Charles Beresford - The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

It is the land of tea-houses and temples, of running footmen and palanquins; where houses and string and handkerchiefs are made of paper; where the people wash themselves every day and their clothes never; where the oldest profession in the world is counted honourable service, and the pictures of courtesans adorn the temples in which the bonzes intone prayers in the midst of games and dances: where the writing is done from top to bottom, from right to left, and keys are turned from left to right, and carpenters draw their planes towards them, and the houses are built from the roof downwards, and horses are mounted on the off-side, and ladies black their teeth. It was a land of immense processional pageants: the processions of the high Daimios, who once a year quitted their ancestral homes with a great train to dwell in Yedo, the capital of the Tycoon, for six months; and returned again, leaving as hostages for their loyalty their wives and children for another six months. The two-sworded Samurai march in front, crying "Shitanirio!" and all the spectators drop upon their knees and hide behind their legs while the long procession ambles by, spearmen and banners and baggage-carriers and palanquins; the norimons, which are the palanquins of the notable, and the cangos, which are the palanquins of the humble.

When the foreigner rode abroad in state, he was attended by the Ward-guards, who marched in front, striking the earth at every step with their long staves whereon loose iron rings were strung, so that their jingling warned the populace to make way.

At night, festivals were celebrated by immense processions filling the streets, in which everyone carried a lighted lantern swaying upon the end of a flexible bamboo, and the lanterns were painted with bats and dragons, and the people wore horrible masks, distended with the monstrous rictus of the devil-gods. In the Yoshiwara, where the women, painted and gilded, sashed and bedecked, sit in a double row, each with her price placarded upon her knee, there were the great priapic processions, concerning which the English works upon Japan preserve a shocked reticence.

In old Japan, the common ideal of the ruling classes was that their country should maintain for ever intact its immemorial laws, traditions and customs; an ideal whose attainment the entrance of the foreigner would render impossible. As for the common people, they had no aspirations beyond the day's work. Japan, in her own view, was complete, self-sufficient and wholly satisfied with a civilisation compared with which the politics of the Occident were of yesterday. The Islands of Nippon were ensphered in holy crystal, whose flawless preservation was the highest duty of a patriot.

Into that rare atmosphere, surcharged with perilous elements, sailed Commodore Perry of the United States Navy in the year 1853. Some fifty years later, Pierre Loti entered Japanese waters in a French warship. "Et nous entrions maintenant dans une espèce de couloir ombreux, entre deux rangées de très hautes montagnes, qui se succédaient avec une bizarrerie symétrique – comme les 'portants' d'un décor tout en profondeur, extrêmement beau, mais pas assez naturel – on eut dit que ce Japon s'ouvrait devant nous, en une déchirure enchantée, pour nous laisser pénétrer dans son cceur même" ( Madame Chrysanthème ).

It was Commodore Perry who rent open the heart of Old Japan, and her blood flowed. The gallant commodore, anchoring off Cape Idzu on 8th July, 1853, with two steam frigates and two sloops of war, demanded no more than a treaty securing help and proper treatment to sailors shipwrecked on the coasts of Japan. The Japanese Government said neither yes nor no; whereupon Perry gave them a year to consider the matter, promising to return at the end of it with a "larger fleet." And on 12th February, 1854, there was Commodore Perry in the Bay of Yedo with three steam frigates and four sloops of war. After long negotiations, a treaty of amity was signed, including a promise to succour ships in distress, and (above all) opening two new ports. From that moment the isolation of Japan was ended. The door opened but a crack; but into that crack the wedge of commerce, driven by the lust of gain, was thrust by America (1854), Russia (1857), England and France (1858).

In 1859, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Rutherford Alcock, British representative of H.B.M. Government in China was appointed her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Japan. His book, The Capital of the Tycoon (London, 1863. Longman, 2 vols.), gives one of the first authoritative accounts of Old Japan presented to the British public. During his three years in that country he was constantly in peril of assassination. In August, 1859, an officer and a sailor from one of the Russian ships lying in the harbour were cut down and slashed to pieces in the streets of Yedo, and a steward was severely wounded.

In the following year the Japanese linguist attached the British Legation was stabbed to death, and two Dutch ship-captains were cut to pieces in Yokohama. The next demonstration of the hatred of foreigners was the murder of the Gotairo, the Regent, Iko-mono-no-kami. His escort was suddenly attacked as it was leaving his castle by some twenty swordsmen, wielding the terrible Japanese two-handed weapon. The hands of the bearers of his norimon were severed on the pole and the Regent himself decapitated, his head being carried away as a trophy.

In 1861, Mr. Heuskin, attached to the American Legation, was murdered. Soon afterwards, one of the Governors (or Under-Secretaries) of Foreign Affairs, Oribeno-no-Kami, who had been especially friendly in his intercourse with the Legations, "died," in the Japanese phrase, "without the effects of medicine." To be more precise, he had committed hara-kiri.

In July, 1861, the British Legation at Yedo was attacked at night by a band of swordsmen, who passed the guards and rushed the building. Mr. Oliphant, who had recently been appointed Secretary to the Legation, was severely wounded. One of the guards, a porter, and a groom, and two of the assailants, were killed outright. One of the assailants was severely wounded, to six of the Legation party who were severely wounded and eleven slightly wounded.

Such were the beginnings of Western influence in Japan. Sir Rutherford Alcock's voluminous account of his three years' ministry reveals a gallant, honest, kindly gentleman sorely perplexed by the ethical problems involved in the forcible interference of one powerful nation in the affairs of a weaker nation, whose sole ambition was to be let alone. Hampered, on the one hand, by the greed and discourtesy of the European traders, and on the other, by the immitigable duplicity and the furtive and implacable enmity of the Japanese, yet singly determined to do his duty to his Queen and country, Sir Rutherford Alcock honourably fulfilled a task of extreme danger and incredible difficulty.

Thenceforward, until the year 1869, the duel between East and West continued with increasing ardour. The whole polity of old Japan was shaken as by the earthquakes which agitate and rend its soil. There were frequent assassinations of the foreign barbarians; the governing classes, which consisted wholly of the military caste, employed every invidious method to restrict trade with Europeans; while the Western nations, on their side, brought their armed strength to bear in the enforcement of treaty rights, which by the same means had originally been wrung from the Tycoon's government. And here it falls to distinguish between the divine prestige of the Mikado, descendant of the sun-goddess, and the temporal administration of the Tycoon, or Shogun. In that dual administration resided a main factor of the extraordinary difficulty of the situation. Both the spiritual and temporal rulers, the Imperial Court and the Bakufu, or Tycoon's Government, were equally inspired by hatred of the foreigner. But whereas the Mikado, dwelling majestically apart, could avoid all contact with the barbarians, the Tycoon was compelled by superior force to negotiate with them. He was thus placed between two fires; on the one side, the Mikado ordered him to expel the foreigner; on the other, the foreigner threatened him with war unless the treaties were carried into execution.