Introduction
After a hiatus in diplomatic relations beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, China and Japan restored government-to-government ties when the Qing dynasty and the Meiji Government signed a treaty in 1871. Although the treaty was called a ‘friendship treaty’, modern Sino-Japanese relations were troubled from the beginning. The Meiji Government began to end the dual subordination of the Kingdom of the Ryukyus to China and Japan in 1872. Almost concurrently, it began to consider launching a punitive expedition against the Taiwanese aboriginal territories on the pretext of a massacre and other atrocities that the aboriginal tribes of the island had committed against shipwrecked Ryukyuans and the residents of the Japanese Mainland (Honshu) in 1871 and in 1873. When the Meiji Government carried out an expedition to Taiwan in the spring of 1874, tensions mounted between the two countries, and difficult negotiations continued for months. The Sino-Japanese War might have broken out two decades earlier if the crisis had not been settled by British mediation in October 1874.
There has been an argument that those Japanese actions in the early 1870s marked the commencement of Japan's consistent aggression and expansionism towards China and the East Asian mainland.Footnote 2 Inoue Kiyoshi has, for example, defined Sino-Japanese relations from the early Meiji period to the end of the Second World War as 70 years of Japanese aggression towards China and contrasted that period with 2,000 years of friendship prior to the beginning of the Meiji era.Footnote 3 In his work on the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Nakatsuka Akira sees the war as the culmination of Japanese policies of continental expansion, which had begun early in the Meiji era.Footnote 4 Some also see that the annexation of the Ryukyus and the invasion of the aboriginal territories on Taiwan were the inception of Japanese militarism and aggression towards China.Footnote 5 Others have traced the origin of Japanese ambitions for continental expansion back to the Bakumatsu period, arguing that the Meiji Government tried to realise the expansionist dreams advocated by Yoshida Shoin and others.Footnote 6 Zhang Qixiong discusses modern Japanese aggression towards China, tracing its origins back to Bakumatsu intellectual expansionist discourses, in the context of the historical conflict between the Han Chinese and surrounding minority ethnic groups, such as the Mongols and Manchus, over the rule of the Middle Kingdom.Footnote 7
The first purpose of this study is to elucidate the motives for the early Meiji policies towards the Ryukyus and the Taiwanese aboriginal territories. I will maintain that they were consistently derived from the Meiji Government's concern over national security and a hope for better international status in a Western-dominated world. Although Kinjo Seitoku has pointed out that the Ryukyu and Taiwan issues need to be comprehensively understood as intertwined, previous studies have failed to consider the two issues in relation to each other in terms of Meiji Japan's concern over national security and prestige.Footnote 8 The Meiji Government concluded that in light of the Western notion of territorial sovereignty, the Ryukyus’ ambiguous status of dual subordination to both China and Japan since the early seventeenth century would pose a menace to Japan's national security and had to be resolved by incorporating the archipelago kingdom into Japan. The expedition to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories was also a necessary action to demonstrate Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyus by chastising the aboriginal tribes who had massacred and maltreated Japanese subjects.
For the Japanese, the expedition was a measure for dealing with the potential and actual threat to national security posed from outside and inside simultaneously. Robert Eskildsen calls Japanese ambition for colonising the Taiwanese aboriginal territories ‘mimetic imperialism’; the Japanese wanted to raise their low international status in the Western-dominated world by imitating the Western powers, namely, by colonising the aboriginal territories.Footnote 9 Meiji Government was afraid that the aboriginal territories, over which Qing China had failed to demonstrate territorial sovereignty from Japanese and some Westerners’ point of view, might be taken by the Western powers. The seizure of those territories had the more serious intention of preventing the Western powers from taking over the island, located to the south of the Ryukyus. Previous studies have explained that the direct cause of the expedition was the ex-samurai discontent with the Meiji Government, especially after the political crisis of 1873.Footnote 10 I have no intention of challenging the popular view but will argue that Japanese policy makers saw the ex-samurai discontent directed against themselves not only as a domestic problem but also as an obstacle to strengthening Japan's power and raising its international status, which they believed were necessary for national survival in the Western-dominated world.
Even though the concern over national security and prestige was behind the Ryukyus and Taiwan policies, the question remains: Did Japan attempt to launch aggression towards China by encroaching on its territory and tributary system for the sake of its national security and prestige in the first decade of the Meiji era? Peter Duus writes, ‘Given its limited fiscal, political, and military resources, the Meiji Government was in no position to embark on an expansionist policy in the 1870 and 1880s’.Footnote 11 Some Japanese historians virtually support his statement by demonstrating that Meiji Japan did not take action to become a continental power (tairiku kokka) before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. From the perspective of military history, Tobe Ryoichi and Kurono Taeru argue that early Meiji military formation and the policies of the 1880s indicate that the Japanese did not initiate an expansionist policy towards the East Asian mainland. These two Japanese historians state that Japanese military strategy was formed rather on the assumption of defence against foreign invasion. The assumed invader was Qing China, with which Japan had been antagonistic over Korea since the early 1880s.Footnote 12 Through an examination of Japanese policy towards Korea and China from the early 1880s up to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, based on the security of multilingual primary sources, Takahashi Hidenao and Osawa Hiroaki deny that Japanese East Asia policies of that time before the war were designed to make Japan a continental power.Footnote 13
On the other hand, aforementioned previous studies have shared the view that early Meiji policies towards the Ryukyus and Taiwan were the beginning of modern Japan's encroachment upon China. In his book review of Takahashi's work, Kobayashi Hidehiro notes that the absence of an expansionist policy would not necessarily mean that Meiji Japan had no ambition to expand towards China.Footnote 14 Some Japanese leaders, fascinated by Western achievements, actually had evident expansionist ambitions, and China was never excluded from their targets. Iwakura Tomomi, one of the most prominent court politicians in the Bakumatsu and early Meiji periods, stated that the seizure of China would be necessary for Japan's national security.Footnote 15 Soejima Taneomi and Eto Shinpei also envisaged expansion to China, for the same reason as Iwakura.Footnote 16 Kurono's Osawa's and Takahashi's studies of the 1880s and the early 1890s do not directly counter the position that Japanese aggression towards China began in the first decade of the Meiji era.
Another purpose of this study is to maintain that the Japanese policies towards the Ryukyus and the Taiwanese aboriginal territories in the 1870s were not designed to put such expansionist dreams into practice. Firmly believing in their substantial domination, the Japanese did not perceive the unilateral annexation of the Ryukyus as an encroachment upon China. Nor did the expedition to the aboriginal territories aim at invading China. Through talks with Western diplomats and with the knowledge of international law, the Meiji Government had expected international (Western) recognition of the expedition to the aboriginal territories as a legitimate action until Western powers suddenly changed their attitudes and began to object to the overseas military campaign immediately before carrying it out. The Western change of attitudes and objection only proved that the greater powers behaved opportunistically for their own sakes and that lesser powers would be tossed about by their intentions. Despite the lack of international support, the Meiji Government, confronted with the mounting domestic pressure, could no longer cancel the expedition. This still did not, however, mean that Meiji Japan had abandoned the maintenance of peace with China, nor had it become aggressive towards China, still less that it had begun to carry out an already-laid-out plan to conquer China.
The Ryukyu Disposition (Ryukyu Shobun) of 1872
On November 30, 1871 (Meiji 4/10/18), four Ryukyu ships (two from Miyakojima, two others from Yaeyamajima) encountered a tempest on the way from Naha, the Ryukyu capital, back to their home islands after rendering annual tribute to the Ryukyu Government. One of the ships from Miyakojima Island, with sixty-nine crew members aboard, drifted helplessly off Taiwan. Three crew members drowned, and the surviving sixty-six were cast ashore on the south-east side of the island on December 17, 1871 (Meiji 4/11/6). The area where they landed was the dwelling area of the Botansha, one of the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan. Drifting foreign sailors had repeatedly been massacred or despoiled by the tribesmen of the Mudanshe, and those shipwrecked Ryukyuans were no exception. Twelve barely escaped and were rescued by Chinese settlers; fifty-four were massacred. The survivors were then protected and handed over by the local inhabitants and Chinese officials of Fujian Province to the Ryukyu House in Fuzhou on February 24, 1872 (Meiji 5/1/16). They returned to Naha on July 12 (Meiji 5/6/7).Footnote 17 The king of the Ryukyus, Sho Tai (r. 1866–1872), expressed his gratitude and sent a reward to the Fujian officials.Footnote 18
Between the summer and the early autumn of 1872, the news of the Ryukyu shipwreck incident was reported to Tokyo from two directions. The first report of the incident came from the Japanese envoy in Beijing on June 27, 1872 (Meiji 5/5/22). Yanagiwara Sakimitsu, a young official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was in Beijing at the time for the purpose to negotiate the revision of the 1871 treaty, whose content dissatisfied the Japanese, before its ratification.Footnote 19 He saw the news of the incident in the Chinese newspaper, Jingbao (Peking Gazatte), of May 11, 1872 (Meiji 5/4/5), in Tianjin and reported it to the foreign minister, Soejima Taneomi, on May 19 (Meiji 5/4/13).Footnote 20 The other report came from Kagoshima-ken (prefecture). The de facto governor of the prefecture (daisanji), Oyama Tsunayoshi, received news of the incident on July 17 (Meiji 5/6/12) from two prefectural officials, Ijichi Sadaka and Narahara Shigeru, both of whom had recently returned from the Ryukyus. He then relayed the news to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 31 (Meiji 5/7/28). The report stated, ‘The residents of Miyakojima Island belonging to the Ryukyus were cast ashore on Taiwan last winter. As the attached papers note, most of the sixty-six crew members were massacred, and this should not be tolerated. Therefore, I ordered Ijichi to proceed to the imperial court so as to relay the details of the incident’.Footnote 21
As Oyama stated, two documents were attached to his report, detailing the incident. One of them was written by Ijichi, based on his questioning of two of the survivors.Footnote 22 The other was written by high Ryukyu officials in the form of a petition to the Meiji Government to respond to the incident. This was the first time since the Kingdom of Ryukyus had been subdued by Satsuma in 1609 that the Ryukyu court had petitioned Japan (or Satsuma) to take measures against the atrocities their people had suffered in Taiwan. Although similar incidents had occurred previously, the court had neither complained nor asked the Japanese to take any measures. As Edwin Pak-hwa Leung mentions, the Ryukyuans might have submitted the petition, taking the form of voluntary submission, reluctantly in compliance with orders from Kagoshima officials.Footnote 23
The Kingdom of Ryukyus had been a Japanese subordinate since the early seventeenth century. In 1609, the domain of Satsuma (later called Kagoshima prefecture) sent expeditionary forces and conquered the Ryukyus. There were several reasons the Japanese launched their first overseas military action since the Korea campaign. On the one hand, through this expedition Satsuma expected to strengthen its domainal finances by dominating the profitable Ryukyu trade with China, to consolidate the sway of the House of Shimazu over the entire domain and to demonstrate fidelity to the Tokugawa, whom it had opposed in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. The Tokugawa bakufu, which sanctioned the expedition, expected the Chinese tributary to be a possible mediator in its efforts to rehabilitate the diplomatic and commercial relations with Ming China, which had been terminated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea in the 1590s.Footnote 24 Granted the conquered territories as a fief by the bakufu, Satsuma separated and integrated several northern islands belonging to the Kingdom of Ryukyus under its direct control. Although the Ryukyu royal house of Sho remained on the throne after the conquest, the Ryukyus were obliged to pay annual tribute and to send a congratulatory mission to Kagoshima, the domainal capital of Satsuma, and the shogunal capital of Edo every time a new lord (hanshu) or shogun ascended to office. Satsuma, moreover, required the Ryukyus to surrender a prince of the House of Sho, who was considered an heir to the king, to Kagoshima as a hostage, and stationed its retainers at strategic points within the archipelago.Footnote 25 For such reasons, historians have defined the Ryukyus as a foreign country within the Tokugawa bakuhan system.Footnote 26
However, Satsuma's fief was simultaneously China's tributary state. The Sino-Ryukyu tributary relationship had an even longer history than did Satsuma and the Ryukyu. Since it had first paid tribute to Ming China in 1372, the Ryukyu Kingdom had been one of its vassal states. The tributary relations continued after the Manchu conquest of China in 1644.Footnote 27 As Araki Moriaki noted, the Ryukyus were under the substantial control of Shimazu, while the king was formally invested with his title by the Chinese emperor.Footnote 28 Although the Chinese recognition, along with the Japanese recognition, was indispensable for the Ryukyu throne to claim legitimacy, neither the Ming nor the Qing had ever intervened in the kingdom's domestic affairs as they took the same stance towards the Ryukyus as they did towards their other tributary states, such as Korea. Since the Japanese were interested in exploiting the tributary relations for the sake of indirect trade with China and wanted to avoid antagonism with China, they maintained the appearance that the Ryukyus were a kingdom and subordinated to China.Footnote 29 Although it had noticed Satsuma's presence and influence on the Ryukyus despite Satsuma's attempts at concealment, China, as the Middle Kingdom, could tolerate or pretend to be unaware of the Satsuma–Ryukyu relations as long as tribute continued to be paid.Footnote 30
Faced with Western inroads into East Asia, the Japanese realised even before the Meiji restoration that the ambiguous position, from the Western point of view, of the Ryukyus in subordination to both China and Japan could not be maintained. Satsuma and the Tokugawa bakufu had already seen the frequent appearance and arrival of the Western ships as a possible menace to both Japan and the Ryukyus in the mid-1840s.Footnote 31 Immediately after liberating Japan from ‘isolation’ and concluding a ‘friendship’ treaty with the Tokugawa bakufu in March 1854, the United States (U.S.) squadron led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed down and concluded a similar convention with the Ryukyus in July. France and Holland subsequently appeared in the Ryukyus and also established diplomatic relations in 1855 and 1859.Footnote 32 The Ryukyu court was in fact unwilling to sign treaties with these Western powers but did so under the instruction of Satsuma, which was also acting under the authorisation of the bakufu.Footnote 33 Interested in trading with the Western powers by opening the Ryukyu ports to them, Satsuma felt that dual subordination could not be maintained when the foreign powers were treating the Ryukyus as an independent sovereign state.Footnote 34 Not only Satsuma but also the bakufu seemed to be aware that the resolution of the historical dual subordination and the unilateral integration of the Ryukyus into Japan would be a realistic way for them to secure the Ryukyus, though they did not carry out this idea so as to avoid conflict with China.Footnote 35
This apprehension might have become an actual problem if the Japanese had made a different response to the Western approach to Japan and the Ryukyus. Although some Westerners recognised the Ryukyu's dual subordination and virtual Japanese control, ambiguity remained regarding their notion of its territorial sovereignty. In 1861, for example, the British representative sent an inquiry to the bakufu regarding the Ryukyus’ legal status.Footnote 36 Perry acknowledged Satsuma's de facto rule over the islands, noting, ‘These islands come within the jurisdiction of the Prince of Satsuma’ He, however, considered that the occupation of Ryukyu ports would be necessary in case Japan refused to open its doors to his country and recommended occupying Ryukyu ports to the Secretary of the Navy of President Millard Fillmore's administration, John P. Kennedy, during his own voyage to Japan on December 14, 1852. Perry justified such an action by saying:
Now it strikes me, that the occupation of the principal ports of these islands for the accommodation of our ships of war, and for the safe resort of merchant vessels of whatever nation, would be a measure not only justified by the strictest rules of moral law, but which is also to be considered, by the laws of stern necessity; and the argument may be further strengthened by the certain consequences of the amelioration of the conditions of the natives, although the vices attendant upon civilization may be entailed upon them.Footnote 37
It was fortunate that the Franklin Pierce administration, coming after the Fillmore administration, did not approve of this proposal and also that the Japanese did not make an unwise decision. The Western powers’ purportedly peaceful approach and demands for open ports could certainly have had turned into armed aggression in the name of ‘civilization’, depending upon the Japanese response to their demands.Footnote 38
The change of regime from the Tokugawa to the restoration government in 1868 did not diminish Japanese uneasiness about national security. The new regime was also eager to save and aggrandise national prestige (kokui) or imperial prestige (koi), which it felt had been demeaned by the Western powers. The Japanese concern over national prestige and security had grown as the ruling and intellectual elites became increasingly aware of the presence of the Western powers beginning in the nineteenth century, and especially since the Bakumatsu period.Footnote 39 In particular, the perception that they had been coerced into opening the country and surrendering to unequal treaties by the Western powers gave the Japanese impetus to aspire strenuously to the exaltation of their national glory within the Western-dominated international community.Footnote 40 On February 8, 1868 (Keio 4/1/15), the Meiji Government issued a proclamation entitled ‘taigai washin kokui sen'yo no fukoku’ (decree on the overseas enhancement of national prestige) and stated, ‘His Imperial Majesty [the Emperor Meiji] wishes to complete armaments, enhance the national prestige all over the world, and return the imperial ancestors’ favour. All the subjects of this empire are therefore to comply with this imperial will and make a strong effort to accomplish it’.Footnote 41 On April 6 (Keio 4/3/14), namely, on the day Emperor Meiji read out the Charter Oath of Five Articles (gokajo no goseimon) before Japanese deities, he issued an imperial letter (shinkan) called kokui sen'yo no shinkan (imperial letter on the enhancement of national prestige) to all the government officials. The letter stated:
We are afraid that if we stayed peacefully within the imperial palace, passed my time in idleness, and disregarded the trouble of the past hundred years, this country would become subject to foreign countries, humiliate the imperial ancestors, and pain would come to all our subjects. We swear therefore, with every court official and domainal lord, to enhance the imperial ancestors’ great achievement, by willingly enduring difficulties. We will reign over this entire country directly, govern all our subjects with benevolence, open up the oceans, exalt our national prestige throughout the world, and secure the empire in peace as high as Mt. Fuji.Footnote 42
The proposal by Iwakura Tomomi, one of the major contributors to the Meiji restoration, shows that the leaders of the new regime shared the apprehension of losing independence revealed in the imperial letter. Calling all foreign countries ‘the common enemies (koteki)’ of Japan, Iwakura Tomomi claimed, ‘In communicating with foreign countries, the primacy of our objective is neither to depreciate imperial prestige nor to forfeit national rights. Therefore, it is indubitably necessary to revise the treaties already concluded with England, France, Prussia, America and so on in order to safeguard the independence of the imperial state’.Footnote 43 Fujimura Michio has argued that not only the revision of unequal treaties but also the principle of washin kaikoku (opening and amity with foreign countries) itself grew out of Japanese feeling of inevitability rather than their sincere desire for associating with foreigners.Footnote 44 Iwakura also stated, ‘Foreign powers have in-born villainous intentions. If we were awe-stricken by their tyranny, we would be destined to be their slaves’.Footnote 45
It would not be surprising that the new regime with distrust for Western powers paid attention to the status of the Ryukyus in terms of national security and prestige. According to international law and Western diplomatic notions, liberating the Ryukyus from their dual subordination to China and Japan and recognising them as an independent sovereign nation could have been a possible choice. However, Meiji Japan had no intention of either loosening or renouncing its grip on its historical subordinate. In late January 1869 (Meiji 1/12), the new regime granted a general amnesty to the Ryukyus as it had done for all the domains in Japan proper.Footnote 46 On March 2, 1869 (Meiji 2/1/20), the domain lords (daimyo) restored all of their domains and people to the emperor. Satsuma-han, as a result, was renamed Kagoshima-han, and its lord was reappointed a domainal governor (han chiji). These events (hanseki hokan) technically meant that the land and people of Satsuma's fief, the Ryukyus, were also returned to the emperor. On July 26, 1871 (Meiji 4/6/9), the Meiji Government ordered Kagoshima-han to submit a report on the history of Satsuma–Ryukyu relations, and Kagoshima officials sent the report to Tokyo on August 17 (Meiji 4/7/2).Footnote 47 When it promulgated the abolition of domains and their replacement by prefectures (haihan chiken) two days later, the Meiji Government granted jurisdiction over the Ryukyus to the former Kagoshima-han, namely, Kagoshima prefecture (ken).Footnote 48
However, the actions did not actually affect the Ryukyus’ historical socio-political circumstances or their relations with China and Japan. It was not until the next year that the Meiji Government took concrete action concerning the status of the Ryukyus. On February 13, 1872 (Meiji 5/1/5), Kagoshima prefecture dispatched two officials to the Ryukyus.Footnote 49 The aforementioned report by Oyama explains:
The country [Ryukyus] is located in the middle of the southern ocean, and her customs are irredeemably bigoted. The imperial state (kocho) has been undergoing the restoration, whose influence is difficult to extend [to the Ryukyus]. This spring, accordingly, I dispatched a Kagoshima ex-samurai (shizoku) Ijichi Sonojo (Sadaka) and two others to persuade the Ryukyus to comply with the will of the imperial court and reform their regular customs. The king respectfully received the pronouncement and commenced creating civilization.Footnote 50
In addition, Kagoshima officials were assigned to order the Ryukyu Court to send an envoy to Tokyo to offer congratulations on the imperial restoration and exempted the kingdom from the tribute of 3,000 koku on which they had defaulted; they were also forgiven a debt of 50,000 yen to the Shimazu.Footnote 51
Since the summer of 1872, discussions over the treatment of the Ryukyus had continued in the central government in Tokyo. About 2 months before Oyama's report, on July 5 (Meiji 5/5/30), Inoue Kaoru, Choshu clansman and the deputy minister of the Ministry of Finance submitted a proposal on Ryukyu policy to the Central Board of the Council of State. Although Yanagiwara Sakimitsu's report had reached Tokyo by that time, it is unknown whether or to what extent the news of the Ryukyu shipwreck incident affected Inoue. His proposal, as well as Oyama's, projected his concern over national prestige and security. Stressing the Ryukyus’ strategic importance for Japan, he wrote, ‘Needless to say, in the current time of the restoration, we should not allow the dual subordination of the Ryukyus to China and Japan to continue. I therefore hope that the government will eradicate this ambiguous and unacceptable situation and take measures to enhance the imperial state’.Footnote 52 He objected, however, to using forcible measures to accomplish the incorporation of the Ryukyus into the Japanese empire, suggesting that the Meiji Government summon the Ryukyu king to Tokyo. Around the same time, but certainly prior to July 14 (Meiji 5/6/9), the foreign minister, Soejima Taneomi, also submitted the ministry's proposal. He believed that the Ryukyus had virtually been Satsuma's fief despite their dual subordination and overall favoured the same line as Inoue and proposed the dissolution of the Ryukyus’ dual subordination and their annexation to Japan. This would include the suspension of the Ryukyus’ interaction with foreign countries, the appointment of the king as domainal king (han-o) and the raising of the king to the peerage (kazoku).Footnote 53
In the view of Yamagata Aritomo, the need to bring the Ryukyus under Japanese territorial sovereignty came most from concern over national security. In September 1872 (Meiji 5/8/u), the deputy minister of war began a proposal by stating, ‘Currently all the countries of the world are checking each other and designing to extend their borders arrogantly while greedily pursuing profit. Now is the crucial moment; we may be unable to control the territory, but this must not be conceded. If statesmen fail to be far-sighted or maintain a vision of the future, we may be deprived by foreign countries of remaining profits. . . . The Ryukyu archipelago stands in the southern seas. Aggrandizing gesture in the Ryukyus by other countries have much to do with us’. He then insisted that the Ryukyus be annexed both because of the need to clarify territorial sovereignty over the archipelago according to international law and because of the need for border defence against possible foreign encroachment.Footnote 54
After receiving those proposals, the Central Board referred them to the Board of the Left (Sain), the legislature of the Council of State. The Central Board had already determined to terminate the Ryukyus’ dual subordination; it had stated in its inquiry to the Board of the Left, ‘Now is the time to clarify with what country jurisdiction over the Ryukyus lies and to solidify the foundation of the imperial state [Japan]. The ambiguous state [of the Ryukyus], therefore, must be rectified’.Footnote 55 The Board of the Left, however, opposed the unilateral annexation of the Ryukyus, not believing it inevitable. The legislative organ of the Central Board agreed on summoning the king to send a mission to Japan, suspending the Ryukyus independent intercourse with foreign countries, and stationing Japanese troops. It, however, opposed the dissolution of the islands’ dual subordination as unnecessary action for the following reasons. Firstly, Japan's suzerainty over the Ryukyus had been more substantial than China's. This indicates that the Board of the Left shared the perception of the Japanese predominance over the Ryukyus with other government leaders such as Inoue and Yamagata. Secondly, foreign (Western) countries had also acknowledged Japan's ascendancy over the Ryukyus. Thirdly, the establishment of a Han would be contradictory after the abolition of the domains in Japan proper. Fourthly, since the dissolution of dual subordination would cause unnecessary conflict with China, the Sino-Ryukyu tributary relations should be excluded from the suspension of their diplomatic activities.Footnote 56
Nevertheless, the opposition of the Board of the Left did not appeal to the Council of State. The Council eventually chose the proposition of Inoue and Soejima, and of Yamagata, possibly by late September 1872 (Meiji 5/late 8).Footnote 57 It is quite understandable that Japanese leaders did not believe that the status quo would be enough to secure the Ryukyus in the particular international environment of the time and instead favoured the formal incorporation of the archipelago kingdom into the Japanese empire as one of its administrative units. For the Council of State, preserving dual subordination would have run counter to the creation of centralised administration motivated by its leaders’ concern with national survival and prestige. Iwakura Tomomi, in a proposal of August 1870, the year before the abolition of feudal domains was implemented, stated that the introduction of the prefectural system would be necessary to exalt imperial prestige and to expand national rights and would also be an effective way to emulate the great foreign powers.Footnote 58 Kido Takayoshi expected centralisation to become the basis for Japan to acquire an equal status with foreign countries.Footnote 59 The imperial edict on the abolishment of feudal domains on August 29, 1871 (Meiji 4/7/14), declared that the purpose of this policy was to provide security for all the subjects at home and be competitive overseas.Footnote 60 From the same concern, the Council of State must also have understood that the dissolution of dual subordination would be the only way to avoid contradiction with international law. According to the concept of territorial sovereignty in international law, if there were a land whose legal status, especially from the Western point of view, was questionable, it would belong to whoever occupied it first.Footnote 61 The understanding of the Board of the Left that Japan's de facto jurisdiction over the Ryukyus had won international recognition would not, therefore, have been able to ease the apprehension of the Council of State for possible Western menace to the Ryukyus and Japan proper.
The arrival of a Ryukyu congratulatory mission in Tokyo in October 1872 (Meiji 5/9) marked the first step in the so-called Ryukyu Disposition (Ryukyu shobun). The Ryukyu court, receiving the order of the Meiji Government to send a mission to Tokyo in February or in early March, 1872 (Meiji 5/1), was reluctant to yield to the Japanese request, still hoping to preserve as much of the traditional relationship with Japan as possible.Footnote 62 The Meiji Government was informed of this decision of the Ryukyu court by Ijichi Sadaka, along with Oyama's report, on September 4 (Meiji 5/8/2).Footnote 63 The Ryukyu mission, led by Prince Ie (Sho Ken), reached Tokyo on October 3 (Meiji 5/9/1). The imperial edict on the Ryukyu Disposition was issued on October 15 (Meiji 5/9/13), and the mission was granted an audience with Emperor Meiji on the 16th.Footnote 64 The emperor declared that the Kingdom of Ryukyu was to become Ryukyu-han, conferred the title of domainal king (han-o) on Sho Tai, and raised him to the Japanese peerage.Footnote 65 The Meiji Government subsequently, on November 14 (Meiji 5/10/14), announced the establishment of Ryukyu-han to foreign representatives and notified them that the treaties the Ryukyus had previously concluded with such Western powers as the United States were to be observed.Footnote 66
This measure did not, however, complete the dissolution of dual subordination or the consolidation of Japanese territorial sovereignty over the Ryukyus; the Ryukyu Disposition was not actually completed until the establishment of Okinawa prefecture (Okinawa-ken) in 1879. The establishment of Ryukyu-han was originally the proposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But, as the Board of the Left pointed out in its reply to the inquiry from the Central Board, this seemed to contradict the Meiji Government's pursuit of centralisation.Footnote 67 The government also distinguished the treatment of Ryukyu-han from that of other former domains renamed prefectures and charged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with exercising jurisdiction over the Han, rather than the Ministry of Finance, which was in charge of local administration at the time.Footnote 68 This was probably because of the treaties that the Ryukyus had concluded with the West. It might have also been because the Meiji Government chose to take gradual and sober, rather than radical, measures to incorporate the Ryukyus into Japan. Tokyo leaders were probably afraid that impetuous measures might shake the Ryukyuans.Footnote 69 Although some Ryukyu leaders had been aware since the Bakumatsu period that dual subordination could not continue in the changing international environment and thought that the Ryukyus would need to be incorporated into Japan for survival, the majority of the leadership still adhered to the maintenance of the islands’ historical status. Ryukyu leaders did not even seem to understand the meaning of the Japanese policy; they expected that the five islands of the Amami Chain taken over by Satsuma in 1609 would revert to them, and the envoy led by Prince Ie petitioned for the reversion.Footnote 70
The Meiji Government seemed to share the same concern as the Board of the Left to some extent and employed its opinion partially. The Meiji Government tacitly allowed the Ryukyus to continue to pay tribute to China.Footnote 71 This may have been a compromise to the Ryukyus; Tokyo was possibly afraid that radical measures would encounter Ryukyuan resistance. The Meiji Government simultaneously chose not to inform Qing China of the establishment of Ryukyu-han. It would be possible to interpret this as reflecting the Japanese stance to the Ryukyu issue as a domestic issue.Footnote 72 However, as well as the maintenance of the Sino-Ryukyu tributary relations, it may have come out of the Meiji Government's wish to avoid fatal confrontation with China. No matter how it believed Japanese possession of the Ryukyus was legitimate in light of international law, they would not be able to find an effective way to let China renounce its claim of suzerainty and recognise Japan's territorial sovereignty over its tributary.
The Rise of Arguments for an Expedition to the Aboriginal Territories on Taiwan
From the beginning, the expedition to the aboriginal territories on Taiwan was inseparable from the Ryukyu issue. After reporting on the Ryukyu shipwreck incident, Oyama concluded his report, stating, ‘I, Tsunayoshi, plead with the government to launch a punitive expedition to chastise the aborigines for the sake of imperial prestige. I would therefore like to be authorized to borrow battleships and annihilate the ringleaders and then enhance imperial prestige overseas and console the anger of the victimized islanders. I beg the government to grant my request’.Footnote 73
Oyama's proposal for a punitive expedition against the Taiwanese aborigines who had maltreated Japanese subjects could have been considered a normal action to demonstrate Japanese sovereignty by protecting their people among the ‘civilized’ nations of the time. When Yanagiwara Sakimitsu had a conversation with Mettohorusu (Medhurst?), an unidentified Western consul to Tianjin, on July 3, 1872 (Meiji 5/6/8), the Western diplomat told him, regarding the shipwreck incident, that Western countries would immediately dispatch battleships, investigate the incident and try to acquire indemnities.Footnote 74 In fact, when fourteen mariners of the American ship ‘Rover’ were massacred by Taiwanese aborigines in March 1867, the United States launched battleships led by Admiral H. H. Bell to Taiwan in June 1867, on the pretext of China's failure to protect the sailors. Charles William LeGendre, as Consul to Amoy, obtained a statement from the local Chinese officials that the aboriginal territories were beyond Chinese administration. Since the military operation was not successful, he then negotiated with the tribesmen directly with the help of local Chinese officials, and in October 1867 obtained the promise of the aborigines not to maltreat shipwrecked foreigners.Footnote 75
Following Oyama, other Satsuma clansmen, hearing the news of the Ryukyu shipwreck incident, started to advocate military action against the Taiwanese aborigines who had maltreated the people of their historical subordinate. Major Kabayama Sukenori, Kagoshima branch officer of the Kumamoto garrison and later the first governor-general of Taiwan in 1895, was informed of the incident by Oyama, possibly before August 28 (Meiji 5/7/25).Footnote 76 Without the sanction of Major General Kirino Toshiaki, the commander of the Kumamoto garrison who was in Hiroshima at that time, Kabayama went to Tokyo for the purpose of convincing the government to launch an expedition to the aboriginal territories.Footnote 77 In Tokyo, Field Marshall and leading Grand Councillor (hitto sangi) Saigo Takamori was basically in favour of the proposition, though not completely as mentioned below. Among the high officials of the central government with whom Kabayama talked, Takamori's younger brother, Saigo Tsugumichi, Itagaki Taisuke and Soejima Taneomi also favoured a punitive expedition. Pro-expedition people maintained that such military action would be Japan's obligation to protect the subjects of its subordinate. They shared the common perception that Chinese suzerainty over the Ryukyus, which had been a fief of the House of Shimazu, was a mere formality, while Japanese suzerainty was not.Footnote 78 However, Kabayama noted on September 15 (Meiji 5/8/13), ‘I submitted a proposal for an exploratory party to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories to Mr. Saigo this morning. Although he had some objections the other day, he approved of it today’.Footnote 79 This indicates that surrounded by different opinions, Saigo, as the leading Grand Councillor, might not have been as eager for overseas military action as his junior clansmen.Footnote 80 Kabayama's zeal was as a result reduced to an inspection, and he submitted a proposal entitled ‘Taiwan banchi tankentai haken ikensho’ to the War Ministry on September 16 (Meiji 5/8/13).Footnote 81
The Ryukyu Disposition seemed to urge the proponents of a punitive expedition to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories to take further steps. Possibly soon after the government decided to make the Kingdom of Ryukyus a domain (han), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed launching a punitive expedition to the south-eastern part of Taiwan, asserting that it belonged to no one.Footnote 82 On October 15 (Meiji 5/9/13), one day after the imperial edict on the Ryukyu Disposition was issued, Kabayama Sukenori further proposed that the War Ministry ask the government to make a decision on an expedition to Taiwan.Footnote 83 Among the proponents of the expedition, it was especially Soejima Taneomi, the foreign minister, who played a pivotal role. Soejima was a Saga clansman born into a family committed to national learning. He was also familiar with international law as he had studied it under a Dutch-born naturalised American missionary, Guido Verbeck, at Nagasaki in the mid-1860s.Footnote 84 His diplomatic policy has been described as ‘national rights diplomacy (kokken gaiko)’, as is well exemplified by the Maria Luz case.Footnote 85 Some scholars have speculated that Japanese like Soejima hurried the Ryukyu Disposition forward in October 1872 in order to strengthen the justification for an expedition; I do not find any evidence to go beyond stating that after the October event, Soejima apparently began working actively towards the realisation of the expedition.Footnote 86
From the Japanese point of view, the Ryukyu and Taiwan issues were also intertwined in terms of the Japanese concern over national security and prestige, and the expedition plan originally proposed as a chastisement of the hostile Taiwanese aborigines was extended to the seizure of the aboriginal territories of the island.Footnote 87 Inoue Kaoru noted the motives for the expedition in a November 18, 1872 (Meiji 5/10/18), letter to Kido Takayoshi, who was in Europe as a deputy ambassador in the Iwakura Mission. He stated, ‘It has been argued that Formosa (Taiwan) is a strategically important island. The Dutch used to occupy the island. Foreign countries such as England, the United States, and Prussia have been eyeing it for a long time but have not yet put their ambitions into action because they have not obtained a pretext for carrying out their ambitions. Therefore, if we took advantage of this situation and requested that the Chinese Government yield the Island to Japan (Qing China has also acknowledged that half of Formosa is under its jurisdiction, but the other half is not and is a barbarians’ den), the Chinese Government, being obsessed by so many difficulties and having no vigour to govern the island, would not object’.Footnote 88 Ohara Shigezane, a Foreign Ministry official, also mentioned that Soejima wanted to secure the aboriginal territories before the Western powers took them over.Footnote 89 Soejima, in fact, assumed that foreign powers had been watching for a chance to seize Taiwan, where Qing China ruled only half of the island in spite of her claim to the entire land. He was concerned about a rumour to the effect that the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was watching Taiwan at that time.Footnote 90 As mentioned below, Soejima therefore expected the Japanese seizure of not only the aboriginal territories but also the entire island to secure Japan's southern shores.Footnote 91
There was also the advice of two Americans behind this expansionist zeal. One of them was Charles E. DeLong, the U.S. minister to Japan. On October 24, 1872 (Meiji 5/9/22), the self-made former mine worker visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the U.S.–Ryukyu Convention of 1854. In a conversation with Soejima, DeLong, asking whether the Japanese intended to take action in response to the Ryukyu shipwreck incident, mentioned that since the Chinese jurisdiction over Taiwan was nominal, regardless of the Chinese claim, anyone who wanted to possess the island could occupy it.Footnote 92 The American minister's reference to the questionable legal status of Taiwan indeed must have gained the Japanese foreign minister's confidence of his own claim of the absence of Chinese territorial sovereignty over the aboriginl territories. He responded by expressing his interest in seizing Taiwan.Footnote 93 Seeming to lack concrete knowledge of Taiwan, he then inquired of DeLong regarding the U.S. expedition to the island in 1867 and asked him to provide information regarding both the island and the expedition.Footnote 94 In response to Soejima's request, DeLong agreed to introduce the former U.S. Consul to Amoy, Charles LeGendre, to him. The American minister's cooperative attitude towards Soejima is said to have come not from his affection for Japan but from his East Asia strategy. He was afraid that Japan, after accomplishing modernisation, might ally with China and Korea against the Western powers; therefore, he wanted Japan to isolate itself from its neighbours.Footnote 95
LeGendre, also known as the father of the legendary kabuki actor Ichimura Uzaemon XV, had much more influence on the Japanese policy towards Taiwan than DeLong. He was a French-born naturalised American who had participated in the Civil War as a Union officer. For his distinguished services in the war, he had been appointed Consul to Amoy in October 1867. In late October 1872, he stopped over in Japan on leave, while en route to the United States. Since his nomination by the Grant Administration to be minister to Argentina had been rejected by Congress by reason of his foreign birth, he needed to secure a new position.Footnote 96 He was acquainted with Taiwan, especially the aboriginal territories, because of his experience in negotiating with the aboriginal tribes over the Rover Case.Footnote 97 Soejima might have had some information regarding his career and his visit to Japan in advance.Footnote 98 Asked by Soejima to arrange a meeting with LeGendre, DeLong readily agreed to Soejima's request and persuaded LeGendre to delay his departure.Footnote 99
Meetings with LeGendre on October 25 and 27 (Meiji 5/9/22 and 24) must have further encouraged Soejima's intention to engage in overseas military action. In their first meeting, on the 25th, LeGendre mentioned that the Qing dynasty itself had admitted its lack of control over some of the aborigines.Footnote 100 In the second meeting, on the 27th, he further suggested that Japan take over Taiwan and stated that 2,000 soldiers would be enough to conquer the island, though both DeLong and he did not expect the Japanese to take immediate military action as mentioned below. Soejima expressed his pleasure with LeGendre's advice and added that Japan could easily send 10,000 soldiers.Footnote 101
Conversations with the two Americans revealed that Soejima's interest in the expedition was also due to his concern with domestic problems, which the Meiji Government faced at the time. Soejima seemed to see an overseas military campaign as an outlet for the discontent of the ex-samurai (warriors) with the new policies by the government as he mentioned that there were more than 400,000 ‘brave’ samurai who would be willing to fight.Footnote 102 The ex-samurai problem was not necessarily external to the government. More direct and serious pressure was posed by ex-samurai within the military. Looking for a chance to display their strength, the imperial army and navy of the new regime, which still consisted of ex-samurai prior to the enactment of conscription in 1873 and was equipped with modern armaments, had had its eye on Taiwan since the news of the Ryukyu shipwreck incident was announced. Soejima seemed to feel that their enthusiastic demand for military action against the Taiwanese aborigines, who had massacred the Japanese subjects, had reached an alarming point and that the government had difficulty restraining this military enthusiasm and outrage.Footnote 103
Fascinated by LeGendre's experience and knowledge and realising his usefulness, Soejima had repeated conversations with him and also worked on employing him in the Japanese Government. As a result, on December 30, 1872 (Meiji 5/12/1), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appointed LeGendre as an advisor.Footnote 104 Both before and after his appointment, possibly beginning in early November, he drafted five memoranda, the so-called LeGendre Memoranda, at Soejima's request.Footnote 105 In the first three memoranda, LeGendre explained at length that Chinese jurisdiction over the aboriginal territories was insubstantial under either international law or in view of the historical relationship between Qing China and the aboriginal tribes in Taiwan. He then suggested that Japan should take possession of not only the aboriginal land but also the entire island of Taiwan for the sake of Japan's national security vis-à-vis the Western powers. The fifth memorandum was possibly submitted to the government some time in mid-March 1873.Footnote 106 In this memorandum, LeGendre advised that Japan take both military and diplomatic measures to realise the seizure of the aboriginal territories.Footnote 107 Soejima's junior clansman, Okuma Shigenobu, mentioned that Soejima was especially fascinated by LeGendre's grand vision set forth in the fourth memorandum.Footnote 108 The memorandum was perhaps eloquent enough to Soejima's concern about Japan's national security and prestige. LeGendre predicted that antagonism between the Western powers, especially between Britain and Russia, would soon intensify in East Asia. He continued that since foreign countries intended to expand their spheres of influence, seizing Korea in the North and Taiwan and the Penghu Islands in the South would be the best strategy and indispensable for the Japanese empire's further development.Footnote 109
Despite Soejima's zeal, the Meiji Government did not choose to launch an immediate military operation. On November 3 (Meiji 5/10/3), Kabayama Sukenori noted in his diary that Soejima had submitted a statement to the Central Board one day earlier, though the contents are unknown, and that a government decision would be made in a few days. The decision the government eventually made was not, however, to launch an expedition to the aboriginal territories. On November 10 (Meiji 5/10/10), he noted, with pleasure, that the government had mostly resolved the Taiwan issue.Footnote 110 It is unclear from his diary what exactly had been resolved. It was probably not to carry out an expedition immediately, since one day earlier Kabayama had been ordered to go to Taiwan, as well as to China, not by leading troops but on an inspection mission.Footnote 111 On December 9 (Meiji 5/11/9), government leaders gathered in Chancellor Sanjo's mansion and made a final decision to dispatch an envoy to China.Footnote 112
This decision perhaps reflected the objections and opinions, from both within and outside the government, to the immediate launching of an expedition to the aboriginal territories. Preaching to Soejima the legitimacy and legality of the expedition, LeGendre and Delong did not in fact expect the Japanese to take immediate military action. They stressed that Japan would need to have diplomatic negotiations with Qing China first to clarify the absence of Chinese territorial sovereignty over the aboriginal territories, before dispatching troops.Footnote 113 The mainstream of the government leadership was also against Soejima's firm stance.Footnote 114 As noted above, Saigo Takamori, the most prominent leader in the caretaker government, also seemed to hesitate to favour the immediate launching of an expedition. The deputy of the Finance Ministry, Inoue Kaoru, and an official of the Ministry, Shibusawa Eiichi, raised objections to the expedition. Not necessarily questioning the propriety of the expedition itself, they thought that the overseas military campaign would not be feasible because of the fragility of the regime, the lack of military preparations, and the fiscal difficulties. On November 26, 1872 (Meiji 5/10/26), Inoue submitted a statement, drafted by Shibusawa, to Sanjo, arguing against the expedition and the seizure of the aboriginal territories on the grounds of inadequate military preparations.Footnote 115 On December 15 (Meiji 5/11/15), Shibusawa attended a meeting on the Taiwan issue, standing in for Inoue, who was in mourning for his mother, and expressed his opposition to the expedition.Footnote 116 In a letter dated December 18, 1872 (Meiji 5/11/18), to Kido, Inoue adduced the reason for his disagreement. Inoue's opposition was grounded in the same reasons as Shibusawa's. He thought that launching an overseas expedition before completing domestic modernisation and reforms, and under fiscal difficulties and domestic instability, would be imprudent.Footnote 117 Another objection to the expedition came from the concern over the relationship with China. Although he did not question the legitimacy of the expedition, Okuma Shigenobu, a Councillor of State, was anxious about the reaction of China, which possessed half of Taiwan.Footnote 118
The Soejima Mission of 1873
In mid-December, the Meiji Government singled out Soejima Taneomi to lead a mission to China. On December 18 (Meiji 5/11/18), he received an imperial edict that ordered him to go to China.Footnote 119 Another imperial edict the day after stated that the purposes of his mission were to congratulate the Qing emperor, Tongzhi, on his marriage and the commencement of his direct administration and to complete the pending ratification of the 1871 treaty.Footnote 120 Soejima was granted the status of Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary on February 28, 1873.Footnote 121 As Chancellor Sanjo Sanetomi stated, the audience with the Chinese emperor and the ratification of the treaty were, however, only the ostensible objectives of his mission to China. The true objective was to negotiate on the Taiwan issue.Footnote 122 When the members of the Soejima mission were summoned to the imperial palace on March 9, Emperor Meiji promulgated an edict, stating, ‘We have heard that the aborigines of the Island of Taiwan have massacred my subjects several times. Why wouldn't these calamities become worse in the future if [we] were to renounce the investigation [of the cases]? Now [We have] granted carte blanche to you, Taneomi. You, Taneomi, are to go [to China], and to discuss this issue with justice, with the intention of protecting my subjects’.Footnote 123
It was indeed Soejima himself who sought the appointment. Soejima, whose ambition for an immediate expedition had been frustrated, did not conceal that he still intended not only to clarify the status of the aboriginal territories but also to obtain them. Possibly before he was appointed ambassador, in a written statement to the emperor, he stated, ‘No one except me is able to prevent foreign powers aiming at Taiwan from impeding our imperial undertaking, to convince Qing China to cede the aboriginal territories to us, to bring the land under civilisation, and to gain the confidence of the inhabitants. I entreat your Imperial Majesty to send me to China to ratify the treaty, and to proceed to Beijing to convince foreign delegations not to question the treaty with China, to confer with the Qing government on the Audience Question, and to give prior notice to the government of a punitive expedition to Taiwan. And, with the expedition, we should clarify the demarcation of Taiwan and develop half of the island.’Footnote 124 On February 17, he also stated in a letter to his fellow clansman Okuma Shigenobu, ‘I am fairly confident of obtaining half of the island through negotiations. Resort to arms may be unnecessary even if the entire island is desired. I believe that this opportunity must not be missed in order to obtain half of the island now and to acquire the entire land through negotiations in four or five years’.Footnote 125
The Meiji Government did not, in fact, entirely trust Soejima. Soejima had been confident of the absence of Chinese sovereignty over the aboriginal territories before he began diplomatic talks with China.Footnote 126 On the other hand, the government was afraid that his firm attitude might lose Chinese amity. Ohara Shigezane even suspected that Soejima would not hesitate to wage war on China, though Soejima actually hoped that Japan would stay on friendly terms with China.Footnote 127 Inoue Kaoru continued to be apprehensive that Soejima might manoeuvre to manipulate the mission and was still proposing an official of the Finance Ministry, Mutsu Munemitsu of Kishu, for the ambassadorship until shortly before the Soejima mission left Japan.Footnote 128 This kind of apprehension within the government, which Kabayama felt keenly, might have been the reason it took the government so long to make a final decision on the dispatch of the mission to China and its departure.Footnote 129 Why did the government eventually choose Soejima? Ohara mentioned that no one could control Soejima after Saigo Takamori had returned to his hometown, Kagoshima, in December 1872.Footnote 130
Before the Soejima mission left Japan, the government, fearing his manipulation of the mission, took some measures to keep him under control. It issued several instructions to Soejima regarding negotiations. On February 27, 1873, the Council of State rejected Soejima's intention to use the mission to acquire the aboriginal territories and also rejected action in accordance with the five memoranda that LeGendre had submitted, having advocated seizing the aboriginal territories.Footnote 131 On March 9, following the imperial edict promulgated the same day, Chancellor Sanjo gave Soejima more specific instructions consisting of four clauses. The instructions stated that if the Qing Government claimed territorial sovereignty over the entire land of Taiwan, agreed to negotiate on the shipwreck incident and accepted the responsibility for taking appropriate measures, the Soejima mission would request that the Chinese take sufficient compensatory measures—the punishment of the criminals, relief money for the victims’ families and a crackdown on atrocities—for those who were massacred. If the Qing Government either admitted or denied territorial sovereignty over Taiwan and refused to negotiate, the decision would be left to the emperor. If the Qing Government answered in other ways, negotiations were to be carefully carried out in accordance with international law, without forfeiting any national rights.Footnote 132 The Council of State subsequently instructed Soejima to carry out negotiations as a duty to Japanese citizens and to avoid friction with China in compliance with the principle of peace.Footnote 133
On March 8, shortly before Soejima left Japan for China on the 13th of the month, another shipwreck incident occurred, and it was later cited as another pretext for the expedition. According to the records of the Council of State, the Japanese delegation in Shanghai reported that four Japanese sailors of Bitchu Oda prefecture (part of present-day Kurashiki, Okayama prefecture), who had left their native port in January 1873, encountered a storm coming back home from Kishu. They were cast ashore and robbed by Taiwanese aborigines though fortunately none of them was murdered. The sailors were rescued by Chinese officials of Fujian province, delivered to Japanese officials in Shanghai and returned to Kobe on July 20.Footnote 134
The Soejima mission reached Shanghai on two military vessels, the Ryujo and the Tsukuba, on April 1, 1873. This was the first time a Japanese diplomatic envoy had used gunboats, and the intent was perhaps to exalt national prestige in a dignified manner rather than to intimidate China.Footnote 135 After reaching China, Soejima completed the ratification of the 1871 Sino-Japanese Treaty with the Viceroy of Zhili Li Hongzhang in Tianjin on April 30, and reached Beijing on May 7.Footnote 136 After the Soejima mission arrived in the Chinese capital, the members spent most of their time on the so-called Audience Question. The Qing dynasty and foreign representatives were engaged in antagonistic negotiations over foreign demands for an audience with Emperor Tongzhi. Although the Chinese compromised with the foreign representatives including Soejima on the audience itself, the dispute still continued over the form of the audience. The Chinese Government was finally forced to surrender to foreign demands once again, and the audience, without the kowtow, eventually took place on June 29. The settlement of this issue significantly contributed to Soejima's vigorous and adamant negotiations with the Zongli Yamen.Footnote 137
Although he stayed in China for nearly 4 months, Soejima attempted to negotiate with the Qing Government on the Taiwan issue only once. On June 21, Soejima's Deputy Ambassador Yanagiwara Sakimitsu and Tei Nagayasu visited the Zongli Yamen and conferred with the Yamen ministers, while Soejima did not attend the meeting.Footnote 138 Wayne C. McWilliams conjectures that Soejima's absence might have been an intentional ‘tactical retreat’ to protest against the Chinese attitude towards the Audience Question.Footnote 139 Sharply opposed to the Qing dynasty over the form of the audience, Soejima had notified the Chinese that the Japanese envoy was to terminate the negotiations and leave China one day before the meeting took place.Footnote 140 McWilliams’ conjecture does not, however, explain why he attempted a negotiation only once. Nisshin koshoshi teiyo (A summary of Sino-Japanese relations) and Mori Toshihiko conjecture that Soejima did not want to spend much time on the Taiwan issue, which would inevitably bring up the issue of the status of the Ryukyus, after spending so much time on the Audience Question.Footnote 141 It is impossible to find an answer to this question because of the lack of evidence; it might be possible to speculate as follows. In addition to the unexpected rough going of the Audience Question, his lack of enthusiasm for talks with the Chinese on the Taiwan issue, despite his mission, because of his confidence of the absence of the Chinese sovereignty over the aboriginal territories made it difficult for him to find an earlier chance to enter talks.
In his meeting with the two Yamen Ministers, Dong Xun and Mao Changxi, Yanagiwara stated that the Chinese had no jurisdiction over the aboriginal territories of Taiwan, notifying them that the Japanese Government intended to send an expeditionary force to chastise the hostile aborigines who had massacred Japanese subjects (Ryukyuans). Yanagawara's reference to the Ryukyu shipwreck incident was unavoidable within the context of informing the Chinese about the expedition; it necessarily brought up the issue of the status of the Ryukyus, which Soejima, perhaps as well as other Japanese leaders, did not want to discuss with the Chinese. The Yamen ministers replied that they had been informed of the massacre of the Ryukyuans but not of the Japanese and stated that the Ryukyus were subordinated to China. Yanagiwara probably anticipated this Chinese reaction from the beginning. He did not continue the debate over the status of the Ryukyus. After stating that the Ryukyus belonged to Japan, which was under an obligation to protect the Ryukyuans as Japanese subjects, he shifted the topic to the Taiwan issue.Footnote 142
Yanagiwara asked the Yamen ministers how they would deal with the ‘savage’ aborigines. The ministers replied:
There are two kinds of aborigines on this island (Taiwan). The aborigines who have been subjugated are called jukuban (barbarians inside the Qing jurisdiction); we have set up prefectures and administered them. The other aborigines who have not yet been subjugated by us are called seiban (barbarians outside the Qing jurisdiction). They are beyond the influence of Chinese civilization (huawai) and also beyond our jurisdiction.Footnote 143
Yanagiwara urged on the Chinese the importance of the Taiwanese aboriginal territories:
If foreign powers occupied the aboriginal territories under the pretext of a massacre the aborigines had committed, and if these aboriginal territories became like the French territories in Vietnam, Macao, Hong Kong, and Russia's expanding sphere of influence from the Amur River basin to our northern frontier, we would be confronted with a menace on our southern shores, which would threaten the islands in that area.Footnote 144
He continued:
The Japanese government, therefore, intends to conquer the aborigines immediately. However, our minister (Soejima) restrained the popular call for a punitive expedition in order to promote amity between the two countries. If we, therefore, notify you through this mission that we are to launch an expedition and avoid your suspicion, and then chastise the aboriginal territories, there will be no suspicion that we might intervene in your territories.Footnote 145
From the Chinese statement, the Japanese understood that Qing China acknowledged its absence of sovereignty over the aboriginal territories and that it was up to Japan to take the next step to solve the Taiwan issue. Kabayama Sukenori, who was in Beijing with Soejima, noted in a diary entry dated June 21 that all the members of the mission felt like jumping for joy at the result.Footnote 146 Soejima also did not seem to anticipate that he would be able to gain what he had wanted so easily, though he had probably predicted that the Chinese would make such statement before coming to China because of his talks with DeLong and LeGendre. He stated in a report to Tokyo on June 29, ‘Negotiations over the Taiwan issue had fortunately been completed’.Footnote 147 Meanwhile, the Chinese officials failed to notice the gravity of their own statement. Sun Shida, a Yamen official attending the meeting, believed mistakenly that Yanagiwara had brought up the Taiwan issue to force them to submit to foreign demands over the Audience Question.Footnote 148
Sei-Kan ron and the Taiwan Issue: Summer and Autumn, 1873
When Soejima returned to Tokyo on July 25, 1873, another diplomatic problem had come to overshadow the Taiwan issue inside the Meiji Government. After the years of stagnant negotiation from early 1869 with Korea on the establishment of diplomatic relations, in the early summer of 1873 a report from Pusan in late May touched off a clamour for firm measures against Korea (sei-Kan ron). The protagonist of this moment was Saigo Takamori. In response to a report on the Korean affront, he proposed to go to Korea, as a formal envoy, in a final diplomatic effort to convince Korea to open its tightly closed doors to Japan, as well as to other foreign countries, before taking military measures. The popular interpretation states that Saigo was not, however, at all optimistic about his own mission, which he anticipated would provoke Korean violence and give Japan justification for punitive action.Footnote 149 Some historians have challenged this interpretation by submitting a sort of ‘pacifist’ theory that Saigo was confident of succeeding in settling negotiations with Korea peacefully.Footnote 150 Mori Toshihiko, for example, argues that Saigo's jingoistic words were merely a manoeuvre to mislead the true jingoist, Itagaki Taisuke. Examining Saigo's letters, I do not find anything other than speculation to support this revisionist theory. Although he was not proposing an immediate military action against Korea, Saigo anticipated that the use of military measures would be inevitable after his diplomatic effort failed as the popular interpretation states.Footnote 151 His proposal encountered objections primarily from the leaders who had participated in the Iwakura Mission and had returned from the United States and Europe—Okubo Toshimichi, Kido Takayoshi and Iwakura Tomomi—and caused a grave rupture in the leadership of the government. This schism resulted in the defeat of Saigo and his supporters and their leaving the government in late October.
Saigo's preoccupation with the Korea issue in the summer and autumn of the same year did not mean that he had got indifferent to the Taiwan issue. As mentioned above, he approved of Kabayama's proposal for an inspection mission to Taiwan in 1872 and actually dispatched some agents like Kabayama to China with the Soejima mission for inspections. He ordered military and civilian officers who had experience studying in China since 1871, like Kodama Toshikuni and Narutomi Seifu, to inspect Taiwan and southern China.Footnote 152 He also appointed Major Fukushima Tadashige (Reisuke) to serve as Consul in Amoy.Footnote 153 On June 23, two days after Yanagiwara's conversation with the Zongli Yamen regarding the Taiwan issue, Kabayama and others left Beijing for their destination.Footnote 154
Saigo even indicated that the expedition to Taiwan should be carried out before the one to Korea. He seemed to see the expedition to Taiwan as more feasible. He contrarily thought that the war against Korea would have to wait for the result of his mission. In a letter dated April 6, 1874, to Okubo Toshimichi, Iwakura Tomomi mentioned that in case Korea responded [to his mission] with discourtesy, Saigo had considered chastising Korea, but only after several years of military preparations.Footnote 155 While he was still trying to obtain government approval for his mission to Korea, Saigo was simultaneously moving forward the realisation of an expedition to Taiwan. On August 3, he asked Chancellor Sanjo Sanetomi to grant final authorisation for the expedition.Footnote 156 This was probably because he thought that the expedition to Taiwan had obtained sufficient justification as a result of the meeting between the Soejima mission and the Zongli Yamen in June 1873.
Saigo saw the two overseas military actions as outlets for domestic discontent, which he believed that the new regime had to contain. Japanese leaders, including Saigo, were aware of the disaffection and resentment among ex-samurai towards the defeudalisation and modernisation policies that stripped away their hereditary privileges and undermined their livelihoods. Saigo's home, Satsuma (Kagoshima), was a particular hotbed of ex-samurai discontentment. Many of the Satsuma clansmen, whose domain had been one of the major forces overthrowing the Tokugawa regime, felt betrayed by the drastic socio-political transformation that had taken place since the restoration. In a letter sent to his fellow clansman Okubo the year before, Saigo acknowledged the anguish caused by the rancour and condemnation of Shimazu Hisamitsu, the father of the domainal lord Shimazu Tadayoshi and the domain's de facto power holder.Footnote 157 The great south-western domain, in addition, was unique in that the samurai population—more than 26 per cent of the entire local population—was about four times as large as the national average (about 6 to 7 per cent).Footnote 158 Government leaders called it a ‘powder keg’.Footnote 159 On July 21, 1873, he asked his younger brother, Major General Saigo Tsugumichi, to give permission to Kagoshima ex-samurai to participate in the expected expedition to Taiwan.Footnote 160
Ex-samurai discontent was also obvious inside the military. The Imperial Guard was Saigo's greatest headache. It was originally organised as goshinpei, consisting of the ex-retainers of the three major restoration forces, Suzuki of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa, for the purpose of smoothly executing the abolition of domains in 1871, and was renamed konoehei (imperial guard) in the following year.Footnote 161 Proud of their own contribution to this revolutionary event, ex-samurai were upset when conscription, which would undermine their hereditary monopoly of arms, was announced in December 1872.Footnote 162 Satsuma clansmen formed the largest faction in the Imperial Guard, and their regionalist sentiment had caused friction and trouble inside the military.Footnote 163 Saigo, as head of the military and also as the leader of the Satsuma oligarchs, found dealing with his clansmen quite difficult. He called them ‘Kagoshima's troublemakers (Kagoshima no nanbutsu)’ and described his position as ‘napping in the midst of explosives’.Footnote 164 He said to Itagaki Taisuke on August 17 that military action against Korea would force the motives behind internal disturbances to be directed outward.Footnote 165 In his letter dated August 3 noted above, Saigo confessed to Sanjo that he was under pressure from the demands of the Imperial Guard for immediate approval for an expedition to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories.Footnote 166
Saigo also seemed to hope that an overseas campaign would improve the confusing, depressed and unstable domestic socio-political atmosphere that had descended since the restoration. He believed that Japan had been exhausting its national power and losing its mettle since the restoration and also that the encroachment of Western civilisation had caused social demoralisation.Footnote 167 He lamented the corruption among government officials. The decline of the moral of government leaders displeased him. Scandals involving high government officials like Inoue Kaoru and Yamagata Aritomo came out one after another.Footnote 168 Chancellor Sanjo and Grand Councillor Okuma Shigenobu abandoned themselves to frequenting the amusement quarters.Footnote 169 Demanding a stoic morality for government officials, Saigo must have been disgusted with these lapses in official discipline.Footnote 170Jiyutoshi (History of the Liberal Party) notes that Saigo had become disgusted with the corruption and confessed to Itagaki his hope to retreat to Hokkaido.Footnote 171 The two leaders then agreed to reinvigorate the declining public morals through an expedition to Korea.Footnote 172
Saigo's interest in overseas military actions was further evidence of his concern over his country's national prestige and security, as was the case with other government leaders. Like them, he regarded Russia as a menace to both Korea and Japan. In a letter dated March 23, 1872, to Okubo, who was in the United States, he reported the movements of the Russian military in Northeast Asia. One of his objectives in dispatching emissaries to China and Korea in August of 1872 was to reconnoitre the Russian military deployment near the Manchu–Korean border.Footnote 173 Japanese fear of Russia was increasing when the government leaders struggled over Saigo's sei-Kan ron.Footnote 174 Sakai Genba, an ex-retainer of Shonai-han, noted on January 9, 1874, that Saigo had said in Kagoshima that the settlement of the Korea issue, along with the defence of Hokkaido, would be a first step in preparations for a coming war with Russia, suggesting that Japan should exploit the Anglo–Russian confrontation by allying with Great Britain.Footnote 175
Saigo did not see the domestic issues—ex-samurai discontent and the decline of public mettle and morals after the restoration—as mere domestic problems. For him, an overseas military campaign as a solution for the domestic problems was a ‘farsighted measure to help the country flourish’.Footnote 176 He was afraid that those problems would be impediments to Meiji Japan's primary concern, evident in the imperial edicts and government leaders’ missives, namely, a safer and stronger position in the Western-dominated international environment. He was afraid that the declining mettle would lead Japan into the loss of independence.Footnote 177
The Expedition to the Taiwanese Aboriginal Territories
While Saigo believed that a military action in Korea would contribute to raising his country out of difficult internal and external conditions, in addition to settling a long-pending diplomatic issue, his opponents were against him for the same reasons. Also concerned over the Russian presence, they believed that priority should be given to the dispute with Russia over Sakhalin.Footnote 178 Also eager to strengthen the country and enhance its national prestige, they were convinced that domestic development (modernisation), including the ‘rich nation and strong army (fukoku kyohei)’ policy, was more urgent than an overseas military action, especially after the Iwakura mission had seen the advanced Western nations with its own eyes. Also desperate to survive in a Western-dominated world, they were afraid that a possible war with Korea as a result of the failure of the Saigo mission would undesirably consume Japan's energy, invite British intervention and profit Russia. Also concerned over domestic security, they feared that an overseas military adventure would on the contrary induce ex-samurai revolts and public disturbances rather than pacify the interior.Footnote 179
Nevertheless, the result of the dispute, called the political crisis of 1873 (Meiji rokunen seihen or sei-Kan ron seihen), fuelled anti-government sentiment, especially among those who had looked forward to an overseas venture. Many ex-samurai, including military and police officers, felt disillusioned and angry with the government under its new leadership. In the Imperial Guard, more than 600 officers and soldiers from Satsuma, and more than forty from Tosa, left their offices, following Saigo and the other pro-sei Kan leaders like Itagaki and Goto Shojiro on October 28, 1873. An imperial edict was issued to the military to calm their disquiet; its ineffectiveness revealed Saigo's great influence on the military and its antipathy and even hostility towards the anti-sei Kan leaders.Footnote 180 In January 1874, the increase in ex-samurai discontent became even more obvious to the government. On January 14, Iwakura Tomomi, the minister of the right (udaijin), was assaulted and injured in Akasaka, Tokyo, in the dark by a group of pro-sei Kan ex-samurai led by former Major Takechi Kumakichi. Takechi had been one of the emissaries dispatched to Manchuria in 1872.Footnote 181 Three days later, the Grand Councillors who had resigned—Itagaki, Goto, Soejima Taneomi and Eto Shinpei—established Japan's first political party, the Patriotic Party (Aikoku Koto), and submitted a petition to the government, criticising oligarchic rule and calling for the establishment of a national assembly; this marked the commencement of the Popular Rights Movement (jiyu minken undo). The threatening situation among pro-sei Kan ex-samurai in Saga, reported to Tokyo earlier in January, eventually escalated into the Saga Rebellion on February 1.Footnote 182
Into this domestic atmosphere, the inspection missions dispatched to the Chinese mainland and Taiwan returned in the late autumn and winter of 1873. Possibly in November or early December, Iwakura Tomomi received a proposal for an expedition to Taiwan from Fukushima Tadashige, who had participated in the inspection mission to Taiwan from February until September 1873.Footnote 183 On December 17, Okubo Toshimichi also received reports on Taiwan from Kodama Toshikuni and Narutomi Seifu, who had also been in Taiwan since February and had returned to Japan on December 6.Footnote 184
Furthermore, the anti-sei Kan leaders were probably aware that it would not be easy to ignore or kill the plan of expedition to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories whose legitimacy had been given by the result of the Soejima mission. On October 28, days after Saigo and such other Grand Councillors as Soejima had left the government, Okubo sent a letter to Iwakura, asking him to dispatch army and navy officers to China and Sakhalin for an inspection.Footnote 185 On November 11, a military vessel, the Kasuga, sailed for Taiwan to inspect the coast and the aboriginal territories of Taiwan.Footnote 186 In the same month, the army also dispatched eight officers to Beijing and Tianjin under the pretext of language study.Footnote 187 On December 20, in a letter to Iwakura, Okubo, who was not sure that his regime—historians have often called it the ‘Okubo regime (Okubo seiken)’—could survive February, mentioned that the Taiwan issue could no longer be left as it was.
Historians, especially Japanese historians, have overwhelmingly argued that mounting ex-samurai unrest motivated the anti-sei Kan leaders to carry out the expedition to the aboriginal territories as a solution to the problem; They have tended to overlook, however, that the Japanese leaders, including Saigo, understood ex-samurai discontentment as more than a mere domestic problem.Footnote 188 Since the very beginning of the restoration, they had consistently seen domestic pacification and stability as one of the most crucial issue, along with the enhancement of national power and the exaltation of national prestige, for Japan's national survival and development in the international environment of the late nineteenth century.Footnote 189 That is to say, both domestic and external objectives stemmed from the most crucial and urgent issue, namely, national survival and development. Furthermore, as the ‘rich country and strong army (fukoku kyohei)’ policy exemplifies, the attainment of domestic objectives would contribute to that of external objectives, though the latter would also contribute to the latter. The imperial edict calling for the abolition of feudal domains in 1871 manifested the official vision that domestic stability under the rule of the new regime would be the basis of bankoku taiji (parity and competition with the Western powers).Footnote 190 In his repeated advocacy for military campaign to Korea early in 1869, Kido Takayoshi thought that the overseas military action would facilitate the new regime's consolidation of power at home and then enable the rise of Japan in the international community. Footnote 191 As mentioned above, Saigo thought that the resolution of the domestic unrest would be necessary for the country's prosperity. The leaders, including Okubo, who took leadership after Saigo and others left the government, also needed to reduce the growing hostility directed at themselves after the sei-Kan ron debate and not only to gain domestic stability but also to pursue the political agenda that they believed was more important than Saigo's Korea policy to place Japan in a safer and stronger international position.Footnote 192
The Meiji Government began to wrestle seriously with the Taiwan issue beginning in January 1874. Iwakura said later, ‘The expedition to the aboriginal territories was at my suggestion’.Footnote 193 Some time after early January, Okubo and Okuma Shigenobu received an order from Chancellor Sanjo Sanetomi to investigate the issues regarding the aboriginal territories in Taiwan. Okubo's diary shows that after receiving the order, he frequently met and communicated with other leaders such as Sanjo, Iwakura, Okuma and LeGendre on the Taiwan issue. He even met Soejima, who had left the government after the sei-Kan ron debate in October 1873, and heard the details of the 1873 talks with the Chinese Government.Footnote 194 By January 29, Yanagiwara Sakimitsu and Tei Nagayasu, who had received an order from Okuma, drafted a proposal entitled Taiwan shobun yoryaku (The outline of the disposition of the Taiwan).Footnote 195 Okubo and Okuma then revised and submitted it, renamed Taiwan banchi shobun yoryaku (The outline of the disposition of the Taiwanese aboriginal territories), to the Cabinet on February 6. Footnote 196 This proposal was approved by the Cabinet on the same day and became the guidelines for the Japanese expedition to Taiwan.Footnote 197
These guidelines for the expedition, consisting of nine clauses, showed three characteristics. Firstly, the expedition meant to demonstrate Japan's territorial sovereignty over the Ryukyus and its protection of their subjects by subduing the savage aborigines and preventing them from repeating atrocities. Secondly, the Meiji Government did not want the expedition to the aboriginal territories to cause friction with Qing China. The pretext for military action was the Ryukyu and Oda shipwreck incidents; it was based on the claim of territorial sovereignty over the Ryukyus, and on an understanding of the legal status of the aboriginal territories, which the Japanese believed was unquestionable. This belief was based on remarks, statements and attitudes of Westerners like DeLong and LeGendre, and of the ministers of the Zongli Yamen. However, the Japanese seemed to have two remaining concerns. They were concerned that a punitive expedition over the shipwreck incident would possibly cause a dispute with China over the status of the Ryukyus. It is probable that they were also aware of the sensitive nature of military operations in the aboriginal territories, which shared a fuzzy border with the China-ruled territories on the island. The Meiji Government had no intention either of disputing over the Ryukyu issue or of losing peace with China. and was to dispatch a minister to Beijing, in parallel with undertaking the expedition. The second, third and fourth clauses suggest that the minister would have to make efforts to maintain friendship with China; if the Chinese referred to the status of the Ryukyus, he should merely restate the Japanese position but must not argue with them; and Ryukyu House in Fuzhou, in which a Ryukyu tributary mission to China regularly stayed and traded, would be left intact during the expedition.Footnote 198
Thirdly, the conquest and colonisation of the aboriginal territories, which had attracted Soejima, was mentioned nowhere in the guidelines. The original draft that Yanagiwara and Tei submitted did not conceal a territorial ambition, stipulating that it was the duty of the Japanese Government to take possession of the aboriginal land.Footnote 199 The guidelines did not, however, include that part of the Yanagiwara-Tei draft. Okubo and Okuma, who had originally wanted to concentrate national resources on domestic reform and modernisation, perhaps wanted to restrict overseas military action to the chastisement of the Taiwanese aborigines, which they probably hoped would ease the resentment and frustration of the ex-samurai.
However, this did not mean that Japanese leaders totally renounced their interest in seizing the ‘masterless’ land.Footnote 200 Iwakura's letter to Okubo dated February 6, when the Cabinet approved the guidelines, indicates that Iwakura had not necessarily seemed to give up his interest in territorial gain; he mentioned that the issue of the seizure of the aboriginal territories should be discussed later.Footnote 201 Since mid-February, Okubo, the home minister, had been in Saga to quell the Saga Rebellion, led by the former Grand Councillor Eto Shinpei and did not return to Tokyo until late April. During his absence from Tokyo, Okuma, Iwakura and Kuroda Kiyotaka of Satsuma were primarily in charge of the Taiwan issue.Footnote 202 Shortly after the government decided on March 18 to launch an expeditionary force, Major General Saigo Tsugumichi began to lobby for an appointment as commander of the expeditionary force.Footnote 203 Iwakura's letter to Okubo dated March 28 states that Saigo asked Iwakura to appoint him to the position and proposed seizing the aboriginal territories.Footnote 204 Considering that chastisement would not be enough to satisfy the participants in the expedition, especially those who were from Kagoshima, Saigo planned to transfer the discontented Satsuma ex-samurai to the seized aboriginal land.Footnote 205 Two points should be remembered here. Firstly, the Japanese leaders, including his elder brother Takamori, saw the problem of the ex-samurai discontentment not as a mere domestic issue. Secondly, Satsuma clansmen's participation in the expedition was originally elder Saigo's idea, which he discussed with Tsugumichi in 1873. It is, therefore, quite likely that younger Saigo saw the seizure of the aboriginal land for the ex-samurai not simply as a solution for the domestic issue.
Saigo's zeal won both an appointment to the commandership and modification of the expedition plan. Urged by LeGendre's fifth memorandum submitted on March 13, Okuma, who had previously opposed the expedition, also seemed to favour the active takeover of the aboriginal territories.Footnote 206 On April 4, an imperial edict was issued, appointing Saigo commander of the expeditionary forces. A separate edict concurrently issued to him showed that the colonisation of the aboriginal territories had been approved as government policy. The second clause of the second edict instructed that ‘the purpose is to induce the aborigines to become civilised gradually after subduing them and finally promote salutary enterprises between them and the Japanese government’.Footnote 207 On the same day, Okuma was appointed Director of the Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs on Taiwan (Taiwan Banchi Jimukyoku) established within the Central Board.Footnote 208 LeGendre was also named an advisor to the expedition.Footnote 209
Modification of the expedition plan did not mean that the Japanese were also changing the original policy, sent in the earlier guidelines, towards China. On April 8, Yanagiwara Sakimitsu, prospective minister plenipotentiary to Beijing, received an imperial edict. It emphasised the maintenance of amicable relations with China even if China questioned the Japanese expedition to Taiwan on which the aboriginal and Chinese-ruled territories coexisted. It also instructed him not to discuss the matter of the dual subordination of the Ryukyus, which would prolong negotiations, though Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyus must be claimed.Footnote 210
Unexpected Western powers’ change of their attitudes, however, undermined the underlying rationale for the expedition. Since April 2, the British minister to Japan, Sir Harry Parkes, had repeatedly inquired of Foreign Minister Terashima Munenori regarding the involvement of British citizens and ships in the expedition, the scale of the expedition and whether prior negotiations with Qing China had taken place.Footnote 211 On April 13, Parkes even threatened the Japanese, stating that if the Chinese Government regarded the Japanese expedition as hostile to China, all British citizens involved in the expedition would be recalled.Footnote 212 Parkes was concerned that the Japanese expedition would possibly bring about a Sino-Japanese War, in which British ships might be involved.Footnote 213 He also sought other countries’ alignment, and Russia and Spain followed the most powerful country of the time, declaring neutrality.Footnote 214 He furthermore put pressure on the new U.S. minister to Japan, John A. Bingham, who had replaced DeLong in September 1873.Footnote 215 Under Parkes’ strong influence, an editorial appeared in the English language newspaper, the Japan Daily Herald, of April 17, criticising Bingham for his tacit approval of the commitment of U.S. citizens and vessels to the Japanese expedition to territories under Chinese sovereignty.Footnote 216 The new U.S. minister had in fact cooperated with the Japanese Taiwan policy in the same way as his predecessor.Footnote 217 The criticism of the newspaper, under the influence of the minister of the most prominent power of the time, seemed to convince Bingham to abandon his previous attitude towards the Japanese expedition. On the 19th, he announced that since the involvement of U.S. citizens and vessels in the expedition to Taiwan which the United States had recognised as a part of Chinese territory would violate the 1858 Sino-U.S. Treaty (Tianjin Treaty) and international law, the Japanese use of U.S. citizens and vessels could not be approved.Footnote 218
The British and American responses shocked the Japanese. It would be understandable that Okubo describes them as ‘surprises (igai no koto)’ in a diary, because the Meiji Government had previously found no foreign objection.Footnote 219 The Taiwan policy had originally been encouraged by the two Americans—DeLong and LeGendre—regarding the legal status of the aboriginal territories. When he met with Soejima on August 7, 1873, Parkes had knowledge of LeGendre's influence on the Japanese Taiwan policy and the Japanese ambition to seize the aboriginal territories but did not express his objection to the Japanese plan.Footnote 220 When Soejima referred to the expedition plan in China in 1873, the British Minister to China Thomas Francis Wade and the U.S. Minister to China Frederick F. Low also did not express objections.Footnote 221 As mentioned above, Bingham had even been cooperative, just as DeLong had been. Foreign advisors serving the Meiji Government made the same prediction as did DeLong and LeGendre.Footnote 222 In such circumstances, the Meiji Government was confident of the legality of the expedition and believed firmly that it would not cause foreign objections or bring about foreign intervention. Parkes’ reaction was typical: whether or not the Japanese action was legal was not the primary concern of the Westerners. Although aware of the hypocritical aspects of international law, the Japanese leaders were forced to reconfirm the reality of international politics, in which international law could be trifled with by the intentions of great powers but was helpless to defend lesser powers like Japan. The members of the Iwakura mission, like Iwakura himself, might have recalled the speech of Bismarck. The German chancellor said in a speech given during their stay in Berlin in 1873 that not international law but wealth and strength were the only things lesser powers could count on.Footnote 223 On April 19, frustrated in its optimistic expectation by the Western objections, the Meiji Government finally decided to postpone the expedition.Footnote 224
Saigo Tsugumichi, the Commander-in-Chief of the expeditionary forces, defied the government decision on the grounds of the imperial edict of April 4. Saigo was indeed in a difficult position as Kanai Yukiyasu, who delivered the government order to Saigo, was sympathetic to him.Footnote 225 Saigo probably feared that the postponement would enrage his soldiers and drive them to riot. In Nagasaki, there were 3,658 soldiers, including 295 Satsuma volunteers recruited by Saigo's elder brother and were led by a former police officer, Sakamoto Sumihiro, standing for departure to Taiwan.Footnote 226 On April 27, Saigo dispatched Fukushima Tadashige, Council to Amoy, along with about 200 soldiers. Fukushima reached Amoy on May 3 and delivered notification of the expedition to Li Honian, the Viceroy of Fujian and Zhejiang.Footnote 227
Okubo Toshimichi saw the pitch between the volte-face of Western attitudes and Saigo's refusal to obey the government's order as a ‘national crisis (kokunan)’.Footnote 228 Five days after returning from Saga and being informed of the foreign objections and the postponement of the expedition on April 24, Okubo again left Tokyo to suspend the dispatch of the expeditionary forces.Footnote 229 He discovered, however, that it was too late to cancel the expedition. When he reached Nagasaki on May 3, Saigo had dispatched the secondary forces one day earlier.Footnote 230 At this moment, the solution Okubo chose was to carry out the expedition on a restricted scale and made an arrangement with Saigo and Okuma Shigenobu on May 4: instead of permitting Saigo to pursue a punitive expedition, they agreed to abandon the colonisation plan, to give up employing British and U.S. citizens and ships and to dispatch Yanagiwara Sakimitsu, appointed minister to China, to negotiate with the Qing Government; Okubo then accepted full responsibility for the expedition.Footnote 231 On May 17, Saigo left Nagasaki, leading the rest of the expeditionary forces.
Although the military chastisement launched against the aboriginal tribes (Botansha) was completed quickly by early June, the diplomatic negotiations with Qing China faced rough going and were protracted.Footnote 232 After Yanagiwara left Yokohama the day after Saigo left for Taiwan, nearly 5 months were spent on negotiations between Japan and China. The first phase of the Sino-Japanese negotiations lasted from early June until the end of August 1874, in Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing. During this phase, The negotiation routes got fragmented and as a result confused the talks between the two sides; Chinese officials approached, deliberately or not, both Yanagiwara in China and Saigoin Taiwan in parallel. The primary issues were the legitimacy of the expedition in terms of international law and the 1871 Sino-Japanese Treaty and the presence (or absence) of Chinese jurisdiction over the aboriginal territories in Taiwan. In the negotiations, the Japanese and the Chinese did nothing but sticking to their positions. The former never renounced their claim of the righteousness of the punitive expedition according to international law, while the latter refused to comply with ‘Western’ international law.Footnote 233
The second phase lasted from September until the last day of October 1874. When the negotiations between Yanagiwara and the Zongli Yamen came to a deadlock in late August, Okubo Toshimichi arrived in Beijing, and his arrival opened a new phase of the negotiations. In Beijing, Okubo's strategy was to settle the prolonged negotiations by acquiring the Chinese recognition of the punitive action as a righteous action and also an indemnity from China, in exchange for a withdrawal of the expeditionary forces from the territories. This implied that he would not persist in the claim that the aboriginal territories were beyond Chinese sovereignty, and that he understood that it would be the only way to settle the crisis, without a loss of Japan's national dignity or prestige, if the Chinese refused to drop their claim on the territories. Although the negotiations continued to be difficult and almost broke down, they were finally concluded when the Beijing Agreement was signed on October 31, 1874, with the mediation of the British minister to China, Wade, whose concerned was that a war between the two East Asian countries would harm British interests in the area.Footnote 234
In the negotiations, there were three characteristics found in the Japanese diplomatic attitude. Firstly, the Japanese negotiators—Okubo, Yanagiwara and Saigo—never abandoned the claims that the expedition was a righteous action according to international law and that the aboriginal territories were beyond Chinese sovereignty until the very last moment of the negotiations in Beijing. Secondly, on the other hand, the Japanese held firmly to the line of maintaining amity with China. When the negotiations appeared futile, Japanese leaders had deemed a war with China to be inevitable; they had even started military preparations before Okubo's departure for China.Footnote 235 However, in the end, the Meiji Government did not choose to lose peace because of concerns over domestic fiscal difficulties and a lack of confidence in military readiness to wage war on the neighbouring great power.Footnote 236 Granted full responsibility for peace and war, Okubo himself did not want a break with China.Footnote 237 Denying Chinese jurisdiction over the aboriginal territories, Okubo noticed that the Japanese would have no justification for declaring war against China over the ‘non-Chinese’ land.Footnote 238 Third, the Japanese were also consistent in not bringing the Ryukyu issue to the negotiating table. Claiming that the expedition was a righteous action to protect their subjects, the Japanese negotiators could not keep the Chinese blind to their claim on the Ryukyus but never went beyond merely repeating the claim that the Ryukyus belonged to Japan.
The Beijing Agreement certainly saved the two countries from a fatal rupture; it was a compromise for both sides. Although some previous studies have argued that China recognised Japan's action in the territories as a righteous one to protect its ‘subjects’, as Okubo demanded, the first clause of the agreement shows that China did so merely in an euphemistic way. It states, ‘The present enterprise of Japan is a just and rightful proceeding to protect her own subjects, and China does not designate it as a wrong action’.Footnote 239 China agreed to pay $750,000 (500,000 taels)—100,000 taels as compensatory money for the victims of the shipwreck incidents and 400,000 taels for China's purchase of Japanese-built facilities in Taiwan, though Okubo originally demanded $3 million (2 million taels) for Japanese military expenditures.Footnote 240 The promise stipulated by the Chinese in the agreement to adopt measures to prevent the recurrence of atrocities by the aboriginal tribes also implied Japan's tacit recognition of Chinese sovereignty over the aboriginal territories and China's acceptance of its responsibility for putting the Taiwanese aborigines under proper control of the Qing Government.
The ambiguous meaning of the term ‘Japanese subjects’ in the agreement may be further evidence of compromise and became a cause of further dispute between the two sides. The Japanese interpreted the term as suggesting both the Ryukyuans and the residents of Oda prefecture. The popular interpretation is also that China, definitely, virtually or indirectly, recognised the Japanese claim on the Ryukyus.Footnote 241 On the other hand, the Chinese interpreted it merely as reference to the residents of Oda prefecture. Two Chinese historians, Edwin Pak-ah Leung and Zhang Qixiong, also challenge the popular interpretation, maintaining that after signing the agreement, Meiji Japan distorted the meaning of ‘Japanese subjects’, which originally meant no more than the Chinese understood. This distortion theory is not, however, valid because of Leung's misinterpretation of primary source materials and Zhang's blind following of the Qing interpretation of the agreement.Footnote 242 Furthermore, they fail to notice the fact that some Westerners, including the mediator, Wade, also understood the term to include the Ryukyuans.Footnote 243 This makes it possible for us to offer some speculations: China simply failed to understand the term in the same way as the Japanese and the British; not the Japanese but the Chinese distorted the interpretation of the term after signing the agreement; all of three chose to settle the prolonged dispute as soon as possible despite their awareness of the ambiguity of the term and of its possibility to case a discrepancy in interpretation.
After the crisis was over, the Meiji Government began to work on consolidating its claim on the Ryukyus. Okubo submitted a proposal after returning to Japan in December and stated that the Beijing Agreement clarified Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyus to some extent (ikubun), but not completely. He thought that the Ryukyus were still under dual subordination.Footnote 244 He then insisted that the government implement measures to consolidate Japanese control over the Ryukyus.Footnote 245 As mentioned above, Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi had previously promised the Ryukyuans that their polity would not be changed. Beginning in the spring of 1875, the Meiji Government, however, following Okubo's proposal began to take measures to reinforce its claim. It suspended the Ryukyu mission, which Sho Tai, the domainal king of Ryukyu-han, had dispatched to celebrate the coronation of the new Chinese emperor, Guangxu, and stationed troops on the islands. Four years later, it finally replaced Ryukyu-han with Okinawa prefecture.
Soon after China and Japan started a new phase in their relationship of several thousand years, the two neighbours endured the disputes over the Ryukyus and the aboriginal territories on Taiwan. In this study, I have first demonstrated that the Ryukyu and Taiwan issues were motivated in common by the Meiji Government's concern over national security and prestige. Were the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyus and the invasion of the Taiwanese aboriginal territories designed as a part of (or prelude to) an invasion of China? In other word, did Meiji Japan try to invade China for its own national security and prestige? In the changing international environment, in order to protect themselves from Western invasion, the Japanese realised the necessity to modify the traditional international relations and border by adopting the Western notion of territorial jurisdiction and sovereignty. As the Bakumatsu and early Meiji discourses of some intellectuals and political elites show, the Japanese, fascinated and frightened by Western expansionism and colonialism, wanted to enhance Japan's national power beyond their small territory towards the East Asian mainland, for the sake of national glory and security. From the Chinese (or Taiwanese) point of view, all the trouble between the two neighbouring countries would be caused by Japanese aggression into their territory and tributary system, no matter what kinds of motives were behind those Japanese actions. My conclusion here is, however, that such expansionist ambition was never directed against China in the actual Japanese policies of the time period covered by this study. The policies towards the Ryukyus and Taiwan were by no means designed to secure a bridgehead to the Chinese mainland. From the Japanese point of view, the annexation of the Ryukyus was no more than a modification of the traditional Japanese domination over the Ryukyus in accordance with international law. The Meiji Government understood that it would be necessary in order to defend the archipelago and also Japan proper from possible Western encroachment. The expedition to the Taiwanese aboriginal territories was a necessary and legally legitimate action to demonstrate Japan's territorial sovereignty over the Ryukyus, to prevent Western seizure of the masterless land beyond the Chinese sovereignty and to cope with the domestic problem that might endanger Japan's national survival in the Western-dominated world.
