A Diplomat in Japan. Ernest Mason Satow

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ anxious that the Admiral should land some men and carry off a few guns as trophies of victory, but that he declined to send a single man on shore. And men said that he was demoralized by the death of his flag-captain and commander, with whom he was talking on the bridge when the shot came that took off their heads. But none of this appears in the official correspondence. I believe the real explanation to be that differences had arisen between the diplomatist and the sailor, the former of whom interfered too much with the conduct of the operations. No doubt the etiquette was for him to remain silent after he had placed matters in the hands of the Admiral, but this the impetuosity of his nature would not permit him to do. It is also possible that insufficiency of the supply of coals, provisions and ammunition may have been a factor in the determination that was come to. The Admiral in his report, which was published in the London "Gazette," took credit for the destruction of the town, and Mr. Bright very properly called attention to this unnecessary act of severity in the House of Commons; whereupon he wrote again, or Colonel Neale wrote, to explain that the conflagration was accidental. But that I cannot think was a correct representation of what took place, in face of the fact that the "Perseus" continued to fire rockets into the town after the engagement with the batteries was at an end, and it is also inconsistent with the air of satisfaction which marks the despatch reporting that £1,000,000 worth of property had been destroyed during the bombardment.

      KAGOSIMA HARBOUR

      After the return of the squadron to Yokohama we settled down quietly again, and the trade went on pretty much as usual; there were some complaints that the Tycoon's council were laying hands on all the raw silk destined for exportation, with a view doubtless of forcing up the price and so recouping themselves out of foreign pockets for the indemnities they had been forced to pay to the British Government. But on a strong protest being made to them by Colonel Neale, the embargo was removed. Rumours reached us of disturbances at Kiôto, where the retainers of Chôshiû had been plotting to take possession of the palace, and seize the person of the Mikado. Failing in their plans, they had been dismissed from their share in guarding the palace, and had departed to their native province, taking with them seven court nobles who had been mixed up in the plot. Amongst them were Sanjô Sanéyoshi, Higashi-Kuzé and Sawa, who afterwards held high office in the government of the restoration.

      The ill-success of the Chôshiû clan, which had been one of the foremost in demanding the expulsion of the foreigners, was a turn of luck for the Tycoon, and the result was the withdrawal of the circular of Ogasawara proposing the closing of the ports. Ogasawara himself was disgraced. Foreigners at Yokohama began to breathe freely again, and to renew their former excursions in the neighbouring country.

      But on the 14th October a fresh outrage completely upset our tranquillity. A French officer of Chasseurs named Camus, while taking his afternoon's ride at a distance of not more than two or three miles from the settlement, and far from the high road, was attacked and murdered. His right arm was found at a little distance from his body, still clutching the bridle of his pony. There was a cut down one side of the face, one through the nose, a third across the chin, the right jugular vein was severed by a slash in the throat, and the vertebral column was completely divided. The left arm was hanging on by a piece of skin and the left side laid open to the heart. All the wounds were perfectly clean, thus showing what a terrible weapon the Japanese katana was in the hands of a skilful swordsman. No clue to the identity of the perpetrators of this horrible assassination was ever discovered, but it made a profound impression upon the foreign community, who after that were careful not to ride out unarmed or in parties of less than three or four. Not that we were able to place much confidence in our revolvers, for it was pretty certain that the samurai who was lying in wait to kill a foreigner would not carry out his purpose unless he could take his victim at a disadvantage, and cases of chance encounters with peaceably inclined Japanese were not known to have occurred. Excepting perhaps the Richardson affair, from the very first all these murders were premeditated, and the perpetrators took care to secure their own safety beforehand.

      It was an agreeable surprise to us a month later, when there appeared at the legation two high officers of Satsuma, who undertook to pay the indemnity of £25,000 and gave an engagement to make diligent search for Richardson's murderers, who upon their arrest were to be punished with death in the presence of British officers, in accordance with the original demand. We may give Colonel Neale credit for knowing that there was no genuine intention on the part of Satsuma to carry out this promise, but on the other hand there was strong reason to suppose that Shimadzu Saburô himself had actually given the order to cut down the foreigners, and it could hardly be expected that the Satsuma men would ever consent to do punishment upon him. The actual doers of the deed were merely subordinate agents. We could not with justice have insisted on their lives being taken, and at the same time suffer the principal culprit to go scot-free. In order to succeed therefore in enforcing the whole of the demands made by Her Majesty's Government, it would have been necessary to invade Satsuma with an overwhelming force and exterminate the greater part of the clan before we could get at their chief; and we may be sure that he would never have fallen alive into our hands. We had bombarded and destroyed the greater part of the forts and town, probably killed a good many persons who were innocent of Richardson's murder, and had thereby elevated what was in the beginning a crime against public order into a casus belli. There would indeed, it seems to me, have been no justification after that for taking more lives by way of expiation. The Satsuma envoys, however, formally acknowledged that their countrymen had been in the wrong, and they paid the fine demanded by the British Government. No one therefore can blame the British Chargé d'Affaires for having made peace on these terms. It should be mentioned, however, that the Satsuma men borrowed the money from the Tycoon's treasury, and I have never heard that it was repaid.

CHAPTER IX

       Table of Contents

      SHIMONOSEKI; PRELIMINARY MEASURES

      Sir Rutherford Alcock returned from Europe early in March 1864, and Colonel Neale took his departure. The members of the legation gave him a farewell dinner, at which he delivered himself of prognostications as to the future of those who had served under him. For me he prophesied a professorship of Japanese at an English University, but so far his words have not come true. The new chief was liked by everyone, and he was particularly gracious to myself, relieving me from all chancery work, so that I could devote the whole of my time to my Japanese studies. Willis and I occupied a wooden house in a back street between the native town and the foreign settlement, and there I worked industriously with my three teachers. Sir Rutherford had brought with him very ample powers, which he determined to make use of to chastise the Chôshiû clan for its hostile attitude. We had, it might be said, conquered the goodwill of Satsuma, and a similar process applied to the other principal head of the anti-foreign party might well be expected to produce an equally wholesome effect. In the summer of the previous year the Chôshiû people, acting upon the orders which they had extorted from the Mikado for the "expulsion of the barbarians," had fired upon an American merchant vessel, a Dutch corvette and a French despatch-boat as they passed through the straits of Shimonoséki. The corvette had returned the fire, and in the other two cases satisfaction of an incomplete kind had been obtained by the United States sloop "Wyoming" and the French squadron under Admiral Jaurès respectively. The batteries had been destroyed, but as soon as the foreign men-of-war quitted the scene, the Chôshiû men set to work to rebuild the forts, to construct others, and to mount all the guns they could bring together. So the hornet's nest was after no long interval in good repair again, and more formidable for attack and defence than before. That no foreign vessels could take their way through the straits of Shimonoséki, which they had been in the habit of passing from time to time after touching at Nagasaki in order to make a pleasant and easy passage to Yokohama, instead of encountering the stormy Cape Chichakoff, was felt to involve a diminution of western prestige. Nothing but the complete subjugation of this warlike clan, СКАЧАТЬ