Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (89 page)

Early the next morning, Kim Ok-kyun, using the king’s seal, sent a message to leaders of the Sadaedang commanding them to come to the palace. They were arrested and killed as they arrived. With Japanese help, the Kaehwadang had seized control of the government, and a new cabinet was formed consisting of its members. The coup seemed to have succeeded, and the king was preparing to proclaim a change in the government; but then Koreans who had learned what had happened went to Yüan Shih-kai, the commanding general of the Chinese forces in the city, and begged him to intervene. The Chinese forces, which outnumbered the Japanese troops by seven to one, attacked the palace and rescued the king, who at once declared his opposition to the rebels. Fighting ensued between the Japanese and the Chinese. The Chinese forces were augmented by Koreans who had seemed up until then to be pro-Japanese.

The Japanese lost more than 30 of their 150 men. They withdrew from the palace, taking the progressive leaders with them. Soon more than 300 people crammed into the Japanese legation, which did not have enough food to feed them for even one day. Takezoe decided that the Japanese must fight their way out of Seoul to the coast.
³⁷
They did so, reaching Inch’on on December 8. On the following day a message from the king was delivered to Takezoe, sympathizing with his difficulties and asking him to return to Seoul to settle matters, apparently discounting the importance of the clash between the Japanese and the Chinese. The British and Americans also urged Takezoe to wait, but he and a shipful of Japanese and Korean refugees sailed for Nagasaki on December 11.

The incident was not yet over. On December 21 the emperor received Inoue Kaoru and told him that he was sending him to Korea as minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary. Inoue would be accompanied by high-ranking military officers. The emperor was prompted to take this step by the controversy that had been aroused by Takezoe’s return with details of the failed coup. The Chinese minister to Japan had also reported that China had sent a large number of soldiers to Korea. Inoue would take a message to the Korean king stating that he was ready to confer with senior Korean officials in order to determine who was responsible for the recent incident, to see that the appropriate punishment was carried out, and that the Japanese received reimbursement for the damage to the legation. If in fact the king had requested protection from the Japanese minister (as the Japanese claimed), the king should send a letter of apology to the emperor so as to dispel all doubts, both at home and abroad, as to what had happened. The Chinese should be asked, in the interests of peace, to agree to join the Japanese in withdrawing their forces from Korea.

Inoue requested two battalions of troops to escort him to Korea, and this was agreed on. He would also be protected by three warships. By this time he had concluded that Japan had brought about the incident by its own actions. Having decided to promote Korean independence, Japan had intervened in Korea’s internal politics to achieve this end; Japan had also tried to persuade other countries to accept Japan’s position. Japan now had to decide between one of two courses. The first was to pursue its demands for Korean independence, even if this meant war with China. Of course, friendly relations with neighboring countries were important, but to temporize was to invite future trouble, and nothing should be tolerated that might harm Japanese prestige. Now that China was occupied with a war with France, if the Japanese presented their demands with a sufficient show of force, the Korean court was likely to accept. That was why Inoue had asked for the two battalions. If this course of action was found unacceptable, because maintaining peace was more important than any other consideration, the second alternative—abandoning plans for Korea’s independence and recognizing China’s suzerainty over Korea—should be adopted. Inoue asked for a prompt answer as to the course Japan would follow.
³⁸

He received the same day an answer from Sanj
ō
urging that war with China be avoided at all costs. Sanj
ō
reminded Inoue that he must obey his original orders to reach a peaceful solution acceptable to both Japan and China. He said that the two battalions were being sent not as a display of force but because it was feared Korea might be a dangerous place after the failed coup. He added that it was not possible at present to decide whether to support Korean independence, even at the risk of war with China.

Inoue arrived in Inch’on on December 30, still uncertain what course to follow. He was not the only one who was puzzled. For another decade, relations with China and Korea remained a riddle for Japanese diplomats to ponder.

Chapter 38

On November 28, 1883, the completion of the Rokumeikan, a two-story building in Western-style architecture, was celebrated in a ceremony presided over by the foreign minister, Inoue Kaoru, and his wife, Takeko. The old Enry
ō
kan, where foreign dignitaries (beginning with the duke of Edinburgh) had previously been entertained, was a cheaply constructed building, originally erected by the shogunate as a training school for naval cadets. By now, despite the interior decorations added when the building was converted into a residence for foreign guests, the Enry
ō
kan was badly showing its age.
¹
A new building was needed.

The Rokumeikan was designed by the English architect Josiah Conder in “French Renaissance style” (so termed because of the mansard roof), but the arched portico of the facade had a vaguely Moorish look and the columns showed an Indian influence. Only the garden with its pines, pond, and stone lanterns indicated that this particular example of eclectic architecture was situated in Japan. The style of the building reflected Inoue’s cosmopolitan tastes, and the presence of his wife at the opening ceremony, unthinkable on a state occasion fifteen years earlier, was a sign that women would participate prominently in the future activities of the new building.

The Rokumeikan was erected on the site of a former armory of the Satsuma domain at a total cost of 180,000 yen (compared with 40,000 yen for the Foreign Ministry building).
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Surely nothing could be further from the spartan discipline characteristic of Satsuma samurai than the frivolity to which the new building was dedicated. The extent of the changes that had occurred in a bare fifteen years seemed to be symbolized by the fairy-tale appearance of the building, replacing the forbidding walls of an earlier era. The name Rokumeikan itself was derived from a “deer crying” (
rokumei
) song in the ancient Chinese book of poetry the
Shih Ching
that describes how a host had welcomed honored guests. The name was appropriate, for entertaining foreign guests would be a major function of the new building.
³
Foreigners, no longer denounced as excrescences who defiled the Land of the Gods, would be ceremoniously feted at the Rokumeikan.

An equally important function of the Rokumeikan was as a stage on which Japanese might display to foreigners that, having turned their backs on the antiquated ways of the past, they had become masters of European table manners and the decorum of the ballroom. The meals served at the Rokumeikan were elaborate, and the many courses were listed in French on the menus.
⁴
In the ballroom, Japanese gentlemen wearing evening clothes ordered from London and ladies in gowns designed in Paris danced the quadrille, waltz, polka, mazurka, or galop to the latest European tunes played by the army and navy bands. For those who had not yet learned how to dance, foreign residents of T
ō
ky
ō
were available as tutors.
⁵

Conservative commentators frowned on Japanese who participated in ballroom dancing, warning that men and women who embraced in public were likely to yield to immoral impulses. Here is how one dance was reported in the press:

A beautiful woman leans her head against a man’s shoulder and turns her fair face toward the man’s ears. Her bare arm circles the man’s neck, and her undulant bosom touches the man’s chest, rising and falling with her breathing. Her legs intertwine with the man’s like vines on a pine tree. The man’s strong right arm firmly encircles the small of the woman’s back; with each move he presses her ever more tightly to his body. The light flowing in the beautiful woman’s eyes is steadily directed at the man, but she is too dazzled to see anything. The music stirs her, but she does not hear the sounds. She hears instead the echoes of a distant waterfall and moves as in a dream, her body clinging to the man’s. When a woman reaches such a state, where is the innate modesty of the virtuous maiden?
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Many Japanese shared these moral objections to ballroom dancing, but members of the upper classes had decided that it was a necessary social accomplishment. To improve their skill, they attended practice sessions that were held on Sunday nights from October 1884 at the Rokumeikan. A contemporary account reported:

Married ladies and young women of the gentry, from the wives of Councillor Inoue, Councillor
Ō
yama, and Minister of Education Mori on down, gathered at the Rokumeikan at six in the afternoon on the twenty-seventh of the month for a practice session of dancing. This was in preparation for the ball that will be held on the third of next month, on the emperor’s birthday. The steady improvement in the ladies’ proficiency at dancing means that gentlemen who are unfamiliar with this art will unfortunately be unable to enjoy the pleasure of being partners to the ladies when the ball takes place. Officials of the Foreign Office, the Imperial Household Ministry, and other agencies have consequently begun to take lessons, and there is gossip concerning whether or not they are likely to become proficient by the third of next month.
⁷

Probably most of those who danced at the Rokumeikan had nothing more profound in mind than displaying their expensive costumes and terpsichorean skills, but Inoue hoped that by cultivating congenial relations with foreign dignitaries, he might persuade them that the Japanese had attained so high a degree of European culture that they had to be treated as equals. His ultimate goal was the abolition of extraterritoriality, the symbol of European distrust of Japanese justice and the most obvious instance of foreign feelings of superiority toward the Japanese.

It is doubtful that the amenities of the Rokumeikan contributed significantly to ending the unequal treaties. Contrary to the hopes of the Japanese, Europeans who attended balls were not impressed by Japanese efforts to prove that they could successfully act like Europeans. In fact, they found the appearance of Japanese men and women in expensive foreign clothes amusing and even ludicrous. A cartoon by the French artist Georges Bigot shows a man and a woman standing before a mirror. Her hair, starched to imposing heights, is crowned with a feathered bonnet; her bustle and umbrella are the last word in Parisian elegance. Her companion’s moustache is waxed, and he carries a silk hat, but the legs under his elegantly tailored jacket are matchsticks. The reflection in the mirror shows a pair of monkeys.
⁸

Bigot’s cruel jest is labeled “Monsieur et Madame vont dans le Monde.” This was how the Japanese guests at the Rokumeikan appeared to foreigners. Pierre Loti, who arrived in Japan in July 1886 and was invited to the ball on the emperor’s birthday in November, described his experience in both his diary and the story “Un bal à Yeddo,”
⁹
a visitor’s impressions of a ball at the Rokumeikan:

The first European-style ball, held in the middle of T
ō
ky
ō
, was quite simply a monkey show. Young ladies, dressed in white muslin and wearing gloves that reached above their elbows, sat on chairs, holding engagement books white as ivory in their fingers and maintaining forced smiles on their faces. Presently, they could be seen dancing polkas and waltzes, more or less correctly, to tunes from operettas, though the sounds of our rhythms surely must fall most unpleasantly on their ears….

This contemptible imitation is certainly interesting for the visiting foreigner to observe, but it reveals that this people has no taste and is absolutely lacking in national pride.
¹⁰

Loti was more generous in his description of a few of the ladies. He was most impressed by Inoue Takeko, the wife of the foreign minister, who stood at the head of the stairs alongside her husband, greeting guests with a smile and words of welcome. Her ease and accomplished manner revealed that she had spent time abroad as one of the first Japanese women to accompany her husband to a diplomatic post. Loti repeated the rumor he had heard that she was formerly a geisha (a matter of speculation). He declared, in any case, that her costume could pass muster in Paris and that her manners were faultless. He concluded his description with an expression of admiration for the complete ease she displayed, even to holding out her hand for him to shake, like an American woman.
¹¹