by Donald Keene
This was the first time the emperor had seen nō in Tōkyō. He seems to have been genuinely fond of it. Sometimes, when in a particularly good mood, he used to sing passages from the plays, and he even taught his court ladies how to sing them.39 His enthusiasm for nō was undoubtedly an important factor in the preservation of this art at a time when its future looked bleak. From then on, whenever the emperor visited the residences of principal officers of the state or members of the nobility, he was generally entertained with performances of nō.
Meiji’s next visit to the house of an adviser took place soon afterward, on April 14. On his way back to the palace from Asukayama, where he had gone to admire the cherry blossoms and to inspect a paper factory, he stopped at the villa of Kido Takayoshi in Somei Village.40 Summoning Kido into his presence, the emperor uttered these words of praise: “You, Takayoshi, ever since the inception of the Restoration, have dedicated yourself to national duties, and now the country is fortunately enjoying peace. This is due to your accomplishments and those of your colleagues. We have personally paid you a visit and are delighted to be able to share pleasures together.”41
He gave Kido 500 yen in gold, a large Satsuma ware vase, a pair of silver cups, and three cases of imported wine. He granted Mrs. Kido an audience, strolled in Kido’s garden, and then joined in eating a box lunch with the other guests. This was the first time an emperor had ever visited the house of someone of the samurai class. Kido naturally was delighted.42
The emperor’s plan of traveling to all parts of the country, announced years earlier, had been temporarily postponed as the result of various emergencies—the controversy over sending an envoy to Korea, the Saga insurrection, the expedition to Taiwan, and, most recently, the incident at Kanghwa Island—but now that these crises had been surmounted, the desirability of an imperial tour of the north of Japan was again urged.
On the whole the country was at peace, although peasant revolts (such as one in Wakayama early in May) were signs of residual discontent. In May, Kido submitted a lengthy memorial to the throne opening with the bold declaration that governments were established for the sake of the people but that the people were not under obligation to serve the government. He went on to describe the situation that had prevailed before the Restoration. During the 700 and more years since rule was delegated to the military, the people had always been oppressed by the government, but when the emperor, with supreme benevolence of intent, proclaimed the Restoration, he swept away the accumulation of evil practices. Truly, Kido commented, this must be accounted a great blessing for the people.43
Having read this far, one might expect that Kido would go on to urge even stronger steps to eliminate practices lingering from the rejected past. Instead, he warned against excessive changes. For example, with the establishment of prefectures in place of domains, officials had been appointed who were not necessarily natives of the locality they administered. They were therefore less solicitous when dealing with local problems than officials who were familiar with the persons involved and who would be anxious not to acquire a bad reputation that would be inherited by their children and grandchildren.
Kido was in effect pleading for the retention of one of the “evil customs” of the past. On May 19 after visiting Sanjō Sanetomi, he wrote in his diary: “We have been dazzled by the daily changes before our eyes, and we have discarded our customs of several hundred years too readily. In the end we have fallen victim to the disease of excessive rigidity in our approach.”44
He was particularly upset by the announced plan of ending the stipends given to samurai: “If the plan for termination of stipends is not given up, I hope the government will minimize the troubles of those adversely affected, open the path of livelihood to them, and treat them with generosity.”
Kido favored change, but without haste and with due consideration of “human” concerns. He probably transmitted these views to the emperor, for Kido was consulted by the emperor more frequently than any other statesman of the day.
Meiji’s reactions are not described. His time was largely occupied by events that related directly to the steady progress of modernization. On May 9, for example, he attended the opening ceremonies of Ueno Park, the first public park in Japan. Refreshments, provided for the occasion by the Interior Ministry, typified the new age, as they included white wine, champagne, and ice cream.45
On June 2 the emperor finally set forth on his journey to the northeast.46 He was accompanied by 230 persons, including members of the cabinet, official historians, chamberlains, and physicians. The first stop of the journey was at Sōka, reached by the procession at three that afternoon. As soon as the emperor had settled in his temporary quarters, he was formally welcomed by the governor of Saitama and other officials. The emperor rose the next morning at four, and the procession set out again. On the way to Gamō Village, the emperor commanded that his carriage be halted in order that he might observe rice planting. The peasants were dressed in their best clothes for the occasion, the men in the paddies wearing white cords to hold back their sleeves and the women red, and all wore sedge hats. As the peasants planted the rice seedlings, they sang songs that echoed far and near. The emperor was fascinated and kept his carriage waiting until he had seen his fill.47
The procession reached Satte, the next stop, that afternoon. The emperor sent for the governor and asked him about conditions in the prefecture. The governor described local geographic and living conditions and the products of the region. He mentioned that the greatest hardship endured by the people of the prefecture was the rivers’ flooding. The emperor asked if there was no discontent among the people over the system of paying land rent with money rather than produce. The governor replied that most people welcomed the new system, but they would like to have the time of payments divided through the year. As in all future meetings between the emperor and local officials, Iwakura Tomomi and Kido Takayoshi were in attendance.
Almost everywhere the procession went, the emperor inspected elementary schools, listened to the pupils’ recitations, and gave gifts (generally, dictionaries or atlases) to those pupils with the best marks. Outside the classrooms he watched the children perform calisthenics. These visits could not have been of great interest to the emperor, but he never indicated anything but pleasure over what he saw. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing his young subjects applying themselves to mental and physical culture; even more, he may have considered that such visits to schools and factories were part of his duties as a sovereign.
Only when there was some sight of unusual interest in the vicinity does the journey seem more than a graciously performed duty. When the emperor visited the Tōshōgū in Nikkō, for example, he carefully examined the architecture, the statues, the treasures from Japan and abroad. He paid his respects also at the tomb of Tokugawa Iemitsu and had documents concerning Ieyasu sent to his lodgings so that he might peruse them at leisure. That night he asked members of his escort to compose poems about the Eight Sights of Nikkō. Meiji felt no hesitation about visiting a site intimately associated with the Tokugawa family.
Wherever the emperor’s procession went, it was greeted by crowds lining the roads. Many of the spectators composed poems describing their emotions, hoping that somehow they might be seen by the emperor himself. These farmer-poets were well aware that if they attempted to send their poems to the emperor through proper channels, local officials would see to it that they never reached him; so they either begged members of the entourage to show the poems to the emperor or left them in places where they would most likely attract notice. The head chamberlain collected and arranged such poems and offered them for the emperor’s scrutiny every night at dinner.
The emperor also inspected local produce wherever he went and made a point of listening to the songs of peasants of the vicinity. Wherever he went, he was also shown antiques from the distant past, whether paintings and calligraphy or ancient farm utensils. He was pleased to see newly opened farmland and equally pleased by factories, a begi
nning of industrialization. In Sendai he attended a public display of objects owned by the Date family, including an oil painting of Hasekura Rokuemon, who visited Rome in 1615, worshiping a crucifix and a parchment book in Latin that Hasekura had brought back from Europe.48 The emperor received gifts from both local officials and humble persons, like the cage of fireflies offered by elementary-school pupils in Furukawa. On occasion he bought local wares that intrigued him.
Probably the emperor found the last place he visited, Hakodate, the most intriguing. He happened to arrive at the Hakodate Hospital for a tour of inspection just when an experiment was being conducted on a toad’s blood circulation. He examined the toad through a microscope, the first time he had used this instrument. When he reached his lodgings after a tour of the schools, he found that an exhibition of local wares had been arranged for him, including Ainu utensils and clothes. Later that day, more than fifty Ainu came to pay their respects. At night the garden was bright with hundreds of red lanterns. Every house along the streets had a lantern hanging from the eaves, and even the ships in the harbor were illuminated with strings of lights. All along the shore there were lighted stone lanterns, and in nearby villages, torches burned.
On July 17 the emperor visited the Five Point Fortress, the site of the last resistance to his army, and climbed up the ramparts. He asked a local official about the warfare. When he heard of some fifty Ainu, both men and women, who had come to Hakodate to see the procession, he sent for them and watched them dance.
During the voyage back to Yokohama from Hakodate, the sea was rough, and almost everyone was seasick. But the journey was otherwise a triumph. It is true that Kido Takayoshi, worried about the emperor’s lack of exercise, had tried without much success to persuade him to walk or ride a horse, but he seems rarely to have left his carriage or palanquin during the journey.49 A more serious concern was the accounts of dissatisfaction and even unrest among the samurai class, heard from local officials wherever the procession went. This pent-up discontent would, before the year had ended, explode in violence.
Chapter 27
The rapid pace of modernization continued unabated during the remainder of 1876. On September 4 the Jingei, a warship intended for the emperor’s personal use, was launched at the Yokosuka shipyard. On the following day the last link in the railway line between Kyōto and Kōbe was completed, and train service between the two cities by way of Ōsaka was inaugurated. On September 7 the emperor issued a rescript to the Genrō-in calling for a rough draft of a constitution to be compiled after making a broad study of the laws of different foreign countries. On September 9 the emperor was presented with two newspapers, one published in Tōkyō and the other in Yokohama; he would henceforth receive a number of newspapers every day. Each of these developments in its own way—transportation, political progress, dissemination of information—suggested the shape of things to come in Japan.
The emperor also entered into closer contact with the heads of various foreign countries. On October 1, for example, he sent a message of congratulations to President Ulysses S. Grant on the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of American independence. Two days later he received from the czar of Russia the photographs and architectural drawings he had requested of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, to be consulted when building his new residence in Tōkyō.
Not all his subjects were pleased with such developments. Many samurai still clung to their old ideal of sonnō jōi and resented each step the government took to make Japan into a modern nation. They were outraged that foreigners were now permitted to buy property in the Land of the Gods and to live outside the foreign settlements. They were especially infuriated by the edicts issued earlier that year commanding them to cut their hair in Western style and to cease wearing swords. Their anger over what they considered to be flagrant violations of Japanese traditions (those of their own class in particular) was intensified by the economic hardships that many were then suffering.
The Saga rebellion, the first violent expression of this anger, had been suppressed with the aid of government troops from the Kumamoto garrison. It occurred to the leaders of “patriotic” groups in Kumamoto that now, when the garrison was far below its normal strength, might be the moment to attack their headquarters. At the time there were four “parties” (tō) in Kumamoto. Two—the Keishin-tō (more familiarly known as the Shinpūren)1 and the Gakkō-tō—were reactionary, hoping to restore the samurai traditions rejected by the Meiji government. The other two “parties”—the Jitsugaku-tō and the Minken-tō—favored modernization.2 The wrath of the Shinpūren was roused to fever pitch by the false rumor that the emperor was planning to go abroad.3
The leader of the Shinpūren, Ōtaguro Tomoo (1835–1876), decided in October, after having on several occasions performed rites of Shintō divination,4 that he had at last been given divine authorization for staging an uprising. He was in contact with samurai in other prefectures who shared his convictions, and he hoped that success in Kumamoto would encourage them to stage similar revolts. The mutual bond uniting these men was hatred of the changes (especially in the status of the samurai class) that had occurred since the Meiji Restoration. The members of the Shinpūren were the most extreme. They were not satisfied merely with arresting the spread of Western influence; they were determined to eradicate every trace of it, whether the wearing of Western clothes or the use of the Western calendar. Some members displayed their hatred of electricity, for example, by holding white fans over their heads when they had to pass under telegraph wires, in order to protect themselves from baleful foreign influences. Many carried salt to sprinkle (by way of purification) whenever they saw a Buddhist priest,5 a Japanese in Western clothes, or a funeral. And one man, convinced that paper money was imitated from the West, refused to touch it lest he be polluted and accepted money only with chopsticks.6 One ideological decision had fatal repercussions during the impending battle with government forces—their refusal to use modern weapons. The members of the Shinpūren fought with swords and spears against soldiers armed with rifles and cannons.
Late at night on October 24 the men of the Shinpūren—fewer than 200—gathered secretly. They quickly divided into squads, each with a specific assignment. One squad attacked the Kumamoto garrison and, taking advantage of surprise, killed many defenders before setting fire to the barracks of infantry and artillery soldiers. Other rebels, bursting into the telegraph office, smashed the hated foreign instruments, although this meant cutting off communications with the outside world, including their allies. Still others attacked the residences of the prefectural governor Yasuoka Ryōsuke, the garrison commandant Major General Taneda Masaaki, and the chief of staff Lieutenant Colonel Takashima Shigenori. They killed Taneda and Takashima, mortally wounded Yasuoka, and burned down his house.
The slaughter was indiscriminate. The attack on the barracks, completely without warning, caught the unarmed soldiers in their nightclothes, but this did not induce the Shinpūren to capture rather than kill. They showed no mercy even toward men who were too badly wounded to defend themselves. More than 300 soldiers of the garrison were killed or wounded in the battle. Unlike the members of the Shinpūren, the garrison soldiers were conscripts, most of them peasants. It seems to have given the Shinpūren samurai special pleasure to kill lowly peasants who had dared to usurp their place as military men.
At first it seemed as if the rebels had won a complete victory, but once the army officers were able to overcome their surprise and shock, they rallied the remaining soldiers and, by force of numbers and modern weapons, routed the attackers. The rebels were decimated by gunfire; Ōtaguro, badly wounded, commanded his followers to cut off his head, and they did. Most of the survivors committed seppuku, maintaining Japanese tradition to the end. By dawn, the fires set by the rebels had died down, and sounds of gunfire could no longer be heard. The battle was over, but it had thrown the city into a state of panic, and many people had fled. The eme
rgency was not lifted until November 3.7
The revolt of the Shinpūren had achieved nothing except the deaths of some 500 men who might otherwise have been of service to their country and perhaps to the world. The two long lines of gravestones at the Sakurayama Shrine in Kumamoto where 123 of the Shinpūren are buried, each marked with a name and the age at which the man died, whether in action or by his own hand, are likely to inspire reveries on the swiftness of the fall of the cherry blossoms and similar metaphors for the deaths of samurai. Visitors who stand before these tombs today may be so impressed by the dedication displayed on behalf of a doomed cause as to forget that the attack was brutal in the extreme and that the ideals for which the young men (most in their teens or twenties) died were insensate.
All the same, the 180 or so members of the Shinpūren had demonstrated that it was possible for a small body of men, if their attack was unforeseen and they themselves were ready to risk their lives, to defeat much larger forces or at least to reduce them to a state of terror. This lesson of terrorism was communicated to samurai dissidents throughout Japan, some of whom soon demonstrated that they also were prepared to start a rebellion with a mere handful of men.8
Word of the Shinpūren uprising reached the court on October 25. Iwakura Tomomi and Kido Takayoshi immediately informed the emperor of what they had heard, but because communications with Kumamoto had been cut, they did not know the details. The next day after telegraphic service with the Kumamoto garrison had been restored, Sanjō Sanetomi and Ōkubo Toshimichi gave the emperor a fuller report. Officers were dispatched to Kyūshū to obtain firsthand information, and Major General Ōyama Iwao was appointed to replace the murdered Taneda as commandant of the Kumamoto garrison.
