CHAPTER III
Palmer as a Journalist

• (I) List of Articles
• (II) Before 1884 (The 17th Year of Meiji)
• (III) 1884 (The 17th year of Meiji)
• (IV) 1885 (The 18th year of Meiji)
• (V) 1886 (The 19th Year of Meiji)
• (VI) 1887 (The 20th Year of Meiji)
• (VII) 1888 (The 21st year of Meiji)
• (VIII) 1889 (The 22nd Year of Meiji)
• (IX) 1890 (The 23rd Year of Meiji)
• (X) 1891 (The 24th Year of Meiji)
• (XI) 1892 (The 25th Year of Meiji)

(I) List of Articles

(II) Before 1884 (The 17th Year of Meiji)

　The present treaties should be revised, as it would not be the ultimate interests for the Great Britain to keep forcing the extra-territoriality to the country like Japan whose development in the future is regarded as certain.

　On September 2nd, 1879, Parkes sent the following letter to his wife, then back in England.
<Next stage about the work of Treaty Revision is a fresh proposal to be furnished from the Japanese Government, but they have not done it yet.
They were quite occupied with General Grant, and did not exert their energies in the work of the Treaty Revision.
Probably, they think that they may somehow accomplish the purpose of the treaty revision by the support of General Grant.
The Tokyo Times reports that a new Association under the name of Friends of the East will shortly be organized in Tokyo.
General Grant and Sir Pope Hennessy, Hongkong Governor are expected to be the leading members of the Association.
Sir Charles Dilke (M/P, Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs the following year) to say nothing of Mr. Reeds (M/P)¹⁹will also join the Association.
General Grant will leave Japan tomorrow morning.
Perhaps, the Ministers of the Japanese Government, after some pauses, will call up the thought of the Treaty Revision.>

(III) 1884 (The 17th year of Meiji)

　Whoever did write this article, he must be quite conversant with the actual situations of both sides, and the point of his argument is quite impartial and accurate.

　As the point of his argument in the article is quite impartial and accurate and rarely found in the newspapers published in England, we translated the gist of the article into Japanese for the readers to read.

　A Correspondent raises a question which is pretty sure at no distant date to force its way to the front.

　What our Correspondent clearly shows - what ought not henceforth to be forgotten - is that it rests with England in the main to say what will be the character of the relation to the outer world of a great Empire inhabited by 37,000,000 of human beings gifted with rare industry and aptitude and moving steadily along the high road of civilization.

　We are informed from reliable sources that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered the Translation Section of the Ministry to expedite the translation of the article which a Correspondent contributed to "The Times" as well as its editorial concerning a very hot problem of the Revision of the Treaties which appeared in that paper of June 9, 1884.

September 13, 1884

　 Dear Colonel Palmer,

　I beg to present you my sincere thanks for your constant endeavour to place the English public the wrongs, grievances and aspirations of Japan.
Apart from your articles in the "Manchester Guardian" and the "Pall Mall Gazette" the one in "The Times" has afforded me a great satisfaction.
　The place which that newspaper occupies in England and the Continent must prove to be a powerful ally.
It may be of satisfaction to you to learn that I have caused your article and The Times editorial to be translated and submitted to His Imperial Majesty's perusal.
Governor Oki is in the way of attaining the sanction of the Government to the Water-Works at Yokohama and I have much pleasure to offer you service under our Government in connection with the Waterworks.
Mr. Kawase, our new Minister in London who leaves per Mail on 21st inst., will communicate you the particulars, therefore, I will only add that I shall be exceedingly grateful if you will accept the offer and give us the opportunity of availing ourselves of your able assistance in the work beneficial alike to Japanese and the foreign residents.
Before you leave England there is one thing I am very anxious that you should accomplish, that is to get the Times and other high-standing papers, with which you have established connection to appoint you as their special correspondent in Japan.
Captain Brinkley, I expect, will write to you more fully in this matter.
As the Englishman and friend of Japan, you will be glad to learn that Mr. Plunkett by his conciliatory manner and friendly sympathy is winning the golden opinions of the Japanese Government and the people.
We feel that we have a true diplomat to deal with.
We owe much to the British Government and the nation for sending here the Honourable F.R. Plunkett.

Trusting to be able to see you again out here,
I remain,
very truly yours,

Inouye Kaoru

(IV) 1885 (The 18th year of Meiji)

　Regarding the imminent departure of Palmer to Japan, I am very happy to be able to advise you as follows; <While contacted Palmer in accordance with your instruction to check the feasibility of Palmer to be appointed as the special correspondent of the leading newspapers in England, such as "The Times" and etc., he told me that he could satisfactorily arrange with Mr. Buckle, the President of "The Times" to be appointed as their Tokyo correspondent, which was confirmed by Mr. Buckle himself in his letter addressed to me.>

　Palmer was an active observer, but he does not appear to have kept the paper very well informed of the relations between China and Japan.

Great Britain, notwithstanding her avowed wish to follow the course best conducive to her own interests, the interests of her colleagues, and the well being of Japan, renders that wish null and void by sticking to a combination as destructive as it is opposed to the dictates of practical common sense.
In order to maintain that combination, she suffers herself to insist on a strict observance of the favoured nation clause in its most aggravated shape.
That a great nation like England should head or even tolerate a league of this nature can only be accounted for by supposing her to hold exaggerated views as to its necessity.
She doubtless believes that adherence to the old policy of combination is the sole way of checkmating the rivalry and covert antagonism of her associates and that these are sufficiently formidable to British interests to warrant the sacrifice of every other consideration that affects the case.
There can be little difficulty in discerning the best paths out of this dilemma.
Were England to take the lead in forsaking a combination long ago obsolete and now in everybody's way, America certainly, and most probably Germany, would at once follow suit.
This done, the whole difficulty would virtually disappear.
England, while relieving herself from an odious and embarrassing position, would earn the gratitude of the Japanese Government and people, regain her old supremacy on the foreign councils of the nation, and greatly improve her commercial position and prospects.

The communication which we print this morning from a Correspondent at Tokyo appeals to public opinion against persistence in a policy which he considers equally prejudicial to English and to Japanese interests.
However, there are wheels within wheels; and it may not be as easy as is supposed in the English settlement at Tokyo to break up amicably the concert of the Powers.
It would be far more pleasant that whatever was done were done by common consent.
England has no desire to spring mine upon other States, and is abundantly willing to share the advantage of Japanese concessions with all who comply with reasonable Japanese requisitions.
It can be open to no accusation of ill-faith for warning its allies that it repudiates stipulations equally invidious and injurious to Japan and to them.
England is bound to act in this direction, in deference rather to the urgent and rightful wish of Japan than from motives of individual advantage.
By the favoured-nation clause in its most aggravated shape, Japan suffers an evident wrong, and it would be as inequitable as impolite in England to connive much longer, by immobility, at the continuance of the infliction.

My own suggestion is that public opinion should be brought to bear on Her Majesty's Government with a view to their forming a separate arrangement with Germany and the United States, and whatever other Governments are willing to join them in breaking up the coalition; and further to advise Japan to withdraw from the treaties with other nations, guaranteeing her against all consequences.
In return, Japan would certainly undertake not to enter into engagements hostile to the interests of the countries who should have helped her out of her difficulty.

Nothing can really excuse resort to it (Diplomatic Cooperation) except when it is employed on the side of civilization against barbarism, or against the barbarous and uncivilized acts or policy of an otherwise civilized country.
The writer of the correspondence is new to us in Eastern journalism; but he is evidently behind the scenes of that piece with the stale old title <Revision of the Treaties> which is now being played in Tokyo.
The writer describes the situation, and pleads that England should boldly strike off the fetters with great clearness and force.
The apt and vigorous language in which the letter is couched, the mastery of details, and manner in which the facts and arguments are marshalled render the communication of great value just at this moment when the deadlock has occurred.

An English gentleman resident, recently wrote a letter to that journal on the subject of England's policy towards Japan, and The Times has now published a leader advising the British Government to adopt a just and impartial line of policy.
Affirming at the outset the decline of English influence in this country which he attributes to England's opposition to treaty revision, the correspondent goes on to say that it was England that inaugurated the policy of united action on the part of the treaty Powers, and whatever may have been its virtue in the old times when Japan hated foreign intercourse, to drag her into the path of civilization, it is at present this very policy that is obstructing the progress of the country.
How true these words are!

Nearly two years have passed since it was definitely understood that Great Britain, at any rate, was prepared to treat Japan in a liberal spirit.
During these two years unwearing efforts have been made to unite the sixteen high contracting parties into a consentient group.
And now, at the eleventh hour, somebody, it is said, has still to await his instructions.
The revision was to have been completed by the close of this year.
Now it is to begin next spring.
Who can tell what may not happen between this and that?
Japan is not a strong country.
She is as helpless in the presence of her sixteen confederated dictators as a child would be in the hands of a battalion of soldiers.

It is a disgrace to Western civilization, a disgrace to Western intelligence, a disgrace to Western morality that such a league should be maintained to crush the worthy aspirations of a people who ask only to be recognized as friends and fellow-workers in the cause of that same civilization.

The communication from the Time's Correspondent in Tokyo as well as its leader, and Mr. Stein's essay on Consular Jurisdiction in Eastern Area, all openly declare that the system of the extra territoriality should not be maintained any longer.
We are unable to tell the names of the author who sent this article to "The Times," but he is undoubtedly well acquainted with the actual condition of our relations with foreign countries.

It will be observed that, under the system of writing which was then in use, the higher standards of education could only be reached after toilsome devotion to the effort of learning by heart many thousands of fanciful, and intricate signs of Chinese ideographs - a task which not only needed a very heavy expenditure of time, but was also calculated to stimulate the memory in an abnormal degree, at the cost of other not less important mental faculties.
In Japan besides the system thus described, there has existed for more than a thousand years a syllabary called the Kana, devised by her own scholars for easing the yoke of the Chinese script.
The Kana consists of highly abbreviated forms of those Chinese characters which correspond with the 47 syllabic sounds that enter into the Japanese language.
It is in two styles, the Katakana and Hirakana, of which the former is used as an auxiliary to Chinese ideographs in books and the like, while the latter is used chiefly for social prints and letter-writing by women and the lower classes.
Undoubtedly the Kana has been a great boon to the mass of the Japanese people, since it has placed within their easy reach the arts of writing and reading, which but for it were far beyond them.
To the student, however, it brought no such clear relief.
For those who sought to walk in any of the higher paths of knowledge, if it was in some degree a help, it was in none a substitute for the weary and harassing study of Chinese.
This was the state of things in Japan in the matter of written speech at the time when, after the restoration of the Mikado in 1868, there began that rapid course of demolition and reconstruction of her political and social fabrics which is recognized as the most remarkable of its kind in the history of nations.
The whole country suddenly became athirst to acquire the languages, arts, and sciences, the philosophy and laws, in fact the entire civilization of the West.
Obviously, with such work before them, the youth of Japan could hardly afford to spend years and warp their brains in learning the single accomplishments of writing thoroughly their own tongue.
Under such circumstances, it is gratifying to note that the new movement of the Roman Alphabet Association, has been strongly supported by resident foreign scholars and others, and by nearly the whole of the Diplomatic Corps - among the latter by none more than by England's present Minister, the Hon. F.R. Plunkett, who has worked very hard in its behalf.

(1) the abolishment of the Council of State (Abolishment of the offices of Daijo Daijin as well as Sa Daijin and U Daijin),
(2) the establishment of the First Cabinet under the premiership of Hirobumi Ito, due to the enforcement of the formation of Cabinet system,
(3) the establishment of the formation of Cabinet Organization, all of which were promulgated by Imperial Notification on December 22, 1885.

(V) 1886 (The 19th Year of Meiji)

Great Britain suffers also, in her commercial interests immediate and prospective.
The prosperity of English markets abroad is not at present such that we can afford to view these and similar changes with complacency, or to be in other ways indifferent to our waning position and interests in a country which bids fair to become the first state in the Far East.

Upon us, therefore, rests the obligation of giving effect to our own candid admissions in the one way which admits of escape from the present deadlock, namely, by breaking up the combination of Powers and making independent terms with the Japanese.

It is her (Britain) duty not to leave any stone unturned in her attempt to bring the other Powers to a rational view of the claims of Japan.
But if all efforts fail, if no declarations of our Minister at Tokyo have any effect upon his diplomatic colleagues, then it remains open to us to withdraw, and to resign into the hands of the Japanese, as far as we are concerned, the pledges which we exacted from them a quarter of a century ago.
The time is approaching when they (Japan) will have to choose between the friendship of Russia and that of England.
It is not on the Afghan frontier alone that the two great antagonists are watching one another.
The Pacific is almost as important to us as India is;
It is a fact that for a long time past Russia has been coquetting with Japan, as with China, and there will at least be no harm done it, by putting Japan under a strong obligation to ourselves, we do something to show them that our friendship is the more valuable of the two.
This is, moreover, what the Japanese desire.
　Nothing is more certain than that they look to England for the type of civilization which they would prefer to follow; that they are interested on England, learn the English language, and imitate English habits as closely as they can.
Thus a liberal treatment of the wishes of Japan would be of the greatest indirect as well as direct service to England, in that most important of her peaceful campaigns, the campaign against the obstructiveness and the stagnation of China.

Your readers' attention will doubtless be drawn in other ways to the very powerful letter in The Times of Saturday last (March 6) from Tokyo, respecting treaty revision in Japan, but it cannot be out of place if I say a few words about it from the Londoner's point of view.
It is surprising enough that, in the height of the busiest season in London-when Parliament and the Courts are sitting, and many grave public questions, such as Ireland, Burma, the unemployed, &.c, are engaging public attention, The Times should devote on March 6, two whole columns to a statement, which must necessarily be somewhat technical, of the position of affairs in Japan, this, I say, is surprising; but it is still more so that on the following Monday on the 8th, a leader of unusual length should be published on the same subject.
It will be observed that now, the leading journal pronounces in a clear manner for the active assistance of this country to Japan, in order that the latter may be released from the most galling fetters of the present treaties.
It is rarely that the great journal speaks with so much decision, and, unless all our experience of the past is to be belied now, the time cannot be far distant when Great Britain will, if it prove unfavourable in order to meet Japanese wishes, break with the coalition of the Powers, and strike out her own course in her future dealings with Japan.
I do not think that his letter, backed as it has been in The Times and elsewhere, can fail of having an important effect, directly or indirectly, on the attitude of the Foreign Office towards Japan and the other treaty Powers in its general policy towards that country.
The most immediate effect of the letter has been a notice of Mr. Hanbury in the House of Commons to call attention, on the Civil Service Estimates, to the effect of existing treaties between Japan and the European Powers upon the Eastern trade of the United Kingdom and the development of Japan; and to move that in the opinion of the House the time has arrived, in the interests of both countries, for the withdrawal of these treaties, either singly or in concert with other Powers.
The reading of the notice in the House was greeted with cries of <Hear, Hear>, so that Mr. Hanbury will have a sympathetic audience.
I think the friends of Japan, and the Japanese themselves, should take heart from all these things; the end may not be near, but we are making perceptible advances towards it.

The remarkable letter to The Times from its Tokyo Correspondent clears the atmosphere and enables us to see distinctly the present position of the question, our own　attitude in the business, and the consequences, actual and probable, to us of this attitude.

In one respect the Japanese are to be congratulated.
Their case is now being presented to the British public by the Tokyo Correspondent of The Times in a manner in which it never had before and we think they are fortunate in having amongst them a writer who will take pains to study this and other Japanese questions, and to state them with so much clearness and force from so lofty a platform as the columns of the Times.

These very commonplace incidents would be unworthy of notice if it were not for the glimpse they afford of the widely different views held by two such great Powers as England and the United States respecting the obligations and rights of themselves on the one hand and Japan on the other which are conveyed by the existing treaties.
Japan, it is to be observed, has no extradition treaties with other States.
This argument caused by the different views, it will be seen, carries with it the inevitable conclusion that the extra territorial clause is to be interpreted not by its letter, but by the individual opinions and practice of each of the sixteen Powers having treaties with Far Eastern countries.

The case above described is but one of many constantly recurring examples of the peculiar anomalies and contradictions which beset the complex problem of extra-territoriality.
But the story of Calvin Pratt's case may at least draw timely attention to the necessity of sweeping away the rotten and tottering fabric of a system, which makes such contrasts possible.
To those who live in the Far East, and see from day to day the working of these outlandish extra territorial provisions, it is at times impossible to suppress doubts whether the questions affected by them, receive that attention in official quarters at home which they certainly need.

They (Japanese) are an intensely patriotic and high-spirited people, and they have long chafed bitterly at the position of national inferiority to which the Western Powers condemned them 28 years ago.
But, at length, first among the peoples of the East, they now see themselves about to cross as equals the threshold of the great family of Western nations, freed from the isolation and stigma of semi-barbarity which have so long oppressed them.
Probably there never was a race more capable of welcoming and appreciating this change; and the Power which maintain the lead in effecting it may count with confidence on their lasting gratitude.

The settlement of the thorny question of the treaties (if we are to assume that it is a settlement) is the work of our Minister, Sir Francis Plunkett and of the recently appointed representative of Germany, Baron von Holluben.
Our Correspondent speaks emphatically of the good that has been already done to the position of England in the affection of Japan by the course which the negotiations have taken.
We have recovered, it would seem, all the influence that we possessed in old times, before we began to pose as the sole and immovable opponent of treaty reform.
There may be difficulties with one or two other Powers, notably Russia and France, but there seems to be nothing to prevent Japan's finally emerging, a little more than two years hence, from the restraints imposed by those who have kept her so long in stata pupillari.

　The Times is one of the first class newspapers in the world and it is well known to the world that it always reports the most authentic intelligence in the international political problems.
True to its name, on reading the communication sent from its Tokyo Correspondent on July 21, the writer cannot be too much impressed with the accuracy in his reporting the fact with so much caution and circumspection as could be.

(VI) 1887 (The 20th Year of Meiji)

(1) The Miyako Odori

　How many years, or possibly decades, are likely to elapse before the chaste Miyako Odori, with its refined and courtly style and squadrons of decorously clad little Maiko, will give place to violent muscular achievements such as those with which troops of bounding, perspiring, and half-nude damsels charm the senses of theatre-goers in the West?
Looking to the signs of the times, is it possible to hope that this and other emblems of Japan's ancient and refined civilization can long survive the over-whelming tide of change and progress which is sweeping over the land?
It is feared that all are doomed.

(2) The Story of an Earthquake

　To us who are constrained to dwell in the midst of so many and great dangers, on this unstable and highly heated domain of the earth's crust, it is some comfort to remember that, the patient researches of Professor Milne and his disciples have opened up to us additional means of providing against disaster from earthquakes.
However long it may be before the inhabitants of countries subject to earthquake movements will have the sense and the means to act upon the warnings which science gives them, we have here an epitome of all that human ingenuity has yet been able to devise for the protection of human life and property against one of the most potent and fearful of all forms of energy.

(3) England, Germany and Japan

　While treaty revision is crawling on with steps so slow and painful, the public mind in Japan is occupied for the time with two other questions of considerable moment and significance.
　One is the rapid increase of German influence and　popularity.
The other is a group of social reforms and novelties, having as their main object an improvement of the position of women in Japan.
　The recent shower of German appointments is only the natural fruit of Japan's choice of the parliamentary and administrative institutions of Germany as models for her own new Constitution which is to be established in 1890.
The selection of German models of government has led, in a perfectly natural and legitimate way, to sundry appointments having a direct relation to pending constitutional changes; while the intimacy and fresh centres of influence thus set up have somewhat extended in other directions the field of patronage in Germany's favour.
From the above simple chain of causes and effects have sprung all the recent outcries about a German craze, about Japan's being turned into a German colony, about German aggressiveness, and Japanese fickleness, waywardness, and ingratitude.
Yet, surveyed calmly and with full knowledge of the facts, the position does not seem to warrant any of these interpretations.
　If Germany is, for a time at least, being warmed by rays of Japanese official sunshine, England is not on that account being pushed out into the cold.
It is both unnecessary and at variance with the facts to infer that accession of German popularity must, needs issue in coolness or ingratitude towards England.
On the contrary, England's position in this country was never higher nor did it ever possess surer elements of ultimate strength than at present.
There are no signs of wavering or lukewarmness on the part of Japan's leading statesmen in their sentiments towards Great Britain.

The varied communications from Tokyo are the product of the Times Tokyo Correspondent who must be well conversant with the politics in Japan, especially in the diplomatic field and the writer was often impressed with the accuracy of the communication which appeared in the Times.
Above all, the communication from Tokyo which appeared in "The Times" on May 14, is the one which cannot help stirring up the readers' particular attention.

The point of argument of this communication viewed with an unprejudiced eye clearly analyses the actual political situations in Japan.
We can say that the Times Correspondent must be truly clear-sighted in revealing the matter to light and making public the valuable argument.

(4) Social Problem in Japan

In a recent letter ("England, Germany and Japan"-April 5, from Tokyo), I referred to the movement lately set on foot in this country for reforming the dress of its women after Western styles.
The subject has excited some attention in Europe, and not a little criticism.
It is no wonder, then, that the grievous change now in progress is loudly deprecated by nearly all onlookers.
With most of us the first feeling is one of wrathful indignation.
That the Japanese, who are before all things artistic, should set themselves in this cold-blooded way to blot out one of the most delightful and picturesque features of the whole national life is regarded as incredible, unnatural, and exasperating.
It is Vandalism; it is sacrilege; it is senseless mimicry; it is everything that is bad.
That is the general lament, and there seems to be a good deal in its favour.
It is a habit in certain quarters to speak of the Japanese as a nation of children, always thirsting after some new toy.
Yet that character will hardly be assigned to Count Ito, even by the most reckless of censors.
And Count Ito it undoubtedly was who advised the Empress to inaugurate the new movement.
There must surely be something behind it all, of graver purpose and import than any yet divined, to have led a statesman with his cool head and sagacious brain to beget a reform of this weeping nature.
Into that something - into the real springs of the movement - it seems worth while to enquire.
To understand this question at all, it is necessary to glance at the present state of Japan's progress.
Thoughtful watchers of events in this country are agreed that the Japanese people have now reached a very critical point in their career of advancement.
If they aim at complete success in their new civilization, it is impossible for them to remain any longer content with material, administrative, and educational reforms, of the kind pursued during the last 20 years with such unexampled vigour and resolution.
Not only into the body politic, but into the whole social and moral fabric must be ingrafted those conditions and principles to which Western civilization owes its growth and vitality.
With the tone of that civilization perhaps nothing in Japan is so gravely out of harmony as the position of her women.
There is abundant proof that, if women are to take that part in the great work of national regeneration to which they are entitled, and which is essential for success, their whole position in society must be radically changed.

If there is one doctrine which we Westerns have hammered into the minds of Orientals, more forcibly than any other, it is the doctrine of their own inferiority.
The idea of most Europeans, <from noblemen to tailors>, is that an Oriental, though possibly one of God's creatures, hails from some substratum far down on the human scale, and is to be treated accordingly.
That is the kind of teaching which was inclined this most patriotic of peoples towards the adoption of expedients which without sacrificing their national individuality, may tend to make Occidental forget the differences between them.
Dress, without doubt, is an important factor in this question.
As long as a Japanese wears his country's costume, it marks him conspicuously an Occident, and tells against him in his intercourse with foreigners.
Substitute European clothing, and the contrast becomes less striking.
He at once receives greater recognition and respect.

If foregoing be a correct outline of the reasons by which Count Ito set the example of adopting European dress, we are led to conclude that the new movement, so far from being a blind following after Western ways merely because they were Western, is part of a high and deliberate scheme for bringing Japan into line with the nations of the Occident, and for reducing to the narrowest breadth possible the gulf of separation that lies between them.
Bent on this task the Japanese Chancellor believes that it can only be achieved by a modification of the domestic and social habits of Old Japan.
Further, he believes that a gradual assimilation of the national garb to that of Western lands will serve the double purpose of contributing to the above objects and of helping to blot out the stigma of Orientalism which, in spite of a long series of drastic reforms stamped with the seal of the world's approval, still clings to his progressive race.
Believing these things, he has not flinched from applying his remedies.
Here, then, we have the key to all the recent novelties, to this heart-breaking dress reform; to the improved means of education for girls and women; the thirst for foreign tongues, especially the English; the rapid growth of houses built, furnished, and managed in foreign style; the classes for training ladies in domestic work; and the multiplication of dances and other entertainments for the free intercourse of foreigners and Japanese, and of the Japanese among themselves.

the change of the dress is not a feminine's caprice, but Count Ito's policy who was unfortunate enough to be branded as a real author of the new heresy in taste.
However, his firm belief, we may call it his seditious plot, is that the reform eventually brings with it the modernization of the life of all the Japanese in every field and will get rid of the prevailing distinction between the East and West, even if his policy is laughed at as a ridiculous fool's imitation.

(5) A New Phase of Japanese Treaty Revision

If Japanese statesmen, warned by long experience of the flagrant shortcomings and grotesque anomalies of consular jurisdiction, were firmly opposed to any extension of that system beyond the bounds of the foreign settlements at the treaty ports, they were at the same time under no delusion whatever as to the terms upon which alone foreign Powers might be expected to surrender the privileges of extra territoriality.

Laws consistent with Western principles, and a judiciary competent to administer those laws, would certainly and rightly be insisted on as conditions precedent to foreign acceptance of Japanese jurisdiction.

Its main features were clear and simple.
They composed of 3 concessions and 2 conditions.

Concessions:

Japan was to concede 　　　　　　　　　　(1) The free opening of her whole territory.
The Powers were to concede
　　　　　　　　　　(2) Revision of the Tariff.
　　　　　　　　　　(3) Abolition of the extra territorial jurisdiction.
Conditions:
　　　　　　　　　　(1) Japanese laws were to be completed in conformity
　　　　　　　　　　　with Western standards.
　　　　　　　　　　(2) Japan was to establish Courts adequate to the
　　　　　　　　　　　competent administration of those laws.

It is conceivable also that the Japanese negotiators, weighed down by an acute sense of the immense difficulties of the problem, may have been able to reconcile themselves to sacrifices altogether unpalatable to the roughly-judging and inexperienced bulk of the people.
We know, at all events, that the Government's somewhat tardy resolve was not taken until they felt the national pulse beating strongly and unequivocally against the contemplated concession.

We see that something has, after all, been achieved by these negotiations.
Japan has avowed before the world her readiness to unlock her whole domain, on the condition, no less openly assented to by the Treaty Powers, that extra territoriality shall be thereupon abolished.
But, at any rate, Japan now knows what remains to be done before she can escape from her bondage, and she may be expected to set about doing it with increased verve and determination.

In these results may surely be seen some grounds for satisfaction, as well as features that cannot but be welcome to the ambitious and patriotic Japanese.

The Western world has received no more advantageous acquisition in the present age than from the admission of so fresh and vigorous an element into its community. Its gain is the greater and the more growing for the sturdiness with which Japan insists that it shall enter as an equal, and not as a dependent. They should note with pleasure every sign that the period of pupilage is drawing to a close, if it be not absolutely finished already. They had better, in any case, do spontaneously what it is clear they will otherwise have to do by compulsion. Japan evidently does not mean to be kept in leading-strings any longer. Englishmen, from, a sense both of right and of their own interest, will, it may be hoped, be the foremost to repudiate any share in constraining it.

(6) Changes in the Japanese Cabinet

(7) Japanese Politics

　Foreigners recognize in him (K. Inouye) a Japanese whose genuine sympathy with their civilization enables him to interpret justly their reluctance to surrender extra territorial privileges, and whose astute liberality prompts him to choose the route of practical conciliation rather than that of sentimental inflexibility.
　No Japanese, perhaps, but Count Inouye and his fellow statesmen, fully recognized another aspect of the situation, namely, that between Japan's comparative insignificance in Western eyes and the altogether novel character of the international recognition she was seeking the only possible path to immediate revision of the treaties lay in a compromise which must needs present some outwardly distasteful features.
　Upon that conviction Count Inouye acted, facing boldly the risk of his countrymen's disapproval.
　It was an unfortunate issue in many respects.
　The best that can be said in its favour is that it may serve to rivet the future attention of all concerned on a new and embarrassing factor in the treaty problem - the ever-increasing soreness and sensitiveness of the Japanese public in respect of their country's status vis-a-vis the Western Powers.
　The postponement of the treaty revision negotiations described in my last letter, has been followed by the resignation of Count Inouye, Minister of Foreign Affairs.
　Few doubted that this must ensue.
　Count Inouye's project, dictated by considerations which I hope to explain in a future communication, was to revise the treaties forthwith, offering to foreign Powers such guarantees as were judged essential in view of the incomplete organization of her judiciary.
　On this basis he conducted the negotiations until they reached the stage where the signatures of the contracting parties were alone required to conclude the convention.
　The Cabinet, by deciding to postpone the conference at this point, practically announced that the order of Count Inouye's project was premature.
　His Government, in short, could not consent to endorse the concessions he had consented to make as the price of immediate revision.
　Therefore, there was no other way for Inouye but to resign.
　In the intense earnestness with which Count Inouye has throughout pursued his weary tasks may be detected some considerations lying deeper than the ordinary instincts of patriotism.
To his astute mind it must have been long apparent that Japan's very independence might eventually come to be menaced by a protracted maintenance of international barriers applicable only to a condition of Pagan semi-barbarism.
　To the friends of Japan it must be a matter for regret, though hardly a matter of surprise, that the guarantees exacted by the foreign representatives were not framed in a more liberal spirit, and that the profound purpose of Count Inouye's policy could not be achieved without concessions from which the nation recoiled as an ordeal at once undeserved and unprofitable.
　No more conclusive evidence of the success of his foreign policy could be adduced than the fact that he accomplished the conflicting interests of 16 Western Powers, and of bringing an Oriental State for the first time within measurable distance of admission to the pale of Christendom.

(VII) 1888 (The 21st year of Meiji)

(1) Japanese Political Progress

　The post of Minister of State for Foreign Affairs had been offered to and accepted by Count Okuma.
　By Japan's friends this strengthening of the Government at a critical period of the nation's history is greeted with unmixed satisfaction.

　A careful study of Japanese history reveals a deeper and graver cause of anxiety.
　The men who planned the abolition of feudalism and undertook the task of constructing anew the nation's political and social fabrics do not encounter or expect to encounter any check from the nature of the materials they had to work upon.
　On the contrary, they had every reason to anticipate that the forces they applied would, so to speak, work expansively, and would need firm and powerful hands to keep them from gaining strength beyond control.
　For they knew full well that there was, and always had been, a Socialistic tendency among the Japanese people.
　Again, while the spontaneous abandonment in 1869 of their fiefs, military power, and feudal splendour, by 300 Nobles, occupying nearly the whole of the empire, stands out before Western eyes as the most astonishing of the many strange events which succeeded the Mikado's restoration, from a Japanese point of view the conduct of the barons seemed only natural and proper.
And when the Administration afterwards adopted very arbitrary measures for commuting the incomes of the feudal lords, it well knew that the national sentiment would condone the means for the sake of the end, which embodied the principle of distribution of wealth.
　The whole system, in fact, although restrictions against the purchase of land disappeared with feudalism, is clearly adverse to the tenure of large estates by moneyed men.
　Yet, at this very time, one of the stock outcries of political agitators is that the recipients of official incomes enjoy luxuries in excess of their deserts and in dangerous contrast to the condition of the masses.
　All these things point an unmistakable moral, and may well inspire apprehensions that Japan needs the curb rather than the spur, and that when once set in motion her political progress may be too swift to be safe.
　Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that, while great and early changes are inevitable, any precipitate measure of enfranchisement in the immediate future would be fraught with the gravest danger to the country.
　In entering on new paths of philosophy and science, the rising generation has cast loose some of the bonds which make for discipline and good order.
　The new and mischievous element thus called into being, coupled with the Socialistic tendencies which are indicated by the national history, offer additional arguments for political caution.
　Japan's statesmen must be well alive to the whole situation, and to the warnings which it inculcates.
　Already, indeed, they have given proof of their wariness and sobriety by a prudent choice of German models for Japan's Constitution, clearly recognizing, no doubt, that, however admirable the British Constitution, for example, may be in the abstract, to transplant it into this country without fully preparing the soil for its reception would be only to invite, in their worst form, dangers from which even the Anglo-Saxon race itself is not only exempt on its political progress.

(2) Japanese Material Progress

　Another noteworthy feature of the record of 1887 is the rapid increase of railway construction under the special conditions.
　With respect to railway construction, an important result of those conditions is that the face of the nation is firmly set against having recourse to foreign capital as long as the present treaties remain in force.
　Japan has become gravely apprehensive lest the abuses which have grown up under extra territorial system which should defy all efforts to prevent their gradual spread over the whole empire.
　Foreigners now live at a half-dozen settlements on the coast, where they have their own judicial tribunals.
　They cannot lawfully trade or own land outside of those settlements, nor can they lawfully become partners with Japanese in any commercial, industrial or other business undertaking.
　Yet, as time goes on and intercourse grows closer, as railways spread and enterprises of many kinds spring up at the chief centres of activity, foreign residents can and do devise means of evading with impunity the restrictions which are imposed by the treaties.
　It is little wonder, then, that she recoils from aggravating her present risks by contracting pecuniary obligations abroad which might possibly tend to postpone the day of her emancipation from the thraldom of the treaties.
　So serious, indeed are her apprehensions on this point that she is resolved for the present to build her railways with her own money; and as she by no means possesses the wherewithal to justify such a proceeding, namely, surplus capital seeking investment - the work progresses, not only with comparative slowness, but also at the cost of development in other directions.

(3) A Japanese story from real life

　Spring is of all seasons the most delightful in Japan.
　Lit by a warm sun, and no longer swept by Siberian blasts, the land bursts of a sudden into a beauty peculiarly its own.
　Maple sprouts begin to blush in the woods; several kinds of flowering trees successively put forth their exquisite blossoms; and many hued varieties of camellia and azalea deck the gardens with a blaze of colour.
　To all classes of the nature-loving Japanese this floral epoch is a time of festival.
　While the higher ranks of society, from the Sovereign downwards, exhibit the glories of their private grounds to parties of invited guests, every city and town has, what may be called its natural flower shows open to all comers.
　In the parks, gardens, and temple-grounds, by river and lake margins, and at choice spots in the suburbs, are to be found groves of flowering plum, peach, and cherry trees which from early March until late in April are thronged by happy swarms of admiring visitors, clad in holiday raiment and bent on genuine but simple pleasure.
　Young men and maidens, old folks and children, alike flock to these gatherings, which form one of the most attractive and characteristic feature of the national life.
　To a stranger unaccustomed to Japanese crowds the scene is full of novelty and interest.
　He must be a poor observer indeed who fails to be struck by the singular capacity for innocent enjoyment that is displayed by these around him by their love of natural beauties, their wonderful politeness to one another, their pleasant ripple of conversations, and their picturesque appearance.
　As to the watchful looker-on there will surely be manifested something of the happy and tender relation between parents and children which is the fruit partly of their sunshiny disposition, and partly of that most hallowed of all articles of Japanese faith, the doctrine of filial reverence.
　Among such people and in such a scene, at the famed Gion Temple in this <city of gardens> there happened very lately a dramatic incident in which the dying embers of an old feudal practice flashed into momentary brightness.
　The world may never hear again a tale from life in this country so strangely connecting the present with the past.
　Let me, then, tell it to the readers of <The Times> in the style of the Japanese narrator,

(4)　Japan's New Privy Council

　The prescribed components of the SUMITSU-IN are a President, a Vice-President, and 12 members, all chosen from the ranks of public men distinguished by the experience or signal service to the State.
　Besides the above, the 10 Cabinet Ministers have ex officio seats in the Council, with the right of voting.
　Apparently, then, the SUMITSU-IN, though destitute of executive functions, is designed to be no mere figure-head in the councils of the nation.
　But, whatever the powers of the SUMITSU-IN may prove to be, there can be little doubt as to the main purposes of its creation.
　Japan's rulers are now passing through a period of extraordinary difficulty.
　The framing of the constitution under which, a little more than two years hence, Japan is to enjoy a considerable measure of popular representation.

　To ease the burden of legislative work and critical scrutiny, leaving the Cabinet freer to carry on its executive duties, is plainly the chief motive that led to the formation of the SUMITSU-IN.
　The existence in immediate proximity to the Throne of the shelter of a select and sober consultive body, such as the SUMITSU-IN, will be well calculated to mitigate the difficulties likely to arise from time to time in the days of Japan's Parliamentary infancy.

(5) The recent volcanic explosion in Japan

< A NAME="SECTION3.7.6">(6) The Bandai-san Eruption

　At about eight o'clock on the morning of the 15th instant, almost in the twinkling of an eye, and by means of one of those most potent but happily rare manifestations of energy which seem to be our mother Earth's way of assuring us that she is still hearty, Sho-Bandai-san was blown into the air and wiped out of the map of Japan.
　A few minutes later its debris had buried or devastated an area about half the size of London.
　A dozen or more of upland hamlets had been overwhelmed in the earthen deluge, or wrecked by other phenomena attending the outburst.
　Several hundreds of people had met with sudden and terrible death.
　Scores of others had been injured; and the long roll of disaster included the destruction of horses and cattle, damming up of rivers, and laying waste of large tracts of rice-land and mulberry groves.
　Such were the facts as to the explosion and its results which gradually reached the capital in the course of last week.
　With them came thrilling reports of the tremendous sights and sounds that attended the eruption.
　It was impossible to sit still in Tokyo while the scene of such a great disaster was within fairly easy reach.
　So a small party of explorers was quickly formed.
　We went, and we have returned; and the above report will tell something of what we saw in our rapid but most interesting survey.

the two experts have embodied, as much as we are ever likely to know of a volcanic manifestation of the first order, investigated under highly favourable circumstances, and full of interest for the student of natural science.

　<Professor Sekiya - who has been kind enough to lay before us some of the fruits of the two or three month's hard work lately carried on by himself and his colleagues, in the rough and desolated region about Bandaisan - is in every way a high authority upon the subject, and we have to thank him for a clear, simple and intelligent account of many phenomena hitherto regarded as puzzling and inexplicable.
　On one point only there seems to be some outstanding mystery, and that is the origin of the little conical pits found in such profusion in the region round the volcano.
　Professor Milne is understood to attribute these to subterranean movements produced by the convulsion.
　Professor Sekiya holds, as we have just heard that they were caused by falling stones.
　When two such doctors differ, it is hardly likely that any sane man not belonging to the inner circle of the craft will take upon himself the role of arbiter.
　Therefore, you will, I know, agree with me that silence on my part is the best policy.
　And, after all, this question of the conical pits is a very small one, compared with those much mightier features of the explosion which are the real foci of ordinary human interest, and which come home with a peculiar and personal interest to us, who have our being on this unstable and highly-heated domain of the earth's crust.
　Vastness and suddenness are the two great factors which stand prominent in every narrative of the outburst.
　However, we know that the Bandaisan explosion altogether pales before the frightful cataclysm of five years ago which shattered and sunk the island of Krakatoa, and raised sixteen other islands in its place, besides elevating a large area of the ocean floor to the south east of Sumatra into a plain above the waters, and destroying, by tidal waves and otherwise, something like 100,000 people.
　But a very special feature of the Bandaisan disaster is that, happening in this land of Japan, which has no equal as a field for the practical study of seismology, nor any rival in its school of experts, the catastrophe had no sooner taken place than a band of highly competent explorers was sent to the spot, to study and report upon it.
　Probably no volcanic manifestation of the first order has ever been so carefully and systematically investigated as this one, and we must all feel grateful to Professor Sekiya, the leader of the expedition, for giving us an opportunity of hearing the highly interesting results of his researches, as just now kindly read to us by Professor Burton.>

(7) The Shrines of Ise, in Japan

　From Kioto, a dozen hours of travel by railway and steamboat bring you to the little haven of Kamiyashiro, which does duty as the port of Yamada, headquarters of the Shinto faith, and a goodly town of the province of Ise.
　In Yamada and its neighbourhood you come face to face with the two most famous and hallowed shrines of the oldest religious systems in the world.
　These <two great divine palaces> as they are called, have been for ages the centre and stronghold of the early Shinto faith, and their history runs far back into the mists of time.
　On the border of the town is the GEKU, or outer palace, dating from the year 478 of our era.
　The NAIKU, or inner palace, three miles beyond, was established no fewer than 1,892 years age, and within it is hidden the original sacred mirror, said to have been forged out of metal from heavenly mines, and bestowed by the Sun Goddess herself on her adopted grandson, the founder of the Japanese Imperial dynasty.
　Chief of all holy places in the Empire, the Ise shrines are to the Shinto believers of this realm what Mecca is to the Moslems or Jerusalem to the Christian Greeks.
　Shinto - the name given to the ancient religious belief of the Japanese, before Confucian philosophy and Buddhism came upon the scene-means <the way of the gods>.
　But it is a cult rather than a religion as commonly understood; its deities are for the most part terrestrial; and it has its roots in the remotest depths of Japanese mythology, which, as disinterred from old records and commentaries by the scholarly labours of Messrs. Satow and Chamberlain, may, for present purposes, be briefly outlined thus;

　Simple and unadorned as the Shinto faith itself, and exhaling a like odour of antiquity, are the <Two great divine palaces> of Ise.
　At the GEKU and NAIKU you find no such splendour - no wealth of colour, ornaments or carving, no elaborate gateways, or gorgeous altars, no pompous ceremonials, no images or objects exposed for veneration, no grandeur of form, or cunning workmanship, no sacrifices hardly any symbols.
　On the contrary, there reigns supreme in every detail the rigid, almost rude simplicity of the purest and humblest Shinto style.

　Such, in their history and impressive plainness which have surely left some marks, when you come to think of it, on the annals and temperament of the Japanese race - are the leading externals and other characteristics of the <two great divine palaces> of the Shinto faith.
　These teach us that antiquity, simplicity, and purity are the key notes of Shinto in all its phases, as far as exemplified at its head-quarters in Ise.
　Could any loftier ideals be devised for fostering those genuine and soul stirring emotions which are aimed at in the fabrics of all religion?
　I doubt it.
　And I am sure that no man or woman, Christian or otherwise, can come away from Yamada without feeling that a very curious and deep interest attaches itself to those strange groups of homely buildings, breathing the flavour of age, decay, and repose, and bringing you into touch with the earliest days of the oldest faith of this interesting people.

(VIII) 1889 (The 22nd Year of Meiji)

(1) The Birthday of a Constitution

(2) The Birthday of a Constitution

(3) The Treaty Drama in Japan

The precise terms of the Treaty with the United States have not yet been made public; but our Correspondent enunciates the broad principles on which the Japanese Government is prepared to enter into negotiations with the several Powers for the abolition of their extra territorial privileges.
In our judgement these proposals are perfectly reasonable in substance.
At any rate, there is nothing to prevent their being made the basis of friendly negotiation with a Power which has given and is giving such proofs as Japan of its capacity to March abreast with the movement of Western civilization.
In comparison with the substantial advantages which Japan now offers, and which the United States have so promptly and so eagerly seized, the privileges of extra territoriality, to which in common with the other European Powers this country seems unwisely disposed to cling, are an absurdity and an anachronism.
They might have been defensible and even expedient when Japan was little known and therefore little trusted.
In existing circumstances, they are little short of an insult to Japan, as well as a serious hindrance.

(1) It approved the appointment of the foreign Judges as per the text "A number of competent foreign Judges shall be appointed to sit with Japanese Judges in the Supreme Court of Japan, which has appellate jurisdiction in all cases involving interests or penalties of 100 dollars or upwards; such foreign Judges shall be in a majority in all cases where foreigners are concerned."
(2) It pre-contracted to the Treaty Powers the following; "The new codes which are modelled after the best European systems shall have been duly compiled and promulgated and put into force 3 years before the expiry of the time limit, therein denoted for the abolition of the treaty-port system, and that authorized English translation shall be published a year and a half before the said time of expiry."

(4) England's position in Japan

In view of the strong public feeling on the treaty revision which has prevailed in Japan for some years past, since the failure of the Conference of 1886/7, it is not surprising that the recent news was greeted by the people and the newspapers with unmixed approval, congratulation, and joy.
With a unanimity rarely observed on subjects of great national importance, the whole vernacular Press joined in a chorus of gratitude on behalf of the Japanese people for Germany's timely recognition of Japan's claims.
Count Okuma at the same time comes in for warm praise on account of his bold and sagacious statesmanship; while the terms of the new treaty, for the first time made publicly known through your columns by my letter already referred to, are generally welcomed, being recognized as a marked improvement on the former proposals more consistent with the country's indignity, and less submissive in spirit and fact.

(5) Japanese Polo

(1) "Dakiu", the Japanese polo which was performed at the entertainment given by Prince Kita-Shirakawa for welcoming Princes Albert Victor and George, grandsons of Queen Victoria on October 27, 1881.
(2) "Dakiu-raku," one of the Japanese dances of olden days (Gagaku) that was performed on February 11, 1889 at the Imperial Palace.
(3) "Japanese Dakiu" which was played at "Japanese Polo Club" in Tokyo on May 5, 1889 which Palmer saw the real match, and on this basis he wrote the particulars of its origin, history and detailed rules of the play.

(6) Cormorant Fishing in Japan

(7) The attempted assassination of the Japanese Foreign Minister

(8) The Shinto Festival of Ise, in Japan

If it be worth while - and few will deny that it is so - to seize fleeting opportunities as are still now and then permitted to us of photographing the old ways and ceremonies of the interesting land first introduced to Western ken by Marco Polo, six centuries ago, under the name of ZIPANGU, then, assuredly, the subject of this letter may well enough claim a hearing in the columns of The Times.

My story today is of an old-time spectacle appertaining to Shinto, at once the primitive, yet still living and ruling faith of the Japanese people and one of the most ancient religious　systems in the world.
To this it may be added that, as the ceremonies which I shall describe take place but once in 20 years, and as no alien was present at these ceremonies, in 1869, nor any but myself on the occasion lately ended, the writer of these lines is, and must in the nature of things be for 20 years to come, the sole foreign eye-witness, living or dead, of the great festival of Ise, which is by far the chief and most rare of all its kind in Japan.
Readers of my letter on the Shrines of Ise in The Times of the 27th of last December may remember that, in a tolerably full account of the temples and matters relating to them, I pointed out that the hoary antiquity of those hallowed seats of worship is the antiquity of type and of establishment, not of the fabric themselves.

I showed that, being built only of plain spruce and thatch, exactly after the primitive fashion of the buildings that prevailed in Japan before the birth of Christ, the two great shrines at Yamada, namely, the Naiku, dedicated to the Sun Goddess, who is regarded as the ancestress of the Imperial line, and the Geku, dedicated to the Goddess of Earth, suffer impairment so rapidly in the damp and variable climate of Japan that it has been the practice for the last 12 centuries to renew them every twentieth year.
I dwelt upon the extraordinary care that has been taken on all such occasions to preserve the ancient style most faithfully in every detail, so that each successive group of structures should be an accurate copy of the last.
I further explained that, instead of pulling down one set of fabrics and building another in its place, the Japanese plan for each temple is to have two precisely similar sites, contiguous to one another and, alternately occupied, the old set not being dismantled until its counterpart is finished and made ready to become the new home of the venerated emblem of the deity, in which latter, be it what it may, is incorporated and centred the sacredness of every Shinto shrine in the empire.

(9) Affairs in Japan

Notwithstanding the cordial welcome with which the acceptance, first by America and then by Germany, of Count Okuma's new scheme of treaty revision was greeted by the nation at large, thorns sown since that time in the path of the Government by a few agitations, at first perhaps for purely party purposes, have grown into what now threatens to become a barrier of ugly and somewhat unmanageable dimensions.
It must, of course, seem at first surprising, and even unintelligible, that there should really have arisen in Japan itself any appreciable antagonism to the very excellent treaty programme which was set on foot by the Emperor's negotiators ten months ago, and which has already reached a stage, as far as the Western Powers are concerned, within sight of early and happy achievement.
The real bugbear is that the provisions of the new treaties fall short of that degree of equal treatment which the country has a right to expect.
That such a cry, once raised, should run like wildfire among this proud and excitable people is a matter less of surprise than of regret to those who know them best.
The occasion, nevertheless, furnishes an interesting illustration, not only of the extraordinary rapidity with which the force of public opinion is at this epoch making heed in Japan, but of the untoward issues that were only to be expected from the endless wrangles and delays which have beset the whole weary question of the treaties.
It is not too much to say that the programme now being cavilled at would have been passed with acclamation two years ago.
There is the power of public opinion, growing daily in scope and strength.
No longer have foreign diplomatists a handful of Ministers only to deal with.
Every one can understand that the spectacle of an alien Judge administering Japanese Law from the Japanese bench, in respect of Japanese subjects, and in the name of the Japanese Emperor, is little likely to be welcome to a proud and sensitive race, even though they know that it is but a temporary sacrifice in exchange for which their country acquires concessions of such vastly greater weight as an unfettered tariff and judicial autonomy.
The second class of dissentients comprises those who apparently will be content with nothing less than absolute unfettered equality in the country's foreign relations.
And of the ideas of this party are rather chimerical than practical, they at least furnish an interesting index of the mood that has grown out of long delay, long pondering, and perhaps some knowledge of that which in the game of poker is called <bluffing>.
As to the course the Government will take in respect of the treaty question, there is room for much interesting speculation.
Diplomatists, it is to be hoped, would succeed in finding some exit from the situation.
At least they would not fail to weigh well the new facts and aspects of the case, and to consider whether inflexibility on a point that has proved to be so hurtful to Japanese pride could not be made to give place to some expedient, which, while removing the sting of encroachment on the nation's sovereignty would at the same time embody all necessary safeguards for the administration of justice where foreigners and their interests are concerned.

(IX) 1890 (The 23rd Year of Meiji)

(1) The Reconstruction of the Japanese Cabinet

　It cannot, however, be too clearly laid down that the failure of Count Okuma's scheme of revision is due in a vastly greater degree to the strife and friction of Japanese political parties than to any demerits, real, or fancied, in the scheme itself.
　The proposal to appoint four or five alien Judges to administer Japanese laws from the Japanese bench, which was made the stalking horse of the recent agitation, can at best be regarded as an alternative necessitated by the exigencies of the case, as the most practicable means to exit from a situation daily becoming more impossible as the date of the operation of Japanese new Constitution rapidly draws near.
　The point is that this expedient would certainly have passed unheeded, or, at least, have been acquiesced in without demur by the public of Japan, if the unwary exultation of the Kaishinto had not lashed their rivals into a fever of opposition, and called forth that torrent of angry and exasperated declamation, seasoned with inflammatory appeals to the peoples' pride, on which, and not because of any lack of merit in itself, this fourth attempt to solve the terrible problem of the treaties has come to grief after a year of struggle.
　It is not too much to say that, in the calmer mood of a twelve month ago, the very measure now overwhelmed in the strife of parties would have been accepted gratefully by the mass of the people.
　The Foreign Office falls to Viscount Aoki, formerly Envoy to Berlin, and for some years past Vice-Minister of the Department, under the leadership, successively of Counts Inouye, and Okuma.
　The country has yet to learn the qualities as a statesman of the Minister who now consents to step into the breach where two such capable men have fallen.
　But it is certain that he brings to his new post a wide experience of Japan's foreign relations, especially in the matter of the treaties, together with a liberal and cosmopolitan breadth of view, and that no one is more keenly alive than himself to the dominant weight of English interests in Japan, and to the enormous importance to his Government of Great Britain's friendship.
　Meanwhile, there is nothing in recent events and changes to shake the opinion on which I ventured a few weeks ago, namely, that, while neither assenting, on the one hand, to an indefinite postponement of the negotiations, nor, on the other hand, attempting to preserve with Count Okuma's programme, in the teeth of opposition at home and abroad, the Government will take the middle course of once more essaying a settlement of the problem by some such modifications of the recent proposals as shall tend to satisfy foreign scruples without offending the susceptibilities of the people.

(2) Japanese Ways

It might be a curious subject for inquiry whether, as there are personal equations among star observers, so there may be personal equations among nations, equations appertaining, that is to say, to everyday ways of doing the same everyday things which prevail among the world's different peoples, as the result, not of the special circumstances under which they live or have lived, but of independent mental bent.
If such an investigation should be now undertaken, it is certain that the personal equations of the Japanese vis-a-vis the Western and indeed, all other races would be found to be a very appreciable quantity.
Japanese ways are in many respects unique.

Hereunder, several examples;
(1) The carpenter planes and saws towards instead of from him, the wrong way as we should say, yet this feats of planing are extraordinary.
(2) At games of cards the dealer deals to the right, and the play goes round in the same direction.
(3) Horses are mounted from the right side, where also are all the harness fastenings.
(4) The sail cloths in Japanese crafts are vertical instead of horizontal, and laced instead of sewn.

　Lastly, who of us that live here has not had experience of what I have heard described as the Japanese habit of saying Yes when they ought to say NO?
　You ask your guest, <Will you not take some more wine?> or say to your friend in the street, interrogatively, <I suppose there will be no more rain today?>
　In both cases he answers in the affirmative.
　He will not take more wine, and he agrees with you about the weather prospects.
　The Englishman, in both cases, would say NO.
　The question is, which is correct?
　That, too, is the question which suggests itself in respect of many of the idiosyncrasies here grouped together under the name of Japanese ways.
　In the difficulty of answering it, one is tempted to wish that there were some standard nation, like the ambidexterous man of the story, from which, as a datum, the personal equations of the rest might be ascertained.
　It might then be possible to establish conclusively that certian things ought to be done only in certain ways, and to say - what no one can say now - who is right and who wrong.
　The foundation of the Western faith in such matters are rudely shaken by what we saw and know of the Japanese.
　Accustomed to our own ways, we are apt to speak lightly of Japanese ways as wrong.
　But the Japanese say the very same about us.
　As Mr. Chamberlain tells us in the interesting book entitled Things Japanese, which he has lately published, many of our ways are the ways of topsy-turvydom in the eyes of this country's people.
　In what respects, among those here cited, we or they have the better of the argument each reader of The Times may judge for himself from the fore-going epitome of the most conspicuous of their so-called peculiarities.
　Possibly some scientist of the future may succeed in throwing light on the subject, and be able to find out the causes of differences which are too great and invariable to be the results of mere accident.

(3) The Birthday of Japan's First Parliament

　Not even the sagest student of the national thought and character could venture to forecast with any confidence at this epoch, the issue of the momentous plunge that Japan has now taken, after more than two decades of preparation.
　For the present her friends can only hope the best of her.
　To judge from the past, there certainly seems to be ground for hope.
　Nothing has so puzzled even the men who best know Japan as the way in which, despite the worst fears and prognostications, she has conquered, one after another, by some qualities wholly inscrutable to Western minds, difficulties that might well have brought an ordinary country to grief.
　Most of the rulers and counsellors who have led her up to her present stage are still to the fore in the fabric of the Government, and their influence and experience can hardly fail, for some time to come, to have an effect on the conduct of the national affair.

(X) 1891 (The 24th Year of Meiji)

(1) The Death and Burial of a Great Japanese Noble

　Emperor's confidence in Prince Sanjo was almost unbounded, and was attested in an emphatic and touching manner at his dying servant's bedside.
　Learning, on the 18th instant, that the Prince's case was hopeless, the Emperor hastened to his residence, and personally conferred on him the highest rank attainable by a Japanese subject, accompanying the bestowal with the following words which were uttered in a voice broken by emotion and sorrow; <In the early years of my reign while I was yet a youth, you were my chief aid.
　It was you who, not shrinking from a post of weighty responsibility, lent me assistance so constant, so steady, and so true that you were to me as a teacher and a parent.
　Never, from first to last, did you falter or fail in the discharge of your large trust.
　Your services are a model for all subjects of our time.
　In recognition of your noble fidelity, I confer on you the First Class of the First Rank.>
　Palmer wrote on the funeral as follows;
The State funeral of the lamented Noble, which took place yesterday, was conducted, as far as the set ceremonial went, in strict accordance with the simple and ancient rites of pure Shintoism.
　White is the prevailing colour at Shinto funerals-white wood for coffin and bier, white robes for priests, deacons and bearers, white crape garments for the sorrowing womankind who follow.
　Pomp and pageantry are conspicuously absent, no matter how great be the dead man's rank and fame.

(2) Parliamentary Procedures in Japan

　It is, no doubt, safe to say that of all that Japan has done and undone during the process of being born again which she has undergone during the past 25 years, and still undergoing, the feature of chief interest for Western minds is her recent adoption of representative institutions.
　The birth of the first Oriental Parliament would be, under any circumstances, a landmark in history.

(1) The structures of the diet buildings.
(2) The laws of the House and Rules of Procedure.
(3) System of debate and discussion.
(4) Competency and faculty of the congressmen.
(5) Behaviour and manners of the Congressmen.

　It will be gathered, moreover, that the framers of Japan's Constitution, with the world's successes and failures as their guides, have aimed at elaborating a system combining the liberty proper to Parliamentary institutions with due safeguards against licence.
　They have borrowed from the fabrics of the European Continent, the United States, and England, adapting what they borrowed to existing conditions in Japan.
　There is no slavish copying of any one model, and scarcely anything has been adopted without modification.
　From England was inhaled the spirit of liberty which permeates the whole, while the Sectional division of the Chambers was inspired by examples from the Continent, and the Committee system embodies the best features of the United States' practice.
　It remains to be seen what measure of final success will attend these efforts to strike a happy mean, with special adaptation to the country's circumstances and to the capacity and character of its representatives.

(3) Parliamentary Reporting in Japan

　Mr. Kentaro Kaneko, the Secretary of Privy Council returned from Europe studying the parliamentary procedures and his enquiries had led him to favour very strongly the adoption, if possible, of official shorthand reporting for the proceedings in the Japanese Diet.
　The great point to be determined was whether the system already existing could be safely resorted to.
　With this object he gathered together at his house, about a dozen of Minamoto's disciples and tested their capacity to record accurately from his own lips a lecture on his Western travels.
　The result of two such evenings of trial was a genuine triumph, leading later to the assemblage of a sufficient staff for the Diet's work, and to the elaboration of an organized system of reporting.
　Thus the labours of Minamoto and his little band were at last to bring forth fruit and reap reward.
　Mr. Kaneko could now produce the system and the men, and the Government, advised by him, adopted the principle of official verbatim reporting and established a stenographic Bureau.
　As a result, the proceedings, day by day, of each House of the Diet, all through the session, appeared in print in the Official Gazette at six o'clock the next morning; and with such fidelity were the speeches reproduced that many a country member is said to have been fairly aghast at finding his very provincialism literally taken down, and published in the enduring pages of the Government journal.

　Such is the story of an undertaking long thought to be hopeless-begun in drudgery and privation, achieved only to meet at first with the poorest recognition, but at length crowned with a measure of success so great as to have placed Japan in the enviable position of being able to stereotype the utterance of her earliest parliamentary legislators from the first hour of their very first assemblage.
　It is also said by scholars that the new stenography bids fair to confer an inestimable blessing on Japan, by bridging the gulf which now separates the written language from the spoken language.

　Meantime its author, the sturdy Minamoto will take neither office nor reward.
　He is a Japanese of the old school.
　He worked for his country and for a cause; he succeeded; and that, for him, is enough.

　I (the editor of the journal) know very well, with thanks, the fact that Major General Palmer has been kind enough to have sent various instructive communications to The Times which is called the king of the Newspaper circles in the world, as its Tokyo Correspondent, with the pen which is both of fluent and flowery touch, regarding the current events of our country with the purpose of informing European peoples of the actual position of New Japan.
　As he sent this time the exact and detailed communication on the parliamentary Procedure and Reporting of the Diet just started in Japan, we herein translated the gist of the communications into Japanese so that our readers may be able to know how the Japanese Diet just started in Japan effected in the mind of this talented foreign guest.

(4) The Attack on the Czarevitch in Japan

(5) The Departure of Czarevitch from Japan

　The Tokyo Correspondent of The Times reported on May 15 in details on the accident which occurred in the body of the Russian Crown Prince.
　As this communication conveys only the real position true to the accident all through, European peoples, on reading this, will fully be able to grasp the real position as to the feeling of Japanese people to Russia and other foreign countries.
　And the writer would like to hereby respectfully give his hearty thanks on behalf of our country to the Tokyo Correspondent for his detailed and accurate communication which he sent to The Times.

(6) The Flower Art of the Japanese

　Of the national love for floral beauties, as manifested in the national customs and art no one having any knowledge of this country can fail to be well aware.
　Rich from ancient times in a fine art instinct, the Japanese have always loved flowers, and spared no pains to cultivate them.
　With nearly every month and every national festival are identified the chief flowers and flowering shrubs and trees of the season.
　Flower-viewing excursions to the displays of plum and cherry blossoms, wistaria, peony, lotus, chrysanthemums, and other floral delights, that are to be found in and about all of the principal cities, rank among the best-loved of Japanese holiday pastimes.
　But that the flower charm which thus pervades the national life had found a deeper and more refined expression in the development - during the last four or five centuries especially - of a highly artistic cult of flower arrangement was a fact till lately unknown, or at least known only to residents in Japan and a few amateurs of her art abroad.
　Though we could, and did, admire enthusiastically the matchless charm of the finished work, the details and principles of the art that produced it were a dark and seemingly hopeless mystery.
　At length Mr. Conder approached the problem, bringing to his task, besides the necessary qualification of a sound knowledge of Japanese, considerable artistic qualities on his own part.
　A paper on the “Theory of Japanese Flower Arrangement" read before the Asiatic Society of Japan in October, 1889, was the first fruit of his researches and that has now been elaborated into the very thorough and attractive quarto volume, rich with illustrations, to which I devote this letter.
　He is its sole foreign apostle and expounder.
　The origin of the cult is apparently religious, its first teachers in this country having been the priests who introduced Buddhism from China in the sixth century.
　Underlying it, moreover, is the Buddhist doctrine of the economy of life.
　By the Japanese, who are deeply imbued with that doctrine, flowers and plants, as living things, are held to deserve the treatment due to sentient objects.
　It being the Japanese conception of flowers that they are to be regarded and treated as living things, not merely the blossoms but all the characteristics of the plant or tree producing them are lovingly studied by the flower art of Japan.
　The broad and inevitable conclusion from Mr. Conder's revelations which most directly concerns the people of the Occident is that in the whole cult and poetry of domestic floral arrangement Japan is head and shoulders above the rest of the world.
　A Japanese critic has well said of Mr. Conder's book that in treating an art subject its author has himself given us a work of art.
　Founded as it is on the principle of fidelity to nature, the flower art of the Japanese can never die, but, rather, is assuredly destined to serve as a model for other countries.
　It would also inculcate the close study of flowers and their ways, the love of nature and art, and perhaps even some of the higher tributes that are claimed for devotees of the floral cult in Japan.

　<A religious spirit,> Mr. Conder tells us, <self-denial, gentleness, and forgetfulness of cares are among the virtues of the art of arranging flowers>.

(7) The Great Japanese Earthquake

　Ten days ago, the whole of Central Japan was convulsed by an earthquake of very uncommon severity.
　The particulars of the phenomenon of its potency and far reaching effects, are gradually coming to light, and enough is now known to make it only too clear that the catastrophe of the 28th must be ranked as one of the most terrible seismic records.
　No fewer than 31 provinces of Japan were more or less violently agitated.
In other words, the earth's crust was similarly shaken for several minutes together over an area equal to that of England.
　Roughly speaking, the area of maximum disaster measures 25 miles from North to South by 20 miles from East to West, and contained in the provinces of Mino and Owari, the whole of which suffered more or less cruelly by the catastrophe.
　To sum up the whole fruits of this latest manifestations of the earth's plutonic energy, the figures thus far arrived at show that fully 8,000 people have perished by horrible deaths, the wounded numbering about 10,000; and that, to 84,000 houses demolished by the earthquake, must be added 5,000 afterwards destroyed by fire, and at least 20,000 reduced to various states of dilapidation.
　More than 300,000 people have been suddenly rendered homeless, and to many of these the calamity means for the time at least, virtual destitution.

(XI) 1892 (The 25th Year of Meiji)

(1) The Great Japanese Earthquake

(2) An Incident of Extra-territoriality in Japan

(1) the abolishment of the post of Consul General in Japan without informing the Japanese Foreign Office for its reason, and

　 (2) subsequent leave of the Consul General from Tokyo without any replacement, were recognized by the Japanese Government as the abandonment of the Consular Jurisdiction.

　The extra territorial immunities which are enjoyed by the Western Powers under the treaties with Japan provide exemption from the subjects of those Powers from Japanese jurisdiction of every kind, with the one exception that civil cases in which Japanese are defendents are heard in Japanese Courts.
　But the treaties which confer these immunities enjoin at the same time - constructively, at least that the Powers thus granted exemption from the territorial jurisdiction shall provide efficient substitutes for the Japanese tribunals and laws.
　Each Power is bound to provide and maintain the proper machinery for exercising jurisdiction over its nationals in Japan.
　Portugal, it is to be remarked, has been a grievous sinner in this respect.
　The Emperor's advisers evidently hold that Portugal, by her failure, after fair warning, to maintain the discharge of the international obligations which she deliberately assumed under the treaty of 1860, has forfeited her title to the immunities conveyed by that treaty, and has practically abdicated her power of consular jurisdiction.

(3) Political Development in Japan

　Railways - Short lines of railway, first, ran in the neighbourhood of the two capitals, Tokyo and Kyoto, and of the Treaty Ports of Kobe and Yokohama, now it is possible to travel by rail within a single day from Tokyo to Kyoto, while over 1,500 miles of the iron road are recorded in the statistical calender.
　Tramcars clatter along the streets in the capital.
　Gas flames in some of the principal highways, and the electric light is uniformly employed in the public buildings, in many of the residences of Ministers and nobles, in the tea houses which figure so largely in the holiday life of the Japanese gentlemen, and in quite a number of stores and even small shops.
　Telephones and telegraphs stretch a web of wires overhead.
　Public offices, of showy European architecture and imposing dimensions have almost replaced the long picturesque lines of Yashiki, or fortified city residence of the feudal lords and their sworded retainers, that covered so great an area within the moats.

　An immense pile of scaffolding, surrounding a space much larger than the Law Courts on the Strand, conceals what will presently be known as the new Ministry and Courts of Justice, where will be dispensed a jurisprudence that has been borrowed, with a truly Japanese eclecticism, from the codes of half the nations of Europe.

although the level of political intelligence in the Chamber is reasonably high, it does not appear that the level of character or prestige is equally so.

It may be said, indeed, that the Parliamentary experiment is being watched by the more stable elements of the community from a suspicious though narrowing distance and that a sense of national obligation to the highest duties of citizenship has not yet been aroused as widely as was hoped.

　At the same time,charges of Government nepotism and electoral tyranny are freely bandied about.
　A curious feature in the new Japanese polity, in the midst of a welter of change, is the continued dominion of the old clan system, just as it did before the revolution.
　The principal clans, Satsuma, Choshiu, Hizen and Tosa, still retain almost unchallenged supremacy, alike in the formation of Cabinets and the distribution of patronage.
　The Army, and still more the Navy, which in the background play a very important and a little understood part in the politics of modern Japan, and which are the real mainstay of the Government against the subversive tendencies of Parliamentary majorities of demagogic Radicalism, are mainly officered by men belonging to the principal clans; and it will be long before a system disappears which so many of the hands that pull the strings are united to support.
　Ultimately it may perish, as did the influence of the Wing families in England.

　Among the questions which are much discussed alike by foreigners and residents, and about which very contrary opinions are expressed, not merely at different times, but by different writers at the same time, is the general attitude of the Japanese people, and particularly of the rising generation towards foreigners.
　It should not be inferred because Japan has recognized that Europe is ahead of herself in many branches of knowledge and resources of civilization, and that she must go to Germany for her guns, to France for her law, to England for her railways that she is, therefore, an indiscriminate admirer of that which she imitates or that the Western man is an idol in her social pantheon.
　On the contrary, the more she has assimilated European excellencies the more critical she has become of European defects; whilst at times the precipitate rapidity of her own advance has produced a reactionary wave, which occasionally assumes serious proportions.
　The existence of such a feeling is by no means surprising when we remember the forces by which it is recruited.
　Among these may be counted the latent Conservatism in the national character, which, though but little expressed, still smoulders with an internal combustion that while those sudden shocks of nature that wreck the Japanese landscape, now and then breaks force in a passionate vendetta of outrage or assassination, inordinate vanity of the people, fostered at once by their illustrious antiquity and by the ease with which they seem to have planted themselves in the forefront of the files of time; the indiscreet rapidity with which they have been asked to swallow, almost in the same gulp, a foreign dress, a foreign language, and a foreign religion; and a consciousness of national strength that resents the suspicion of having bartered its birthright to aliens.
　Political incidents, a proposal of treaty revision on terms at all derogatory to the national dignity, the not too sensitive and sometimes brutal candour of the European Press, the resolutions passed at a meeting of Foreign merchants, may excite this feeling to a white heat of fury.
　At times, it slumbers.
　A year ago it seemed for a time to have experienced a sharp inflammation, but since then to have subsided.

< A NAME="SECTION3.11.4">(4) The Political Situation in Japan

　In one respect the present political situation in Japan resembles that in England.
　A new Ministry has recently assumed the seals of office, and Parliament and the country are waiting to see what their policy and their programme will be.
　In neither case can any definite forecast be hazarded; for though Count Ito, the new Prime Minister, is confronted by no such problem as that of taking to pieces an old Constitution, he has yet the far from easy task of keeping intact a new one; while the subject of Treaty Revision is at least a stubborn thorn in Japanese as is that of Home Rule in British politics.
　Nay, the historical analogy may be pushed one point further; for just as the revolutionary struggle in Ireland has not passed without the assassination of an English Minister, so the treaty conflict in Japan was signalized at an earlier stage by an equally murderous, though happily a less fatal, attack upon Count Okuma, one of the leading Japanese statesmen.
　Here, however, popular suspense will sooner be allayed: for the Diet meets again in November; and the speculations with which the native Press is filling the holiday season as to the programme of the new Administration will be in process of solution almost as soon as these lines are in print.
　The new Japanese Government may almost claim to be a Ministry of all the Talents, and undoubtedly the summons of Count Ito by the Emperor upon the fall of the Matsukata Cabinet in the past summer, and the composition of his Administration, have excited the liveliest satisfaction in political circles in Japan.
　The treaties which regulate the commercial relations of Japan with foreign countries; and which provide for the separate jurisdiction in the treaty ports of the subjects of the 18 signatory Powers, have been concluded at various periods since the first American Treaty was signed by Commodore Perry in 1854.
　On the various occasions since, when revision has been seriously attempted, the endeavour has resulted in failure owing to the difficulty of reconciling the conflicting claims of the foreign Powers, who have been averse to stepping down from their pinnacle of vantage without either a definite quid pro quo, or at least a guarantee that they will not suffer by the surrender; and of Japan, who, with a natural consciousness of her steadily improving position and of the obligations of natural dignity, whittles away one by one the counter - concessions which, she was at first prepared to make, and even talks about exacting conditions herself.
　I do not share the feelings of either of those schools between whom public opinion, as represented in books and newspapers about Japan, seems to be directed, namely, those on the one hand the sentimental side of whose nature inflamed, if they are Japanese, by patriotism, if they are foreigners by contact with an engaging people and a pretty country revolts against what they describe as a great national wrong, whereby Japan has been cheated out of her birthright, and is being kept in perpetual exile in the tents of Edom; or, on the other hand, those who argue for the strict letter of the treaties ad aeternam, and decline to make the smallest concession to the vast change that 30 years have effected in the status of modern Japan.
　The former attitude is adopted, naturally enough by Japanese writers as it seems to me, by the majority in English and American tourists in Japan.
　The second or ultra-Conservative attitude is taken up by many of the merchant class in the treaty ports, who, for perfectly honourable but selfish reasons, would like to maintain the status quo as long as they can.
　As a matter of fact there is quite sufficient justice on both sides of the controversy to admit of temperate discussions and of amicable agreement; and the energies of the true friends of Japan should be directed to minimizing the points of friction and broadening the basis of possible compromise, instead of sharpening their blades for a further abortive encounter.
　In what quarter, then, does the solution lie?
　The answer will be found in a brief examination of the various proposals for treaty revision that have so far been made by Japanese statesmen to the foreign representatives or vice versa.

　Their history has been one of unbroken disappointment and failure; but it has also been marked by certain signs of progressive development which may lend guidance to statesmen at the present stage.
　Three times in the last 10 years have Japanese Foreign Ministers made overtures to the treaty Powers.
　The first of those was Count Inouye, the present Minister for Home Affairs, who in 1882, originally suggested the ultimate abolition of consular jurisdiction and the ad interim discussion of terms.
　A preliminary conference was summoned in 1884 and memoranda, prepared by the British and the Japanese Government, were successively submitted.
　The negotiations continued till, in 1886, the actual conference of all the treaty Powers met in Tokyo, when a definite scheme, initiated by the English and German Governments, was propounded, and passed through many of the preliminary stages both of examination and acceptance.
　There were to be a large number of foreign Judges on the Japanese bench, the conditions of whose appointment and removal evoked much hostile criticism in the native Press.
　The promised codes and future amendments therein were to be submitted to the foreign Powers - an additional source of national irritation.
　It was not surprising that upon these points the negotiations at length broke down in 1887.

　Undeterred by the failure of his predecessor, Count Okuma resumed negotiations in 1888; but, having learned by experience the mistake of dealing with a Round Table at which the representatives of 18 nations with conflicting interests were seated in conclave, he approached the Powers individually, offering, in place of a majority of foreign assessors in the Supreme Court in cases where foreigners were concerned.
　A space of three years is to elapse between the promulgation of the promised codes and the final abolition of consular jurisdiction.
　Upon these lines the United States, Germany, and Russia had already signed treaties; and Great Britain, the vast preponderance of whose commercial interest in Japan renders her in every case the arbiter of the situation was within measurable distance of the same end, when, public opinion having been already gravely excited in Japan at the proposed appointment of alien Judges, and being further inflamed by impending elections for the first Diet, an attempt was made with a dynamite bomb upon the life of Count Okuma in October 1889.
　The statesman escaped, though seriously mutilated.
　The would-be assassin killed himself.
　But his ulterior object had been gained, for once more treaty revision was dropped like a hot coal from the terrified fingers of the plenipotentiaries at Tokyo.
　Nor could the retreat be fairly set down to cowardice, seeing that public sentiment, though not behind the assassin, was in open sympathy with the motives that had actuated him to a deed which was the more significant that it by no means stands alone in the annals of modern Japan.
　Since that date the opening of the Japanese Diet, and the rapid growth both of national self respect and of ill-marshalled but powerful public opinion which it had produced, have not combined to render a settlement more easy.
　Nevertheless, Viscount Aoki, Foreign Minister in the succeeding Government, gallantly re-entered the lists in 1890: and it is understood that his overtures, which were naturally directed in the first place to the removal of the lingering vestiges of British opposition, were met in the most favourable spirit by the Administration of Lord Salisbury; and that it now only rests with the Japanese Government which it has more than once admitted to be reasonable, to enter upon the fruition of the long struggle for complete national autonomy whose successive stages I have described.

　What must be the leading feature of any such solution will be manifest from what has already been said.
　In the first place, the full text of the entire civil and commercial code (the criminal code and the codes of criminal and civil procedure being already in operation) must be promulgated, translated and put into satisfactory operation.
　No nation can with justice call upon the subjects of another, even within its own territories, to exchange a position of judicial security, established by treaty and ratified by long and successful experience, for the dubious protection of an inchoate, and imperfect, or an ill-comprehended body of law; secondly, a period must elapse in which the new codes thus promulgated shall be tested by practical operation, the Judges becoming accustomed to the exposition of rules which involve in many cases a complete revolution in Japanese customary law, and the new law itself acquiring public respect by pure and consistent interpretation.
　Not until after such a probationary period can foreigners reasonably be expected to yield to the Japanese demand for complete judicial autonomy; thirdly, these conditions having been realized, the final abandonment off extra-territorial jurisdiction may fitly be made to synchronize with the entire opening of the country.
　Other points may well become the subject of diplomatic pour parler and of intermediate agreement.
　Such, for instance, are an extension of the present passport system in return for a revision of the tariff; and the novel but intelligible Japanese demand that foreigners shall not be allowed to own real property or to buy shares in Japanese banks, railways, or shipping companies.
　The last requisition which is the latest outcome of native susceptibilities, is due to a not unfounded alarm that the superior wealth of foreigners might enable them unless carefully guarded by law, to acquire a commanding hold upon the national resources, and that Japan might some day find herself in the humiliating position of an Asiatic Peru.
　Means ought to be found without great difficulty of reconciling her apprehensions with the reasonable demands of foreign residents possessing a large stake in the fortunes of the country.
　The materials for a successful settlement lie, therefore, ready to hand, and it will depend upon the tact and savoir-faire of the Japanese statesmen, with whom the initiative now lies, to use them for good or for evil.
　It will be obvious, however, how much turns upon the question of the new codes and their promulgation, the decision as to which is the pivot of the political situation.
　Should the postponing Bill be placed intact upon the Statue Book, there vanishes for four more years the chance of treaty revision and the opportunity of finally settling a question that has baffled the foremost intellects of Japan for more than a decade, that has fretted the susceptibilities, and further delay in which might even compromise her amicable relations with foreign Powers.
　Upon the decision, therefore, of the new Japanese Cabinet the development of their country in the immediate future very largely depends.
　They can no longer pretend that the treaty Powers are the obstacle that blocks the way.
　In their own hands lies the initiative, and, as a consequence, the responsibility.
　We may hope that the high reputation which Count Ito and his colleagues deservedly enjoy, alike in the estimation of their countrymen, and in the respect of foreign statesmen, will be a guarantee for careful forethought and prudent decision.
　By no Power certainly would Japan be welcomed more cordially into the comity of nations, with whom already she shares so many common relationships, than by ourselves, who fill in the West the role which she aspires to play in the far East, and whose commerce and energy have contributed so largely to her own expansion.

　We conclude that Treaty Revision has now entered a new phase, inasmuch as the nation, speaking through its representatives in the Diet, has given its mandate for the final solution of the problem and the Government and Diet, acting together, have fulfilled the legislative conditions which constitute the guarantees hitherto sought by Foreign Powers.

　On the 19th, Count H. Ito, the Prime Minister and M. Mutsu, Foreign Minister were received in audience by His Majesty the Emperor and The Majesty gave sanction to the scheme of Treaty Revision which was reported to the Throne.

(1) To grant the Mixed Residence
(2) To abolish the Consular Jurisdiction
(3) To revise the Customs Tariff
(4) To start negotiations, first, with England, and next with Germany and U.S.A.
(5) To entrust S. Aoki, an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Germany, with the negotiations with England and Germany.

Chapter 2



Chapter 4