Au Japon. Amedee Baillot de Guerville
domestic tranquility of Korea, and even threatened the dynasty. Some rumors circulated that Japan was behind the revolt, just as they had been behind an aborted coup attempt in 1884. Though such rumors proved false, China reacted by sending in its troops. Now better prepared for its long anticipated confrontation with China, Japan recognized the opportunity and immediately dispatched troops of its own. The momentum towards war had begun.
Most historians agree that Japan made only token attempts to stop the coming conflict at a time when China would have done virtually anything to avoid open war. China even agreed to a joint and temporary troop presence until order could be restored. But Japan had moved beyond compromise. The reasons are simple enough. Japan would only be satisfied with the full independence of Korea. More cynical reasons may be inferred from this desire, such as a Japanese design, once Korea was unleashed, to snatch the now-isolated country up for herself (certainly, once the war began Japan was had no interest in seeing it stop until it had carved itself a comfortable sphere of control in Korea and Northeast China). Here is not the place, however, to renew those debates. The facts are simply that no agreement was reached and on August 1, 1894, war was declared on China by Japan’s Meiji emperor speaking before a solemn gathering of the new National Diet. Here was Japan’s first modern war.44
It must be said that Au Japon provides us somewhat snapshot and scattered images of de Guerville’s Sino-Japanese War experience. Rather than Au Japon, it is de Guerville’s period writings—for Leslie’s Weekly, Munsey’s, the New York Herald, and the Japan Weekly Mail—that best preserve his impressions of and reactions to the war he covered. This need not be surprising, even if it is a little disappointing. De Guerville was writing in 1904, and there was little need to rehash to his reading public the details of a war that had practically been forgotten, to the extent that it was ever even familiar to a European audience.45 It is also likely that writing from France, with little documentary residue of his time in the Far East at hand (much, if not most, had been destroyed in the fire at de Guerville’s Illustrated American in 1898), de Guerville was forced to rely upon a mixture of memory and sentiment.
Secondly, Au Japon is meant first and foremost as the author’s reflections on a country, people, and culture he greatly admired and the memory of which he cherished, and not primarily as a war memoir. In this respect Au Japon is perhaps best seen as a series of anecdotal essays from his time traveling in the Far East. Each chapter is more or less self-contained and self-revealing, rather than forming part of a larger unfurling storyline.
However, as the Japan Weekly Mail noted soon upon Au Japon’s publication, Port Arthur was one of the few incidents of the war that de Guerville felt it essential, even after a decade, to revisit. It is worthwhile asking why this was so.
De Guerville’s Sino-Japanese War Experience
Within weeks of the formal outbreak of hostilities, foreign correspondents were arriving in Yokohama, much as foreign naval vessels crowded into Japanese and Korean ports eager for a view of this historical inter-Asian conflict. Yet even before he had departed Europe for America and then Japan, de Guerville was already penning editorials on the looming conflict, which had yet to break into open fighting. It is fair to say that at this early date most observers in the West anticipated a Chinese victory, despite the fact that Japan had clearly done more in terms of modernization. China’s sheer size and numbers seemed enough to ensure it would prevail. De Guerville, however, placed his bets on Japan, with its superior navy and better organized and better equipped army, realities he had witnessed on his trip there in 1892. He also strikes a moral tone that was generally echoed in the Western press and popular opinion of the time: “Japan is fighting in Asia the battle of civilization and it is sincerely to be hoped that she will be victorious, though she will undoubtedly remain in Corea [sic], as the English in Egypt, should she be allowed to gain there a foothold.”46 Indeed, though it does not survive, de Guerville authored a small pamphlet published in Japan in the aftermath of Port Arthur entitled Civilization and Barbarism that no doubt dealt with this same theme on a larger scale.47
In late August, 1894, de Guerville departed New York City for San Francisco, where he caught passage to Japan aboard the sail-assisted steamer City of Peking. From Chicago he shared his journey with his rival correspondent James Creelman of the New York World. Though de Guerville may not have realized it, Creelman already harbored a grudge against him, describing the young French-American as “a tall, thin hawk eyed young man with courtly manners and a stupendous faculty for lying.”48 Creelman’s obvious animosity is at first glance enigmatic, particularly when one considers that Creelman confesses that in his conversations with de Guerville on the train to San Francisco de Guerville had no idea who Creelman was.49
On closer consideration, however, Creelman’s feelings can perhaps be better gauged. Creelman had written for Bennett’s New York Herald before de Guerville had been picked up by that publication, and had in fact left primarily due to Bennett’s refusal to put Creelman’s name to his stories. That de Guerville was now heading to the Far East as reporter for the New York Herald was perhaps an understandable source of resentment.50 At the very least, the fact that de Guerville was the only other American correspondent to be covering the Sino-Japanese War made for intense competition between the two men.
However, combined with these factors were Creelman’s own intimate fears of failure, which come across strongly in his letters to his wife. That de Guerville had the advantage of previous contact with the Far East only compounded such anxieties regarding Creelman’s coming tour in Japan and Korea, his first as a war correspondent (almost as if to emphasize this advantage, in San Francisco de Guerville gave Creelman a Korean half-cent piece as a souvenir of his experiences; Creelman promptly sent it to his wife).
Further, Creelman had a reputation as a dandy, one who cultivated an aura of refinement and sophistication in his dress and person. And here was de Guerville, a younger man to whom Creelman himself attributes “courtly manners,” a clear talent in the art of conversation (as accounts of his New York lectures testify), and with his intimidating worldly experiences and important contacts in the Far East. De Guerville also stood at six foot compared to Creelman’s short and stocky figure, a superficial but not insignificant point. For a man like Creelman, who lamented to his wife his inability to form easy friendships, such a man as de Guerville could naturally be perceived as a rival, both personal and professional, whether de Guerville immediately perceived it or not. As their relationship progressed in Japan and China, de Guerville became increasingly aware of Creelman’s very personal hostility towards him.
The City of Peking arrived in Yokohama harbor on a stormy evening in early September. A Japanese naval vessel guided it to safe anchorage through two miles of defensive submarine torpedo mines. Arriving at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Creelman was greeted with a letter from his wife Alice. “I am so entertained by de Guerville being on the same steamer,” she wrote. “I know you will spike his guns nicely if you can possibly do it.”51
No sooner had de Guerville made landfall in Japan than he was attending formal diplomatic dinners at the French and Russian legations, and if one is to believe his own account, enjoying tête à têtes with the highest ranking officials in the Japanese Army and government—including Counts Mutsu and Oyama, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and War respectively—to the jealousy of the other foreign correspondents gathered in Japan eager to proceed to the front. At first foreign correspondents were not allowed permission to proceed to the front, and frustrated reporters circulated among the Yokohama and Tokyo hotels. However, perhaps seeing the advantage to be got from positive reportage of Japanese victories, the Japanese government soon determined to allow access to properly accredited war correspondents.
In mid-September, and a few days before Creelman, de Guerville received permission to accompany a Japanese troop transport to the battlefront, which was then approaching the Korean city of P’yŏngyang (Pen-Yang). Thus on his return to the Far East as war correspondent, de Guerville served as what we might call today an “embedded reporter.” Reasonable charges could be made—and they were—to the objectivity of any reporter whose coverage of the war was limited to the sanction of one of the belligerents. But all journalists covering the Sino-Japanese conflict reached the front only through the permission and assistance of the warring powers, whether that be Japan or China. Further, in the opening weeks of the war the Japanese government