8. Foreign Relations 1867 - 1895
If the questions of Treaty Revision and Trade are excluded, Japan's Foreign Relations, from the Restoration down to the close of the Russian War, may be said to have been confined to her three nearest neighbours, China, Russia and Korea, and the last named was the pivot on which the most important controversies depended which she had with the other two.
From the dark ages in which Japan, under the leadership of her mythical Empress Jingo, claimed to have conquered Korea, the latter acknowledged the suzerainty of her conqueror in the usual Oriental fashion by the payment of annual tribute. The custom was at no period observed with absolute regularity and it fell into total abeyance in the anarchy that prevailed throughout Japan during the long civil wars of the middle ages, but it was revived at the beginning of the seventeenth century subsequent to Korea's second invasion and conquest by Hideyoshi, the great military dictator of Japan, and it thenceforward continued to be regularly observed throughout the whole of the Tokugawa regime. " Payment of tribute," it may be mentioned, was only in form. It did not involve the transfer of any sums of money, and was signified by the despatch of a mission to the superior Power bearing certain specified ofierings of no great value. On the occasions of Lord Macartney's mission to China in 1793 and of Lord Amherst's in 1816 as ambassadors of George III, the usual complimentary presents which they ofiered to the Emperor were described in the Chinese official gazette as "tribute," and the ambassadors themselves as tribute bearers to a superior Power.
Throughout all time, Korea, while thus outwardly acknowledging herself as a tributary of Japan, also not only admitted herself but claimed to be the vassal of China, to which she was bound by ties of gratitude, reverence and propinquity which had no existence in her relations with Japan. So far from that, the memories of all the sufferings she had undergone during Hideyoshi's ruthless invasion and of the national ruin which followed it, made the very name of Japan an object of bitter hatred to all her people, high and low. Korea also conserved her national isolation, even more rigidly than Japan had done prior to Perry's arrival. Her sole connections with the outward world were with Japan and China and all attempts by Europeans to enter the country were repulsed. The few French missionaries, who secretly made their way there, and all their converts were cruelly tortured and killed, and even the use of European goods was forbidden under pain of death. So conservative were the court and officials that they adhered to the dress and customs which they had adopted from China when under the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644) and made no change in them throughout all the succeeding years in which they professed to be the obedient vassals of the Manchu Emperors.
After the Restoration, Japan sent letters to the Korean Court informing it of the change of government. The letters were answered with contemptuous insult and the overtures of friendship which they contained were haughtily rejected. When, in 1873, this fact became public in Japan, the whole nation was in a ferment of indignation and angrily demanded that war should at once be declared. War with Korea would, however, almost certainly have ultimately involved war also with China, a task for which Japan was quite unfitted, and the Emperor, young as he then was, showed his wisdom and prudence by supporting the members of his ministry who had the courage to resist both the national outcry and their own colleagues in sympathy with it. Then occurred the first split in the Ministry, involving the resignations among other ministers of Itagaki and Saigo, but peace was preserved and the country permitted to continue without foreign complication in its great tasks of domestic reform and reorganisation.
Japan was, however, only biding her time. She did not forget Korea's insult. She also fully recognised the danger to her own territorial integrity, I)erhaps even to her continued independent existence, if Russia, then in her full career of Asiatic eximnsion, took possession of Korea, whose northeastern boundaries were already conterminous with those of Russia's Far Eastern province of Primorski on the Pacific littoral. Korea, in her national ignorance and debility, consequent on her long seclusion from the outer world, could make no resistance against a great European military Power, "while the magnificent ice-free harbours on her southern coast provided a bait for Russia that would in time prove irresistible. Japan resolved to take upon herself the mission, which the United States had accomplished in her own case, of dragging Korea out of her isolation, hoping thereby both to bring her into the sphere of international intercourse and to induce her to shake off the fetters of her effete Chinese civilisation and educate herself in Western science, as Japan was doing. Korea's immunity from foreign aggression might then be secured.
In 1875, a Korean fort fired on a Japanese gunboat which was surveying the mouth of the River Han, the river on which the capital lies about 20 miles from its mouth. It was a very insignificant occuiTcnce, the action of a subordinate and ignorant officer, and it might be said to have been provoked by the gunboat, which was in Korean waters, access to which on the part of any foreign vessel for any reason was forbidden by Korean law. The most ample punishment for it was inflicted at the time, the gunboat having first shelled the fort and a landing party, against which the Koreans, anned only with bows and arrows and old matchlocks, could offer no effective resistance, having completed its destruction and slaughtered the entire garrison. But the insult to the flag provoked a new ferment in Japan and once more war was demanded by hot-headed patriots. There was no division in the Government on this occasion. They were unanimous in taking a more sober view than some of their predecessors had done in 1873 and they were for once supported by the press. War was not declared but an armed expedition was sent to Korea early in the following year. Its object was peaceful, to induce Korea to enter into a treaty of friendship, but following Perry's example in Japan, it was quite prepared to use force if its peaceful overtures failed.
The Koreans yielded and the treaty was signed on February 26, 1876, the first step being thus taken to end Korea's isolation. The provisions of the treaty were in almost every detail precisely similar to those in the treaties which Japan had herself, when ignorant of international law and custom, originally concluded with Western Powers and which she afterwards so bitterly resented as a stain on her national dignity. As the Western Powers had done with herself, so did she now, without one particle of compunction, induce Korea to sign away her sovereign rights of executive and tarifi" autonomy and to confer on Japanese residents within her borders all the extraterritorial privileges which were held to violate equity and justice when exercised by Europeans in Japan.
The history of Japan in the early days of her foreign intercourse was repeated with strange similarity in that of Korea, where Japan played the part that in her own case had been performed by the Western Powers. As in Japan, in those days, so in Korea, the nation was divided into two factions. One was saturated with conservative bigotry, and claimed that the old traditions of national isolation should, notwithstanding the treaty, be restored and maintained in their integrity. The other, less numerous and less influential in rank and reputation, influenced by what had been seen of the material progress which Japan had already made after twenty years of foreign intercourse, urged that Korea should follow Japan's example and endeavour like her to assimilate Western civilisation. In the capital, Seoul, the conservative faction was all-powerful and the people, cherishing the hatred of the Japanese that was transmitted to them from their fathers, were easily aroused. Just as the British Legation in Yedo was twice attacked by Japanese fanatics in the early sixties, so twenty years later was the Japanese Legation in Seoul twice attacked by infuriated mobs, with the same object of murdering all its inmates. On both occasions in Seoul, the inmates were able to fight their way out of the city and escape to the coast, but the Legation buildings were utterly destroyed. After both, the Koreans were forced to pay heavy indemnities and to make national apologies, as were the Japanese by the British Government, after the assaults in Yedo. And just as the British and French established garrisons of their own troops in Japan, so Japan after the first outrage stationed a contingent of troops in Korea. Her action was even more humiliating to Korea than that of the Western Powers to herself. Their troops were quartered in Yokohama, twenty miles from the capital, which they never entered. Those of Japan in Korea were posted in the heart of the capital, almost in the shadow of the King's palace.
Japan in the treaty recognised Korea as " an independent state, enjoying the same sovereign rights " as herself, and Korea by assuming this status theoretically terminated her vassalage to China. Similar provisions were inserted in all Korea's later treaties with Western Powers, including Great Britain, in all of which Korea was dealt with as "an independent nation free in her foreign relations from all control by China." But the ties between the great Empire and "The Hermit Kingdom" were too close and of too long duration to be ended by a stroke of the pen. China showed no inclination to part with her old tutelage, Korea equally little to cease to rely on her suzerain for both protection and advice. Li Hung Chang, the great Viceroy, was at this time the director of China's foreign policy. He had neither fear of nor respect for Japan and he was determined that the interests of his own country in Korea should not be those of sentiment only. His ablest and most trusted lieutenant, Yuan Shi Kwai, who has since become the first President of the Chinese Republic, was sent to Korea early in the eighties as ResidentGeneral, and there during the next ten years he was the defoMo ruler of the country. The Japanese were all this time urging reform on the Korean Government, but all their efibrts were rendered nugatory by the paralysing interference of Yuan Shi Kwai, and by the administrative incompetence and gross corruption of the native officials. At the end of the ten years, Korea had made no progress in the path which had been marked out for her by the Japanese at the beginning of their modern relations. She was still incapable of defending herself against foreign aggression. Her Government retained all its worst vices ; the people sunk in abject and hopeless poverty, spiritlessly cowering under official tyranny, indolent, and thriftless, were the most wretched in the world, as wretched under their own authorities as were the Irish in the darkest periods of British maladministration, or the Bulgars when enduring the utmost cruelties of Ottoman oppression.
In 1894, the people of southern Korea, maddened by suffering, rose in rebellion with the avowed object of removing fi'om the side of their King " the corrupt ministers and officials who were indifferent to the welfare of the country." The iU-equipped and halfhearted soldiers who were sent to quell the rebels were repeatedly defeated and the Government, thoroughly alarmed at the result of its own tyranny and incapacity, appealed to Yuan Shi Kwai for help. China and Japan had covenanted in a treaty, defining their respective positions in Korea, that neither should send troops there without notice in advance to the other. At this time domestic politics in Japan were at one of their Avorst stages. The parliament was in the full career of obstruction that marked the early years of its existence and Li Hung Chang had been advised by the Chinese minister in Tokio that Japan, divided into bitterly antagonistic factions, was so fully occupied with her own internal affairs, that she could spare neither thought nor action for whatever occurred abroad. As it proved, the minister completely misjudged the spirit of the nation, but at the time it seemed that China could do as she pleased in Korea without fear of further complication, and Li Hung Chang, relying on the disastrous advice that was given to him, decided to revive the old obligations of a suzerain and assume the task of restoring order in the vassal kingdom. A force of 3000 troops, all well drilled and armed, was sent from Tientsin and landed at Asan, a port on the Korean coast within striking distance of the headquarters of the rebels. Formal notice of this step was given to Japan and she promptly replied by sending a force of 8000 men, complete in every detail of cavalry, artillery and infantry, which instead of remaining on the coast, as did the Chinese, at once entered the capital.
Some diplomatic negotiations ensued. Japan proposed that the reform of Korea should be jointly undertaken by hereelf and China. The proposal was flatly refused, whereupon Japan laid before the Korean Government an independent programme of reform and demanded its unqualified acceptance. Korea, encouraged by Yuan Shi Kwai, refused to discuss this programme so long as a Japanese army was in her capital, and when friction was at its height, an incident that might almost be called an accident occurred on the seas which rendered war inevitable. Li Hung Chang determined to reinforce his troops in Korea, and for that purpose chartered the "Kowshing," a British steamer, to transport 1500 men from Tientsin. When she was on her voyage, under the British flag, manned by British oflficers and a crew who, though of Chinese race, were British subjects, she was intercepted by the Japanese cruiser "Naniwa" under the command of the officer, then a post captain, who has since become world-famous as Admiral Togo and called upon to surrender and follow the "Naniwa" to a Japanese port. The Chinese officers of the troops on board forcibly prevented the master from complying with this demand : a signal was made from the " Naniwa " for Europeans to save themselves by jumping overboard, a torpedo was discharged, and in a moment the " Kowshing " was sinking. The master and some of his deck officers saved themselves by swimming until they were picked up by the " Naniwa's " boats, but everyone else on board, most of the engine-room staff of British engineers, the crew of British subjects, and all the Chinese soldiers perished, the boats refusing to save a single soul of Chinese race.
This occurred on the 25th of July 1894 and seven days later war was formally declared by both Powers. Two battles were fought on Korean soil and a naval engagement took place in Korean waters off the mouth of the Yalu river. Then, Japan having secured the command of the sea, the scene of the war was transferred to Manchuria, where a campaign ensued which lasted for six months. The perfection of Japanese military organisation, which had provided every requisite that human foresight could suggest for a winter campaign amidst the Arctic rigours of the Manchurian mountains, and the bravery of her officers and soldiers were equally manifested, and victory, unbroken by a single reverse, though taniished on some occasions by cruel excesses, attended her arms both by sea and land throughout the whole war. The great fortress of Port Arthur, its approaches both from land and sea guarded by heavily armed forts that had been constructed at great expense by European engineers according to the most modern principles of military science, was taken by storm, and the victorious army was on the high road to Peking, when China, beaten to her knees, made overtures for peace. Li Hung Chang had to swallow the bitter pill of proceeding to Japan, and after discussions which lasted nearly a month, a treaty of peace was signed at Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895. Assassination has, it has been mentioned before, been a recurring incident in all Japanese politics both ancient and modern. It was not wanting in the peace negotiations. ^Vhile they were in progress an attempt to assassinate Li Hung Chang was made by a Japanese fanatic indignant at the thought that peace prevented the crowning triumph of the military occupation of Peking. That the old samurai spirit of Japan was not yet dead was manifested by the fact that fully a score of officers with the army in the field committed suicide in the orthodox method of hara-kiri for the same reason.
Tlie principal terms of the treaty of peiace provided that the Liao Tung peninsula, at the southern extremity of which lies the fortress of Port Arthur, and Formosa, together with the Pescadore islands which are adjacent to it, should be ceded to Japan ; that a war indemnity of 200,000,000 taels should be paid to her in eight instalments ; that Wei Hai Wei, another fortified harbour, directly facing Port Arthur, which had also been taken in the war, should be held by her until the last instalment of the indemnity was paid ; and that China should for ever forego all claims to suzerainty over Korea. Some valuable commercial privileges were also secured, in the benefits of which all Western Powers shared equally with Japan under the most favoured nation clauses in their treaties.
Japan's triumph seemed to be complete. Her diplomatists had been no less successful than her generals and admirals. Her losses in life during the war had been insignificant and the monetary cost was recouped two-fold by the indemnity. She had impressed all the world by her military capacityShe had obtained a large accession of territory of great strategic importance and of equally great potential commercial value ; and above all she had attained, in the fullest extent, the ostensible object for which she fought and had finally ousted China from Korea, where thenceforward she could anticipate a free hand in whatever measures she might see fit to adopt, either for the regeneration of Korea or the promotion of her own material interests. But her triumph was soon impaired by a blow as unexpected as it was crushing.
Hardly had the ratifications been exchanged in less than a month after the signing of the treaty, when, one morning, the chief diplomatic representatives in Tokio of Russia, France and Germany called without notice on the Minister for Foreign Affairs and presented to him a joint note in which Japan was advised, in the interests of the permanent peace of the East, to forego the cession of any Chinese territory on the mainland. The note contained no threats, but it was verbally intimated, in terms which left no doubt, that the three Powers were prepared if necessary to enforce the acceptance of their advice. Japan was exhausted by the war : her military stores and money had been all used ; her ships were in urgent need of extensive repairs ; and her military authorities declared that she was incapable of resisting the new coalition which faced her. The national pride was bitterly wounded, but once more the Emperor took upon himself the responsibility of impressing on his people the necessity of accepting what was inevitable. None but he could have succeeded. In his rescript, he declared that : -
he bad taken up armB for no other reason than his desire to secure for the Orient a lasting peace, that the friendly recommendations of the three Powers were equally prompted by the same desire, and that he therefore did not hesitate to accept them as in no way impairing the honour and dignity of his Empire.
The peninsula was restored to China, Japan receiving as a solatium an additional indemnity of 30,000,000 taels. She asked for a pledge that no portion of the retroceded territory should ever be given to any foreign Power, but it was categorically refused, and from that day she saw that war with Russia was inevitable in the future and she began to prepare herself so that when the time came she could enter on it with no less confidence in its result than that which had animated her when she flung down the gauntlet to China.
In the meantime she quickly testified her in, tention of honourably endeavouring to accomplish the aims which were the avowed object of the war. Her troops were withdrawn from both Korea and Manchuria as rapidly as transport could be found for them, and the reform of Korea, the task of leading or driving her into the path of progress, was entrusted to the veteran statesman, Count Inouye, who took up his new post as Minister at the Court of Seoul without delay. He had, as a cabinet minister, been long and closely associated with Sir Harry Parkes. No one knew better the share which Sir Harry Parkes had in the reform of Japan and he had now before him the role in Korea which Sir Harry Parkes had so successfully performed in Japan.
As one of the elder statesmen (Genro), Count Inouye held a position that was only second to that of Marquis Ito in the estimation of his countrymen. He was, like Ito, a Choshiu clansman, and was, like him, one of the earliest of the clansmen to be converted to the policy of opening the country and adopting Western civilisation. \Mien five youths of the clan, braving the penalty of death or of life-long banishment, secretly left their country in May 1863, in order to study in England, Ito and Inouye were of their number, but while their companions made their journey from Shanghai to England in a mail steamer, Ito and Inouye shipped in a sailing ship and both worked their passages as ordinary seamen on the long voyage round the Cape, sharing throughout it the same food, accommodation and work as the rest of the crew. This they did in order to learn navigation, a knowledge of which they thought was a primary essential to Japan's material development. They had been in England only one year, during which they acquired a sound knowledge of the English language which neither ever lost in after life, when they heard of the complications between their feudal lord and the Western Powers which eventuated in the bombardment of Shimonoseki. They knew that the anti-foreign policy of Japan could only bring disaster, and both abandoned their studies and hastily returned home in order to stop their lord's folly even at the sacrifice of their lives, which were liable to legal forfeiture for having secretly left their country. Tlieir efforts were in vain and the bombardment of Shimonoseki took place. Both nearly met their deaths at the hands of their fellow-clansmen, who regarded them as traitors to their clan and to their country, and Inouye, who is happily still alive, bears many scars of the terrible wounds he received at the time. Both afterwards took an active share in all the struggles of the Restoration, and when it was accomplished both became subordinate officials of the new Government to which their knowledge of Western affairs and of the English language, then a very i-are accomplishment, was of inestimable value. The rise of both was rapid. Ito, as already stated, became Minister President within sixteen years from the Restoration. Inouye filled many high offices in the Cabinet, including that of Minister for Foreign Affaii-s, and always showed himself to be possessed of a high degree of courage, firmness and tact, as well as of the fertility of resource, and the foresight and administrative ability that are essential in a great statesman. It was to this Minister that the Emperor entrusted the task which Japan had set herself in Korea.
The five Choshiu Students in England 1864 The difficulties which confronted Inouye on his arrival were very great. China had been driven out of the peninsula and her active influence on its affairs eradicated, but the spirit of Chinese conservatism remained, and it found its exponent in the Queen, a woman of strong and vigorous character, scarcely less so than Tsu Hsi, the great Dowager Empress of China, She completely dominated her weak and vacillating husband, and was herself an inflexible opponent of reform and progress, and a champion of the venality and tjTanny that had hitherto been the chief characteristics of the Court and Government. From the fii*st Inouye found in her an effective barrier to the most important of his measures, and he was scarcely less handicapped by the conduct of his own countrymen in Korea. The worst rogues and bullies of Japan - and Japan produces abundance of both types - poured into the unfortunate country, and robbed and browbeat the terrified natives in a way that filled European witnesses with indignation and horror, and increased tenfold the traditional hatred of the natives to the very name of Japan. And Inouye himself made the one serious error in judgment that is apparent in the long record of his great career. He estimated the assimilative capacity of the Koreans by that of his own countrymen, and just as the latter were in 1871, apparently in a moment, converted from disciples of conservative bigotry into apostles of wholesale reform, so he thought could be the Koreans. He forgot that his great British prototype in Japan had spent five years of earnest propagandism before Japanese statesmen were induced to enter whole-heartedly on the paths into which he was now anxious to lead the Koreans.
He succeeded in reorganising the military system and the local administration. But a host of other reforms, which descended from national legislation and finance down to the smallest details of domestic life, bewildering to a people whose customs had remained unchanged through centuries, could only be kept alive by his own commanding influence. When, after a year, he left Korea and was replaced by a successor, who, though a Lieutenant-General in the army and a Viscount in the peerage, proved to be lacking in every quality of constructive and administrative statesmanship, all that he had done was quickly undone and all the worst features of Korean maladministration revived. Then occurred the most shocking incident of the reign of the Emperor, one that for its atrocity and cruelty in our own time finds its only parallel in the murders of the King and Queen of Servia, Viscount Miura, the new Japanese Minister, saw in the Queen the principal obstacle to the success of Japan's policy. She was hated by a faction of the upper classes of her own people, who knew that her influence would exclude them from all share in the Government. Miura, equally forgetful of the civilisation which his country claimed to have acquired, of the mission which he had undertaken as the apostle of order and legality, of the dignity of his office, and of his own reputation, entered into a conspiracy with the leader of the Korean faction for the murder of the Queen, and the object of the conspiracy was accomplished during the night of October 7, 1895.
A mixed band of Koreans and Japanese, the latter including not only police and military officers, but even some members of the staflF of Miura's Legation, surprised and overpowered the palace guards and, having made their way into the royal apartments, " slashed to death " the Queen and many of the ladies and officials of her court who tried in vain to hide or protect her. The corpses were saturated with paraffin and burnt in the courtyard.
When the incident, with its details of revolting cnielty, became known in Tokio, Miura and all his satellites were at once recalled and brought to trial, but all escaped through legal technicalities and suffered no other punishment than the dismissal of those who were in Government service. But even if they had paid the penalty of their savagery with their lives, the mischief they had done could not have been undone. Japan, at one blow, lost all the influence in Korea which her success in the war with China had won for her, and it was not regained until she had fought another and a greater war.