A Diplomat in Japan. Ernest Mason Satow
indemnity of £25,000 and gave an engagement to make diligent search for Richardson's murderers, who upon their arrest were to be punished with death in the presence of British officers, in accordance with the original demand. We may give Colonel Neale credit for knowing that there was no genuine intention on the part of Satsuma to carry out this promise, but on the other hand there was strong reason to suppose that Shimadzu Saburô himself had actually given the order to cut down the foreigners, and it could hardly be expected that the Satsuma men would ever consent to do punishment upon him. The actual doers of the deed were merely subordinate agents. We could not with justice have insisted on their lives being taken, and at the same time suffer the principal culprit to go scot-free. In order to succeed therefore in enforcing the whole of the demands made by Her Majesty's Government, it would have been necessary to invade Satsuma with an overwhelming force and exterminate the greater part of the clan before we could get at their chief; and we may be sure that he would never have fallen alive into our hands. We had bombarded and destroyed the greater part of the forts and town, probably killed a good many persons who were innocent of Richardson's murder, and had thereby elevated what was in the beginning a crime against public order into a casus belli. There would indeed, it seems to me, have been no justification after that for taking more lives by way of expiation. The Satsuma envoys, however, formally acknowledged that their countrymen had been in the wrong, and they paid the fine demanded by the British Government. No one therefore can blame the British Chargé d'Affaires for having made peace on these terms. It should be mentioned, however, that the Satsuma men borrowed the money from the Tycoon's treasury, and I have never heard that it was repaid.
CHAPTER IX
SHIMONOSEKI; PRELIMINARY MEASURES
Sir Rutherford Alcock returned from Europe early in March 1864, and Colonel Neale took his departure. The members of the legation gave him a farewell dinner, at which he delivered himself of prognostications as to the future of those who had served under him. For me he prophesied a professorship of Japanese at an English University, but so far his words have not come true. The new chief was liked by everyone, and he was particularly gracious to myself, relieving me from all chancery work, so that I could devote the whole of my time to my Japanese studies. Willis and I occupied a wooden house in a back street between the native town and the foreign settlement, and there I worked industriously with my three teachers. Sir Rutherford had brought with him very ample powers, which he determined to make use of to chastise the Chôshiû clan for its hostile attitude. We had, it might be said, conquered the goodwill of Satsuma, and a similar process applied to the other principal head of the anti-foreign party might well be expected to produce an equally wholesome effect. In the summer of the previous year the Chôshiû people, acting upon the orders which they had extorted from the Mikado for the "expulsion of the barbarians," had fired upon an American merchant vessel, a Dutch corvette and a French despatch-boat as they passed through the straits of Shimonoséki. The corvette had returned the fire, and in the other two cases satisfaction of an incomplete kind had been obtained by the United States sloop "Wyoming" and the French squadron under Admiral Jaurès respectively. The batteries had been destroyed, but as soon as the foreign men-of-war quitted the scene, the Chôshiû men set to work to rebuild the forts, to construct others, and to mount all the guns they could bring together. So the hornet's nest was after no long interval in good repair again, and more formidable for attack and defence than before. That no foreign vessels could take their way through the straits of Shimonoséki, which they had been in the habit of passing from time to time after touching at Nagasaki in order to make a pleasant and easy passage to Yokohama, instead of encountering the stormy Cape Chichakoff, was felt to involve a diminution of western prestige. Nothing but the complete subjugation of this warlike clan, and the permanent destruction of its means of offence, would suffice to convince the Japanese nation that we were determined to enforce the treaties, and to carry on our trade without molestation from anybody, irrespective of internal dissensions.
Sir Rutherford Alcock therefore lost no time in diligently setting to work in order to bring about a coalition with the representatives of France, Holland and the United States. In this he completely succeeded. The Tycoon's government were warned that if they did not within twenty days give a satisfactory undertaking to re-open the straits, the foreign squadrons would be despatched thither to bring the Prince of Chôshiû to reason. By a curious coincidence there had just returned to Japan two out of a band of five young samurai of Chôshiû, who the year before had been smuggled away to England to see the world, and learn something of the resources of foreign powers. Their names were Itô Shunsuké and Inouyé Bunda. The other three who remained in England while their companions, armed with the new knowledge, set forth on their journey to warn their fellow clansmen that it was no use trying to run their heads against a brick wall, were Endo Kinsuké, Inouyé Masaru and Yamao Yôzo. They made themselves and the object of their return known to Sir Rutherford, who promptly seized the opportunity thus offered of entering into direct communication with the daimiô of Chôshiû, and while delivering a sort of ultimatum, of affording him the chance of abandoning his hostile attitude for one more in accordance with the treaties. He obtained the consent of his colleagues to the despatch of two men-of-war to the neighbourhood of Shimonoséki in order to land the two young men at a convenient spot, and delivered to them a long memorandum for presentation to their prince.
A French officer (Commandant Layrle) and a Dutch naval officer, besides Major Wray, R.E., were sent at the same time to gain what information might be obtainable as to the present condition of the batteries, and to my great joy I was lent as interpreter, along with my colleague, Mr. J. J. Enslie. On the 21st July we left in the corvette "Barrosa," Captain W. M. Dowell, and the gun vessel "Cormorant," Commander Buckle, and passing up the Bungo channel, anchored off Himéshima Island after dark on the 26th. We ran ashore, but managed to get off again, smashing the jib-boom of the "Cormorant" as we did so. Early on the following morning we landed our two Japanese friends Itô and Inouyé (who at that time went by the name of Shiji), after promising to call for them on the 7th August at the island of Kasato, off the coast of Suwô. On the way down I had talked a good deal with them, and between us, with the aid of my teacher, Nakazawa Kensaku (a retainer of Ogasawara, who had to seek his livelihood in consequence of his master's disgrace), we had managed to put Sir Rutherford's memorandum into Japanese. They were to cross over in an open boat and land at Tonomi in Suwô. At eight o'clock we saw them leave the shore. In Nakazawa's opinion the chances were six or seven out of ten that their heads would be cut off, and that we should never see them again.
We landed later on in the day at Himéshima and found the people very friendly. They sold to us a plentiful supply of fish, but there were no vegetables, beef or chickens to be had. Cattle were pretty plentiful and fat, but the people looked poor and half starved. The population was about 2000. The island was not fertile. I tried to buy some beef, but the pretext that it was wanted as medicine for sick sailors (a Japanese idea) was useless. Half the population was engaged in salt-burning; ½d and 1d banknotes were current, and very little coin was to be seen. At one place we gave a man an ichibu, worth say 10d. He pretended to turn it over and look at it carefully, and then said "these are very rare things here."
Next day we went round to the north side of the island and anchored there. Here we again landed to visit the salt pans, and met with the same friendly reception as before. On the 29th we crossed in one of the ship's boats to Imi in Iyo, where the villagers refused to have anything to do with us, but at Takeda-tsu, a mile or two further west, they made no difficulties, and we were able to lay in a supply of pumpkins and brinjalls. On the 1st August we weighed anchor before sunrise, and stood away towards the straits. The "Barrosa" anchored about ten miles on this side of Shimonoséki, and we went on in the "Cormorant," steaming towards the coast of Buzen and then up to Isaki Point. When half-way across the mouth of the straits we saw signal guns fired all along the north coast from Chôfu to Saho. After going nearly up to Tanoura, keeping carefully out of the range of the batteries, and cruising backwards and forwards for a while, in order that the situation of the batteries and the number of guns might be accurately noted, we finally returned to Himéshima. We used to go on shore there for a walk every day, and found the people inquisitive