THE AMERICAN SHARE IN OPENING-UP JAPAN.*

IT was in the spring of 1854 that Commodore Perry, in command of a United States naval squadron, but without hostilities, obtained the signature of the Council of State of the Tai-Kun of Japan to a treaty providing that any American sailors shipwrecked on Japanese coasts should be kindly treated, that American ships should be permitted to anchor and purchase such stores as they required at the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate, and that, if either Govern- ment deemed it necessary, a United States Consul should reside at Shimoda. This was, we believe, the first diplo- matic recognition on the part of the Japanese authorities of the necessity of departing from the policy of rigid exclusion of foreigners, which, taking its rise in the dread of a traitorous alliance between the Christian party and foreigners bent on the subjection of the Island Kingdom, and sealed by the blood of multitudes of converts, had been firmly maintained for more than two hundred years. The only exception had been in favour of the Dutch, who—whether with good grounds, or not, is a disputed question—inspired one of the first of the Tai-kuns of the House of Tokugawa with the belief that a conspiracy was afoot under the auspices of the Portuguese. The former nation, whose representatives also took an important part in the military operations by which the native Christians were overcome, were permitted to maintain a settlement on the island of Deeima, in the harbour of Nagasaki, but under conditions humiliating enough to be in harmony with the most discreditable view of the proceedings by which the privileges they limited had been earned. Aversion to foreigners and dread of their aggressive machinations, should they obtain a footing in Japan, seem to have become deeply rooted among the ruling classes, and to some extent, we may suppose, among the populace also ; and there can be little doubt that the action of the Tai-krin (or Shogun) and his Council (collectively called, with him, the Shognnate or Balrufn) at Yedo, in assenting to the Treaty asked for by Commodore Perry, and shortly afterwards to similar engage- ments with the Russians and the Dutch, was in advance of the national feeling. Besides that, it was plainly irregular, in that it was taken without reference to the Court of the Mikado at Kioto. The technical rights of the Mikado to supremacy, in all causes, civil as well as ecclesiastical, throughout Japan, had been so much in abeyance for a long period, that the Shoguns at Yedo were regarded by all foreign nations as at least the secular Sovereigns of the country. But they were not, and none of them would have professed to be, more than the first subjects of the Mikado ; and for many years before the question of readmitting foreigners into Japan came up in a pressing manner, a movement of opinion and sentiment directed towards the re-establishment of the authority of the Mikados in its ancient completeness, and the depression or abolition of that of the Shoguns, had been in progress. This movement was fostered by the Princes of certain powerful clans, who had always resented the predominance acquired by the Tokugawas since the office of Shogun had become hereditary in the latter house at the beginning of the seventeenth century ; and they and their adherents doubtless used the beginnings of conces- sions to foreigners made in 1854 by the Shognnate, and their subsequent extensions, as a means of fastening on the Toku- gawas the stigma of deficiency alike in common patriotism and in regard for the sacred claims of the divinely descended Emperor. Similarly discrediting reflections, we may assume, were then cast upon all who fell in with the policy of con- cession.

The above remarks seem desirable, as introductory to the notice of a volume for which it is justly claimed by the

• Townsend Harris, First American Envoy in Japer. By William Runt Or London: Sampson Lw, Marston, and Co.

editor, Mr. W. E. Griffis, that it fills a gap in history by showing what American diplomacy was doing in Japan between Commodore Perry's treaty-making visit in 1854, and the visit of Lord Elgin's mission, from which resulted the first Anglo-Japanese treaty in 1858. The agent of American diplomacy at that period was the late Mr. Townsend Harris.

He was also the first recognised agent of Western diplomacy to reside in Japan; and for that reason, and as having had to face alone the situation created by the conflicting currents of thought and feeling, to which allusion has been made, his journal, which occupies the bulk of the volume, entitled "Townsend Harris in Japan," possesses great interest to all who have paid any attention to the fascinating subject of the " re-birth " of that wonderful nation. Harris was a man of great courage, patience, and resource, and he needed all those qualifications in large measure to enable him to dis- charge with success the mission entrusted to him. He was taken to Shimoda in August, 1856, in an American ship of war, and his reception at the outset was such that he might well have been excused if he had requested the naval commander either to have taken him back to the States, or to provide him with an adequate escort before leaving him on shore. The local authorities showed endless ingenuity in devising excuses for not receiving him, excuses mostly quite courteous in form, but manifesting a persistent aversion to the idea of having a foreign Consul residing in their district.

The first business interview described in Hr. Harris's diary was far from satisfactory :—

"They did not expect the arrival of a consul. A consul was only to be sent when some difficulty arose, and no such thing had taken place. Shimoda was a poor place and bad been recently dcsolated by an earthquake. They had no residence prepared for me. I had better go away, and return in about a year, when they

hoped to have a house ready Would I land at liakisaki, and take up my residence at the temple there, and leave the question of my official residence to be settled by further nertia- tions ? and so on. The foregoing," continues Mr. Harris, "is the substance of their remarks and propositions, made and renewed and changed in every possible form and manner during three mortal hours. I need hardly write that I courteously but firmly negatived all their propositions."

Then, after Mr. Harris had agreed, in order to save them any real difficulties, to put up with the temple at Kalizaki, which adjoined Shimoda, though its position was not by any means convenient, a new Governor arrived from Yedo, and at the first meeting with him and the retiring Governor-

" They ran over all the old objections and civilly asked me to go away ; and on my declining to do so, they asked the commodore if he had no power to take me away. That was answered by saying that he was a military man. His orders were to bring;the consul-general to Shimoda and land him there, and

then his part was done Would the commodore write to his Government explaining the reasons why the Japanese refuse

to receive a consul-general ? Would I write to my Government asking for my own removal ? This was declined."

During the same conversation, Mr. Harris notes that he was told that boats were ready to go to the frigate to bring off his luggage, and he came to the conclusion that the officials "were acting a part in which they did not even hope to succeed. The people," he adds, "are of a genial disposition, and are evidently inclined towards intercourse with foreigners, but the despotic rule of the country, and the terror they have of their so-called inflexible laws, forbid them to express their wishes."

Such being the depressing circumstances under which Mr. Harris's residence in Japan began, it is impossible to avoid compassionating his loneliness, left there without a single visit from a ship of the United States Navy, or a single letter from home, for more than a year. His only cultivated European companion was an able young Dutchman, Mr. Heusken, who acted as his interpreter. His health, during a considerable part of his first year in Japan, was very bad. Yet he worked resolutely and successfully at the development of the Treaty relations between the United States and Japan. His journal gives a very clear and interesting account of the diplomatic struggles which had to be waged over every step of progress. The duplicity to which the Japanese oacials habitually re- sorted in their discussions with Mr. Harris seems to have surprised him, even after ten years' previous experience of commercial life in the East. But he held firmly on his way, quietly exposing their falsehoods, adroitly meeting their

arguments, and all the while manifesting a kindly considera- tion for Japanese interests, so far as his duty to his Govern-

ment permitted, and an unfailing personal courtesy and geniality which won both respect and regard from those with whom he was brought into contact ; and, at last, on June thb, 18-57, he was able to write, "I have carried every point triumphantly with the Japanese, and have got everything zonceded that I have been negotiating for since last Septem- ber." The convention in which these points were included, provided for the opening of the port of Nagasaki to American ships, for the right of permanent residence to Americans at Shimoda and Hakodate, and the appoint- ment of a Vice-Consul at the latter port, for extra- territorial consular jurisdiction over American settlers, for a very favourable currency settlement, "so that where we paid one hundred, we now pay only thirty-four dollars and a half," and for the right of the Consul-General to go where he pleased in Japan. Success bred success, and within three months after the Convention just described had been nego- tiated at Shimoda, Mr. Harris had the great satisfaction of receiving an intimation that, after many anxious consulta- tions, it had been agreed at Yedo—what he had been pre- viously assured was absolutely preposterous and altogether yantrary to Japanese Court etiquette—that he should not only visit the secular capital, but have an audience with the 'Shogun, and personally present to him a letter from the President of the 'United States.

Mr. Harris's journey from Shimoda to Yedo was of the nature of a triumphal progress, every possible arrangement being made for his comfort, and every honour paid to him as a personage of the highest distinction. He was duly received by the Shogun, before whom he firmly refused in advance to make any humiliating prostrations, and heard that all who were present at the audience were amazed at his "greatness pf soul" and at his independent bearing in the presence of the mighty ruler of Japan. He not only bore himself satis- factorily through that ordeal, but succeeded in developing the Convention he had negotiated at Shimoda into a Treaty, pro- viding not only for the concessions embodied in the earlier instrument, but for the opening of several more ports. Not a few of the points which had seemed established at 3himoda had to be fought for steadily over again, and when other arguments failed on the part of the Japanese plenipotentiaries, they always fell back upon the danger of producing disorder by making concessions to which the con- 3ervative aristocracy was averse. Finally, when, under Mr. Harris's steady pressure, the Shogunate had given way all along the line, he found that, after all, that august authority leemed it necessary to obtain the sanction of the Mikado to the new Treaty, and his eyes were opened to some extent to the reviving reality of that hitherto shadowy power. The Treaty, however, was signed by the Shogun's chief Minister, without the Mikado's consent, on representations from Mr. Harris that large foreign fleets were coming, and that it would be much better and more honourable to make the first and leading concessions when there was no display of force in support of the request for them. The Treaty so made was the model of that shortly afterwards negotiated by Lord Elgin for England, and also of those concluded with France and Russia and several other countries. It is right that the world should understand fully how the way had been prepared by American diplomacy, though, having regard to such books as those of the late Laurence Oliphant and Sir Edward Reed, we must claim that not all "English writers" exhibit the "profound ignorance and misapprehension" of Townsend Harris's work which the editor of his journals has found among them.