Au Japon. Amedee Baillot de Guerville

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ against him, describing the young French-American as “a tall, thin hawk eyed young man with courtly manners and a stupendous faculty for lying.”48 Creelman’s obvious animosity is at first glance enigmatic, particularly when one considers that Creelman confesses that in his conversations with de Guerville on the train to San Francisco de Guerville had no idea who Creelman was.49

      On closer consideration, however, Creelman’s feelings can perhaps be better gauged. Creelman had written for Bennett’s New York Herald before de Guerville had been picked up by that publication, and had in fact left primarily due to Bennett’s refusal to put Creelman’s name to his stories. That de Guerville was now heading to the Far East as reporter for the New York Herald was perhaps an understandable source of resentment.50 At the very least, the fact that de Guerville was the only other American correspondent to be covering the Sino-Japanese War made for intense competition between the two men.

      However, combined with these factors were Creelman’s own intimate fears of failure, which come across strongly in his letters to his wife. That de Guerville had the advantage of previous contact with the Far East only compounded such anxieties regarding Creelman’s coming tour in Japan and Korea, his first as a war correspondent (almost as if to emphasize this advantage, in San Francisco de Guerville gave Creelman a Korean half-cent piece as a souvenir of his experiences; Creelman promptly sent it to his wife).

      Further, Creelman had a reputation as a dandy, one who cultivated an aura of refinement and sophistication in his dress and person. And here was de Guerville, a younger man to whom Creelman himself attributes “courtly manners,” a clear talent in the art of conversation (as accounts of his New York lectures testify), and with his intimidating worldly experiences and important contacts in the Far East. De Guerville also stood at six foot compared to Creelman’s short and stocky figure, a superficial but not insignificant point. For a man like Creelman, who lamented to his wife his inability to form easy friendships, such a man as de Guerville could naturally be perceived as a rival, both personal and professional, whether de Guerville immediately perceived it or not. As their relationship progressed in Japan and China, de Guerville became increasingly aware of Creelman’s very personal hostility towards him.

      The City of Peking arrived in Yokohama harbor on a stormy evening in early September. A Japanese naval vessel guided it to safe anchorage through two miles of defensive submarine torpedo mines. Arriving at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Creelman was greeted with a letter from his wife Alice. “I am so entertained by de Guerville being on the same steamer,” she wrote. “I know you will spike his guns nicely if you can possibly do it.”51

      No sooner had de Guerville made landfall in Japan than he was attending formal diplomatic dinners at the French and Russian legations, and if one is to believe his own account, enjoying tête à têtes with the highest ranking officials in the Japanese Army and government—including Counts Mutsu and Oyama, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and War respectively—to the jealousy of the other foreign correspondents gathered in Japan eager to proceed to the front. At first foreign correspondents were not allowed permission to proceed to the front, and frustrated reporters circulated among the Yokohama and Tokyo hotels. However, perhaps seeing the advantage to be got from positive reportage of Japanese victories, the Japanese government soon determined to allow access to properly accredited war correspondents.

      In mid-September, and a few days before Creelman, de Guerville received permission to accompany a Japanese troop transport to the battlefront, which was then approaching the Korean city of P’yŏngyang (Pen-Yang). Thus on his return to the Far East as war correspondent, de Guerville served as what we might call today an “embedded reporter.” Reasonable charges could be made—and they were—to the objectivity of any reporter whose coverage of the war was limited to the sanction of one of the belligerents. But all journalists covering the Sino-Japanese conflict reached the front only through the permission and assistance of the warring powers, whether that be Japan or China. Further, in the opening weeks of the war the Japanese government issued regulations regarding the dispatch of war reports from the battlefront. They would all have to be cleared by the Japanese government.52 But further, de Guerville did take the opportunity to strike out on his own initiative once in the field.

      And so, while many foreign correspondents found themselves distressfully stranded in Japan during the course of hostilities, de Guerville—thanks in great part to his connections nurtured as Honorary Commissioner for the World’s Fair—had an eventful wartime experience. De Guerville was afforded the “privilege” of accompanying the Japanese First Army to P’yŏngyang aboard the troop transport Nagato Maru, “the oldest, slowest, dirtiest” of them all.53 Slow as it may have been, Creelman, who also received permission to accompany Japanese troops to P’yŏngyang, was only allowed to depart after de Gueville and on a later troop transport, as a result arriving there several days after his rival from the New York Herald. De Guerville’s head start would later give rise to serious accusations on the part of Creelman.

      The massive walled city of P’yŏngyang, one of Korea’s most important cities, was the primary Chinese stronghold in Korea and its capture was critical to the success of Japanese war plans. At P’yŏngyang, which de Guerville reached following a soggy night’s journey up the Taedong River aboard a Korean sampan, the New York Herald correspondent encountered death and destruction such as he had never witnessed. Approaching the already fallen city by sampan, his senses were assaulted, and overwhelmed, by the stench of rotting corpses, mostly of the city’s fallen Chinese defenders. De Guerville prided himself as the only foreigner to have reported first hand on the fall of P’yŏngyang and took the time to heap almost preternatural praise on the Japanese for the mercy and moderation shown their defeated Chinese counterparts. He also praised the work of the Japanese Red Cross, enthusiastically writing, “If these facts do not call forth the admiration of the world, I am at a loss to know what will do so. I do not see how Japan can be refused the place she rightly claims among the civilized nations of the world.” At the same time de Guerville condemned the brutality and ingratitude of the Chinese, who not only left P’yŏngyang a scorched and ravaged shell but were wholly ungrateful to the Japanese for the kind, even pampered, treatment they received as their prisoners.54

      Following a few days in the city of P’yŏngyang de Guerville turned south, curious to visit the Korean capital of Seoul to see if he might secure an interview with the Korean king, as Creelman had done some weeks previous.55 In Chemulpo—which the indefatigable travel writer Isabella Bishop Bird had left only weeks earlier, fleeing the approaching war—de Guerville the journalist found himself the object of an interview by a Japan Weekly Mail correspondent, likely the result of de Guerville’s friendship with that journal’s owner Captain Frank Brinkley (something he reveals in Au Japon). A few days later, de Guerville related his P’yŏngyang experience in fuller detail in a personal article for the Japan Weekly Mail.56

Figure 5. An artist’s rendition of the fall of P’yŏngyang that accompanied de Guerville’s newspaper account. San Francisco Chronicle (19 December 1894).

      The Japan Weekly Mail was the most respectable of the English papers in Japan. Founded by the Irishman Frank Brinkley—who at times also served as The Times (London) correspondent in Japan—it was largely pro-government and its war coverage echoed official policy and accounts. Circulation wars were no less intense in Japan than in America of the period, and the Japan Weekly Mail certainly had its rivals and detractors. Prime among these were the Japan Gazette and the Japan Herald (which actually predated the Japan Weekly Mail), whose articles tended to be more sensational and more critical of Japan and its policymakers. Both the Japan Gazette and Japan Herald were unabashed in their disdain for the Japanese and their support for the maintenance of the unequal treaties between Japan and the Western powers. (56) The wife of one diplomat wrote of the Gazette and Herald, “I have stopped reading these rags, which always attack us, or the Home Government, or the Emperor, when news is scarce. I can stand intelligent abuse, or good-natured ignorance, but the two nouns in unqualified conjunction make me СКАЧАТЬ