Stephen Wynn - The Rise and Fall of Imperial Japan

The Rise and Fall of Imperial Japan

Stephen Wynn

First published in Great Britain in 2020

by Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Stephen Wynn, 2020

ISBN 978 1 47383 5 788

eISBN 978 1 47386 5 501

Mobi 978 1 47386 5 495

The right of Stephen Wynn to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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How does a once great Empire like Japan lose it all? Was it naivety, greed, arrogance, poor leadership, economics, political interference, military defeat, or maybe a combination of some or all of these factors?

The leader of the first ever Japanese Empire was the Emperor Jimmu. According to legend, Jimmu was born on 13 February, which is the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, in 711 BCE, and died on 9 April 585. He reigned for seventy-five years. According to Japanese mythology he was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu through her grandson Ninigi and of the storm God Susanoo.

Emperor Jimmu decided to set out on a military expedition which began at Hyuga, an old Japanese province on the east coast of Kyushu near the Seto Inland Sea which separates Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, three of the four main islands of Japan. Going on to capture Yamato in Fukuoka, he made this the centre of his power. Yamato became the name given to the whole of Japan and this period of history is known as the Yamato period.

Prince Mutsuhito was the son of the Emperor Komei and one of his concubines, Nakayama Yoshiko, a lady in waiting in the court of the Imperial House of Japan. At birth he was given the name Prince Sachi, or Sachinomiya. Meiji was the 122nd emperor of Japan and came to power on 3 February 1867, the first day of the Imperial Japanese Empire which lasted until 1947.

When he was 7, on 16 August 1860, he was proclaimed prince of the blood and heir to his fathers throne. On the same day he was formally adopted by his fathers consort, Empress Dowager Eisho. A year later he became the Crown Prince and was given the adult name of Mutsuhito.

In 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry of the American Navy arrived in Tokyo harbour, which at the time was known as Edo, with a squadron of ships. The purpose of Perrys mission was to open up trade links between Japan and America. This caused much debate in Japan, and for the first time in 250 years the Shogunate made contact with the Imperial Court to consult with them about what should be done. Perry had not made a polite request in his desire to begin a trade agreement, instead he warned the Japanese that there would be military consequences if they did not agree. Japanese forces were no match for the Americans. Emperor Komeis officials felt that they should agree to Perrys request. Accordingly the Japanese agreed to trade with the Americans and even submitted to what were known as Unequal Treaties, which meant giving up tariff authority and the right to try foreigners in its courts.

By the early 1860s the Japanese way of life and the very structure of its society was also under threat by internal conflict. This was because the main beneficiaries of international trade were the Shogunate, which displeased the Daimyos . With so much money being made from this trade, and more foreign governments seeking similar agreements, groups of Shishi (young samurai), supporters of the Emperor Komei, were all for direct acts of violence, against both the Shogunate and foreigners, favouring their expulsion from the country.

Rather than uniting with the shishi and the Emperor so that they could all benefit from trade, the Shogunate did their best to divide the factions so that they remained in overall control of foreign trade. But the shishi had sufficient sway with the Emperor to persuade him to issue an Order to expel barbarians, which he happily did on 11 March 1863. Foreigners were given two months to leave: the final day was 11 May.

For the Shogunate, this was a problem: for them, more foreigners meant more money. When the deadline came, attacks began against the Shogunate as well as foreigners. Rebels fired on foreign ships in the waters of the Shimonoseki Strait, the waterway that separates the islands of Honshu and Kyushu. There was no sanctuary on land either. The ronin , masterless samurai, joined the fight and killed a number of westerners and Shogunate officials.

One of the westerners killed at this time was English merchant Charles Lennox Richardson, who had lived and traded in Shanghai since 1853. In September 1862, having made his fortune, Richardson decided to retire and return to England a wealthy man. On his way home, the ship he was on stopped off at the Japanese port of Yokohama. There he met a friend from Shanghai, a gentleman by the name of Woodthorpe Charles Clarke. They in turn met up with a fellow English merchant named William Marshall and his sister-in-law Margaret Watson Borradaile. Together they went on a sight-seeing tour on horseback, with their final destination being the 700-year-old Buddhist temple in Kawasaki Daishi, some twenty kilometres from Tokyo. As the four travelled through the village of Namamugi, they came across the Satsuma regent, Shimazu Hisamitsu, and his entourage, travelling in the opposite direction. An altercation of some description took place between the two groups which resulted in Richardson being killed and both Clarke and Marshall being wounded. At the inquest into Richardsons death, Clarke and Marshall stated that as they were travelling through Namamugi they saw a group of samurai ahead of them but did not realise that they were part of a daimyo party. As they turned a corner they suddenly realised they were twelve men deep into the procession and close to the daimyo. But as they had not been shouted at or challenged by the samurai, they were confident that they would not be hostile towards them. But as they attempted to turn their horses, one of the samurai struck Richardson a blow with his sword, and then did the same to Marshall. Fearing for their lives the men reared up their horses and ran, receiving more wounds as they went. Richardson died later of his wounds.

Fifteen years later an account from the Satsuma concerning the incident surfaced in the form of a pamphlet, written by American journalist E.H. House. It stated that Richardson was notorious for his violent dealings with the Chinese while he had lived in Shanghai. Different accounts of Richardson described him as being reckless, stubborn, and arrogant. All include the sentence, Mr Charles Lennox Richardson, of Shanghai was murdered in cold blood.