Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (86 page)

While the Japanese and the Koreans were negotiating the terms of a treaty, there was much discussion in Japan concerning the urgent necessity to increase armaments. Proponents pointed out that the four warships sent to Korea constituted the entire Japanese navy, leaving not one ship to protect the country. Yamagata Aritomo presented a petition to the throne arguing in favor of armaments, recommending that the costs be met by increasing the taxes on cigarettes. On August 16 the emperor asked Iwakura for his recommendations. He replied that if China continued to consider Korea as a tributary state, war with China was inevitable. Iwakura said that it was essential that the armed forces be prepared for war and asked the emperor to issue secret instructions. On August 19 Yamagata sent Iwakura a letter expressing pleasure that Japan had been furnished with such a good opportunity to fight China.
²⁷

Hanabusa went on August 22 to the royal palace in Seoul, escorted by two companies of soldiers, to present the king of Korea with a list of Japanese demands. He gave the king three days to reply. The demands included the payment of 500,000 yen as an indemnity for the burning of the Japanese legation. The king ordered his government to reply within the allotted time, and the
taewon’gun
at once summoned a meeting of the cabinet. However, the cabinet members were so enraged by the unreasonable sum of money demanded by the Japanese (500,000 yen was about one-sixth of the Korean government’s total revenues) that no answer was forthcoming. Judging that it was unlikely the Koreans would comply with the Japanese demands, Hanabusa decided to leave for Inch’on. War seemed inevitable. As prescribed in his orders, he wrote a final message to the king before leaving Seoul. The king at once wrote Hanabusa, begging him to return, but Hanabusa did not change his mind. He had been irritated by a discourteous letter he had received from a member of the government named Hong Sun-mok, who declared that the Japanese need not have sent a special envoy to Korea.
²⁸
On August 25 Hanabusa reached Inch’on. The next day, a letter arrived from Hong stating his intention to resign his office and pleading for a further meeting. Hanabusa agreed to wait two days longer before sailing.

An unexpected complication in the situation was provided at this point by Queen Min, who, from her place of hiding, sent a letter to the king urging him to ask China, as the suzerain state, to send troops to Korea to put down the insurrection. The king, obedient as ever to Queen Min, sent men to Tientsin, where they met two high-ranking Korean officials stationed there. These officials traveled to Peking and transmitted to Li Hung-chang the king’s request for Chinese troops. Li did not hesitate: this was a golden opportunity to revive Chinese sovereignty over Korea, which had been much attenuated over the years.

A Chinese fleet of three warships and six merchant ships was ordered to leave at once for Korea. The ships, carrying 4,000 troops, were to rendezvous off Inch’on. With such forces the Chinese could easily have seized Inch’on, but they were under instructions from Li Hung-chang not to create any unnecessary incident with the Japanese. When the Chinese saw the Japanese warship
Kong
ō
in Inch’on harbor (it had arrived ahead of the other Japanese ships), they at first withdrew, but on August 22 they returned, and on the following day landed some 200 of their troops.

The Chinese informed Hanabusa that they had come to put down a rebellion in their tributary state. Hanabusa, insisting that Korea was an independent country, said that the present tension between Japan and Korea was not China’s concern. The Chinese proposed that they cooperate in suppressing the rebellion, but Hanabusa replied that he was waiting for a reply to his ultimatum to Korea and that no other country should intervene.

The Chinese, resigned to Japanese unwillingness to cooperate, embarked on quite a different course of action. Their three highest naval officers paid a courtesy call on the
taewon’gun
. As they were leaving, they asked him to attend an important meeting at their camp. The
taewon’gun
was obliged by rules of etiquette to return the call and went the next day (September 26) as requested. There were the usual exchanges of politenesses between the Chinese and the Koreans, but at a signal (the lifting of a wine glass in a toast to the long life of the
taewon’gun
), Chinese troops burst into the room, seized the
taewon’gun
, and bundled him into a palanquin. He was carried off to the warship
Wei-yüan
and, still in the palanquin, was taken to China. He was not released from the palanquin until the ship reached Tientsin. There he was interrogated by Li Hung-chang, who tried unsuccessfully to make him admit responsibility for the rebellion. Li ordered the
taewon’gun
put back in his palanquin, and he was carried off to a town about sixty miles southwest of Peking. For three years he was confined to one room and kept under strict surveillance.
²⁹

Now that the
taewon’gun
, the most impressive figure in the government, could offer no resistance, the Korean government had no choice but to negotiate with the Japanese. On August 30 the Treaty of Chemulp’o was signed, officially ending the tension between Japan and Korea. It provided that (1) within twenty days the Korean government would arrest and punish the rioters who had killed the Japanese; (2) the Korean government would give proper funerals for the Japanese victims; (3) the Korean government would pay an indemnity of 50,000 yen to the families of the dead and wounded; (4) the Korean government would pay an indemnity of 500,000 yen for the damage done by the rioters to the Japanese legation and the costs of the expedition, to be paid in five annual installments of 100,000 yen each; and (5) the Japanese legation would henceforth be protected by “a few” soldiers.

Patriotic fervor had been aroused among the Japanese by the incident, with some men volunteering for military service or offering money for war expenses. Hanabusa returned to Yokohama on September 28 and traveled by special train to T
ō
ky
ō
, where he was welcomed by a platoon of cavalry. At the palace he was given an audience by the emperor, who awarded Hanabusa the Order of the Rising Sun.

Deploring the recent unhappy incidents, King Kojong sent three high-ranking officials to express his apologies and to offer gifts. The emperor received Pak Yong-hyo, the senior Korean envoy, who offered a letter from the king conveying his admiration for the emperor’s glorious accomplishments and asking for peace and long friendship.
³⁰

On November 3 Lieutenant Horimoto and the other Japanese killed in Korea were enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine. On November 17 the captain of the
Flying Fish
, which had rescued Hanabusa and other Japanese, was presented by the emperor with a pair of bronze vases and some books, including one on the ancient conquest of Korea. When Pak Song-hyo and his colleagues were about to leave Japan in December, the emperor received them in audience. Expressing regret over their departure, he asked them to convey his feelings of friendship to the king. He also gave them 500 guns for the king, no doubt a hint that he hoped they would be used to put down any future rebellions. Pak said that nothing was more needed than guns and he was sure that the king would be delighted to receive them.
³¹

Pak also reported verbally to the emperor on current conditions in Korea and conveyed the king’s hope that Japan would give financial aid to Korea to help preserve its independence. After his return to Korea, he and Kim Ok-kyun organized a new, progressive party that sought, with Japanese help, to free Korea from the shackles of Chinese domination and the accumulated burden of old evils. For these men, Japan was the model for the enlightenment they hoped to bring to Korea.
³²

The year ended on this rather optimistic note, although some members of the government warned against provoking China into a war that might last tens of years.
³³
On December 23, 1882, Emperor Meiji issued a rescript that opened, “It is my earnest desire to preserve peace throughout the East. However, on this occasion there has been a request made by Korea, and we, with the friendship of a neighboring nation, plan to assist their ability to maintain their autonomy. We also intend to persuade other countries to recognize Korea as an independent country.” One senses behind these words the causes that would lead twelve years later to the Sino-Japanese War.

Chapter 37

The familiar New Year ceremonies opened 1883. On January 4 the emperor attended the first meeting of the year of the Genr
ō
-in, and on January 18, at the first poetry meeting in the palace, his New Year poem was composed on the topic “The Four Seas Are Pure.”

This year the emperor’s fondness for riding seems to have revived: he rode fifty-one times, generally ending his riding practice either with a visit to the Aoyama Palace, the residence of the empress dowager, or with a drinking party at the pavilion in the Shinjuku Royal Park.

The emperor occasionally took pleasure also in the performances of n
ō
at the Aoyama Palace or at the n
ō
theater opened in Shiba Park on April 16, 1881. The emperor and empress, along with members of the imperial family, councillors, officers of the Imperial Household Ministry, and so forth attended a particularly brilliant program of eight n
ō
and six
ky
ō
gen
on May 23, 1883, at the Aoyama Palace. N
ō
seemed to be on its way to being once again recognized as the official “music” of the regime, but despite regular gifts from the empress dowager, its most generous patron, there was not enough money to support the actors or to train successors. Not until the beginning of the twentieth century were the livelihoods of performers of n
ō
made financially secure.
¹

The emperor probably took greater pleasure in the n
ō
than in the lectures delivered before him this year. They were given by Motoda Nagazane on a section of the
Analects
, by Nishimura Shigeki on the Japanese translation of J. K. Bluntschli’s
Allgemeines Staatsrecht
, by Takasaki Masakaze on the preface to the
Kokinsh
ū
, and by Kawada
Ō
ko on
J
ō
kan seiy
ō
, a T’ang-period treatise on the art of government.

Although it began promisingly, 1883 would be marked by personal tragedies for the emperor. On January 26 his fourth daughter, Princess Fumiko, was born to the
gon no tenji
Chigusa Kotoko.
²
His third daughter, Princess Akiko, had been born to the same mother on August 3, 1880. As an infant, Akiko had been stricken with meningitis but had responded to treatment and seemed to have been completely cured. With the birth of Fumiko, the emperor had three children—Prince Yoshihito and the two princesses. But this joy did not last long. In August, Princess Akiko’s illness recurred, induced (it was said) by the extreme summer heat, and this time the palace doctors’ efforts to save her life were unsuccessful. She died on September 6. The infant Princess Fumiko, who had suffered from croup ever since her birth, showed symptoms of chronic meningitis on September 1. The emperor sent his personal physician, and when Fumiko’s condition did not improve, he commanded the surgeon general, Hashimoto Tsunatsune (1845–1909), to treat her. Princess Fumiko died two days after her sister.
³

Six of the emperor’s seven children had died in infancy. The emperor’s reactions to the deaths of his children were usually not recorded, but in face of this double blow, he was clearly grief stricken. In token of mourning, he canceled court business for a day and commanded that there be no singing or dancing for three days. He also ordered the army to fly flags at half-mast and to fire cannon in solemn tribute. On the day of the funeral, crowds gathered along the streets to watch in sorrow as the little coffins were carried off to the grave.

Asada S
ō
haku,
⁴
the physician in attendance on the royal children, asked to be allowed to resign his position because of his failure to cure the two princesses. He blamed his failure on his having tried by turns Chinese and Western medicine. Despite the recent tragedy, however, the emperor continued to believe in using both to treat illnesses. He appointed the Western-trained Hashimoto as chief medical officer of the palace.
⁵
He, along with two other Western-trained physicians,
⁶
were expected to consult with doctors of traditional medicine in prescribing treatment. After the deaths of the princesses, the emperor was more deeply concerned than ever about his one remaining child, the crown prince, whose health had been a problem ever since he was born.
⁷