Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (69 page)

On April 18 a delegation of Ry
ū
ky
ū
nobles headed by Sh
ō
Hitsu called on Matsuda. This time they asked for a postponement of only eighty days and again proposed that Sh
ō
Ten be sent to T
ō
ky
ō
. Matsuda answered that if they requested fewer than forty days, it might be possible to ask Tominok
ō
ji, the imperial envoy, to delay his return. In that case Sh
ō
Ten’s journey to T
ō
ky
ō
could be viewed as a gesture of gratitude. On the next day Tominok
ō
ji approved the plan, and it was decided that Sh
ō
Ten would accompany him to T
ō
ky
ō
. On April 19 Tominok
ō
ji Takanao and Sh
ō
Ten left Naha aboard the
Meiji maru
.

The ship reached Yokohama on May 1. On the fifth, Meiji received Sh
ō
Ten and five members of his entourage, who bowed in respect from the other side of the threshold. That day Sh
ō
Ten offered presents to the emperor and empress. He also requested the prime minister to allow his father a delay in going to T
ō
ky
ō
, but this was refused. Everything went in accordance with Matsuda’s scenario.

On the same day Major Sagara Nagaoki and the court physician Takashina Tsunenori left for Okinawa to examine the king’s malady. The two men arrived on May 18 and went with Matsuda to the king’s temporary residence in Shuri. Takashina diagnosed the king’s ailment as a nervous disorder and hypogastric congestion. He said there was no immediate danger from this illness, but it was unlikely it could be completely cured in a matter of months or even years. Having heard this much, Matsuda produced a document announcing that the government had refused Sh
ō
Tai’s request for a delay. He would have to leave for T
ō
ky
ō
within a week. The king at last resigned himself to going to T
ō
ky
ō
but asked for a delay of three weeks. More than sixty nobles from Shuri, Naha, Kume, and Tomari made the same request, but Matsuda sternly refused. The king’s departure was set for May 27.
¹⁷

In the meantime the Chinese had at last protested. On May 10 a letter signed by Prince Kung and other ministers was sent to the Japanese minister in Peking declaring that the Ry
ū
ky
ū
kingdom had for hundreds of years accepted the Chinese calendar and paid tribute. China, respecting its integrity as an independent country, had allowed Ry
ū
ky
ū
complete freedom in its politics and laws. China had also joined with Japan in signing a treaty with Ry
ū
ky
ū
, recognizing it as a sovereign state. Now, however, the Japanese government had imposed its administrative system on Ry
ū
ky
ū
. This not only contravened the treaty of friendship and destroyed another country but ended its ancestral sacrifices. It could only be considered an expression of contempt for China and other countries. Only by giving up its plan to end Ry
ū
ky
ū
sovereignty could Japan promote friendly relations between the two countries.
¹⁸

China was in a poor position to protest. According to the convention signed at Peking in October 1874 by the Japanese plenipotentiary and the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, the Chinese recognized the people of Ry
ū
ky
ū
as Japanese subjects. The Chinese government agreed also to pay an indemnity to the families of Ry
ū
ky
ū
fishermen who had been killed by the Taiwan natives, referring to the fishermen as “people of Japan.”
¹⁹

When the Japanese foreign minister received the Chinese protest, he replied that the disposal of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
problem was a matter of domestic policy, that other countries might not intervene. The Chinese retained one hope of dissuading the Japanese: the former United States president, Ulysses S. Grant, who visited China in May, would be going on to Japan. He would bear a communication from Prince Kung and might, with his prestige, change the minds of the Japanese.

On June 9 Sh
ō
Tai, who had finally left Naha on May 27, arrived in Yokohama. He was accompanied by his second son, Sh
ō
In, and more than forty retainers.
²⁰
He went immediately to the house prepared for him by the Imperial Household Ministry. On June 17 Sh
ō
Tai, his eldest son Sh
ō
Ten, and some ten other former retainers went to the palace. The emperor granted Sh
ō
Tai and Sh
ō
Ten an audience. Nothing is recorded of Meiji’s reactions on seeing the dethroned king. He may have resented Sh
ō
Tai’s manifest reluctance to comply with Japanese orders, but he doubtless felt that his government had done everything it could to make the loss of the throne—inevitable because of modern Japan’s destiny—as painless as possible. The same day, Sh
ō
Tai was appointed to the junior third rank and Sh
ō
Ten to the junior fifth rank. Matsuda was decorated for his efforts in disposing of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
problem. A precedent for dealing with deposed monarchs, followed after the annexation of Korea, had been established.

Sh
ō
Tai was well treated in exile.
²¹
It is said that he was happier in T
ō
ky
ō
than he had been during the thirty-one years of his reign. No doubt he was glad to be spared the eternal bickering of the political parties in Okinawa.
²²
Some even say that once in T
ō
ky
ō
he was as happy as a country bumpkin on his first visit to the city.
²³
But he seems nevertheless to have yearned for the land he once ruled. In 1884 he received permission to visit Okinawa for 100 days.

Sasamori Gisuke, a former samurai from Hirosuke, recorded in a diary his experiences during a stay in the Ry
ū
ky
ū
Islands in 1893. Although he was not a partisan of the deposed king, he felt obliged to record instances of the worshipful respect still paid to Sh
ō
Tai and his family. In June of that year Prince Kitashirakawanomiya paid a state visit to Okinawa. He paid his compliments to Sh
ō
Ten, the son of the deposed king, and offered his respects at the royal tombs. But despite these conciliatory gestures, not one member of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
noble families accepted his invitation to a banquet several days later. Sasamori commented, “What discourtesy!”
²⁴

Later Sasamori noticed with indignation that on the road from Naha to Shuri, “in front of every house they had spread mats, and men and women sat on them formally in rows. I asked the reason, and I was told, ‘Today, at the invitation of the governor, Sh
ō
Ten and his family are to pass. Everybody has turned out to pay his respects.’”
²⁵

Sasamori had many occasions to notice that the Japanese, however benevolently disposed, were treated by the Okinawans as intruders. He reported that there was not a single instance of an Okinawan marrying a person from “the other prefectures,” nor was there a single person from “the other prefectures” who had taken up permanent residence in Okinawa.
²⁶
He added that even though people from Europe and America belonged to a different race, they often became naturalized in Japan and married Japanese. He concluded that “the natives’ feeling is one of strong attachment to the restoration of the old regime, and for this reason their attitude has not been satisfactory to this day.”

The annexation of Okinawa hardly figures in histories of Japan, and Sh
ō
Tai rates only a brief entry in biographical dictionaries. He was in no sense an important political figure even while a king, and his last thirty years were spent in obscurity. But somehow, even now, there is something affecting about the downfall of a kinglet, deposed by a major country testing its strength at the start of its modern age.

Chapter 31

None of the many foreign visitors to whom Emperor Meiji gave an audience produced as strong an impression on him as did the former American general and president Ulysses S. Grant. General Grant, as he was known even while he served two terms as president, embarked on a round-the-world journey in 1877. The purpose of the trip was largely political. The glory he had won for his military exploits during the Civil War had been tainted by the widespread corruption of his presidency, and his advisers judged it prudent for him to absent himself for a while from the United States in the hopes that this would make voters forget the scandals. He had ambitions of serving a third term as president.

Grant and his wife began their travels with the voyage to England, where a high point was a stay at Windsor Castle as guests of Queen Victoria. During the next two years they visited many countries of Europe, followed by Egypt, India, Siam, China, and, finally, Japan. They were eager sightseers, but they themselves were also on display. As a biographer of Grant has written, “The unpretentious man in the dark suit was his country’s greatest warrior-hero, and the world wanted to have a look at him. The general and his lady were ambassadors of both American simplicity and American power.”
¹

In foreign countries, where the scandals of his presidential administration were not widely known (or perhaps more readily tolerated than in the United States), Grant’s reputation as a great soldier, the savior of the union, had preceded him, and he was welcomed everywhere. An editorial in the
Times
of London concluded that “after Washington, General Grant is the President who will occupy the largest place in the history of the United States.”
²
Kings, queens, and members of the highest nobility were pleased to meet him, although they sometimes commented on his lack of manners.

Wherever he went, he preserved his casual, American ways. When, for example, he called on Bismarck, the most powerful man in Europe, he nonchalantly sauntered into the courtyard of the chancellor’s palace and, throwing away a half-smoked cigar, returned the salute of the startled palace guards. Perhaps the greatest triumph of Grant’s journey was the reception not by royalty but by the working classes of the north of England, who responded with affection to this man who, they sensed, was one of them.
⁴
Grant certainly enjoyed the unaffected welcome from miners and other workmen more than the endlessly repeated state dinners. Sometimes on such occasions the tedium would induce him to get drunk. The viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, wrote a letter describing Grant’s behavior in these sarcastic terms:

On this occasion “our distinguished guest” the double Ex-President of the “Great Western Republic,” who got drunk as a fiddle, showed that he could also be as profligate as a lord. He fumbled Mrs A., kissed the shrieking Miss B.—pinched the plump Mrs C. black and blue—and ran at Miss D. with intent to ravish her.
³

From India, General and Mrs. Grant went to Singapore, Saigon, Bangkok, and Hong Kong before arriving in China. In Tientsin they met the viceroy Li Hung-chang, who greeted his guest with the simple statement, “You and I, General Grant, are the greatest men in the world.” Later he explained that was referring to the success of Grant and himself in putting down huge rebellions within their two countries.
⁴

While Grant was in Peking he was asked by Prince Kung, the acting head of the government, to use his influence to settle the dispute between China and Japan over the sovereignty of the Ry
ū
ky
ū
Islands. The prince deplored the attempt of the Japanese “to extinguish this kingdom, which has always paid tribute to China, which has always been friendly.” General Grant replied that any course short of national humiliation or national destruction was better than war. “‘War,’ he said, ‘was so great a calamity that it should only be invoked when there was no other way of avoiding a greater, and war, especially between two nations like China and Japan, would be a measureless misfortune.’”
⁵