audiences to the ministers of foreign countries was debated, it was finally decided that to allow the foreigners into the palace grounds, but to safeguard the holy precincts, rites of exorcism would be performed at the palace gates in the four directions. The rites performed on the duke of Edinburgh before he was admitted to the palace had the same purpose: the
nusa
ceremony was performed not to shield him from baleful influences but to protect the palace from being polluted by a foreigner.
²⁷
When informed by an interpreter at the American legation of the details, Fukuzawa did not laugh. He wrote instead, “I felt like crying over this revelation of our national shame.”

No one in the British party seems to have been disturbed by the implications of the rite, and the meeting of the duke with the emperor took place without incident. On alighting from his carriage within the palace, the duke was received by high-ranking officers who escorted him to a waiting room. After a short interval the duke was conducted to the Audience Chamber, where the emperor stood on a raised dais. After a few words of welcome, to which his guest returned a suitable reply, the emperor invited the duke to meet him more privately in the garden. Mitford recalled,

After a short delay, during which the princes and dignitaries of the Court came to pay their respects, the Duke was shown to the delicious little Maple Tea-house in the Castle gardens, where tea and all manner of delicacies were served. Then came a summons to the Waterfall Pavilion, where the emperor was waiting; only Sir Harry, the Admiral, and myself went in with the Duke.
²⁸

Parkes had been apprehensive about the duke’s interview with the emperor. He wrote, “I believe the poor young Mikado suffers much from severe shyness and his ministers fear the prince will find him very uninteresting. The Prince himself is rather shy.”
²⁹
The reported conversation between Meiji and the English prince, though scarcely sparkling, was normal for such an occasion. The emperor said that it gave him the greatest pleasure to receive a prince who had come from so distant a country, and he begged the prince to remain long enough to repay himself for the fatigue of the journey. In reply the prince expressed his gratitude for the cordial reception he had received and was sure that it would please Her Majesty, the queen. The emperor assured the prince that he was happy to think that this auspicious visit would help cement the friendly relations between the two countries. He begged the duke to express any wish that might occur to him, so that he might have the pleasure of gratifying it. The prince said that so far from being dissatisfied with his reception, it had exceeded his expectations. It had long been his desire to visit a country of which he had heard so much, and he had not been disappointed. And so on. It is not difficult to imagine a similar exchange of remarks today.

From the beginning Alfred, the duke of Edinburgh, had been resigned to the likelihood that the occasion would be a bore, and in his memoirs, not concealing his boredom, Mitford confessed his inability “to become artistically enthusiastic over the presentation of diamond snuff-boxes.” The snuff-box in question, presented by the prince to the emperor as a memento of himself just before taking leave, was described by Sir Henry Keppel as “a beautiful gold box, on the lid of which a miniature of himself [the duke] was set in diamonds.”
³⁰
The emperor’s gifts to his English guests were considerably more artistic.
³¹
The prince also requested a poem in the emperor’s handwriting, which he intended to present to Queen Victoria after his return to England. He received this
tanka
, which has suitably political overtones:

Nothing has been recorded concerning the two young men’s reactions on meeting. For Alfred, Meiji was probably the ruler of an obscure, though not barbaric, country and, as such, not of much interest; but he probably appreciated the entertainment provided during his stay.
³³
Meiji may have been too tense during this first encounter with European royalty to form an opinion of the English prince, but he was aware that he must be ingratiating lest Japan’s relations with England, the most powerful foreign country, be impaired. Regardless of the interview’s content, the gesture of receiving a foreign prince on terms of equality set a precedent of the highest importance.

A month after the duke of Edinburgh’s departure, an Austro-Hungarian mission headed by Baron Antony von Petz arrived in Japan to begin negotiations for a treaty. The baron also brought gifts: a piano for the empress and a life-size statue of the emperor of Austria for the mikado.
³⁴
At the conclusion of the Japanese treaty with the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which was accomplished with unprecedented rapidity), Meiji is said to have written “an autograph letter to his ‘brother,’ the emperor of Austria.”
³⁵
Black, who described these events, commented that “never before until now had any sovereign but the Emperor of China been similarly addressed by the Mikado.” In the Europeans’ eyes, Meiji had acquired a new set of relatives—all the reigning monarchs of the world.