Emperor of Japan
Page 78
The survival of these children was, of course, a matter of rejoicing, but they were girls, and succession to the throne had been limited to males. In April 1896 the chief chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanetsune, begged the emperor to summon more court ladies to his side. He explained that the people were secretly worried by the fewness of the emperor’s male heirs. More children would promote the glory of the imperial household and contribute to the prosperity of the nation. Yamagata Aritomo, Matsukata Masayoshi, and many other patriotic subjects had again and again discussed the matter with Tokudaiji, asking him to implore the emperor to summon additional court ladies to serve him as soon as possible; he needed sons who in the future would serve in the army and navy and command the armed forces.
Tokudaiji waited until the imperial headquarters had been disbanded and peace restored before broaching this matter to the emperor. He explained that increasing the number of concubines was desirable not for the emperor’s pleasure but as an act of piety toward his ancestors. The emperor, however, chose not to take this advice.
All of the emperor’s last eight children were born to the same gon no tenji, Sono Sachiko. Six were girls, four of whom survived; neither of the two boys lived to be two years old. The curse of meningitis persisted to the emperor’s last offspring, Princess Takiko, his tenth daughter, who died of this disease on January 11, 1899, when she was less than a year and a half old. Tokudaiji and the other members of the government may have been correct in their belief that if the emperor divided his affections among more women he would produce more heirs, but (contrary to gossip that persists to this day) the emperor, although he regarded succession to the throne as a matter of the highest importance, had no desire to acquire a harem. The strict manner in which his heir, the future emperor Taishō, was raised suggests that Meiji had come to disapprove of the profligacy that had been a traditional privilege of the sovereign.
On May 11, 1896, the emperor’s ninth daughter, Toshiko, was born to Sono Sachiko. Undoubtedly there was disappointment that the baby was not a boy, and it now seemed inevitable that the crown prince would succeed to the throne. The day after the celebration of Princess Toshiko’s birth, it was announced that the crown prince would henceforth visit the palace every Saturday.
The education of sons of the nobility was also reconsidered at this time. It had previously been assumed that graduates of the Gakushū-in would become officers in the military or members of the House of Peers, but Konoe Atsumaro (1863–1904), who had been appointed as principal of the school in 1895, believed that the Gakushū-in should also train future diplomats for service in the different countries of Europe. To this end, he proposed modifying the curriculum, and in June 1896 he received permission. Courses to be added included sociology, the history of Western and European diplomacy, public and private law, and foreign languages; but Eastern and Western philosophy, Japanese and Chinese literature, aesthetics, and other “useless” subjects were to be dropped from the curriculum.7 The decision had been made that even young aristocrats must receive a modern education.
Meiji’s busyness, the cause of his inability to find time to see his daughters, was probably due to both external and internal causes. Among the external causes none was more time-consuming than the situation in Korea. King Kojong continued to live through 1896 in the Russian legation in Seoul, showing no signs of returning to his palace, even though he had clearly outstayed his welcome. Russian influence in Korea kept growing, and in order to maintain whatever influence they still possessed, the Japanese had no choice but to join with the Russians in guaranteeing Korea’s independence and promising mutual supervision of its internal affairs. Komura Jutarō, the Japanese resident minister, and Carl Waeber, the acting Russian minister, signed a memorandum to this effect on May 14. They agreed that the king should soon return to his palace, at which time they would urge him to appoint tolerant and moderate ministers and to govern humanely.8 They also agreed to limit both Russian and Japanese military strength in Korea and to withdraw all troops once the country was entirely peaceful.
The coronation of Nicholas II in May was the occasion for further Russo-Japanese discussions on the future of Korea. The emperor sent Yamagata Aritomo as his personal representative to the coronation. On May 22 Yamagata had an audience with the czar at which he presented a letter from Emperor Meiji. In accepting the letter, the czar said that he was well aware of Yamagata’s special qualifications for such a mission. He probably did not know, however, that in April 1895 Yamagata had strongly recommended an alliance with Russia to Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu. He believed that Japan could not single-handedly maintain supremacy in the East, and he was sure that the Russian crown prince’s visit to Japan in 1891 had been inspired by friendly feelings. The incident at Ōtsu was unfortunate, but far from making this a pretext for hostile measures, the Russians had demonstrated that they desired friendly relations promoting the interests of both countries. Yamagata urged that Japan change its foreign policy and ally itself not with England but with Russia.9
Nothing seems to have come of Yamagata’s suggestion, but it probably was not forgotten. At the same time he was informed that he would be sent to the coronation as a special ambassador, he was directed to take the opportunity to engage in basic discussions with the Russians on the defense of Korean independence. On May 24, the day after his audience with the czar, Yamagata met the Russian foreign minister, Aleksei Lobanov-Rostovskii, and gave him a draft proposal for the two countries’ future cooperation in Korea. He was unaware that a few days earlier Lobanov-Rostovskii had secretly concluded with Li Hung-chang (who also had come for the coronation) a treaty of alliance between China and Russia. The main purpose of the treaty was to secure Chinese consent to the Russians’ building a railway from Siberia through Mongolia and northern Manchuria to Vladivostok. The Chinese were offered in return a promise by the Russians to defend Chinese territory from any aggressive action by Japan.10 Lobanov-Rostovskii, naturally not mentioning the treaty, reached an agreement with Yamagata on matters connected with the Korean financial crisis.
The agreement between Japan and Russia had two secret provisions. The first provided that in the event of disturbances or threatened disturbances to peace and order in Korea, the two countries, by mutual agreement, might send additional troops into the country. In such a case, so as to prevent a clash between units of the two countries, there should be a buffer zone occupied by neither. The second provided that until a force of Korean soldiers had been trained to defend their country, Japan and Russia might station the same number of troops in Korea to protect their citizens.11 The Russians, however, did not abide by their promise to cooperate with the Japanese; instead, they took exclusive control of training Korean troops and of managing Korean finances and replaced with Russians the British advisers to the government.
Domestic problems were even more perplexing to the emperor. Foreign Minister Mutsu resigned because of ill health.12 Prime Minister ItŌ decided that since he had to replace his foreign minister, he should take advantage of the opportunity to change other members of the cabinet. He appointed Matsukata Masayoshi as finance minister and Ōkuma Shigenobu as foreign minister. When Home Minister Itagaki Taisuke learned of these appointments, he declared that if Ōkuma entered the cabinet, he would resign. Itō considered appointing only Matsukata, but Matsukata said that unless Ōkuma was appointed at the same time, he would not accept his post. Itō was faced with a difficult choice. If, despite Itagaki’s opposition, he appointed both Ōkuma and Matsukata, this would cause a break with the Jiyū- tō. But if he decided not to appoint Ōkuma, he would cut himself off from the Shimpo-tō, the other important party. Unable to reach a decision, he tendered his resignation on August 20, alleging ill health.
Now it was left to the emperor to decide which course to follow. In the end, he appointed both Matsukata and Ōkuma but accepted Itō’s resignation, even though Itō was the politician he most trusted. He replaced him with the president of the Privy Council, Kuroda Kiyotaka,
to serve as provisional prime minister, in addition to his Privy Council post, until a new prime minister was selected. The appointments of Ōkuma and Matsukata aroused consternation in some quarters; it was alleged that the intent was to exclude the Chōshū faction from the new cabinet.13 Yamagata, the senior Chōshū leader, was asked to confer with other members of the new cabinet on a successor to Itō. The emperor in fact intended to appoint Yamagata as the prime minister, but when Yamagata learned this, he declined, saying he was ill and unequal to the demands of the position.
Nobody seemed to want to succeed Itō as prime minister. The emperor, unwilling to become further involved in the matter, left it to the Genrō to choose the successor. At this point Baron Sonoda Yasukata (1850–1924), the superintendent general of the Metropolitan Police, deploring a situation in which no one was willing to assume the duties of the office, sent a letter to the emperor stating his belief that this was not a time for reticence. He urged the emperor to step forward and reveal plainly to the world what was meant by personal rule. The German kaiser had announced, “I am the prime minister of my cabinet.”14 Sonoda hoped that the emperor would exercise personal control over the cabinet and not leave the appointment of ministers to the Genrō. He declared that although cabinet ministers were supposedly appointed by the emperor, this was not in fact the case; men were able to take their places in the cabinet, regardless of whether they had the emperor’s trust. Sonoda said the cabinet was the scene of endless conflicts that disturbed the peace of the nation. If the emperor were to assume personal control, who would object? He urged the emperor to take this step and appoint trusted people to help him. He termed this the emperor’s most urgent task.15
Personal government by the emperor had been an ideal of the Restoration, but with the promulgation of the constitution and the establishment of the Diet, this ideal had been forgotten and replaced by a conception of the emperor as a distant, ultimate authority, not as an active participant in political affairs. The emperor’s powers were, in principle, absolute, but he rarely chose to exercise them. The “reticence” of which Sonoda complained had become his chosen stance. There is no record of the emperor’s reactions to the letter; probably there were none. Fortunately, he in no way resembled the tyrannical kaiser.16
The crisis over finding a new prime minister was resolved when Matsukata Masayoshi was appointed simultaneously as prime minister and finance minister. Matsukata was extremely reluctant to accept the post of prime minister because he could think of no solutions to the problems facing the government. At first, after much soul-searching, he refused the command with the usual display of awe and trepidation. But the emperor, not taking no for an answer, directed Matsukata to discuss the matter with Kuroda. Matsukata finally yielded. The new cabinet, sworn in on September 20, consisted almost entirely of familiar faces. The emperor was particularly concerned about the choice of a minister of the army, reminding Matsukata that armaments were being expanded and troops were still being shipped to Taiwan. It was essential that the new minister get along with the general staff and be able to deal efficiently with army administration. Matsukata appointed as army minister Takashima Tomonosuke, who had served in the same capacity in the first Matsukata cabinet.17
The most controversial figure in the cabinet was Ōkuma Shigenobu. He favored greater freedom of speech, assembly, and the press and believed that expansion of the army should be limited to twelve divisions, out of which three brigades would be stationed in Taiwan. He also proposed that finances be regulated, declaring that if these views were not acceptable to other members of the cabinet, he would refuse appointment. His views were opposed by the army minister, who objected to limiting future expansion, but in the end Ōkuma’s conditions were met.
The first major test of the new freedom of the press came when a magazine in Ōsaka published in October a stinging attack on Hijikata Hisamoto, the imperial household minister, listing his misdeeds. The article was reprinted the following month in the newspaper Nihon, giving it wide circulation. Hijikata tendered his resignation, at the same time denouncing the story as a fabrication and claiming that it sullied the dignity of the imperial house. He appealed to Matsukata and members of the cabinet to mete out severe punishment to the offenders, by which he probably meant not merely suppression or (at the very least) suspension of the magazine and newspaper but charges of lèse-majesté and libel of a government official.
Matsukata asked the cabinet if an administrative disposition was an appropriate way of deciding whether to ban the periodicals. Ōkuma opposed any such action as contravening the principle of freedom of the press, which the government had adopted. Other members of the cabinet expressed the view that banning the periodicals was unavoidable. The minister of justice, Kiyoura Keigo, who had studied the legal aspects of the matter, opposed sending the dispute to the courts. The article had slandered the imperial household minister but had not directly criticized the imperial house; therefore it did not constitute lèse-majesté. Moreover, if the writer were prosecuted for having libeled an official, this would magnify the incident and give the defendant and his counsel the opportunity to attack the Imperial Household Ministry in court, leading to a real profanation of the dignity of the imperial house.
Matsukata informed Hijikata that the cabinet had decided not to deal with the matter either administratively or legally. Hijikata naturally was upset. However, the chief chamberlain and Kuroda Kiyotaka joined to persuade Matsukata that administrative action was unavoidable, and in the end, the offending magazine was banned and the newspaper suspended publication. Hijikata was not mollified; he thought that the punishment was still too light. The general public was disappointed that despite its stated policy of freedom of speech, the cabinet had acted otherwise.18
The last echoes of the Sino-Japanese War were heard at a party the emperor attended in December at the house of Prince Sadanaru. It was a gala occasion. The two outstanding nō actors of the time, Hōshō Kurō and Umewaka Minoru, performed Kosode Soga and other plays. At the emperor’s request Umewaka Minoru sang “Seikan no eki” (The Battle of Song-hwan), the war song written by the emperor, and Hōshō Kurō sang the empress’s nō play Heijō (Pyong-yang).19 The music for both, newly revised by Umewaka Minoru, exalted the bravery of the Japanese troops. On December 21 the ban on travel to Korea was lifted because the country was now completely calm.
In sum, 1896 had been a rather dull year for the emperor after the excitement of the two years during the war with China. The emperor once more seemed to withdraw into himself. He did not participate in any of the traditional rituals on New Year’s Day 1897, and the empress took his place in receiving greetings from foreign dignitaries.
Soon after the new year began, the empress dowager, who had not been well, caught a severe cold. On January 8 she felt a sudden chill. Her coughing increased and she complained of acute pains in her chest. She was examined by Surgeon General Hashimoto Tsunatsune, who pronounced that she was suffering from catarrhal pneumonia. On the tenth Dr. Erwin Baelz, who often treated members of the imperial family, examined the dowager and confirmed Dr. Hashimoto’s diagnosis. Baelz warned that the illness was extremely serious, and if it was followed by a heart attack or pulmonary edema, the dowager’s life would be endangered.20
On January 11 the emperor and empress asked a court physician about the condition of the empress dowager. They had earlier been informed that she had a cold and were taken aback to learn now that she was gravely ill. They decided to pay a visit to her sickroom at the Aoyama Palace but were dissuaded by the doctors and others because they themselves were suffering from bad colds and in no condition to pay a visit. The emperor insisted nevertheless that he and the empress go as planned at 9:30 in the morning. Word reached the palace early that morning that the dowager was in critical condition. The emperor and empress immediately set out at 8:50 without waiting for a proper escort.
As soon as the emperor entered the dowager’s sickroom, he fell on his knees and in this position c
rawled closer to her bed. Seeing how emaciated she was by illness, he could not restrain his intense grief and wept aloud. The dowager turned toward him. The emperor, looking at her, could only weep and bow. The dowager, also weeping, asked an attendant to convey her thanks to the emperor and empress for their visit, explaining that she was incapable of leaving her bed to bow before them. An attendant of the emperor, fearing that a longer stay might worsen both the empress dowager’s illness and their own, urged the emperor and empress to leave, and they departed shortly thereafter.
The empress dowager died that evening. She was in her sixty-fourth year and had been a widow for exactly thirty years, ever since the death of Emperor Kōmei in January 1867. Although the emperor was well aware that his natural mother was Nakayama Yoshiko (now known as Nii-dono), the empress dowager was officially considered to be his mother, and he always showed her filial reverence. The emperor’s grief on this occasion was genuine: quite apart from ties of personal affection, the empress dowager was a precious contact with the world of his boyhood, one of the last. Although Meiji was often surrounded by men weeping tears of awe and gratitude, he himself rarely wept. His tears at this time were surely not occasioned by regret that he had not been a good son. It can hardly be doubted that he had done everything possible to ensure that the empress dowager’s years after the death of her husband were most agreeably spent traveling, watching nō plays, attending exhibitions of art, and similar pleasures.
For five days after the empress dowager’s death, court business was halted, and a period of mourning of a year was decreed, beginning on the day she died. Mourning clothes would be worn at court, and other Japanese were to desist for thirty days from song, dance, and music. Flags would be flown with black streamers. For the next fifteen days and on the days of the departure of the coffin and of the burial, criminals were not to be executed.21