7. Von Hanneken, testimony on the Kowshing incident, in ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 357. Von Hanneken was the only person who seemed to believe that the damage was done by the torpedo – all other accounts hold that the torpedo missed and that the ship was sent to the bottom solely by the Naniwa’s guns.
8. S Suzuki (ed), Nisshin Sensō Emaki [Pictures from the Sino-Japanese War] (Shunyōdō, Tokyo: 1904) vol 2 ‘The Asan Sea’, p 28, makes the ridiculous claim that it was von Hanneken who ordered the Chinese to fire at the foreigners in the water.
9. Testimony of Lewes Henry Tamplin, quoted in Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, pp 171–2. Falk leans heavily on ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, pp 349–69, which includes several contradictory testimonials of the last moments of the Kowshing, including one claim (Galsworthy’s) that the Japanese did not fire at the Chinese, another (from Von Hanneken) that admitted that men on the Kowshing had been firing at their own lifeboats, and another (from the stoker Tung Ha-shin) that the Japanese deliberately turned their ship-mounted machine guns on the Chinese in the water. It should be noted, however, as does Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 104, that Tung’s testimony was extremely confused. He was convinced that the Japanese had somehow carried Gatling guns up to the tops of the Naniwa’s masts – an unlikely feat. The case of the Kowshing would drag on for many years, and crops up in the Hansard record of Parliamentary business on several occasions after 1894. Five years on, there were questions in the British Parliament about the status of reparations to the families of the dead (HC Deb 26 October 1899 vol 77 cc732–3), which were delayed indefinitely, first by wrangles over responsibility and then by a suspicious two-year ‘illness’ on the part of the Chinese ambassador. The question was last raised in 1900 (HC Deb 08 August 1900 vol 87 cc979–80), during a House of Commons debate wherein Joseph Walton MP recounted a recent trip to the Far East, where he had talked about the fate of the Kowshing with a steamer captain who had been Galsworthy’s first mate (presumably Tamplin). Walton noted that: ‘The Kowshing was sunk not in a moment, but gradually, from the firing of guns from the Japanese cruiser. She would not have been sunk at all had it not been that the British commander and the officers, after they had been summoned and were willing to surrender to the Japanese cruiser, were forcibly prevented from surrendering by the Chinese soldiers on the Kowshing… . The three Europeans who escaped did so only by diving into the sea and swimming to the Japanese cruiser, being repeatedly fired upon by the Chinese soldiers, who believed that their capture was due to the bribery of the British commander by the Japanese.’ The sinking of the Kowshing is last mentioned in Hansard in 1902, where John Denny MP suggests that the commission heading to China to arrange an indemnity accruing from the Boxer Uprising should also attach Kowshing reparations to its agenda.
10. ATAM, pp 85–6.
11. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 162.
12. ATAM, p 86; see also T Holland, Letters to The Times Upon War and Neutrality (1881–1920) (The Echo Library, Teddington: 2006) pp 43–6.
13. See, for example, Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 39; and Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 171. The Kowshing was not the last foreign transport ship in the zone of conflict. J Allan, Under the Dragon Flag: My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War (Frederick A Stokes, New York: 1898) [Dodo Press POD reprint, not dated] pp 6–12, arrived in the area in late August, aboard an American-registered blockade runner – long and slender, with an impressive top speed of 20 knots that could outrun most warships and boilers burning virtually smokeless anthracite as fuel. In late August, Allan’s ship was smuggling ammunition on the Yellow Sea when she was boarded by a party from a Japanese cruiser. The smugglers escaped by bodily throwing the inspecting lieutenant overboard and running for Tianjin, counting on their souped-up engines to outrun the cruiser – which they did, with the loss of five lives aboard due to Japanese gunfire. The same ship subsequently served as one of the troop transports taking men to the Yalu, and hence was on her way home, the Stars and Stripes boldly proclaiming her new-found neutrality, when she ran into the Battle of the Yalu. Unable to resist, Allan put ashore to watch the fight and hence was able to supply the eyewitness account upon which I draw in the next chapter. During the later Russo-Japanese War, Tōgō was famously lenient in his treatment of blockaderunners. As implied in ‘H Tikovara’, Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer: The Personal Diary of a Japanese Naval Officer (John Murray, London: 1907) pp 198–9 and 205, Tōgō may have been soft on blockade-runners because such behaviour made other smugglers less likely to put up a deadly fight – perhaps a result of his Kowshing experience.
14. ATAM, p 18.
15. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 483.
7: The Angry Dragons
1. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 44. Tyler has some remarkably negative things to say, even about Chinese officers who were regarded by the Japanese as noble opponents. Long after McGiffin’s suicide, one of his relatives compiled his extant papers into L McGiffin, Yankee of the Yalu: Philo Norton McGiffin, American Captain in the Chinese Navy 1885–1895 (Dutton, New York: 1968), which presents an understandably different account to Tyler’s. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 109, mistakenly asserts that McGiffin was the captain of the Zhenyuan.
2. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 180, has the Japanese spotting the Chinese at 11:20 a.m. Meanwhile, on the Dingyuan, Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 49, recalls that ‘eight bells had struck’ (i.e., it was past noon) and that he was just about to tuck into a roast pigeon when the news arrived.
3. ATAM, p 88.
4. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, pp 49–50. Tyler was convinced that there was a wooden splinter embedded in his eye and even tried to strangle a Chinese surgeon who claimed otherwise. But the stabbing pain turned out to be simply the effect of the concussion.
5. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 168. The Yoshino had managed a spectacular 23 knots on her sea trials and was using barely 60 per cent of her engine capacity by leading the Japanese fleet into battle at a sedate 14 knots. She was the fastest warship afloat in 1894.
6. Allan, Under the Dragon Flag, p 16.
7. Allan, Under the Dragon Flag, p 17. G Ballard, The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan (John Murray, London: 1921), p 146, claims that the Saikyō’s course was not a foolhardy endeavour, but a simple attempt to catch up with the faster ships by taking a short cut. This short cut, unfortunately, turned out to be right through the enemy battle line.
8. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, pp 191–2. Saikyō (‘Western Capital’) does not appear in Jentschura et al., as she was not technically a naval vessel. Her captain, ‘John Wilson’ (a.k.a. Frederick Walgren, 1851–99) was one of the few Europeans remaining in Japanese service by that time. The Swedish-born, British-trained Wilson was later decorated by the Meiji Emperor for his actions, although notably, in Japanese war prints of the Saikyō’s moment of glory, Wilson has his back to the artist, in order to give the impression that the ship had an all-Japanese crew. For the defective ammunition in use on both sides, see Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, pp 184–5.
9. Allan, Under the Dragon Flag, pp 16–17.
10. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 54.
11. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 193, claims it was the Dingyuan that did this damage to the Matsushima. ATAM, p 89, is adamant that it was the Zhenyuan in her heroic defence of the Dingyuan later in the day.
12. Allan, Under the Dragon Flag, pp 17–18.
13. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 57, notes that the Qiyuan’s captain, Fang Boqian, was beheaded for ‘this and for a previous act of cowardice’. But Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 177, notes McGiffin’s accusation that the Chinese fleet contained ‘traitors, even drawing monthly salaries from the enemy’. Can we be sure that the blame for the sabotage truly lies with the unfortunate Captain Fang? For discussion of po
ssible enemies of Fang within the Chinese fleet, see Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, pp 193–4. Notably, ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 97, not only argues that Fang (in his text, Fong) was a scapegoat whose execution was ordered by ignorant Beijing bureaucrats and unsuccessfully opposed by Admiral Ding, but also that the Japanese themselves were impressed by his conduct at the Battle of the Yellow Sea and expressed surprise on hearing that he had been executed.
14. McGiffin, Yankee of the Yalu, p 140.
15. One dissenting voice in this story is McGiffin, Yankee of the Yalu, p 140, who claims that Lin spent most of the battle cowering on the floor and howling in anguish every time he heard a loud bang. McGiffin claims that the Zhenyuan was effectively under the command of another officer, Yang Yongling, for much of the battle; and hence that it was he, and not Lin, who came to the rescue of the Dingyuan. However, McGiffin’s testimony, already called into question by Tyler, above, would rather require him to be in a dozen places at once; and we might reasonably discount it here.
16. P McGiffin, ‘The Battle of the Yalu’, in Century Magazine, n0.50 (August 1895) p 601.
17. N Chaïkin, The Sino-Japanese War (Nathan Chaïkin, Martigny: 1983) pp 150–1. The same tale recounts the appearance of two doves before the battle, cited as yet another omen, albeit one of unknown meaning. One almost gets the impression that the sailors in the Japanese fleet had never seen a bird before.
18. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, pp 99–101 contains the complete text of Tōgō’s matter-of-fact report on the Battle of the Yalu, more properly called the Battle of the Yellow Sea (in Japan, but thereby confusing it with his later encounter with Vitgeft in the Russo-Japanese War) or the Battle of Haiyang [Island] in some sources. Tōgō reports breaking off action at ‘6:30 p.m.’, whereas Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 51, records the time as ‘about half past five’ with ‘about another hour of daylight.’ In modern parlance, the Japanese were fighting in their home time zone, which they share with Korea, whereas the Chinese were an hour behind.
19. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 200. Falk calls the boat the Kwang-Kai, possibly a misreading of Kwang-chia (i.e., Guangjia), a gunboat run aground in the Battle of the Yalu; see Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 254.
20. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 92.
21. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 190.
22. Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, p 95. Although Lin took the blame, he may have struck a charted hazard in a desperate attempt to avoid some of his own navy’s mines, which had been laid near his ship without warning.
8: Though Your Swords Be Broken
1. ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 270.
2. Letter of Itō Sukeyuki to Ding Ruchang, 25 January 1895, quoted in Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, pp 105–7. The full correspondence is preserved in ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, pp 380–6.
3. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 78.
4. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, p 114.
5. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 74.
6. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 79.
7. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 217.
8. ATAM, p 92. Tyler, Pulling Strings in China, p 85, claimed that Ding killed himself before his ‘reply’ was written, and hence that the famous letter was actually a forgery, frantically assembled by the surviving foreign and Chinese officers in the late Admiral’s name. However, this seems unlikely as both replies are in Ding’s personal style, and there is no reason to suspect that he would take his own life without first making sure that the safety of his subordinates was guaranteed by Admiral Itō. There is a less exacting translation in Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, pp 114–15.
9. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, pp 115–16. ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 297, suggests that Ding could not accept any gift from the Japanese because, as with the case of the Kowshing, any form of cordiality would be read by the Chinese as a sign of bribery.
10. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 190.
11. McGiffin, Yankee of the Yalu, p 140.
12. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, marks Tōgō’s promotion as 26 February 1895. Nishida, Imperial Japanese Navy, in Tōgō’s online naval record, dates the promotion ten days earlier.
13. Even in Chinese, Taiwan was sometimes referred to as Dai Liuqiu (Great Ryūkyū), although such terminology is uncommon today. To imply that Taiwan is one of the Ryūkyū islands is to suggest that it should remain part of Japan. Hence, while one might hear the term Great Ryūkyū from Japanese right-wing organisations, it is rare indeed to hear it from the Chinese. Taiwan remained part of Japan from Tōgō’s expedition until 1945, when the island was restored to China, although arguments then ensued about which China, the Republic or the People’s Republic, should take control. See J Clements, Wellington Koo (Haus Publishing, London: 2008) pp 151–2.
14. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 225, names a governor-designate who was a retired Rear Admiral called Tanaka (presumably Tanaka Tsunatsune, 1842–1903).
15. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 225, asserts that Tōgō took a course along the east coast of Taiwan. This is strangely at odds with accounts elsewhere but shows true cunning.
16. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, pp 153–4. ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 320, similarly notes a two-phase battle, with the majority of the Chinese fleeing ‘like frightened sheep’ while a handful of brave soldiers remained at their posts to surprise the Japanese landing force.
9: Republicans and Rebels
1. J Clements, Pirate King: Coxinga and the Fall of the Ming Dynasty (Sutton Publishing, Stroud: 2004) p 229; R Croizier, Koxinga and Chinese Nationalism: History, Myth, and the Hero (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1977) p 60.
2. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 162.
3. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 166. ATAM, pp 262–6, includes the complete course outline under Tōgō’s stewardship.
4. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, pp 166–7.
5. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 241, claims that Tōgō represented the navy at the funeral of ‘the Mikado’s mother’ during this period, but she did not die until 1907. The confusion originates with the fact the Meiji’s birth mother was an imperial concubine and that he was adopted by his father’s chief wife, the Empress Dowager.
6. J Clements, Prince Saionji (Haus Publishing, London: 2008) pp 82–3.
7. I Nish, The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–5: A Collection of Eight Volumes (Global Oriental, Folkestone: 2003) [8 vols] pp 31–2.
8. Clements, Wellington Koo, p 21.
9. Atago: named after a Tokyo district; Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 115.
10. ATAM, pp 95–6.
11. ATAM, p 96.
12. ATAM, p 96.
13. ATAM, pp 305–6. The errant officer later became Admiral Takarabe.
10: Port Arthur
1. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 182.
2. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 281.
3. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 194.
4. Tikovara, Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer, p 217: ‘The Marconi wireless-telegraphy … was installed on all our ships three months before mobilisation began …’, so presumably November-December 1903. Tikovara (Chikawara?) was purportedly the captain of a Japanese ship in the campaign, whose memoirs were translated first into Spanish and then into English. Published very soon after the events they describe, they contain rare moments of criticism and complaint about Admiral Tōgō, whose reputation was otherwise unassailable by 1907.
5. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 291. It is Falk who times the meeting to the ‘mid-watch’, i.e., between midnight and 4 a.m. in the early hours of 6 February. Falk calls the article on the tray a short sword; but Time magazine, recounting the incident some years later, per
suasively identifies the display as ‘a lacquer tray containing the instruments used in committing hara-kiri’. In other words, not a wakizashi short sword but a tantō dagger. Time, ‘Sea Noon,’ 8 November 1926.
6. New York Evening Post, 4 August 1911, quoted in ATAM, p 253. Further to the above note, the Evening Post article precisely measures the blade as ‘three inches and a half’ – hardly a ‘sword’.
7. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, pp 195–6.
8. Tikovara, Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer, p 15.
9. Keene, Emperor of Japan, pp 606–7.
10. ATAM, p 110. The text says ‘christening day of St Maria’, which is presumably Our Lady of Lourdes (11 February in the Gregorian calendar).
11. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 294–5.
12. ATAM, p 111.
13. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 297. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 210, prefers: ‘You will do your utmost.’
14. Bubnoff, quoted in Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 214.
15. There is a strange coda to the story of the Variag, in that the reaction of the Japanese public to Uryū’s initial failure to sink her led to crowds throwing stones at the absent Admiral’s house. To appease the mob, Mrs Uryū conspicuously went to pray at a local Buddhist temple, whose priests then claimed the credit for the Variag’s subsequent demise. Tōgō accompanied other admirals to the temple, the Myōhōji, to give thanks after the war, and would later sponsor a campaign by the temple’s sect to have its medieval founder, Nichiren, conferred with the honorary title of Daishi. Tōgō would later admit to being a follower of Nichiren, perhaps understandably, given that the Nichiren sect was also associated with the original kamikaze storm that destroyed the fleet of Mongol invaders in the 13th century. The calligraphy on a statue of Nichiren near Senzoku Pond, Meguro, Tokyo, was based on that of Tōgō himself. Inouye Tetsujiro, ‘Fleet-Admiral Tōgō from a Spiritual Point of View,’ in ATAM, p 7.
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