Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (124 page)

In December 1896 the emperor and empress visited Prince Sadanaru’s house for a look at the princess, but the first official meeting devoted to the subject of her suitability as a bride for the crown prince did not take place until February 1899.
⁷
During the discussion, it was discovered that Princess Sachiko had suffered appendicitis two years earlier, and although she had recovered completely, the medical report of the palace doctors mentioned hearing a vesicular murmur in her right chest. This caused some fear about her health, but most of the physicians believed that she was likely to outgrow the problem in two or three years.
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The emperor, however, was distressed by the news, fearing that this defect in the princess’s health might threaten the continuation of the imperial line. On March 22, 1899, he sent the imperial household minister to Prince Sadanaru to announce that the engagement had been broken.

The crown prince does not seem to have been disappointed by this development; indeed, he may not even have been aware a search had been conducted. In any case, he had not completely recovered from his serious illness of 1895, and he was doing poorly in his studies. The prince was capricious and difficult to please, as his servants complained. The emperor was also annoyed by the prince’s infatuation with the West. Even though his command of traditional learning was by no means assured, he loved to sprinkle French words in his conversations.
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His fondness for the West may have been inspired by the decorations he began to receive at this time, including the Order of the Golden Fleece from Spain, the Légion d’Honneur from France, and the Order of the Elephant from Denmark.
¹⁰

The most striking feature of the crown prince’s activities at this time was the frequency of his visits to his villas in Hayama and Numazu. His avoidance of T
ō
ky
ō
, which became almost a mania in later years, was perhaps occasioned by dislike for the court solemnity that was so carefully cultivated by the emperor and his advisers.

On August 28, 1899, the emperor was the host of a banquet to celebrate the revision of the treaties, which had become effective on August 4. Toasts were offered to the health of the rulers of all countries represented at the gathering, and the emperor and empress shook hands with the guests. Extraterritoriality ended not with a bang but with the popping of champagne corks. This should have been the occasion for nationwide celebration, but the day passed with only a subdued awareness of the occasion’s importance.

Although many foreign residents had feared the worst when the protection afforded them by consular courts had ended, there were no mass arrests, no raids by Japanese policemen armed with books of minute regulations, no reports of foreigners being tortured. As time passed, the old fears proved to have been groundless, and the foreigners began to wonder why they had ever supposed that without the shield of extraterritoriality, they would be cruelly treated. But even after the new era had begun, it was not easy for foreigners to discard their feelings of superiority, and many Japanese had become embittered by the efforts they had been required to make in order to prove to foreigners that they were qualified to run their own country. As one British scholar commented, “Attitudes had become fixed and too much had been said which could not be forgotten.”
¹¹
That may be why the end of extraterritoriality did not bring many overt expressions of joy.

On August 21 it was decided that the crown prince would marry Sadako, the fourth daughter of
k
ō
shaku
Kuj
ō
Michitaka, but that the uncertain condition of the prince’s health would necessitate a delay of the marriage until the spring of the following year. The crown prince was not informed of this decision until February 1900, when the emperor sent Iwakura Tomosada to Hayama with a terse message informing the prince of the name of the bride chosen for him.
¹²

Erwin Baelz, one of the physicians serving the imperial family, wrote on March 23, 1900:

Important conference today about the crown prince, that is to say about his state of health, and whether this will allow of his marriage in May. Together with Hashimoto and Oka, I agreed that it would, though there are some small counter-indications. He has not by a long way regained the weight of last year. No reference is, however, to be made to this fact in the report to the Emperor, who would have liked to defer the marriage till the body weight has been fully recovered. Marquis Ito and Prince Arisugawa, and the members of the crown prince’s entourage in general, are of opinion that the marriage must not be any longer delayed—the determination being (oriental customs notwithstanding) that he is not to touch any other woman before his marriage. In view of all the circumstances, both general and particular, I therefore agreed that a prompt marriage is likely to have a good effect.
¹³

In October 1889 the crown prince traveled by warship from Numazu to K
ō
be, Hiroshima, Sh
ō
dojima, Etajima, and other places in the Inland Sea region. He would embark on an even more ambitious tour of Ky
ū
sh
ū
a year later. These travels acquainted the prince with the country he would one day rule and strengthened ties with his future subjects, but they were by no means as arduous or important as the
junk
ō
of the early part of Meiji’s reign. By this time, travel had become much easier and industrialization had advanced. The sights the prince visited were typified by the steelworks in Yawata and the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki.

The marriage of Crown Prince Yoshihito and Kuj
ō
Sadako took place on May 10, 1900. On May 8 the emperor sent the crown prince a set of ceremonial robes and a sword of state. Even as the prince was receiving these gifts, Yanagihara Naruko, the prince’s biological mother, happened to pay a visit. The prince asked her to thank the emperor. It is reported that when the prince first learned that he was Naruko’s son, he expressed surprise and dismay, having always assumed he was the child of the empress.
¹⁴
This story circulated among the court ladies and even reached Naruko’s ears. She had been the prettiest and most intelligent of Meiji’s concubines, but she was blamed (and blamed herself) for the crown prince’s physical infirmity. Her name hardly appears in the pages of the chronology of Meiji’s reign.
¹⁵

On May 9, the day before the marriage, the empress awarded Sadako the Order of the Sacred Crown, First Class, the highest decoration for which a woman was eligible. In celebration of the occasion, the emperor and empress presented the city of T
ō
ky
ō
with 80,000 yen and Ky
ō
to with 20,000 yen, to be used for education.
¹⁶
The emperor also presented Fukuzawa Yukichi, the central figure of the Japanese enlightenment, with 50,000 yen and a rescript expressing appreciation of his contribution to education.

The following day at dawn, the marriage was reported to the palace sanctuary. At 8:40 the prince and his bride worshiped in the sanctuary. The prince offered a declaration to the gods, and the couple drank ritual saké before the altar. The master of ceremonies reported to the emperor and empress the completion of the marriage rites, and army and navy guns fired salutes. At 10:40 the emperor, in ceremonial attire, appeared with the empress inside the Hall of Audiences. The prince and princess were ushered by the master of ceremonies into the imperial presence. The emperor and empress offered cups of saké to the prince and his bride.

The ceremonies were now concluded, and at 11:20 the prince and princess boarded a carriage for the crown prince’s palace. The crowd outside the main palace gate was so dense that for twenty minutes their carriage could make no headway, and it was with difficulty that a path wide enough for the carriage to pass was cleared. The emperor sent the chief chamberlain to the crown prince’s palace with the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum. After the prince and princess had partaken of a ritual offering, they returned to the palace, where they ate a meal with the emperor and empress. At 4:30 the imperial family appeared in the Phoenix Hall to receive congratulations from members of the nobility, high-ranking officers, and the diplomatic corps.
¹⁷

Excitement over the royal marriage had hardly died down when Yamagata Aritomo, who had often expressed the desire to resign as prime minister, on May 24 again asked the emperor’s permission. He pointed out that he had served for a year and a half, during which time the revised treaties had been put into effect. He believed that future prime ministers should be men who were well acquainted with conditions abroad. He himself, though lacking this qualification, had accepted the post of prime minister because of the disturbed situation prevailing in the government after the fall of the
Ō
kuma cabinet; but now that the political world was peaceful and no crisis loomed, he asked to be relieved of his post.

The emperor repeatedly tried to persuade Yamagata to change his mind, but he absolutely refused to remain in office. The emperor, at last resigned to losing Yamagata, sent word to It
ō
Hirobumi that he wished him to accept the post. It
ō
refused, saying he was unable to accept the command, even though it came from the emperor. In his opinion, a cabinet could be formed constitutionally only with the Diet’s approval, and the government was obliged to act in cooperation with the political parties. Unlike Yamagata, he could not issue orders like a general in the field, and any misstep on his part might well involve the throne.

The emperor next commanded Matsukata Masayoshi to assume the post of prime minister temporarily, in addition to his post as finance minister. Matsukata refused, proposing instead Katsura Tar
ō
, the army minister; but the emperor could not agree to this suggestion because it would certainly exacerbate the existing rivalry between the army and the navy.

Just at this time, the court learned of disturbances in China. The emperor, deeply concerned, sent a message on May 31 to Yamagata saying that he was well aware how strongly Yamagata desired to resign his post but believed that it would be highly inadvisable to change prime ministers at such a time. He asked Yamagata to postpone his resignation. Yamagata replied that the disturbances in North China were nothing more than the temporary uprisings of ignorant peasants and were not to be taken seriously. They certainly were not important enough to change his mind about resigning. He agreed, however, to remain in office for another month or two if no successor had been found.
¹⁸

Yamagata vastly underestimated the importance of the unrest in North China, known in the West as the Boxer Rebellion.
¹⁹
The emperor, who seems to have had a better grasp than Yamagata of the seriousness of the situation in China, fell back on Yamagata’s offer to remain in office for the time being.

It took some 45,000 troops
²⁰
(about half of them Japanese) from eight countries to suppress what Yamagata had belittled as a minor uprising. Tens of thousands of Chinese died in the fighting. The rebellion—more properly termed a war
²¹
—was a major conflict between China and eight foreign powers. Even more important, it was a direct cause of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905.

The Chinese name for the rebels,
i-ho-t’uan
(Righteous and Harmonious League), indicates that unlike uprisings in the past whose aim had mainly been to set a new ruler on the throne of China, its members believed that they were fighting a crusade for higher ideals. They were sure that the only way to achieve their goal was to rid China of both foreigners and Chinese infected with Christianity.
²²
Not all the rebels (referred to as “bandits” in the documents of the time) were fanatics, but most believed that they were protected by the Chinese gods. They killed without mercy, convinced of the justice of their cause. In the course of the rebellion, they killed some 250 European missionaries, many foreign military, and perhaps 23,000 Chinese Christians.
²³

The rebellion was the most recent of a series that had broken out during the nineteenth century as discontent mounted with both the corrupt Manchu regime and the repeated acts of humiliation imposed by the foreign powers. The biggest disturbance, known as the T’ai P’ing Rebellion, lasted from 1851 to 1864 and cost an estimated 20 million people their lives. The T’ai P’ing Rebellion had for its ideology a quasi Christianity that might be described as primitive communism. All property was to be owned in common by believers. Men and women enjoyed equal rights. Prostitution and slavery were prohibited, as were foot binding, gambling, opium, liquor, and tobacco. Such ideals (many adopted by the Boxers) suggest the discontent aroused by prevailing conditions in Chinese society. The T’ai P’ing Rebellion was put down only with great difficulty, and it might have succeeded had the foreign powers not intervened.

Another revolt, this one by members of a Buddhist sect called the White Lotus,
²⁴
raged from 1861 to 1863 in Shantung Province, a part of China that had not been involved in the T’ai P’ing Rebellion. The Boxer Rebellion also originated in Shantung, from where it spread to other parts of North China. It was based on religious beliefs, a combination of devotion to traditional gods and a hatred of Christianity which, the members believed, had destroyed village peace and harmony. The Boxers were fervently supported by the impoverished peasantry, but relatively few of the literati of the region, even if they shared the peasants’ hatred of foreign religion, became involved, perhaps because they could not renounce the pacific ideals of Confucius, a native of Shantung.