Emperor of Japan

by Donald Keene

  The Diet session was given over largely to discussions of how to finance the war. It was agreed to issue 100 million yen in bonds to meet the deficit. The points of view of the Diet members differed somewhat, but all were determined to see the war to a successful conclusion, and all expressed gratitude to the emperor for personally commanding the armed forces.

  Even as the Diet was debating in Hiroshima, Japanese First Army troops had advanced to the banks of the Yalu River and on October 24 crossed the river. Chinese resistance was stiff, but the Japanese continued to be victorious in every clash between the two armies. On November 2 the emperor attended a banquet at the temporary Diet building to celebrate the victories. The walls were decorated with pictures depicting the boastful Yüan Shih-k’ai, the weeping Li Hung-chang, the death in battle of Tso Pao-kuei, and similar subjects. Later that day, there were performances of nō and kyōgen.29 On the following day, the emperor’s birthday, there was a party at which the emperor himself sang Yuya.30

  On November 8 the American minister to Japan, Edwin Dun, sent the foreign minister, Mutsu Munemitsu, this message from his government:

  The deplorable war between Japan and China endangers no policy of the United States of America in Asia. Our attitude toward the belligerents is that of an impartial and friendly neutral, desiring the welfare of both. If the struggle continues without check to Japan’s military operations on land and sea, it is not improbable that other powers having interests in that quarter may demand a settlement not favorable to Japan’s future security and well-being. Cherishing the most friendly sentiments of regard for Japan, the president directs that you ascertain whether a tender of his good offices in the interests of a peace alike honorable to both nations would be acceptable to the government of Japan.31

  Behind these words we can sense the usual American mistrust of England and the desire to have the Japanese recognize America as a friend with no territorial or other ambitions in East Asia. But Mutsu, though expressing appreciation for the American offer to mediate, replied (with the consent of the government and the emperor): “The universal success which has thus far during the conflict attended the arms of Japan would seem to relieve the imperial government of the necessity of invoking the cooperation of friendly powers to bring about a cessation of hostility.” Mutsu believed that “unless the Chinese were subjected to further military attacks, they would not feel truly repentant or sincerely desirous of peace. Also, considering that war fever in Japan continued to be rampant, we concluded that any commencement of peace talks would be premature.”32

  Mutsu assured Dun that Japan had no wish to “press its victories beyond the limits that will guarantee to Japan the just and reasonable fruits of the war,” but other Japanese had more ambitious plans. Yamagata submitted to the emperor a memorandum on the future of Korea in which he expressed the conviction that it would be extremely difficult to guarantee the independence of Korea and to keep China from interfering. He mentioned the existence of a secret agreement to build a railway between Pusan and Seoul but said that this would be insufficient, that Japan would surely regret it later if the railway did not go all the way to Uiju, north of Pyongyang. This was a strategic area, and Japanese should be encouraged to settle there in order to minimize Chinese influence. The way between Pusan and Uiju was a highway that extended to India, and if Japan were to gain hegemony in Asia, it would have to start building the railway immediately.33

  Yamagata’s recommendation was not acted on, but ever since the Second Army had taken Chin-chou-ch’eng on November 6, Yamagata had urgently pressed for Japanese expansion on the continent. The Chinese, unable to prevent incursions by Japanese forces deep into their territory, were desperately eager to end the war as quickly as possible. It was reported that Li Hung-chang had decided to make peace with Japan, regardless of the reparations that might be demanded. He asked various countries, including Germany and Russia, to ascertain Japanese conditions for peace. The German foreign minister refused to mediate, recommending instead that negotiations be undertaken directly with the Japanese government. The Russian foreign minister made a similar response.

  The next major battle was at Port Arthur, the strongly defended home port of the Chinese North Sea Fleet. The Chinese had been building up the fortifications at great expense for more than ten years, and it was reputed to be one of the three strongest fortresses in the world. More than 10,000 troops34 manned the many gun emplacements. The Japanese commenced their assault at 1:30 A.M. on November 22. The first line of defense was difficult to penetrate, but once these positions were taken, Chinese resistance crumbled, almost all the defenders running from the scene. Port Arthur, despite its vaunted fortifications, had fallen to the Japanese.35

  On November 22, the same day that Japan and the United States concluded a new treaty of commerce and navigation, Charles Denby, the American minister in Peking, sent a cable to Edwin Dun in Tōkyō stating that the Chinese government had authorized and requested him to make “direct overtures for peace talks.” The terms offered by the Chinese were recognition of Korea’s independence and the payment of a reasonable indemnity for military expenditures.36 The Japanese interpreted the offer (which they termed “minimal”) as meaning that the Chinese were not seriously desirous of peace. They replied that if the Chinese really wished for peace, they should appoint plenipotentiary envoys who would be informed of the Japanese conditions for ending the war.

  Everything seemed to be going favorably for the Japanese when reports sent by foreign newspaper men who had witnessed the occupation of Port Arthur not only horrified readers abroad but for a time threatened Japan’s reputation as a modern, civilized country.

  The first report on the Japanese troops’ actions after conquering Port Arthur was made by Thomas Cowen, a foreign correspondent of the Times of London. After leaving Port Arthur, he reached Hiroshima on November 29 and had an interview the following day with Foreign Minister Mutsu. Cowen astonished Mutsu with his detailed descriptions of the ghastly scenes he had witnessed. That night Mutsu sent a telegram to Hayashi Tadasu:

  Today I met with a Times correspondent who has returned from Port Arthur. He says that after the victory the Japanese soldiers behaved in a outrageous manner. It seems to be true that they murdered prisoners who had already been tied up, and they killed civilians, even women. He said that this situation was witnessed not only by newspaper men of Europe and America, but also by officers of the fleets of different countries, notably a British rear admiral.37

  Cowen asked Mutsu what Japan proposed to do to remedy the situation. Mutsu replied that if the report was true, it was most deplorable but that he could not answer until he had heard from GeneralŌyama, the commander of the Second Army. He found it difficult to believe that Japanese soldiers, who always maintained discipline, could have committed such acts, but if in fact they had occurred, there must have been some cause, and if the cause were known, it might diminish the offense somewhat. Mutsu asked Hayashi to inform him of any information that reached him.

  Cowen’s first dispatch on the fighting appeared in the Times of December 3. It opened by giving the official Japanese view of what had occurred: Chinese soldiers, discarding their uniforms, had put on civilian clothes and carried hidden weapons, including bombs. Civilian snipers had also participated in the fighting, firing from inside the houses. The Japanese military had therefore judged that it was necessary to exterminate them. The Japanese army was further aroused by the sight of the bodies of Japanese prisoners who had been burned alive or had had their hands and feet cut off.

  Cowen then described his own experiences. He had been in the city during the four days following the victorious attack by Japanese forces. He stated as a fact that although there had been no resistance in the city, almost every male inhabitant had been slaughtered, and some women and children had also been killed accidentally. Japanese soldiers had looted the whole city. He had reported to Viscount Mutsu that he had seen many Chinese prisoners, both hands tied behind their ba
cks and stripped of their clothes, who had been hacked and slashed with swords. The intestines of some men had been torn out and their hands and feet cut off. Many corpses were partly burned.38

  The immediate reaction of the Japanese government to this and similar dispatches that appeared in the foreign press was to send out reports favorable to the Japanese.39 Bribes were given to Reuters to circulate pro-Japanese articles. Some newspapers like the Washington Post were directly paid to print articles favorable to Japan.40 Various foreign journalists were by this time in the Japanese pay.41

  Military censorship of the Japanese press was initiated at this time. A set of four regulations was drawn up, headed by the following instructions: “Reports should record insofar as possible true facts concerning acts of loyalty, courage, righteousness, and nobility and should encourage feelings of hostility toward the enemy.” Those who violated these regulations would be suitably punished.42

  Worldwide attention was drawn to the events that had occurred at Port Arthur by a brief cable dispatch from James Creelman, a foreign correspondent of the New York newspaper the World:43

  The Japanese troops entered Port Arthur on Nov. 21 and massacred practically the entire population in cold blood.

  The defenseless and unarmed inhabitants were butchered in their houses and their bodies were unspeakably mutilated. There was an unrestrained reign of murder which continued for three days. The whole town was plundered with appalling atrocities.

  It was the first stain upon Japanese civilization. The Japanese in this instance relapsed into barbarism.

  All pretenses that circumstances justified the atrocities are false. The civilized world will be horrified by the details.

  The foreign correspondents, horrified by the spectacle, left the army in a body.44

  The response of the Japanese press was to justify Japanese actions in terms of the unspeakable trickery of the Chinese soldiers who, even after shedding their uniforms and putting on civilian clothes, continued to resist. They were as dangerous as mad dogs let loose among the population, and the Japanese army had no choice but to kill them before they could bite.45 The atrocities perpetrated against the bodies of captured Japanese were repeatedly cited as the cause of the hatred of the Japanese troops for the Chinese.46

  As for the “massacre,” it was claimed that the British in India had committed worse. Maoris had been massacred in New Zealand. The recent massacre of Armenians by a Bulgarian army unit in the service of the Turkish government was termed far worse than anything that had occurred in East Asia. The lynching of a black man in Texas, whose only crime was to aspire to a good education, was cited not (as one might expect) as a deplorable instance of racial prejudice but to show that civilized people (like the American lynchers or the Japanese) found it hard to sympathize with barbarians (like the black man or the Chinese).47

  The full accounts of the massacre at Port Arthur, as seen by three foreign correspondents (Cowen, Creelman, and Frederic Villiers of the North American Review), are horrifying. They all bear witness to the fact that the Japanese troops killed everyone in sight, even though there was no resistance. Old people, kneeling and begging for mercy, were stabbed with bayonets and their heads cut off. Women and children who fled to the hills were pursued and shot. The shooting was indiscriminate: anything that moved, even a dog, a cat, or a stray donkey, was shot. Cowen declared that as far as he could see, not one shot was fired from inside the houses at the Japanese, but this did not keep the Japanese from reckless shooting. The streets were filled with corpses, as the photographs show, and a river of blood flowed. According to the foreign correspondents, none of the corpses looked like soldiers or carried weapons.48

  No prisoners were taken, although it was officially announced that 355 were being well treated in captivity and would soon arrive in Tōkyō.49 The Yorozu chōhō for December 4 asked why there were so few prisoners, and then answered its own question by saying that if the Japanese army and navy had wished to take prisoners, they could have taken as many as they pleased. But a large number of prisoners would have been a nuisance, so the Second Army killed every man who either was armed or looked as if he might resist the Japanese soldiers. That was why there were so few prisoners.50

  A few Chinese were in fact not killed, probably because their help was needed in burying the dead. They were given white tags bearing such inscriptions as “This man is obedient. Do not kill him” and “Do not kill this man. By order of the XX unit.”51

  Although prohibited by international law from bearing arms, coolies with the Japanese army eagerly took part in the slaughter. In time, when it became impossible for the army to deny that a massacre had occurred, drunken coolies were blamed for what happened. The looting by the Japanese army, which stripped the houses of Port Arthur of every article of value, was formally denied by General Ōyama.52

  On November 23 the Harvest Festival was celebrated with a party in the Port Arthur shipyard. At the height of the party Ōyama Iwao and other high-ranking officers were treated to being tossed in the air in celebration of the victory. That night Ariga Nagao, the legal officer of the Second Army, visited the foreign correspondents. Ariga had been a brilliant student at Tōkyō University, reputedly the only student who fully understood Ernest Fenollosa’s lectures on art,53 but at this time he was an apologist for the Japanese military. He urged Villiers to say without hesitation whether he considered what had happened during the past days to constitute a massacre. Villiers avoided a direct answer, but in his article he characterized the events with another term, “cold-blooded butchery.”54

  If there had been no foreign correspondents, these unspeakable events might never have been recorded.55 The massacre at Port Arthur remains a painful issue: How did it happen that men who were not monsters could have performed these terrible acts? In the heat of battle, and provoked by the sight (or report) of the dismembered bodies of their comrades, normal discipline may have been forgotten and individual convictions, including inborn decency as human beings, melted into an undifferentiated mass emotion characterized only by the instinct to kill.56

  If people in the West had read reports of the massacre of the “natives” of some distant part of the world by the troops of a European or American country, they might have shrugged them off, saying that savages had to be taught to behave like civilized men. But when they read of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops, it confirmed the suspicions of some of them that Japan, for all its beautiful scenery and picturesque art, was a barbarian country that could not be dealt with as an equal.57

  Ratification of the Japan–United States treaty by the Senate was immediately affected. On December 14 Minister Kurino Shin’ichirō cabled Mutsu: “The secretary of state58 says that if the rumors concerning the murders of Chinese in Port Arthur are true, they will surely cause very great difficulties in the Senate.” Mutsu immediately wired back to Kurino that “while reports regarding the Port Arthur incident are greatly exaggerated, some unnecessary bloodshed and killing did occur. I believe, however, that there must have been provocation on that occasion, since the conduct of our soldiers everywhere else has been exemplary.” The Senate, after much delay, finally took up the treaty. Some senators opposed abandoning extraterritoriality in the light of Japanese behavior in China. Then an amendment was proposed that, according to Mutsu, “would have had the effect of virtually nullifying the entire treaty.”59 Not until February 1895 did the Senate approve the treaty.

  Cowen was sure that the generals and other high-ranking officers were aware that the massacre had continued day after day.60 But it seems unlikely that the emperor in Hiroshima knew what had happened. The men close to him would hardly have disturbed him with reports that cast shame on the behavior of the imperial forces. The emperor scarcely looked at the newspapers, but even if he had read them carefully, he would have found only denials of the articles by foreign correspondents, and he had no reason to trust foreigners more than his own countrymen.

  Perhaps the emperor
’s most intimate knowledge of the fighting came from the wartime booty presented for his admiration. Although the booty included works of art, it consisted mainly of Chinese items of clothing, flags, and similar items. Most memorable was the pair of camels first offered to General Yamaji by the Japanese soldier who found them. Yamaji in turn offered them, together with a crane, to the emperor.61 The camels arrived in Ujina on November 29. The emperor, in a good mood, jovially suggested that they be given to Horikawa.62 The puzzled nobleman somehow contrived to avoid the unwelcome gift,63 so in February the camels were presented to the Ueno Zoo as a gift from the crown prince.64

  The emperor composed two tanka on the subject of the fighting at Port Arthur:

  kazu shirazu The sounds of gunfire

  ada no kizukishi As our soldiers boldly charge

  toride wo mo Against the countless

  isamite semuru Fortified positions

  tsutsu yumi no oto Constructed by the enemy

  yo ni takaku How loudly they sound

  hibikikeru kana Echoing through the heavens

  Shōjuzan The shouts of triumph—

  semeotoshitsuru Our men have taken by storm

  kachidoki no koe The fort at Pine Tree Mountain.65

  These were his most overt expressions of his feelings on learning of the capture of Port Arthur.

  Chapter 46

  After the disastrous defeat at Port Arthur, the Chinese tried once again to end the war. At Li Hung-chang’s suggestion, a German commissioner of customs at Tientsin named Gustav Detring was sent to Japan with a letter from Li to Prime Minister Itō. The letter related that the emperor of China had commanded Li to send Detring to Japan because he had “held office in our empire for many years and proved himself faithful, true and worthy of our highest trust.” Detring’s mission was to effect a settlement, and he was instructed by Li to “learn the conditions upon which peace may be regained and amicable intercourse be reestablished as of old.”1 Li also enclosed a private letter to Itō reminding him of their friendly meeting some years earlier in Tientsin and expressing the conviction that Itō and he had a common purpose.