Meanwhile, developments even further to the west would grant Tōgō a new and unexpected mission which had its origins in events a decade earlier. On 4 March 1881, part-way through Tōgō’s service on the Imperial yacht, a foreign Head of State had visited Japan for the first time in history. News drifted in from the American minister that King David Kalakaua of Hawaii had embarked upon a round-the-world cruise and would be dropping in on the Meiji Emperor incognito.
Protocol, and to a certain extent, the Japanese sense of pomp, demanded that King Kalakaua’s visit be anything but unnoticed, leading to a terrific series of 21-gun salutes from both Japanese and foreign warships as Kalakaua arrived in Yokohama as a regular passenger aboard the liner rms Oceanic. All Japan was advised of Kalakaua’s visit, a band belted out a perfect rendition of Hawaii’s national anthem on the shore, and Kalakaua was driven through streets lined with crossed Japanese and Hawaiian flags.
The next day was a day of firsts for the Meiji Emperor. He received the King of Hawaii in the manner set out by European protocol, meeting him at the threshold of his palace dressed in an ostentatious military dress uniform, shaking the King’s hand, and even permitting the giant, brown-skinned monarch to walk by his side – an honour not previously accorded even to the Empress.
Kalakaua’s visit, originally planned to last just three days, stretched into two weeks. He was feted at dances, shown the sights, and left in the care of Prince Yamashina Sadamaro, a teenage member of a minor Imperial house, who was studying at the naval academy. Kalakaua charmed the Japanese with his talk of the pressing need for strong Japanese labourers on Hawaiian plantations – a welcome gesture of friendship at a time when the Japanese were deeply unwelcome in California. He also proposed that the two nations strike off the extraterritoriality clauses in their treaties – in another first, it was determined that Hawaiians in Japan and Japanese in Hawaii would honour the laws of their host country.
In a private meeting on 11 March, with even Kalakaua’s chamberlain absent, the Hawaiian king proposed an even grander suggestion, that Japan become the leader of an Asian league of nations, to present a united front against the white man. Although Meiji diplomatically demurred, Kalakaua made another proposal – that the charming young Prince Yamashina be betrothed to the Hawaiian king’s five-year-old niece and putative heir, Victoria Ka’iulani.10
It was a bad idea. After initial attempts to beg off, the matter was left to the Prince himself, who diplomatically wrote to King Kalakaua that he had been betrothed to a Japanese fiancée since his infancy, and hence could not honourably break off one agreement to accept another. The Prince’s polite refusal, which left the Hawaiian King, if anything, with even greater admiration for him, was a polite spin on the attitude of the conservative faction within the Imperial Family, which regarded Meiji as a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, and refused to permit the idea of a Japanese marriage to a foreigner. Politically, both the Meiji Emperor and Kalakaua’s own chamberlain disapproved of the idea, as it was sure to have been regarded by the white powers as the beginning of a Japanese take-over of Hawaii.11
While the Hawaiian King’s efforts at bringing highborn Japanese to Hawaii failed, he enjoyed much greater success with his appeal to the working classes. The reforms in the Japan of Tōgō’s youth had not brought wealth and prosperity for all. Some agrarian parts of Japan remained in crushing poverty. Traders in outmoded commodities who were unable to adapt, or peacetime samurai unsuited to the modern military, were forced to search for new means of employment. Many therefore jumped at the chance to ship out to Hawaii to earn an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work. At the time of King Kalakaua’s royal visit, the Japanese population of Hawaii was but a handful of men. A year later, there were over a hundred Japanese workers in the plantations. Within a decade, there were more than 24,000, mainly single men threatening to crowd out the native Hawaiians, whose numbers were fast declining. Consequently, even though young Victoria Ka’iulani had not married a Japanese prince, the Japanese state was obliged to pay closer attention to developments in the distant islands, to ensure the well-being of Japanese subjects at the very least. It was in this capacity that Captain Tōgō would be sent to Hawaii for an eventful cruise in 1892.
His recuperation finally judged to be complete, Tōgō was given command of a beautiful ship, the British-built steel cruiser Naniwa.12 At first, both captain and ship were put through mild paces, steaming in Japanese waters and facing no adversary more threatening than fellow Japanese vessels in naval drills. Tōgō toured the major harbours, all the better to shill for his own navy in the wake of Commodore Ding’s efforts to promote the Chinese. Naniwa then returned to Japan before being dispatched on her first cruise of note: a trip to Hawaii.
King Kalakaua’s efforts to promote an Asian ‘league of nations’ had not quite gone according to plan. Despite Kalakaua’s gallant offer that the Meiji Emperor lead the coalition, the Japanese ruler had refused, not the least because he knew that such an organisation would be sure to provoke the anger of the Chinese, who were bound to take umbrage at the suggestion that they should treat with any other nation on equal terms. Instead, Kalakaua seems to have reduced his aims somewhat, embarking on the first steps of what might have become a Polynesian confederation if his plans had not been thwarted by unrest at home.
In 1887, Kalakaua was stripped of many of his royal powers by a revolt. His hopes that an Asian union might protect him from the predations of the white man were never realised. Instead, he was forced to accept a form of constitutional monarchy that disenfranchised many of his native subjects and left the government of Hawaii in the hands of Americans, Europeans and their stooges. Kalakaua continued to rule, at least in name, until his death in San Francisco in 1891. His sister, Queen Liliuokalani, took the Hawaiian throne and immediately disappointed the white lobby by proposing to restore the vote to both native Hawaiians and to Asians living in Hawaii. The Queen also suggested that it would be better for her realm if the reigning monarch’s power of veto were restored, all the better to resist the intrigues of pro-foreign factions. Meanwhile, in America, the new McKinley tariff forced Hawaiian exports to the United States to compete for the first time with other ‘foreign’ goods. American plantation owners in Hawaii realised they could restore their profits if they somehow engineered the incorporation of Hawaii into the United States, thereby reclassifying its sugar and pineapple exports as ‘local’ American products.
On 17 January 1893, a self-styled ‘Committee of Safety’ acted to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani and seize control of the Hawaiian government. Some 1,500 non-native Hawaiians, supposedly acting out of concern for their own safety on Hawaiian territory, seized government buildings and proclaimed a Provisional Government. The committee then invited the resident US minister, John Stevens, to put ashore troops from the uss Boston, supposedly to protect the interests of Americans in Hawaii.
With a similar order to protect his own countrymen, Captain Tōgō was ordered to take the Naniwa with all haste to Hawaii. Even at full speed, it was two weeks before the warship reached Hawaiian waters, catching up with the older Imperial navy ship Kongō, whose captain had put in at Hawaii on his way home from San Francisco and had decided to wait around. The Naniwa was easily the most impressive ship in the harbour, outshining Britain’s Garnet and a cluster of American vessels. Captain Tōgō fired a 21-gun salute for the Hawaiian flag, followed by 13 for the Americans on the Boston – all present and correct.
In meetings with the captain of the Kongō and the Japanese consul Fuji Saburō, Tōgō established that the American government had hailed the new government in Hawaii, but that Japan still technically recognised the deposed Queen Liliuokalani. This fact may have escaped the Provisional Government – many foreign consuls and ministers had acknowledged the regime change, but Consul Fuji had fobbed them off with a long-winded note that, when inspected more closely, merely acknowledged that he had informed the Japanese Emperor of the Provisional Government’s cl
aims.13 Back in Washington, a faction tried to push through a treaty that officially annexed Hawaii to the USA, while in Honolulu, Sanford Dole, a man of American ancestry but Hawaiian born, was elected as the ruler of a newly democratic Hawaii.
Already, the rhetoric of the revolution was divided on political lines. To many Americans, the revolution was a re-run of the birth of the United States itself, with free citizens rising up against a deluded tyrant, establishing a democracy in which all men were created equal. Such a claim, however, did not play in the same way with the subjects of the Japanese Emperor, who saw a friendly reigning monarch rudely shoved aside by the same kind of brash commercial interests that had sent warships to Japan to open up the country by force. With this in mind, Tōgō informed his officers that they needed to tread with even greater care than usual.
I take it for granted that you already know how you are placed here and how you are to behave, but I must remind you of one thing. That our ship has come here means that part of our empire has temporarily been extended here, and you must be prudent in conduct. Every move you make here will affect the dignity of our empire. You must beware of acting rashly lest you should compromise the dignity of our empire, whether there may be disturbance or not hereafter. But should an emergency arise, you must be up and doing in a manner worthy of our empire.14
It was precisely the sort of tense political situation for which Tōgō had often cautioned his subordinates to prepare. If the American navy felt able to land troops to ‘protect’ its own resident citizens, then why not that of Japan? The Imperial Fleet’s first duty was to the safety of Japanese subjects in Hawaii – a situation likely to become problematic if the American government announced that it was now the ruler of the islands.
The rumour mill soon intrigued against the Japanese. Somehow, the story got out that Tōgo was less of a captain than a matchmaker, and that he had arrived in Hawaii with a dashing young Japanese prince aboard the Naniwa. The plan, supposedly, was to swiftly join the prince in holy matrimony with the deposed Queen’s niece and heir, the teenage Victoria Ka’iulani, turning Japan’s interest in restoring the old order from neutrality to passionate imperial interference in a family matter.
‘There is little doubt,’ fulminated the Honolulu Daily Bulletin, ‘that Japan looks upon these islands with an eye of longing, and that there has been a plan underfoot to bring them under Japanese influence by the marriage of one of the Princes of the Imperial House with Ka’iulani.’15
As the Meiji Emperor had already told the late King Kalakaua, there was no chance of that happening. But it is easy to see why the local press had thought otherwise. Clearly, King Kalakaua had been significantly less discreet than the Emperor in discussing his thwarted wedding plans with a home audience. Tōgō’s biographers unanimously dismiss the story as poppycock, but despite the brusque denials of the time, Tōgō does appear to have arrived in Hawaii with a dangerously eligible bachelor aboard his ship. After schooling in Britain and a period at a French naval academy, Prince Yamashina had returned to Japan a year beforehand and been given what everyone had hoped would be a safe and trouble-free posting as a marine squad leader on the Naniwa’s sister-ship, the Takachiho in March 1892. Unfortunately for all concerned, he had then been transferred to the Naniwa herself as a sublieutenant that same September. Now a dashing young officer in his twenties, Prince Yamashina was indeed aboard the Naniwa, and was one of the officers whose responsibility it would be to lead a landing party, should Tōgō decide to wade in on the side of the Hawaiians. Luckily for Tōgō, the putative bride was elsewhere. Victoria Ka’iulani had been sent to England for an education, and by the time Tōgō reached Hawaii, the Princess was already en route back across the Atlantic to protest in Washington at her country’s treatment.16
To ensure that the Hawaiian spring got even more unpleasantly hot for Tōgō, Sanford Dole himself paid a visit to the harbour. The self-styled ruler of Hawaii crossed the water in a small boat, making a beeline for an American warship that was inconveniently close to the Naniwa. Seeing a man approaching who had been accepted by the Washington government as a Head of State, the American warship boomed out an entirely proper greeting – a 21-gun salute.
It would now be deemed appropriate for the Naniwa to follow suit, an unfortunate position considering Tōgō’s past record with naval salutes. Tōgō ruled that the Americans might think Dole was a head of state, but until such time there was a change of policy in Tokyo, Queen Liliuokalani was still the rightful ruler of Hawaii, and Dole was just a pretender. This meant no salute at all: not from the guns, nor even from the sailors aboard the Naniwa.
As the minutes passed, it became apparent that the Naniwa was making no effort to fire her guns whatsoever. Dole himself peered from his boat at the Japanese warship, and saw Tōgō standing on the after-bridge, staring back at him impassively through a pair of binoculars. Then, in a gesture sure to be misinterpreted, Tōgō turned his back on Dole and stared out to sea. By Japanese principles, it was a polite means of pretending that nothing was amiss; to the slighted Dole, it added personal insult to diplomatic injury.17
While Tōgō busily courted diplomatic disasters on the Naniwa, the Kongō was having an altogether easier time of it on an island cruise. The lesser warship took a week-long tour of the Hawaiian archipelago, largely to make sure that the majority of the Japanese nationals in the region, on the Big Island rather than on Oahu, were safe. The Kongō returned to Tōgō, reported all was well and then steamed off towards Japan.
Tōgō was soon to have just cause to wish that he were onboard the Kongō himself, or at the very least, that he had kept her in the harbour for just one more day. Instead, even as the Kongō steamed out to sea, Tōgō received a unwanted guest aboard the Naniwa.
Imada Yasaka was neither prince nor president, but a convicted murderer. A Japanese migrant worker on the island of Maui, he had killed a fellow Japanese labourer with a hatchet, for which he had been sentenced to twenty-one years hard labour. Only three months into his sentence on 16 March 1893, Imada was one of a work-gang shipped over from Oahu Prison to undertake work on the Quarantine Station in the harbour. At a moment when his wardens were fatefully looking elsewhere, Imada broke free of his captors, sprinted down the wharf and dove into the water. A strong swimmer, he powered across the waters, snatching hold of the Naniwa’s gangplank sufficiently far ahead of a pursuing outrigger canoe to be able to introduce himself to Tōgō’s deck officers and claim asylum. By the time word reached Tōgō of the new arrival, all those involved had come to appreciate the delicacy of the situation. Even if Imada had not been wholly forthcoming about his resumé, there was soon a flotilla of police launches and canoes in the water around the Naniwa, demanding that Tōgō hand the escaped prisoner back. Tōgō, however, reacted in a fashion that would not have surprised anyone who had witnessed his previous attitude towards the letter of the law. ‘I am here to protect my countrymen generally,’ he said. ‘Therefore I cannot deliver up to you this subject of Japan.’18
When Imada’s jailers failed to elicit the desired compliance from Tōgō, the matter fell to the police. When Tōgō politely told the police the same thing, the matter was passed up to the same Provisional Government that Tōgō had already refused to recognise. Realising that Tōgō was not listening, officials instead leaned on the Japanese consul, Fuji Saburō, who was at least within reach on land. Fuji pleaded with Tōgō to relent, and when this failed, passed the buck by asking him to write an explanation of his legal and diplomatic situation.
Contentious as ever, Tōgō wrote a long assessment of the legal precedent and protocols, and did so in the beautifully-formed Japanese characters that one might expect from a classically-educated samurai boy from Kagoshima. A flustered Fuji protested that none of the plaintiffs could read Japanese, to which Tōgō bluntly replied that he was the captain of a warship, and had better things to do than translate legal documents into English for a crowd of selfstyled revolutionaries.
Now as exa
sperated as the whites, Fuji sent a cable to Tokyo asking for orders. His problem, as far as he could see, was that Tōgō was not necessarily in the wrong. As one local newspaper had already pointed out:
As there is no extradition treaty between this country and Japan, doubtless the Japanese authorities are in no way bound to comply with the request of this Government for the return of the prisoner. If the Naniwa were a merchantman, she would be under Hawaiian jurisdiction, but the case is difficult with vessels of war, which carry their national sovereignty with them. The Naniwa is as it were a piece of Japanese territory, subject to Japanese laws, and merely temporarily set down in Honolulu harbour.19
What was at issue, and what the Admiralty ultimately decided for itself, was that the stubborn Captain Tōgō was hardly protecting a political refugee or saving an innocent civilian. Instead, he was offering sanctuary to a man who had buried an axe in the skull of a fellow Japanese. Was Tōgō expecting to bring Imada home for a new trial? Imada had already been convicted of second-degree manslaughter, and it seemed churlish to risk an international incident to protect the questionable rights of an escaped convict. Moreover, when the late King Kalakaua had made his historic visit to Japan, he had publicly agreed with the Meiji Emperor to drop extraterritoriality from the agreements between the two countries. In other words, while Tōgō might be adhering to the letter of international law in refusing to hand Imada over to an unrecognised government, the spirit of that same law was that Imada had been found guilty by a Hawaiian court in the closing days of the reign of King Kalakaua, with whose laws the Japanese Emperor had agreed his subjects would abide. What was good enough for the Meiji Emperor was surely good enough for Captain Tōgō.20
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