A BOOK OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 47

A BOOK OF THE DAY.

FROM OM> TO NEW JAPAN.*

BIR HARRY PARKES IN THE FAR EAST. 11.

Sir Harry Parkes was British Minister in Japan at a crisis in its history of gravest constitutional moment. We have already seen what manner of man be was, and how during his official career in China .he always displayed that highest form of courage — the " courage which risefch with occasion." In his new and more exalted post he was destined to encounter situations of difficulty and danger, which were to put his qualities to an equally severe test. The story of Sir Harry's association with Japan is told with great amplitude of detail by Mr Frederick Victor Dickins, who is responsible for the whole of the second volume of this very ad-

* "The Life of Sir Harry Parkes, X.C.8., Cr.C.M.G., some time Her Majesty's Minister to China and Japan." Vol. 11. By F. V. Dickina. London ; Macinillan and Co.)

mirable biography. Mr Dickins was present on the interesting occasion when Parkes landed on the jetty at Yokohama in 1865, and remembers the alert figure, the vigilant, questioning face, and the quick step of the man concerning whom £ competent authority— General.Sir Charles van Straubenzee— wrote to Lord Elgin : " His energy is untiring ; he never spares himself in any way ; personal danger and personal comfort were never thought of when he could in any way advance the public service."

OLD JAPAN.

Mr Dickins gives an interesting account of the state of Japan at the time when Sir Harry Parkes became Minister-Plenipotentiary. He remarks that the so-called restoration of 1868 has been completely misunderstood by most recent writers on the subject. It was no restoration, but a revolution, that gave the Mikado a power he had never previously possessed. In overthrowing the Tokugawa dynasty the revolution put an end to the only over-lordship Japan had ever known. But the over-lordship of the Shogan, real as it was, was exercised within narrow limits, and was far from beiog the equivalent of the feudal sovereignties of mediaaval Europe. The system was perfected early in the seventeenth century, and for 250 years Japan rested from strife. Bat the " daimios " preserved their rights of jurisdiction and selfgovernment, the right of private war excepted. Many of the " daimios " possessed small fiefs in different proTince«, in respect of which they were more or leas at the mercy of the Shogun, who, however, had no regular executive means of enforcing punishment out of his own domains. In addition they were all obliged to attend at the accession of a new - hogun to take the oath of allegiance. There was a further obligation — viz., to reside alternately at their country castles and their feudal mansions ia Yedo, wbere their families were retained as hostages to secure the good behaviour not only of the " daimios " themselves, but of their class. The whole system was loosely knit together by the courb at Kioto, where the authority of the Mikado and the court nobles had been real only durirg the infancy of the State, when he was merely the most powerful among a number of tribal chiefs. At a very early period the Heaven Child (Tenshi), Heaven Ruler (Tenno), or the Innermost Place (Ddiri), as the Mikado was variously called, became a puppet and a nonentity. Nevertheless, the authority attached to the office, bat detached from the person of the sovereign, endured through the veneration of the people. The Shogun had his resident at the Kioto court, whose business i* was, by any and every means, to keep up bis master's influence, and, above all, to exclude the greater " daimios " from the guardianship of the Mikado's person. During the whole of Japanese history the reverence for the Sun Child seems never to have been lost. Often, indeed usually, had he been compelled to abdicate while quite young or to retire into a monastery, but even in epochs of strife and violence he appears to have been exempt from any kind of personal risk. Just as the " daimios " were responsible to the Shognn, the Shogun was theoretically responsible to the Mikado, and the Mikado himself to the gods.

ON THE EVE OF REVOLUTION.

When Sir Harry Parkes arrived in Japan the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa regime was looming in view. Of the many difficulties with which the new Minister found himself confronted, by far the most arduous was that of the ratification of the treaties by the .Mikado. That the Shogun possessed of right as well as in fact the power of making treaties there can be no manner of doubt. In 1858, indeed, there was no other Japanese authority that could even be approached on the subject. All the acts of the Japanese State, inclusive of the decrees against Christianity and of the very deoree of isolation itself, during the whole of the Tokugawa period were the aots of the Shogan alone. Neither Mikado nor daimio had any concern with them. Mr Dickins declares that the contention of the Mikadoist party that the isolation of the " holy country " was a fundamental law of the empire was altogether baseless. No such law had ever existed in Japan before the close of the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. Not only, therefore, was the Shogun justified in undoing the work of bis ancestors, as contrary to the spirit of the Japanese people and unratified by the Mikado, but before he took this step he did actually obtain the Mikado's consent to the new policy. It was not, however, hatred of the foreigner bo much as jealousy of the Yedo Court that gave rise to or, at least, accentuated the long duel between western and eastern Japan, which 10 years later ended in the destruction of a system that bad endured for more than two oenturies and a-half. Nor were the murders and outrages whioh stained the earlier years of Japanese intercourse with the Europeans so much the expression of dislike of the foreigners as the outcome of a desire on the part of the landless men to gain the favour of some magnate by a deed which should smack at once of patriotism and embarrass the Shogun. On more than one occasion the Imperialist party had caused the Mikado to address a rescript to the Shogun ordering him t© expel the, barbarians. To these communications the Shogun returned temporising answer?, and the policy of expulsion never got beyond paper. Mr Dickins thinks it was at no time a serious policy even on the part of the Imperialists, while the Yedo Court merely yielded to it in appearance for the purpose of gaining time to counteract the intrigues of their opponents at Kioto.

SIR H AERY'S TRIUMPH.

Sir Harry Parkes saw the crux of the position in an instant, and the earliest task to which he bent his energies was to procure from the Mikado ratification of the treaties. Presently came from him the bold proposal that the foreign representatives should' go down to Osaka in a body, accompanied by a sufficient naval force, and from t hat important centre, while resuming certain indemnity negotiations, collectively urge upon the Mikado the infinitely more important matter of the ratification. Although at first the other representatives were taken aback by its audacity, Sir Harry's proposal was eventually agreed to, and the expedition left Yokohama for the inland sea on November 1, 1865. It proved an entire success ; and thus before he had been six months in the country Sir Harry had won the most signal

victory British diplomacy had ever gained in the far East. Involving as it did a recognition of the supremacy of the Mikado, the effect of the ratification upon the condition of affairs in Japan was very fai reaching.

KEVOLT OK TUB WEST.

Fast upon the heels of Sir Harry's diplomatic triumph came a recrudescence of internal troubles, but thenceforward the destinies of Japan were virtually in the hands of the Imperialists— a result to which Sir Harry Parkes's master-stroke had mate- . rially contributed. The inner hiitory of the political revolution is not described, but it is sufficiently certain that what lay at the bottom of the movement was the intense desire of the greater " daimios " to get rid of the Shogun (who was equal in wealth and power to any 12 of them combined), as the main obstacle io their participation in the advantages of foreign trade. This desire was not unshared by many who owed direct allegiance to the Shogun as the representative of the Tokugawa house. In 1867 Sir Harry Parkes, who was watching the drift of events with great closeness, wrote: "I think there is a prospect of the Japanese working out a most important change ia their Constitution in a peaceable manner. The Tycoon has set an admirable example of a sacrifice of power, and ' daimios ' will have to follow suit. We may.'in that case, hope to see a strong central Government, having jurisdiction over the whole of Japan, and which can control the • daimois ' as well as concede them their jußt rights." A sagacious prediction, but not destined to comDlete fulfilment. s

A COUP d'etat.

The first day of the year 1868 witnessed the opening of Osaka and Hiogo to foreign trade amid the firing of salutes. Almost before the roar of the guns had died away an audacious coup d'etat at Kioto changed the whole aspect of affairs. At noon on January 3 the troops of five " daimios " dislodged the Aizir clan, the most faithful of the Tokugawa feudatories, from the guardianship of the palace, and made themselves masters of 'the person of the Mikado. The nexb day saw «the publication of a decree abolishicg the Shogunate, and announcing the Mikado's " resumption of the government," as it was phrased— in . reality his assumption— according to the Constitution of a very mythical emperor. In response to the Shogun's protestations the foreign representatives presented a joint note declarirg their neutrality. In that note they gave him the title neither of •' Tycoon " nor of " Sbogun," but addressed bim Blmply as "Highness "'-a significant indication of their view of the situation.

The coup d'etat was the signal for the outbreak of civil war. There was a momentary renewal, too, of outrages dfreoted against foreigners, the result, Mr DickJns declares, of the Bupport given .to the Shogun's party by the French Minister, whose view of the political situation seems to* have been altogether erroneous. The progress of the war was harrassing enough, but in the end the Imperialists triumphed, and in 1869 the foreign representatives, whose collective action throughout theseyears was the work of the British Minister, withdrew the neutrality notifications, a clear indication that the cause of the rebels was lost.

NEW JAPAN

The successful authors of the coup d'etat found the task of reconstruction no easy one. The prestige of the Mikado was there, but the only Government Japan, as a whole, had ever known was that of the Shogun. All through this crisis the conduct of the young Mikado was exemplary. Writing to Lord Stanley in 1869, Sir Harry Parkes eaid :— " I must confess, my Lord, to a feeling of some admiration on observing the sensible and unostentatious way in which this sovereign — accustomed to think of himself and a long line of ancestors as demi-gods — addresses himself to the practical duties of his new 9tation. No attempt at compromise between his former pseudo-sacred and his present secular position appears to be attempted. The object aimed "at seems to me that he shall be known as a sovereign possessing no exceptional or unnatural attributes, but charged with the welfare of some millions of his fellow beings whose interests he is to watch over by the aid of national advisers.' ' In the construction of the new Constitution the Ministers received powerful help front Sir Harry Parkes. Against the reactionary spirit that ever and anon uplifted its • head he battled successfully. •' I stick by this nascent Government," he wrote to a colleague in 1869, " and try to keep them in the right groove, but it is sometimes tiresome work. The Government at present partake of the character of a rope of sand, but time is everthing to them, and every month gained without an actual split will add to the strength of the combination^' The British Minister's aid and counsel were constantly sought, especially by the more liberal section of the Government, and privately as well as officially he gave them all the support in his power. With such tact and prudence were these services rendered that, although the country was convulsed with faction, no umbrage was cause in any quarter. The extent of bis assistance, declares Mr Dickins, will never be fully known, but it may safely be eaid that to Sir Harry Parkes far more than to any other foreigner Japan owed ber successful passage across the difficult days of the revolutionary period. In the transition from old to new Japan— a political change unexampled in Eastern history — England, through her representative, played the part of a sagacious and disinterested adviser. — H. J , in the Sun.

— Life has two surprises. In youth one is surprised that he knows so much. When he has reached the matured life he is surprised that there are so many things that he doesn't know. —

— Wanted for Spring Time. — In front of a shop in Colorado there is a sign bearing the following inscription : — " Money is the root of all evil ; give as a few roots."