To this historic document were appended the great seal of “Dai Nihon” and the signature in the monarch’s own caligraphy—Mutsuhito—it being, perhaps, the first time in all Japanese history that the personal name of the ruler had been used officially during his lifetime. The retiring Shogun left the capital and for a brief period took up his abode in the castle of Osaka. But it was to the chief town of Suruga province, midway between Tokio and Kioto, that he finally withdrew, and thereafter lived the unobtrusive life of a country gentleman on a small estate which the Emperor bestowed upon him. In this way, in the perfect seclusion of Shidzu-oka (lit.: the Hill of Peace) he was able to wholly divest himself of political connections, and was now and then to be seen setting out on a fishing excursion with perhaps but one attendant, preferring the quietude of his existence apart from the cares of State, and revelling in his emancipation from the pomp and circumstance of that Court of which for a brief interval he had been the acknowledged and puissant head. Never, perhaps, did a potentate more completely renounce his rights, nor so absolutely efface himself on doing so, in the history of mankind, but he has had his reward in the confidence and favour of the real sovereign whose deputy he had been, and from whom he has received in recent years the highest honours. He has the rank of Prince under the new regime, while Prince Tokugawa Iyesato, the head of the Tokugawa family, has also been raised to the same rank, and holds office as President of the House of Peers. Thus the family of Tokugawa, which from the close of the Sixteenth Century until 1868 virtually ruled Japan, retains, by the magnanimity of the Emperor, a status among the nobility of the land that is unsurpassed by any princely or ducal house, and actually boasts the possession among its ranks of two princes, since his Majesty thought fit in 1900 to request his former Shogun to visit Tokio, and then and there conferred upon him the title which he now holds, declaring at the same time that he was perfectly absolved of all participation in the events of 1867-8, which would no longer blot the record. There has been nothing in the personal relations of his Majesty with his dutiful and supremely loyal people which has more endeared him to them than his extreme generosity, and inasmuch as there were necessarily among all classes of his subjects many thousands—even hundreds of thousands—who had in their early days been proud to own allegiance to the Shogun and the Tokugawa house, the sovereign’s attitude has been more widely appreciated than it is possible, perhaps, for strangers to the country to comprehend.

The surrender of his privileges by the Shogun in 1868 was resented by the bulk of his adherents, and though they were compelled to retreat towards the north before the determined advance of the Satsuma, Choshiu, Hizen, and Tosa men, under the command of Saigo Takamori, whose notable history will be found elsewhere in this volume, the struggle lasted for many months. In support of the Tokugawa side the stoutest resistance was maintained by the Aidzu clan, whose chieftain dwelt in the castle of Wakamatsu, midway, or nearly so, between the capital and the straits of Tsugaru which separate the northern island of Hokkaido or Yeso from Hondo, the mainland. The prince of Aidzu had been guardian of the “Nine Gates” of the Ten-shi’s palace at Kioto under the Tokugawa regime, until the coup d’état of the 3rd January 1868, by which his opponents contrived to secure the person of the young Emperor, whereupon an imperial edict appeared appointing, instead of the Aidzu men, the clans of Satsuma, Tosa, and Geishiu, as guardians of the Gates. Loyalty to the old regime led the Aidzu chieftain to oppose as far as he was able the deposition of the Shogun, until he was made aware that Keiki’s resignation had been accepted by the Emperor.

Clan jealousy was of course responsible to a very great extent for the opposition of the northern feudatories to the proposed changes, and in the broad sense of the term this was a conflict in which the south waged war on the north. For according to that spirit of loyalty to a chief which prevailed then and, happily for Japan, still prevails, throughout the Ten-shi’s realms, in spite of his subjects having taken for a model the matter-of-fact latter-day civilisation of the Occident, it was permissible to regard the Shogun’s voluntary submission as an act prompted solely by a desire to spare the lives of his followers, and as such one of which they were not obliged to take cognisance, for although there was no act of self-sacrifice in which they were not ready to join if it could be proved to be needful in their country’s interests, they held themselves to be in no way bound by a promise or declaration that their chief had been compelled, as they deemed it, to make under the pressure of circumstances. They regarded the Shogun as the victim of a political combination, and were indisposed on that account to yield to the ambitious dominance of the clansmen of the south. The Aidzu men, therefore, continued to oppose a solid front to the Kioto party, and in the vicinity of Wakamatsu itself many desperate contests took place. All the males of a family, from the father to the youngest son, are known in some cases to have taken the field in defence, as they believed, of their lord’s interests, and warfare of that determined character which those who have watched the career of the Japanese soldier of to-day can fully comprehend lasted in the north of Japan until late in 1868. During the preceding summer there was a fierce engagement at sea, close to the town of Hakodate, which resulted in the defeat of the Shogun’s squadron, at that time commanded by Admiral Yenomoto. Ultimately a general amnesty was proclaimed, and the ships which remained under the Tokugawa flag were handed over to the newly-formed department of the imperial navy.

But before this came to pass, incredible as it may seem, an attempt was made, it was declared, to establish in Yeso some sort of republic, and the signatures to the remarkable document in which proclamation was made of the intentions of the promoters of this scheme included that of Otori Keisuke (now Baron), who later represented his nation with distinction as its Minister to the Court of Seoul. On board one of the vessels commanded by Admiral Yenomoto, moreover, in the engagement at Hakodate, was a young officer who in his later years has been the recipient of the highest honours in recognition of the splendid services rendered to his country in the course of a distinguished diplomatic career.

Strictly speaking, though the proceedings have been described at various times as tantamount to an effort to establish a republic it is impossible that the idea can ever have been entertained of overthrowing the authority of the Ten-shi, whose rule is based on principles which are in the minds of all his subjects immutable and indestructible. What the advocates of a republic for Yeso had in view could in reality have been but the setting up of an independent administration for the northern island, distinct from that of the Central government which it was proposed to provide for the whole Empire at Tokio. But the Shogunate Republic in Yeso, had it ever taken actual shape, would have been nothing more than a local administration owning allegiance to the sovereign power at Kioto, and it would have been more an imperial dependency than a republic.

The Shogun, at the time that he tendered his resignation of his office, had urged upon his imperial master the advisability of convening a meeting of daimios at the capital of Kioto, and his advice was taken. The lords of the various provinces assembled while the War of the Restoration, as it is termed, was yet in progress. A form of Government was decided upon in which the control of the administration was vested in a Council of State, presided over by a Chancellor (the Dai-jo-dai-jin) assisted by two Vice-chancellors (the Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-chancellor of the Left, which in Japan ranks highest, and the U-dai-jin, or Vice-chancellor of the Right). The Administrative departments of State comprised those of the Imperial Household, Foreign Affairs, Finance, War, Education, Justice, and Religion, each with its departmental chief or Minister. The First Council as finally formed was composed of:—

The Ministry was in reality constituted to give equal representation to the four leading clans, as far as practicable, though the Choshiu and Satsuma influence actually predominated.

Acting under authority of his Majesty the members of the Council here mentioned had in the preceding January, on the occasion of the coup d’état, established a provisional government, and had called upon the Shogun to surrender his heritage and to submit himself entirely to the will of his imperial master. For some months past there had been frequent conferences at the Nijo Castle in Kioto between the Shogun and Goto Shojiro (late Count Goto), who, with Komatsu of the Satsuma clan, persistently urged upon the Shogun the advisability of establishing an Imperial Government, with the effect that his Highness had been on the point of yielding to their arguments. Goto was the trusted representative of the Tosa clan, and had brought a letter from his feudal lord addressed to the Shogun, in October 1867, recommending his Highness to resign his position of Shogun, for patriotic reasons. There is excellent ground for the belief widely entertained in Japan, and which it is palpable his Majesty shares, that the Shogun, had he been wholly free to follow the dictates of his own heart, would have relinquished his office there and then, but a new complication arose through his followers coming to blows with the Satsuma retainers, thus compelling him either to repudiate them or to accept a position of absolute hostility to the new government of which the Satsuma chieftain was a leading member. It was with that extreme clemency which has throughout characterised the rule of the present monarch that in after years his Majesty spontaneously recognised that the Shogun had no real intention of being hostile to himself, and that it was mainly the acts of the adherents of the Tokugawa family which drove the Shogun into seeming antagonism to the party of reform. As already explained, the Emperor has recently conferred on the former Shogun a title by which his once lofty position in pre-Restoration days is fittingly acknowledged.

But for the time, as has been said, there was civil war, and its progress was marked by the almost continuous defeat of the Shogun’s forces, and their gradual retreat through the provinces of the Tokaido, the great eastern coast road, on the Shogun’s capital of Yedo, now Tokio. There in the famous castle some of the Tokugawa clansmen were closely besieged, while others made their way northward to the more remote regions of Aidzu and Oshiu, and again defied the imperialists until the future Field-marshal Yamagata finally hunted them down and compelled them to surrender as the only alternative to extermination. The Shogun himself finally retired into private life, at the urgent solicitation of Katsu, the lord of Awa province, in May 1868, five months after his resignation of his office in the first place had been formally accepted by the sovereign, and for what happened after May, until the autumn of that eventful year of 1868 saw the terrible internecine strife brought to a close, the Shogun cannot be held directly responsible. By many he has been blamed because he did not remain by the side of the young sovereign at Kioto in the stormy period which marked the last month of 1867 and the beginning of 1868, but it must be remembered that as a consequence of the coup d’état of the 3rd January the provisional government had already thrust the Shogun aside and was issuing edicts for which it had the direct authority of the monarch. The Shogun’s office had in reality ceased by that time to exist. His presence at Kioto may well have seemed to him in those days to have become superfluous, and his sense of self-respect prompted him to retire to his own castle of Osaka three days later, on the 6th January, seeing that he was no longer being consulted on affairs of State. In the same month of January 1868, there was a naval engagement off Awaji, that “foam-land” to which reference has been made in connection with Japanese mythology, and which lies athwart the Inland Sea a little west of Kobé, the opposed squadrons consisting of the Satsuma vessels Lotus, Kiang-Su, and Scotland, and the Shogun’s Kaiyo Maru (the frigate bought from the Dutch), the yacht Emperor (Queen Victoria’s present to himself) and the Fujiyama, another steamer purchased abroad. The three Satsuma ships were part of the fleet which had in recent years gradually been formed by the lord of the fief in pursuance of his conviction that the possession of powerful vessels would some day or other prove advantageous to the clan. They held their own fairly against the stronger ships of which the Tokugawa party had simultaneously possessed itself, and though the Scotland was sunk off Awa Bay as a result of the encounter the Satsuma men had no reason to be ashamed of the figure they cut in this early clash of armaments at sea. The Satsuma vessels had been under fire before, for they had taken part in the resistance offered by the Satsuma clan to Admiral Kuper at Kagoshima, when he undertook to chastise the lord of their province in 1863. The Tokugawa ships returned to Osaka, or rather to Tempo-san, which is to the great commercial port of Japan what Gravesend is to London, and there they awaited the progress of events in that spring of 1868 which must be accounted the most stirring period of Japanese modern history, as the events already narrated when taken in conjunction with those which have to be related will, it is believed, sufficiently demonstrate. It may be observed that after the battle of Fushimi, midway between Osaka and Kioto, which soon afterwards occurred, and in which the Tokugawa men were signally defeated, the frigate Kaiyo Maru was of the utmost service to the Shogun in conveying him from the region where his forces were meeting with nothing but disaster to a safe retreat for the time being at Yedo. He took passage in her from Tempo-san, and safely reached his own castle in what is now Tokio after two nights at sea.

The then British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, early in the spring of 1868 despatched Messrs Satow and Willis to express to the newly formed Kioto Government his hope that the time might be deemed opportune for the inauguration of direct relations between the accredited representatives of Western powers and his Imperial Majesty, the Shogun having actually resigned three months or more before. Dr Willis was the medical officer attached to the British Legation, and at a later date took up his residence in Kagoshima, the chief town of Satsuma, where he was physician to the hospital which the clan established, and his services during the stormy days of the Restoration struggle and subsequently when the Satsuma men were nominally in rebellion were invaluable. The British Minister’s messengers were well received and hospitably entertained in Kioto, and were permitted to walk freely in the streets of the ancient capital of the Ten-shi, which was something that no foreigners had ever done before. The anti-foreign feeling was still very strong throughout Japan, as was proved by the wholesale massacre of a French vessel’s boat’s crew at Sakai, near Osaka. An officer and eleven men were killed in all, and the French Minister, M. Roches, made an imperative demand on the Shogun’s government, which at that time (February 1868) was administering the affairs of the country, for the delivery of the bodies of the murdered men within twenty-four hours, a request which it was found practicable as well as politic to comply with. Also a number of Bizen soldiers hailing from that province washed by the Inland Sea, west of Awaji, had in passing through the newly opened port of Hiogo, vented their animosity towards the strangers whom they saw in the streets by running amok among them and firing with their rifles right and left. This crime, like that perpetrated at Sakai, was avenged, for the Government was strong enough to issue orders for the performance of seppuku by the culprits and to insist on execution of the sentences. The Bizen men were marching from Okayama to Osaka at the time when they allowed their anti-foreign ideas to outrun their discretion, the actual order to fire on the foreign residents being given by one Heiki Tatewaki, whose death was decreed by imperial edict and the then Governor of the port, the present Marquis Ito, was directed as his Majesty’s representative, to see the act of seppuku carried out in due form.

But there were worse troubles to follow, for when, in the month of March, Sir Harry Parkes went to Kioto on the invitation of the Emperor, to attend, in company with the Ministers of France and Holland, the first imperial audience of the reign of Meiji, he and his retinue were suddenly attacked in a public thoroughfare there, by two outlaws, of the “ro-nin” type already described, and the British representative had personally a very narrow escape. But for the magnificent courage shown by the Japanese officers who had been sent to meet the Emperor’s guest, Goto,—who rode by Sir Harry’s side, and Nakai,—who was immediately in front, with a member of the Legation guard,—both of these Japanese gentlemen having instantly engaged the ro-nins with their swords so effectually that one of the assailants was slain on the spot, and the other taken prisoner, afterwards to be executed, it is probable that Sir Harry would have been killed. The eminent services rendered by Count Goto (as he afterwards became) to his country are elsewhere recorded in this volume. Queen Victoria decorated him, and likewise Mr Nakai, for their gallantry on this occasion, and the Emperor manifested his poignant regret for the outrage when the following month the British Minister was received at Court. The Ten-shi gave practical effect, moreover, to his abhorrence of these crimes by issuing a decree in which it was declared that all persons guilty in the future of murdering foreigners, or of committing any acts of violence towards them, would not only be transgressing the express commands of the Emperor, but would be the direct source of national misfortune, inasmuch as they would be committing the heinous offence of causing the national dignity and reputation for good faith to suffer diminution in the eyes of those Treaty Powers with which his Majesty had declared himself to be on terms of amity and friendship. The effect of such an edict on the minds of people so accustomed to obey their sovereign’s behests as are the Japanese could not be other than salutary, and although there were isolated cases in the years which ensued wherein attacks were made on strangers, the era of opposition to the entry of aliens was by this time practically at an end, and taken in conjunction with the abolition shortly afterwards of those anti-Christian edicts which had been promulgated by his predecessors on the throne it must be admitted that the Emperor speedily gave gracious and convincing evidence of his desire to rule with that justice and liberality towards humanity at large by which he has ever been distinguished throughout an already long reign.

These events have to be recorded in connection with the life of the imperial court at Kioto at a time when the war of the Restoration, as it is termed, was still in progress in the northern portion of the island of Hondo, and in many cases the fighting was of the most desperate character, fortune by no means invariably inclining towards the imperialists. There was a fierce encounter at Utsu-no-miya, a town about sixty miles north of the capital, resulting in a success for the Shogun’s side, their leader having been Otori Keisuke, who, after undergoing a term of imprisonment for his share in prolonging the rebellion, entered the Imperial Government service, and rose to occupy posts of distinction.

In October 1868, his Majesty Mutsuhito was crowned Emperor of Japan in the ancient castle of the Nijo, at Kioto, and it was then that he took the oath to rule constitutionally, which was a purely voluntary act, prompted by an earnest desire to confer upon his people the advantages and blessings of enlightened government. A few weeks later, in the second month of 1869, he wedded the Princess Haruko, the daughter of a Court noble, and during the ensuing spring the Imperial court was wholly transferred to Yedo, that city being renamed Tokio, or Eastern Capital, to distinguish it from Kioto, which bore thenceforward the official title of Saikio, or Western capital. At Tokio his Majesty took up his abode in the Hon-maru, or Inner circle of the former castle of the Tokugawa family, and on the following 6th of September he received Prince Alfred of England in the palace gardens of Fuki-age, adjoining the imperial residence. This was the first occasion in the history of Japan on which the sovereign had ever met a foreign prince, all previous intercourse with strangers having taken place through the medium of the Shoguns. The interview between the Ten-shi and the British prince, afterwards the Duke of Edinburgh, took place in a tiny summer-house in the picturesque grounds of Fuki-age, then of considerable extent and laid out in wholly Japanese style, with its clumps of bamboo, groves of pine, masses of rhododendron, and azalea, rippling brooks, and grassy dells that go to form the delightful pleasaunces in which the heart of every Japanese rejoices. The meeting was of a most cordial character, the Emperor on that occasion wearing the unique old-fashioned head-dress which it was customary from time immemorial for the sovereigns of Japan to don on State occasions. His majesty only once afterwards appeared in public with this peculiar crown, and that was on the day that he opened the railway from Tokio to Yokohama in 1872. He has since worn foreign dress at all State functions.

Late in 1869 the Emperor was joined at Tokio by the young Empress Haruko, who travelled overland by the highroad termed the Tokaido, with an immense retinue, resting on the way at the prescribed honjins or private hotels used by the feudal lords on their former journeys to and from Yedo, when the Shoguns required them to pay periodical visits to the headquarters of the Tokugawa government. The Empress was some weeks on the road from Kioto to Tokio, and as her procession passed through the street of Kanagawa, near Yokohama, the foreign residents took the opportunity to assemble at the wayside and show their respect for the Ten-shi’s consort. They did not catch a glimpse of her features, but they knew that behind the gauze-screened windows of her lacquered palanquin sat the highest lady of the land, perhaps as much interested in her first sight of the strangers from the west as they were with the various elements of the imperial cortege. Though her majesty had heard and read much of the characteristics of the Occidentals, she had never previously seen any of them; in after years, however, her own beneficent impulses in the cause of charity led her to receive on many occasions the wives and daughters of foreign residents and contributed to the establishment of an enduring fame as the strenuous advocate and supporter of all good works.

The Emperor was but little in evidence in the early years of his reign, and it was an event in the history of the nation when the monarch who had been brought up in such strict seclusion was one day seen in the streets of his capital driving in an open carriage to Hama-go-ten, the beach palace in the suburbs of Tokio, in company with his Ministers the Princes Sanjo and Iwakura. On this occasion he had done them the supreme honour of calling for them at their residences and conveying them in his own carriage to a ceremony in which they were both deeply concerned. This was on the 1st of October 1871, and it is difficult to estimate at its true value the extraordinary effect which so graceful an act on the part of the monarch who had only four years before succeeded to a dignity which seemed to impose on him an existence of absolute invisibility to his subjects must have had on those who were witnesses of this vast concession to modernised ideas. Under the old regime the princes would themselves have been hidden from the vulgar gaze by the latticed windows of their sedan chairs, and the sovereign would never have been seen outside his own palace walls.

The next year the first line of railway was completed and the moment was seized by his Majesty’s advisers for a grand ceremony at the port which thirteen years before had been thrown open to foreign trade. A suitable stage had been erected at the Yokohama end of the eighteen miles long railway, over which an experimental train service had been conducted for some weeks previously, and at the appointed hour the Emperor, clad in white silk robes, with a crimson sash, and scarlet trousers, and wearing in place of a crown the antique black coif terminating in an upright lath-like structure which rose some ten inches above his head, came forward in full view of the multitude, which included hundreds of foreign residents and visitors. To the great mass of his subjects, with whom the existence of the sovereign had always been a matter of pious belief rather than of assured reality, this manifestation in the flesh of their revered ruler was beyond measure impressive and gratifying. It unquestionably smoothed the path of the newly formed Central Government, for the advent of his majesty on the scene was proof positive that all which was then being done in the way of innovation upon established usage had the imperial sanction and authority. In Japan this meant a great deal more, owing to the respect for law and order which is admittedly inherent to the Japanese character and disposition, than it by any possibility could have done in lands where less reverence is shown to sovereign attributes. The day was one to be remembered by old and young alike, for it marked beyond all doubt the emancipation of Japan from the thraldom of a feudal system which had held her in check for centuries. The Emperor had set the seal of his approval on projects of reform.

In the same year the Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout Japan, and from this period may be said to have been obliterated those discrepancies in dates which had been unavoidable owing to the tendency to resort to the Chinese plan of reckoning time. Down to the year named the day of the month corresponded to the age of the moon, and an intercalary month had to be provided in the calendar every third year. The new year fell usually between mid-January and mid-February, and as dates were given in conformity with the old style of reckoning in some cases and in others the new, it may be that down to 1872 there will here and there be found a difference of a month or so in the recorded dates of events.

The opening of the railway in 1872 from Tokio to Yokohama, though of no great length, made communication between the capital and its port a far more easy matter than it had been at the time when the Tokaido was the only highway and traffic was liable to dislocation by the passage of a daimio and his retinue of two-sworded samurai. It is true that for some two or three years prior to the date on which the regular service of trains between the two places began to work a revolution in the system of travel there had been a steamer or two plying to and from the wharf at Tsukiji, near the Hama-go-ten Palace, in Tokio, and the jetty at Yokohama which then existed near the northern end of the “Bund” or Esplanade. But the accommodation, though the residents freely enough availed themselves of such facilities as the service afforded, was of the most limited and primitive character, and was necessarily wholly inadequate to the demand for the means of transport of that almost pauseless ebb and flow of the tide of humanity along the shores of the bay which from the days of Kaempfer had never failed to attract the attention of travellers. One of the saddest incidents of the early days of the new era was the explosion of the small steamer Yeddo as she lay at the Tsukiji “hatoba” with steam up in readiness for her daily voyage to Yokohama, some scores of lives being sacrificed on that occasion. The Yeddo was one of the pioneers of the coasting trade of Japan, which has since grown to proportions truly enormous.

While the railway to the “Eastern capital” was being built, another line was commenced from the newly opened port of Kobé-Hiogo to Osaka and on to the “Western capital” of Kioto. It was officially opened for traffic in 1873, the Emperor being present on the occasion, which gave rise to great national rejoicing. The improved methods of transport had by that time been extensively supplemented by greatly enhanced facilities for intercommunication in the form of telegraph lines, which had been stretched over practically the entire length of the highroad from Tokio to Nagasaki, close upon 1000 English miles. The work was done in the days when the peasantry of the interior had no conception of the value of such aids to commerce and were not easily to be persuaded to refrain from interference therewith. In many cases the telegraph poles were uprooted as soon as they were planted in the ground, and in others the opposition to the innovation took the form of active hostility to the individuals, both native and foreign, charged with the duties of carrying out the proposed works. The origin of this antagonism, however, was to be ascribed solely to local prejudice, and the punishment of the ringleaders proved to be a sufficient deterrent to the rest, for after the first few months the attacks entirely ceased.

At this stage the residents of the Capital had become somewhat accustomed to see the Emperor riding or driving through the streets of the metropolis, for he periodically reviewed his troops on the Hibiya parade ground, and not infrequently was to be seen visiting places at some distance from his capital. The greatest concern was manifested by all classes when, late one night in the spring of 1873, the signal guns were heard to announce that a fire had broken out within the castle. There was a prompt muster of the forces forming the Tokio garrison and for a while the utmost consternation prevailed. The damage done was immense, and the actual source of the outbreak was discovered to have been in such dangerous proximity to the imperial apartments as to suggest for the moment that there had again been a preconcerted arrangement to seize the person of his Majesty, in the confusion which might well have been expected to arise on the warning guns being fired. Happily the monarch was efficiently guarded, and whatever may have been the true cause of the conflagration there was no difficulty in removing the Court to another palace at Akasaka, in the suburbs, wherein his Majesty dwelt during the rebuilding on a modern design of the imperial residence within the Honmaru. In the thoroughfares of Tokio were at this time to be seen scores of Satsuma samurai, retainers of the feudal chieftain Shimadzu Saburo, who was occupying the position in the new Government of Sa-dai-jin, or Vice-president of the Left, as already mentioned, and these ardent spirits of the warlike clan of the south found much in the changes that were then taking place to be displeased with. They persisted in wearing their two swords in their belts, and had their hair dressed in the old-fashioned queue. Their retention of the old style of costume, too, with its loose trousers, sandals for the feet, and lacquered helmet tied with cords for the chin, among a population that was already beginning to adopt foreign fashions to a notable extent, made them conspicuous and provoked the ridicule of the lower classes. This the Satsuma clansmen were quick to resent, and here and there slight skirmishes were recorded, the general effect being to create a feeling of uneasiness which lasted for many weeks until the Satsuma chieftain, as elsewhere explained, resigned his office and returned to his stronghold of Kagoshima in the summer of 1873.

The year 1874 was memorable as that of the expedition to Formosa, when Japan chastised the savages of the south-east coast of that island for their ill treatment of Japanese shipwrecked sailors. China’s attention had been drawn to these barbarities, but she had professed her utter inability to put a stop to them, and Japan had then warned the Peking Government that if the savages should continue to subject Japanese mariners or others who might be cast away on Formosan shores to the inhuman treatment which it had been the fate of others in misfortune to experience the Tokio Cabinet would know what to do. A fresh incident arose and Japan was as good as her word. The younger brother of the Saigo Takamori whose fame as a leader will never wane was selected as the Chief of the Expedition, and to him, afterwards the Marquis Saigo, his Majesty entrusted the duty of vindicating the honour of the Japanese Empire, of which it must never be said that it has shown the slightest hesitation to hit out when the interests of its own people have been imperilled. In past years her arm has not always been long enough to extend support to her subjects over-sea, but it is Japan’s aim, as it is that of Britain, to convince the rest of the world that while she repudiates most vigorously the idea that she seeks territorial aggrandisement or covets the recognition of an unchallenged supremacy in the Far East, she at all times resents the slightest attempt to trespass on what are regarded by her statesmen as the boundaries of her national safety. If Japan’s arm is growing longer and her policy seems to be far-reaching, it is but the natural outcome of her resolve to protect her people wherever they may be and to encourage their lawful desires for expansion into fresh fields of enterprise as the result of the remarkable growth of her population at home.

The Formosan expedition proved a complete success, and a detailed account of its progress will be met with elsewhere in these pages. It gave to the newly formed army its first opportunity of displaying to the satisfaction of the sovereign its qualifications as a fighting force, inasmuch as the difficulties which it had to encounter, although its adversaries were savages, were naturally on a formidable scale, and the undertaking bore in this respect a strong resemblance to what have been described as Britain’s “little wars.” The upshot was that the tribesmen of the Formosan east and south-east coasts developed a wholesome fear of the prowess of disciplined troops and from that time forward there were no recorded instances of their maltreatment of mariners, whilst at the present day the best effects are perceptible from the spread of education among them in consequence of the establishment of native schools in Formosa since it became a Japanese Colony. There was, however, an additional advantage secured to Japan by the expedition, in that it served for the time to divert attention from the ever-pressing political questions arising from China’s somewhat irritating attitude, mainly in regard to Korea. From time immemorial the monarch of Korea had paid tribute to Japan at stated intervals much in the way that he had paid an annual tribute to China, but owing to Japan’s preoccupation with other and weightier matters the practice had fallen into desuetude. Instigated by ambitious Chinese officials, as it was generally supposed, Korea had sought to free herself from any and all obligations to continue this practice, and by way of emphasising this reluctance to be bound by old traditions the Koreans had thought fit to attack the Japanese Legation and to otherwise commit unfriendly acts towards their immediate neighbours on the east. The Samurai of Satsuma and the other southern clans clamoured to be led against the Koreans,—and if the Koreans should be supported by China, then against the Chinese as well,—in order that these insults to the Japanese flag might be avenged. It was a strong plea, but it had to be resisted, for Japan was not ready to embark at that time in a great war. Consequently the Government deemed it prudent to be content with the compensation offered and the establishment of a garrison for the Legation at Seoul which might suffice to adequately protect its staff. By the ardent followers of the Satsuma chieftain, however, this was regarded as wholly insufficient, and matters had reached a decidedly perilous stage when the despatch of an expedition to Formosa happily provided an outlet for the superabundant energies of the younger swordsmen. The personnel of the punitive force consisted largely of Satsuma samurai, and right well did the men acquit themselves in the tasks which fell to their share in the mountainous wilds of “the Beautiful Isle.”

A few months prior to the setting out of the Formosan Expedition there had been an insurrection in Saga, the chief town of the Hizen province, led by Yeto Shimpei, who had not long before been a member of the new Government. The rising had been very quickly suppressed, and without much bloodshed, but it was an indication that the policy of the new administration met with scant favour in some of the regions remote from the metropolis, where the spirit of the people was, for want of wider knowledge, very averse to what were viewed as pernicious innovations based upon a wholesale introduction of Occidental manners and customs. Though the antipathy to foreign methods subsided with the punishment of the foremost of the Saga insurgents, the embers were not wholly extinguished, and less than three years later they burst once more into flame at Kagoshima, as will presently appear, and in the meantime the growing hostility in Satsuma to the proceedings of the Tokio Cabinet revealed itself in a variety of ways, though it was the policy of the administration to avoid the danger of driving matters to extremities with the warlike clansmen of the extreme south, at the head of whom stood Saigo Takamori, then resident on his own farm in the vicinity of the castle town which was the Satsuma stronghold and the headquarters of its quasi-independent military organisation. Nevertheless, the clansmen continued their regular drilling and set utterly at naught the remonstrances of the Tokio Government.

Affairs in Satsuma reached their climax in February 1877, when a march to Kioto was decided upon, the military cadets and the clansmen, mustering over 12,000, having resolved on accompanying their leader Saigo Takamori on a journey to the Western capital ostensibly to beg for the intervention of his Majesty in respect of the grievances which Satsuma claimed to be enduring at the hands of the existing Tokio Government. The telegraph promptly carried the news to Kioto of the departure of this formidable force from Kagoshima, and preparations were instantly made to oppose its progress. The Emperor proclaimed Saigo and his followers to be in rebellion, and the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Arisugawa, was directed to inflict punishment on the offenders. The incidents of the campaign in Kiushiu which ensued are set forth at length elsewhere in this volume, and order was not restored in the southern island until the autumn of the year, after a period of the most disastrous strife in which Satsuma was a house divided against itself, inasmuch as there were many of the clan who remained faithful to the imperial standard, notably the younger Saigo, afterwards marquis, and Admiral Kawamura, who commanded the imperial fleet.

The Emperor remained for some time at his Kioto palace before returning to Tokio, and it was known at the time that this outbreak of hostilities in a part of his dominions occasioned his Majesty the most profound sorrow, the more so that Saigo Takamori had led his own forces to victory ten years before, when the imperialists had been plunged into warfare with the adherents of the Shogun. That Marshal Saigo should have been so ill advised as to head an insurrection was to the monarch whom he had in former years served so faithfully a source of the most poignant grief, and the sad end of the arch-rebel, in battle on the crest of Shiroyama, in the town of Kagoshima, made a deep impression on all in Japan. The Emperor’s attribute of magnanimity was displayed only a few years ago in the grant of a peerage to the son of the famous Satsuma leader, and the imperial approval of the erection of a monument to his memory in the public park of Uyeno, in Tokio. The record of Saigo’s rebellion has been effaced, and only his splendid services to the State in the years prior to 1877 are kept in his sovereign’s remembrance.

The period which followed the war in Satsuma was one of uninterrupted industry and persevering endeavour on the part of all the Ten-shi’s subjects to make up for the time which had been lost by the civil war. Immense interest was taken in the advancement of education and the spread of commercial enterprise, the shipping and manufacturing trades being diligently fostered by wise enactments that were often the outcome of the ruler’s own initiative. There can be no doubt that at this period were laid the foundations of that unexampled industrial prosperity which has distinguished the latter portion, down to the present time, of the Meiji era, and which, resting as it does on the most secure basis—one which even a war with a great European power has been powerless to disturb—bids fair to last for ages to come.

In 1880 the Imperial edict appeared establishing the prefectural assemblies, local parliaments which served in not a few instances to develop a talent for debate in political aspirants, and likewise to familiarise the agricultural population, wherein lies the main strength of the nation, with the principles of representative institutions on a larger scale, such as had been foreshadowed by the Imperial promise made at the time of the Emperor’s accession. That promise was reiterated, and a definite date assigned for the opening of the Japanese Diet, by his Majesty in the following year. It was in 1880, too, that the new Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, on both of which a vast amount of careful consideration had been bestowed, were promulgated, the codes themselves having been compiled with a lucidity and completeness which leave nothing to be desired. There is no ambiguity about the laws of Japan, and as translations have been made and published under the sanction of the Government, accessible to all, it is practicable for a stranger to make himself acquainted with the rules and regulations applicable to every walk of life without the aid of lawyer or interpreter.

The announcement that the Emperor had determined to grant a Constitution was everywhere received with joy and gratitude, for though the time had not, it was fully comprehended, yet arrived when it would be feasible for a representative assembly to meet, the nation had the sovereign’s word for it that there would be no needless delay.

Under the system which existed in the early years of the Meiji era the Ministry had consisted of those charged with the conduct of Foreign and Home Affairs, the management of the naval and military forces, of the national finances, of ecclesiastical affairs, and of public instruction. At the side of the Ministry stood the Sa-In, or Senate, of which there were thirty-two members, and the Sho-In, or Council of State, the number of members whereof was unlimited,—the nominations to both these bodies being made by the sovereign. The power of the Emperor was in those days, in both temporal and spiritual affairs, regarded as boundless, and a voluntary surrender of rights which,—though they had often in the past history of the nation lain dormant,—had existed unchallenged from remote antiquity,—was a concession the importance of which could not be too highly esteemed. The Senate (Gen-Ro-In, as it was latterly termed) was composed of Peers of the realm, and of persons who had rendered the country distinguished service in their several capacities, or who were eminent by reason of their erudition, and its duty was to take charge of legislative matters referred to it by the Cabinet or introduced at the instance of the Senate itself. The Gen-Ro-In was likewise empowered to receive petitions regarding legislation from outside sources, so that in its functions it was largely the forerunner of the present House of Peers, as constituted under the edict of 1889. There was also a Local Governors’ Council, which resembled to some extent a national assembly, though composed of officially nominated members, for it was directed by imperial rescript on its first sitting that its duties would be “to attend to the affairs of State as the representative of the people’s interests.” In the same rescript the Emperor declared that the said Council had been called together “in pursuance of the solemn promise, given by Us on the occasion of Our accession to the Throne, to summon delegates of Our subjects to assist Us in the conduct of affairs of State, to make with those delegates arrangements calculated to cement the amicable understanding that prevails between rulers and ruled, and to enable both to co-operate for the common good of the country.” It was added that the Governors who attended the Council were in “no danger of incurring the displeasure of the Government for any opinion enunciated by them at the meeting.” The Council which had thus existed since 1875 was abolished in 1880, but meanwhile the prefectural assemblies had been established, and there were thus other legitimate channels for voicing public opinion.

The next year saw the issue of the proclamation providing for the assembly of a truly national representative body in 1890, and meanwhile Marquis Ito and his staff were diligently preparing the Constitution and the Laws bearing upon elections to the Diet and the Houses themselves, all of which were proclaimed in 1889, on the 11th February, the anniversary of the ascension of the throne by Jimmu Tenno. Thus was fulfilled in its entirety the promise made in the “Charter Oath,” as it is termed, taken by his Majesty on his coronation. The Imperial Rescript has been throughout the guide and mainstay of the people’s hopes and ambitions, and in its original form it was worded as under;—(the translation is almost literal)—