Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
An Alien Game: Japan's Path to War (1)
The transformation of Japan from hermit kingdom to imperial power happened with breathtaking speed. When American Commodore Perry's "black ships" steamed into Tokyo Bay in the 1850s, they shattered Japan's 250-year isolation with technology that seemed to come "from 200 years in the future." This technological gap created a constitutional crisis that would ultimately topple the Tokugawa Shogunate and usher in the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Jonathan Clements guides us through this pivotal period where Japan found itself facing what one historian calls "an invitation to an alien game" - forced to adopt international norms and institutions they never agreed to. Rather than becoming colonized like China or India, Japan's new leaders determined to become players in this global power game. They systematically studied Western nations, adopting what they perceived as the best elements of each: a German-style army, British naval technology, and aspects of French law.
This selective modernization happened against a backdrop of growing militarism and expansionism, particularly toward Korea - strategically described as "the dagger at the heart of Japan." The 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War demonstrated Japan's new capabilities, but the subsequent "Triple Intervention" by Russia, France and Germany (forcing Japan to abandon territorial gains) created a humiliation that would fuel future aggression.
Throughout this period, the Japanese government struggled with "gekokujō" - military insubordination where officers initiated "incidents" that expanded Japanese influence without authorization. The assassination of Korea's Queen Min by Japanese agents exemplifies this dangerous pattern where unauthorized actions expanded imperial control while undermining civilian government - creating precedents that would ultimately lead Japan toward its catastrophic Pacific War.
Whether you're interested in East Asian history, imperial expansion, or the roots of 20th century conflict, this exploration of Japan's rapid transformation reveals how quickly a nation can reinvent itself - for better or worse.
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, russell Hogg. My guest today is Jonathan Clements. Jonathan is well known to the listeners so I'll keep the introduction short. He has many strings to his bow, all of which are showcased in his fantastically entertaining blog, and I'll put a link to the blog in the show notes. But I think he's mainly known as an historian of East Asia.
Speaker 1:We talked before on the podcast about Taiwan and most recently we talked about Japan's Christian century and how that came to an end with the closing of the country in the mid-1600s. Well, today we're going to talk about Japan again, but this time we're going to skip over the closed period and we're going to look at what happened next once Japan reopened. And sorry for the spoiler, but Jonathan's book on the subject is called Japan at War in the Pacific, which gives you a pretty big hint of what happened next. Anyway, welcome, jonathan, to the podcast. Thank you for having me back. I mentioned your book, japan at War in the Pacific, and it's subtitled the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire in Asia from 1868 to 1945. So what is it that happened in 1868?
Speaker 2:Well, 1868 is a crucial date in Japanese history because it is the time of the so-called Meiji Restoration. And what the Meiji Restoration actually was really depends on how cynical you are about approaching the historical materials. Because in the 1850s the Americans show up in Japan and Commodore Perry turns up in his black ships, and this is a huge shock for the Japanese because they've been walled off from the rest of the world effectively. For the last 250 years the Tokugawa shoguns have been in charge and Japan has been in its own little time warp, pretending it's still 1600. For all this time They've kept out the Christians. They only trade with the Dutch at a little ghetto island down in the south and they really don't want anything to do with the world.
Speaker 2:And suddenly and the Japanese have had warning about this, but they're still not prepared for it these massive black ships, two of which are powered by coal, turn up right in the middle of Tokyo Bay and the Japanese are not ready for this at all. And the Americans say well, we want coaling ports and welcome to the rest of the world. We've had an industrial revolution while you've all been asleep and you know, our whalers are going to need somewhere to put in and we'd like to do a deal about sailors and basically you need to join the international community and we're here to make you do that. We'll be back next year with some papers for you to sign and stuff. See you later.
Speaker 2:Bye and so the Americans just you know sail off again. And the emperor says well, we don't want this. This sounds ridiculous. These people are not supposed to come anywhere near us. The Shogun can deal with them. Deal with these barbarians, make them go away. And the Shogun says it's not as easy as it looks, because these are basically people from 200 years in our future. I mean, that's the technological difference between these two groups of people.
Speaker 2:The Japanese have had whispers about what the world is like outside and they've read books about it sometimes, but they really haven't got any idea of the changes that have happened in the world. And the Shogun says yeah, I don't know if we can hold these people off. Foreigners have been showing up on our waters for years and years and we've shooed them away. But these people have come right into the heart of the country and I don't think we can get rid of them. And so the emperor and a bunch of other japanese people say but that's your job. The shogun's title is tai shogun, he's, he's the, he's the, the barbarian suppressing generalissimo. His actual job title is to keep barbarians you know where they belong. And if the, if the shogun's not capable of doing that, this creates effectively a constitutional crisis. The tokugawa family have been running japan on behalf of the emperor for 250 years. They've given this job to do and they're like, well, we don't know what to do. And so all these questions start to arise what about all the the artillery pieces we've got on the coast? And they're like, oh, they're fake. It turns out, um, they, they don't actually work. The Americans called them dungaree forts because some of them were literally on tarpaulins and they just kind of put them up when the Americans showed, to show a silhouette on the horizon and put them down again. And there's reports of the American sailors going another dungaree fort, sire no, off the port bow.
Speaker 2:And so the Japanese aren't prepared for this, they aren't prepared to fight back, but they're also uninformed about how true this is. How do you mean sorry? Well, what I mean is that if you're an armchair general and the shogun's just said, oh, I can't cope with these people, you say, oh, yeah, well, I could, I could do a better job than him. I mean, how difficult is it? You know you could trump your way out of it. And so all over Japan you have people like that saying, well, maybe we need another shogun, let's replace this shogun. And you've got other people saying, well, maybe we need to put the emperor back in charge, maybe we need to do what they say, we need to modernize and then see how we can deal with them on an equal footing. And Japan essentially fragments into about eight different sides, all of them claiming to be loyalists. Every single one of them is going well. We're going to do what the emperor wants us to do. But the way to do that is overthrow the shogun, replace the shogun, get a better shogun, remove the shogun completely and have a modern state. Maybe we should have democracy. No, don't talk about that, this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And so, deep down in the South, there are a number of domains run by the losers in the big civil war that ended in 1600. There are the domains of Satsuma and Choshu and Tosa, and there's another one. I always forget he's in. He's in Thank you. Maybe you should be on this podcast. I always forget he's in. He's in Thank you. Maybe you should be on this podcast.
Speaker 2:And they have spent the last 250 years sitting around saying maybe we should start this civil war up again. And historians are discouraged from such a simplistic account of things. It's called primordialism to suggest something so cartoony. But actually in the case of Satsuma and Choshu, they would have this annual event where they'd kind of clink glasses and drink their sake and go is now the time to take on the no? Okay? Well, maybe next year? And in fact later on in the 19th century there was a revolutionary group called the Shinpuren who would literally the official term is consult oracles about whether or not now was the time to strike. As far as I could see, they were rolling dice or looking at a magic eight ball or something. And eventually it came up yes, start a revolution. And so they did so anyway.
Speaker 2:So Satsuma, choshu, their little friends in Tosa and Hizen, they start a march on the capital.
Speaker 2:They basically declare war on the shogun, and they do so in the name of the emperor. The emperor who, who says let's get rid of these barbarians. He dies very conveniently in his 40s, which is very suspicious, and his heir is a 14 year old boy called mutsuhito. And satsuma and choshu say in the name of this emperor, we are going to overthrow the shogun and we are going to, you know, sort stuff out. And so they commence this march on the capital, which turns into the meiji restoration. Mutsuhito eventually becomes the emperor meiji and the satsuma choshu tosa. He's in clique that marches in his name. They become the new, the new administration that they completely populate the, the government and the, the newly formed army and navy, they that they completely take over and all of the old order, all of the shogun's people. They are just scattered to the four winds. A lot of them end up living in hokkaido, actually, because that was where their last stand was wasn't there another candidate to be emperor?
Speaker 2:you know one of these there was, and and this is something that really is not discussed at all I only found out about it about 20 years ago when donald keen, in one of his last books, wrote a fantastic book about the life of the meiji emperor, and it came up in that because there was a the, the imperial family was absolutely huge I mean, there are dozens of them and a lot of them were went into religious orders. They became buddhist monks, just to kind of get them out of the way, and in fact, after meiji was restored, he ordered them all to come out of the monasteries because he needed nobles in his administration. One of these buddhist monks was a man in his 20s, uh, who was, uh, the abbot of a temple in Ueno, in what is now Tokyo, and the shogunal forces kind of seized the temple and seized him. There was a massive battle at Ueno which turned the waters red at Shinobazu Pond very famously, and the Satsuma and Choshu forces were victorious and the Tokugawa shogun people just kind of ran for it and they took this guy with them. And as they fled further north, ever further north, and the Tokugawa shogun people just kind of ran for it and they took this guy with them and as they fled further north, ever further north, there were these proclamations issued in the name of the Torbu emperor, suggesting that he was the emperor and that Meiji was just some kid that the Satsuma and Choshu clique were putting forward Because Satsuma and Choshu won so apocalyptically. They've kind of scrubbed all mention of this from the historical record and there are Japanese historians today who doubt the veracity of the proclamations of the Tobu Emperor. They say, yeah, maybe somebody wrote them and put them out in the name of the shogunate forces. But how far up the shogunate forces was the person who put that out? But as far as we can see, there were points during the Meiji Restoration when it could have gone either way, and if Mutsuhito had died or Satsuma and Chosho had lost a battle somewhere, then possibly we'd be talking about the Tobu Emperor instead, but anyway nothing happened with him.
Speaker 2:The forces fled further and further north until they were stuck on Hokkaido and they made this rather futile effort to become a republic on Hokkaido, although they were a republic that still wanted to claim allegiance to the emperor. So it was a bit weird. And then everything was kind of shut down, and one of the ways it was shut down was that the Satsuma and Choshu forces used the emperor as a major kind of playing piece in their war. They would carry the imperial banner at the front of their forces, on the understanding that if they approached a town that was claiming allegiance to the shogun and they waved the imperial banner at them, the people in that town could not in all conscience charge against the symbol of the emperor themselves. They might say we are loyal to the shogun, but the shogun is supposed to be loyal to the emperor, and the emperor's forces are here saying no, no, no, it's time for you to surrender. And in a lot of places that did happen.
Speaker 2:There are japanese history books that describe the meiji restoration as a bloodless coup. It wasn't bloodless. About 10 000 people died, but in but by japanese terms that's pretty bloodless. And so that was a kind of great kind of victory for them. And it was also the subject of their most famous song, because as they marched north, they sang this song that one of their generals had written, which was distributed on leaflets by scouts running ahead of the army because they wanted the whole country singing this song and it was based on. It's very alien. It's a very alien song because it uses pipes and drums. It uses things they learned from the americans only 10 years earlier. There's a bit of yankee doodle dandy in it, there's a bit of the star strike banner and the song is uh it goes, which means Prince, oh Prince. What is that banner that flutters in front of your horse? And you know? It's the banner that proclaims allegiance to the Emperor.
Speaker 2:We are going to get it done. We're going to get it done to the end. What are they going to get done? Well, no one actually knows what they're going to get it done. We're going to get it done to the end. What are they going to get done? Well, no one actually knows what they're going to get done.
Speaker 2:That's part of the problem with the Meiji Restoration and its aftermath is that there is this huge I'm going to say the B word. There's this Brexit-level excitement about this thing. That's going to get done, but no one really explains how it's going to be done. We're just going to deal with the shogun. We're going to get rid of him. We're going to put the emperor in charge, which has never happened. I mean, the emperor has not really been in charge for a thousand years. Um, he's always been a figurehead, but now he's going to be the in charge and we're going to sort stuff out and we're going to reform, but we're not going to say how we're going to reform really. And none of this activity answers the elephant in the room, which is these foreigners who are saying you have to join the international community, you have to sign treaties with us, you have to trade with us, and so a number of sorry go on.
Speaker 1:When I was looking at this a bit, I was sort of struck by the fact that, although the the satsuma and Choshu people are saying, look, you know, your job is to get rid of the barbarians, they're incredibly split even within themselves, because people have been going abroad, being sent abroad on little missions, and the students have been sent out and they've kind of been dribbling back and saying you have got no idea how strong these guys are. There's no way we can just shoo them away. You have got no idea how strong these guys are, there's no way we can just shoo them away. And so you've got, even within the new forces you've got this different views are arising right, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:For example, choshu sent an illegal mission out of the country. They sent five boys, basically five very young men, away to study and I think there's a monument to them at UCL in Londonon. There's a little kind of plaque, plaque on a, on a plinth in the gardens at ucl and today we call them the choshu five. But that is a rather modern addition to historiography. I think it only really cropped up after a film was made about them about 15 years ago. And these, these people came back and said exactly just like you have no idea, wow, I've have no idea, wow, I've seen ironclad ships. Well, I haven't seen ironclad ships, but I've seen big battleships. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, to coin a phrase. And those five people became major movers within the later government. There's a future prime minister there and a future industrialist and so on and they come back to a bunch of people who are still samurai yeah who are still living in 1600 and and they tell these stories and, uh, and people don't believe them.
Speaker 2:Um, I actually wrote the entry on japan for the encyclopedia of science fiction and there's a there's a section in there about the problems the japanese had dividing speculative fiction from truth, about the far west. Right, Because they'd see these drawings of people flying in balloons and they'd go, oh, but that's just a story. Because no, no, no, that's true. And then they'd see people flying to the moon and they'd go, oh, that's true. Because no, no, no, that's just a story. And so they weren't really sure For years and years. They were really quite confused and the West was this kind of science fictional proposition for them, which is why I use the analogy of the black ships coming from 200 years in the future, because that's really how it felt to the Japanese and they had a lot of catching up to do.
Speaker 1:All of these students, when they went abroad, they kept diaries and it was very interesting because you can see how much they admired the Western societies. As they're traveling out, they're going to Hong Kong, then they're going on to Singapore, then they're going on to Bombay. Everywhere they go there's a British flag flying there. They've got all this power. You can see, well, this is highly admirable, but they're also terrified because they think, well, japan is weak compared to that, and if they can do this to india, if they can do this to china, if they can do this all these countries, what are they going to do to us?
Speaker 2:so you've kind of got this very ambiguous feelings towards the west yeah, there, yeah, there's a historian called Iida Yumiko who talks about the Japanese attitude towards this world they've been thrust into, and she calls it an invitation to an alien game, which is a title I love and I use it as a chapter in my book and I think we're using it for this podcast too, because, they're told, these are the rules. These are the rules that there are now, the, these are the documents that you need to play this game, these are the institutions you'll need to found and then you can join in and you can be one of us. And, as you say, the students who who leave japan, both before and after the meiji restoration and and to go and study, you know, realize just what a huge difference there is in the world outside. And the the optimists among them, say well, we can be like the British and the Americans and the French. We don't want to be India, we don't want to be China, which is being torn apart by these forces. We'll be one of these nations, we'll sort it out. And one of the advantages that they have is that they've turned up late to the game. So a lot of the good colonial territories have been taken, but they turn up late enough that they can pick and choose, they can cherry pick from the various countries that they visit.
Speaker 2:And so, um, shortly after the restoration, there's a there's this fantastic around the world tour by a bunch of high-ranking satsuma choshu people, including one of the choshu five, actually ito h Hirabumi was among them and they travel around the world shedding students like hairballs as they go. Every time they land somewhere, they kind of push a bunch of students out go you, study here. We're going to keep going. And they come back with a report about what Japan needs to do and they say well, we've been thinking that the French are the best military people, because we've heard stories about this Napoleon guy. But actually the French were just beaten in a war by Prussia, and Prussia is kind of part of Germany now. So what we really need to do is we need a German army. Ok, so let's fire all the Frenchmen who are here right now and bring in Germans to teach us how to fight. And the best navy in the world is the British. The British keep telling us. So we're going to have British ships and, in fact, a lot of their ships. The legal system looks pretty good in France. Let's keep that, which will confuse everybody for years to come. And so they keep cherry-picking and they start putting together a modern country, but even as they do so, there are people there saying this is not what I signed up for, even as the Iwakura mission, which was this round-the-world trip. Even as they leave, there's a guy at the banquet called Saigo Takamori who says I hope your ships sink. Guy at the banquet called Saigo Takamori who says I hope your ships sink. This is not what I know I'm. I'm a samurai. I signed up to replace the shogun and keep the foreigners out, and you're just ruining everything.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, in Korea, the Koreans are saying we didn't sign up to this either. We are also a closed country and you have a little kind of trade delegation that's allowed to dock in Busan and and sell us lucky gonks or whatever it is the Koreans want from the Japanese, and the Japanese show up and they stick a flag on this delegation and go okay, this is our consulate. Now we're setting up an embassy eventually and we're going to deal with you the way the foreigners are dealing with us and the Koreans are like we didn't agree to this. We're a closed country still. Why are you calling yourself the emperor all of a sudden. For the last 200 years years, we've been dealing with someone who's who calls himself the great prince tycoon, and suddenly you're claiming to be an emperor. There is only one emperor, and that's the ruler of china. So this is just.
Speaker 2:This is not working, and so the koreans are getting angry with them.
Speaker 2:They're getting shirty with the koreans and, as you say, within their own organization there are traditionalists like Saigo Takamori saying no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:We still need to get rid of these foreigners. And in fact, during the 1860s, the life for foreigners in Japan is absolutely awful. There's stories about Townsend Harris, who was one of the first ambassadors, who was played in the film by John Wayne. So he's supposed to be a tough guy. He spent most of his time drinking himself into a stupor in his quarters because he was afraid to go out of the house, because anyone with a white face walking in the street would get stabbed, and there were repeated incidents of this happening. All of these kind of young self-declared they call themselves shishi, men of high aim, men of nobility. We might translate that today as proud boys walking around beating up foreigners and saying we're doing this because the emperor would really want this, and this is one of the problems throughout Japanese history is people acting on behalf of what they think the emperor would want if he had had the best advice and if he were allowed to speak for himself.
Speaker 1:There was one british army captain, I think uh who, who made the mistake of sort of riding through the entourage of some high official and his samurai retainers, and he's promptly chopped to pieces uh, that's, that's charles lennox richardson in 1862.
Speaker 2:Uh, so right within the period I'm describing, uh, and that is that was called. That was the namamugi incident. And uh, it was right near the right within the period I'm describing and that is that was called. That was the namamugi incident. And uh, it was right near the end of the period when choshu and uh satsuma were getting ready to start their fight. What happened was is um the the samurai.
Speaker 2:One of the things that the shogun did to keep everybody busy was everyone had to kind of visit him in in what is now tokyo on alternate years, or sometimes on alternate two years. And so the samurai had to go on these long processions from wherever they lived and walk all the way up to japan and then go and live in uh edom, as it was then called um, as basically as hostages and serve at the shogun's mansion. And on one of the last occasions that this happened I think actually was the last there were a bunch of samurai going home and it forms a huge long procession. I mean, it goes on and on and on. So there's this party of visitors led by Charles Lennings Richardson. Reading one of the accounts, there's very prominent talk of it being just after lunch, which doesn't mean anything to the Japanese but to a British reader says they were off their faces. There were two young ladies with the group that Charles Lennox Richardson was trying to impress and they're waiting on their horses and this line of samurais going and, going and going and it just won't stop, in the end with the fatal last words. I know how to deal with these people. Richardson rides into the, into the parade and to kind of push his way through it and he's dragged off his horse and executed by the samurai.
Speaker 2:And this creates all kind of you know, it creates an international incident. Uh, it's a very clear case of western hubris. But he is protected because he is a foreigner and so he's kind of subject to his own laws and this actually eventually turns into what's known as the Anglo-Satsuma War, when a bunch of warships I think they were English and French show up down in Satsuma and start bombarding the coastline and in fact one of the teenage samurai defending Satsuma and start bombarding the coastline. And in fact one of the teenage samurai defending Satsuma is a man called Togo Heihachiro, who would grow up to become an admiral in the Japanese Navy and he actually began his military career standing knee-deep in the water at his artillery battery, waving a sword at the British and shouting foreigners go home.
Speaker 2:And as far as the British were concerned, they bombed Satsuma back into the Stone Age and then turned around and left. So that was a job done. As far as the Japanese were concerned, they didn't land any troops, they didn't fight them on the beaches, they'd retreated. So everybody was kind of happy with the Anglo-Satsuma War and rather than kind of cower in submission, satsuma said to the shogun yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll pay the reparations the British are demanding.
Speaker 1:And they never paid it and they immediately tried to file a deal with the British to build them some warships of their own. These things are never quite what they seem on the surface are they?
Speaker 2:No, exactly. So that was kind of in the beginning of the 1860s. That was kind of in the beginning of the 1860s and that was really the first sign of satsuma and cho-shu realizing. I mean, for the people of satsuma, an encounter with the royal navy is going to tell you what year you're living in. But rather than kind of you know, run away from it like the shogun was doing, they were like okay, here's some money, build us some ships. And satsuma people became an incredibly important component within the modern japanese navy, including Togo, heihachiro or whatever you call them.
Speaker 1:I'm not quite sure what the right word is is much greater. They're much more independent during the shogunate than they become under Meiji, where things seem to get a bit more organized.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't call them independent. Under the shogunate, I mean the domains, which would be the correct translation of the hands the domains were all directly beholden to the shogun, and he could just snap his fingers and replace leaders of various domains. You feel that they're independent because Satsuma and Choshu and their friends started a revolution, right, but that was only kind of right at the end. So so the domains were very much enthralled to the Shogun, and there were, there was lots of shuffling of of kind of pawns on a on a chessboard, to make sure that it was, you know, big man, little job, little man, big job, kind of set up to keep everybody in line.
Speaker 2:One of the first things the Meiji government did, however, was to reform the samurai system. They abolished the word samurai and, bit by bit, they chipped away at the samurai's rights. They took away their haircuts, they took away their right to wear swords, quite fatally. They said you know what? They worded this very brilliantly they said now you've been good samurai all these time, all these years, waging war on behalf of the emperor. But we don't think that's fair. We think everyone should have the right to wage war on behalf of the emperor. And so, in the interest of fairness and everyone getting a chance, we're going to have a conscript army and the samurai like how dare you take away my right to kill people? Of course, immediately the samurai flock into the new army and form the officer class and then it's only the, and so only the poor people are the conscripts. But nevertheless, you know, that's one of the things they do and, as you say, they also. They also abolish, um, the domains, and essentially what happens is everyone kind of hands the keys back to the government and says, okay, we're not, we're not the domain of choshu anymore. And then uh, oh, and we're not the domain of satsuma. And then they get handed the keys straight back and said okay, you're not the governor, oh, you're not the, the, the duke of um, you know satsuma anymore, you're the governor of kumamoto. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:We've changed a few names, but a lot of the, the old samurai families, hang on to power, but they do so as appointed officials of this new government. It still makes life difficult for the samurai, however, because they've got these huge entourages who've been sitting around with nothing to do for a very long time and they have to kind of keep them busy, and there's a lot of samurai who are kind of left behind by this new order. It it's a bit like when the Soviet Union collapsed there were all these people who did really well out of a communist cast iron rice bowl, as the Chinese would say, and then they lost these easy jobs and didn't know what to do. So you get a lot of people who become ronin, who become masterless samurai, which means that they then travel around the country looking for someone to beat up, and it kind of creates this entire underclass of thugs who form some of these so-called terrorists, um, who are making life difficult for foreigners.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, the, the old provinces, um, the old domains are still there, but they redraw the borders and they change a lot of the names and, uh, the, the people are placed in positions of power and of course, japan's not really a democracy at this point. It takes a long while for Japan to develop a fully working democracy and even then it doesn't work very well. So these people are appointees, and that's great for as long as appointment is possible. As the suffrage grows over the next 30 years, the ability of these men to hang on to their power becomes challenged by the ability of other people to vote them out, so that then becomes more of an issue towards the end of the 19th century I want to talk about what happens in korea, because you mentioned korea, but I think just in terms of time or in terms of the timeline, and we were talking about assassinations.
Speaker 1:There was a great story, and actually quite a consequential story, of the heir to the Russian throne, a guy who eventually becomes Tsar Nicholas. He's on a visit and he's having a great time, he's enjoying the food, he's very much enjoying the local brothels and everything is going just brilliantly, and then somebody tries to assassinate him. I'm not quite sure why. So do you want to just tell us about the assassination attempt, because I think it's quite important.
Speaker 2:It is very important in global politics. It's such a tiny little incident which, again, is not discussed a whole lot. If you go to orzu, which is where it happened, which is in which is in a suburb of kyoto, um, in modern japan, there is a monument to it, but it's kind of stuck to a bin outside the hairdressers. It's really very nondescript. Um, when I lecture about it, I do show people a picture. I say some of you will be tempted to go and visit this place. Here's a picture of it, so you know it's not worth it. Here's the deal. There are a couple of international events that are really going to spook the Japanese, and one of them is the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, because there's a plan that you know within a decade or so, the Russians will have built a railway that will go all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok. When they do that, that's going to completely change the politics of the Pacific, because the Russians will be able to move vast quantities of men and material to fight a war, if they had to, to the Pacific. Now, vladivostok is a frozen port, it's not open most of the year, and what the Russians really want is a warm water port, and we'll come to that later on and Prince Nicholas, the heir apparent to the Russian throne, is sent out to the Far East to kind of ceremonially lay one end of the Trans-Siberian Railway in Vladivostok, and on his way he drops in on the Japanese way in Vladivostok and on his way he drops in, uh, on the Japanese, and in the beginning it all goes just super well. He's kind of he's roughly the same age as Emperor Meiji, and the press make this big deal about how, how close they are and how they resemble each other, which they don't at all. They both got beards. I suppose that's good enough, and uh, and how well they get along and how. There are these two young people and and meiji's an emperor and um nicholas is only a prince. So there's this kind of patronizing thing that, oh well, you know, this young russian has come to learn from our leader and one day he'll be a great man too and and they'll be big pals. Um and um nicholas really lays it on thick with the japanese. He appears to absolutely adore japan. He takes his shoes off when he goes into buildings without being asked to, which foreigners still have trouble with today in japan. Um, he gets a dragon tattoo for his whole life. He had this massive dragon tattoo on his arm, um, which he got in, which he got in.
Speaker 2:He's now a Yakuza, is he? Yeah, I mean, they wouldn't let him into a public bath now in Japan. But back then everyone was like, oh, isn't that nice, he's got a nice tattoo. They took him to this geisha party and he was like what the hell is this? Where are the hookers? And so they're like oh sorry, we didn't. When you said you wanted to meet some geisha, we thought you were genuine. Apparently, what you want to do is meet japanese girls who take their clothes off for money, which is two doors down, so we'll just go there now.
Speaker 2:Um, and so him and prince george, his cousin, who's a prince george of greece, I think um, they have, they have absolutely fantastic time and everything's going really well. And then they uh, um, they go to, uh, kyoto and they go up to otsu, which I think is like a spa town, and when they get there, they're in this kind of little rickshaw convoy and one of the police bodyguards draws his sword and attacks Nicholas. He goes for him, he actually slashes him and creates this scar which Nicholas had for the rest of his life and Prince George swiftly intervenes, the other police kind of grab this guy and they drag him away and they never actually find out what his motive was, because he died very quickly in prison under suspicious circumstances, sort of.
Speaker 1:Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 2:It's very Lee Harvey Oswald. Yes, exactly, and there was no explanation given. It was just some policeman who just suddenly snapped and attacked the guy he was supposed to be guarding and this was a matter of absolutely huge embarrassment in Japan. Meiji himself kind of journeyed to the bedside to apologise.
Speaker 2:There were thousands of letters and folded paper cranes sent in by the Japanese, but they knew that this had ruined everything and Nicholas stomped off back home calling the Japanese a bunch of monkeys, ouch, and for the rest of his life the naval calendar of the Russian Empire had the date that he was attacked listed on it and it turned him overnight from someone who was a big fan of the Japanese into someone who absolutely hated them. And the degree to which that will affect geopolitics is a moot point. I mean, I think the Russians and the Japanese were heading towards some kind of head-butting display anyway. But the degree to which the Russians could have been a lot more friendlier and cordial towards the Japanese was just curtailed immediately in 1891 by the Otsu incident, which is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, you know, the foreigners being afraid for their lives Because at any moment one of these Japanese people might just go off like a time bomb.
Speaker 1:So we mentioned Korea, and Japan has sort of suddenly gone from having a trading post there and saying no, no, no, we ought to. We're a proper country now. We have consulates around the world and we'll have a consulate with you. And the Koreans, I think you say, are do they see themselves as part of China? What's their relationship with?
Speaker 2:China, korea is a closed country like Japan, it's the hermit kingdom, in fact, so they don't really want any foreigners in or out. But technically they are a tributary kingdom of China, which in one form or another they have been for hundreds of years. And so they kind of keep to the Chinese calendar and they send presents to the emperor and they're nice to the Chinese and the Chinese are nice to them, and the Japanese are upsetting all of this by showing up in Busan and planting a flag.
Speaker 1:And why is Korea seen to be important to the Japanese? Why can't they just leave them to it?
Speaker 2:Well, strategically speaking, korea very famously was called the dagger at the heart of Japan. If you are going to plan an invasion of Japan, you go in through Korea, because you can walk all the way down to Busan, busan, and then you're 100 miles away from the Japanese coast, which, by the way, is Fukuoka, which is the largest bay in Japan, where it's just perfect for landing a massive armada. So it was what the Koreans used on both of their ill-fated attempts to invade Japan. It was when the Japanese always expected a Chinese invasion would come, although it never did. It's where the Allies planned to make their landings in 1945, if they had ever had to engage in Operation Downfall. So Korea is one of the closest. You know.
Speaker 2:There are several parts of Japan that abut very closely on other countries. One of them is North Japan, which basically connects to Siberia. One of them is South Japan, which connects to Korea, and then, if you go all the way down the Ryukyu Islands, you get Taiwan and China, which are also, at this point, foreign territory, and so the Japanese, with a mind to securing their borders, are talking about a cordon of interest in the Pacific. We need to secure these areas, and Korea is the most important. If Korea goes over to the Russians, then the Russians are 100 miles away from the Japanese in a warm water port, and that's very dangerous strategically speaking for the Japanese. And Korea is much the way that Japan was only 20 years earlier. It's a country that's living in a time warp, with a king and stuff. It's a country that's living in a time warp with a king and stuff.
Speaker 2:So the Japanese form one of the factions within Korea that's trying to change the country In Korea. You basically have three factions at work in Korea. One of them is the traditionalists, normally centered around the king Gojong, and they are very pro-China and want to keep things the way that they are. And then you have a reformist faction called the Seohak, the Western knowledge, and they are Japanese backed and they really want Korea to do what the Japanese have done, and they want them to do it for Japan. So that you know, the first thing Japan does when it's in this alien game is have a very powerful influence on Korea and turn it into this massive market for its goods and so on, while also securing its borders. We normally associate that order with a man called the Daewon Gun, who was the former regent of King Gojong. Basically, king Gojong was chosen as the next king, but he was very young, so his father became his regent.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I just find this so confusing. How could his father be the regent? It's supposed to be the other way around.
Speaker 2:Ah yes, you see you're thinking in a very British way that a king has a son who's a prince, who takes over. It doesn't work like that when you've got 16 wives. Okay, so what happened was is there was a clique at the palace in Seoul and there are three dowagers so one who were responsible for choosing who the next king would be. And the king's wife didn't have any sons, so she had to choose someone who could be a son, and she liked the look of this boy and, very famously, he was flying a kite in the park and she comes over and greets him as her son and everyone's like, oh my God, this means he's going to be the next king. And so the idea was that this young boy would be a pawn in the hands of these three women. Unfortunately, his dad was also very keen on getting involved in things. So his dad was a prince, was a Korean prince, but he wasn't the king. That's why it's confusing I realize that's very confusing to people who've only got one spouse at a time. Um, and and so. So the daewon gun is is this regent on behalf of the, the young king gojong, and so he has a lovely time running things until king gojong is of age. And then king gojong says thanks, dad, but we're done with you now. And so the daewon gun becomes this kind of nomad within the court who's always trying to get involved in stuff, there's always got these schemes and never. Kind of nomad within the court who's always trying to get involved in stuff, who's always got these schemes and never kind of gets anywhere, and he kind of gets in bed with the Japanese. And the thing is with Gojong is that he can be with the Daewon Gong, is that they can. Whenever there's a change in power at the Korean palace, they're like I'll send the Daewon Gong off on a fact-finding mission to the very edge of Korea, that'll keep him busy for a bit, and he has to go off and do it. So he gets kind of kicked out of the palace over and over again and sent off into exile and gets involved in these various schemes.
Speaker 2:There is a third faction, however, at the Korean court. The third faction in the Korean court is based around the Min family, and the Min family are the kind of the richest people in Korea and they have managed to marry one of their daughters to King Gojong. So Queen Min, as she's known, is this incredibly powerful force in the palace and, unlike the Daewon-gung, she can't be sent away. The only way you can get rid of her is to divorce her and turn her into a commoner. And so she's always got the ear of King Gojong and she's always talking to him about stuff, and, depending on who you believe, she was either an incredibly canny, smart political mind, a really clever woman, or, with the traditional misogyny of Chinese historiography, she was a vampire queen. She was a bitch whispering in his ear.
Speaker 2:Either way, queen Min and her family had seen the Russians causing trouble for the Japanese and thought to themselves you know what? Maybe we should get into bed with the Russians. That makes sense. We're sitting here arguing about the Chinese and the Japanese and who should have the better control of our policies, and they're like two tramps fighting in a skip over a cardboard box. We could deal with the Russians. They're foreigners, they're proper foreigners, they're not kind of Asians like us. And so, as it looks like Min is drifting towards the Russians, the Japanese start to get quite worried about that.
Speaker 1:There's something I want to bring up. I don't want to get us too lost in it because time is rolling by, but how did the Japanese then manage to promote their power? And I'm thinking in particular, always in Japan, there seems to be an incident, which is the thing that sort of sparks the Japanese into action. And when I was in Tokyo last, I went to the Asakuni Jinja, which is the famous war shrine there, and they have this terrific museum attached to it. And sure, the Japanese were in a number of wars, but when you go through the timeline, it's the something incident, the that incident, this incident. And Korea seemed to be absolutely stuffed with incidents. Yes, so can you say just a bit about how the war breaks out? And is it a war, is it an incident? I just get so confused. Which war would you like to talk about here? Well, the war I'm interested in is the war they fight, I guess, against the Chinese in Korea. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So the Sino-Japanese War? Yeah, all right. Firstly, about incidents this is one of the things that I was kind of proudest of with my book, and I'll try and keep it brief because it probably bores the hell out of everybody else, but in Japanese historiography there is a lot of talk about incidents. Incident was one of the most common words that showed up in my book. I realized that when I was doing the editing. Every time there's some kind of event that happens an invasion, a fight, a police action it gets called an incident in japanese. Originally, they, they just, they just gave them dates. They call it like oh, it's the, the february 12th incident, but then they started running out of dates, so they gave them actual names.
Speaker 2:What became very apparent is that there are two words in japanese for incident. One of them is jiken, which is more like an affair, like the affair of the missing glasses or something kind of, something that Sherlock Holmes might investigate and that's. You know, oh, some sailors got into a fight in Nagasaki harbour and we had to send in the police. That was the Nagasaki affair of whatever year. Then you have jihen, and a jihen is a cataclysmic event of geopolitical importance. A jihen is something that I think, is often used as a dog whistle by the press in Japan. We must do something about this. It's something that brings down governments. It's something that invites invasions. Sometimes it's a name used for a war when the Japanese don't want to use the word war, because sometimes there are international treaties that say if we go to war, then another country will come in and fight on behalf of someone else, and so you have to go through this situation, this kind of Ukrainian situation, where you never call it a war, because if you call it a war, it activates all these switches in other treaties.
Speaker 2:In the case of the Sino-Japanese War, it was the escalation of these factions. This pro-Chinese faction and this pro-Japanese faction were trying to seize control. There were a number of palace coups in Korea. Repeatedly, gojong or the Daewon Gong or somebody else is seizing control of the palace, firing the old government, taking over, you know, and moving things around again. And in the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese go in to support the pro-Japanese faction, the Chinese go in to support the pro-Chinese faction and, as so often happens when China fights Japan, the battleground was in Korea. And so you had this, you know, embarrassing, embarrassing, uh, conflict in which the, the.
Speaker 2:It's a very, it's a very sad story, um, which I which I've talked about a lot because I wrote a biography of togo, of admiral togo, and, and so japanese naval actions are a very common occurrence. They, the chinese, have got these two german warships that they're super proud of. They, they kind of send them along to this war and then they kind of keep them hidden. In the very common occurrence, the Chinese have got these two German warships that they're super proud of. They send them along to this war and then they kind of keep them hidden in the harbour because they don't want to send them out. And the Japanese have got these fantastic ships built for them, mainly by the British, and they just wipe the floor with the Chinese Navy.
Speaker 2:There's a Chinese admiral called Ding Rucheng who surrendered to the Japanese and then killed himself, and the Japanese were very impressed by this because there's nothing they like more than someone killing themselves over honour. But he was basically sent with a bunch of galleons up against the Japanese and he had these two super modern warships but they were literally stringing, washing on lines between the gun turrets and so on. One of the things the Japanese noticed about it the gun turrets and so on. It's one of the things the Japanese noticed about it. There's a fantastic book actually by one of the engineers, one of the Scottish I think he was Scottish engineers who was with the Chinese. He's kind of on the Chinese battleship and there are bits of people all around him and there's this massive hole in the wall and these alarms are going off.
Speaker 1:And one of the Chinese turns to him and him goes this is what you promised us, this is civilization. You say it happened in in korea, but as I understood it, the the chinese, uh, sorry, uh, the the japanese army. They do push into china, don't they? Uh? I thought. I thought they ended up pushing into what is it? Is it port? Is port arthur at this stage? Is that a chinese territory? That's correct, yes, and I think the. Is it the liadong peninsula? Yeah, and in fact, port arthur. So the capture of port arthur is then followed by some sort of horrific massacres of of civilians, uh, and prisoners. I think that's right.
Speaker 2:So the Japanese make it all the way up through Korea, they cross the Yalu River and they also land troops on the Liaodong Peninsula, which is this pointy, sticky out bit just at the top of Korea, the Liaodong Peninsula. It has a port, it has a harbour at the very end of it, which is absolutely perfect. It's fantastically sheltered, it's a place where you can repair ships and also just kind of store them. You're absolutely safe inside it. There's a very safe approach that can be protected with gun emplacements. So it really, you know, it's just ideal. And it's right in the center of the Yellow Sea. So if you have this port, which would eventually be called Port Arthur, you have control over the sea, approaches to tianjin, which is the port of beijing. So it's a fantastically powerful place. And the japanese nab it, and when they do nab it, they uh, there's some very difficult fighting over port arthur because it has these very, very, very easily defended mountains all around it. At the end there's very hard-fought battles for it and, supposedly in response to Chinese atrocities against them, they start committing atrocities against the Chinese and there is a. So this is in 1894.
Speaker 2:There is a massacre in Port Arthur, which is something of a shock to the world press because they weren't really ready for it. There was a British observer there called James Allen, and he said that when the fortress fell there were corpses hanging on the trees of Japanese soldiers who'd been tortured, and he said it is not surprising their former comrades should have been maddened by the sight, although of course the officers are greatly to blame for permitting the fearful retaliation to be carried to such lengths. And so basically, they killed everyone they found in the town. They went into every single house they could find. They killed everyone in the houses. The Chinese just dropped their guns and ran for it, and the Japanese press didn't talk about it. The news kind of drifted back and they went oh no, no, no, no, no, that's fake news. As one Japanese newspaper said, we should apply to the Chinese the same laws of engagement as are applied to the savages of Africa. It was their version of things, whereas the Western press was actually much more forthcoming about it. They said that the Japanese were killing men, women and children. It was a cause celebre, because the world press had started to regard the Japanese as kind of the British of Asia and regarded them as players of this alien game, who were doing really well in the playoffs, and then they do this and it's like, oh my God, that's not cricket, that's not how we're going to do it.
Speaker 2:I will apologize in advance for the racist words I'm about to use, because Francis McCulloch, who was a war correspondent, he thought it was a terrible example of what the Japanese were going to do. And he said I often discover myself muttering what terrible fellows these Japs are. What superhuman perseverance, what incredible bravery. How little did I think that the awkward, smooth-faced lads in uniform I used to so often meet, walking hand in hand in the park, like Dresden shepherdesses, would prove to be such demons for warfare? What can we, any of us, do against a race which fears no more the Supreme dollar of death than we fear a shower of rain? So it was a.
Speaker 2:It was a big kind of wake up call for everybody. You know, we're in the middle of the yellow peril kind of phenomenon, with everyone worrying about everyone in the of the yellow peril kind of phenomenon, with everyone worrying about everyone in the West worrying about the yellow peril, the Japanese already worrying about the white peril on their own. So that kind of feeds into this fear. That surprise, surprise. You go to a country that's had a military aristocracy for 250 years and you force them to come out into the world. You tell them the way to succeed is to invade other places. And then they invade other places and they start killing people. So what?
Speaker 1:happens at the end of the war. I mean, this has been a success then for Japanese foreign policy. I guess They've managed to sort of get control of Korea and it's gone pretty well, I mean, apart from the fact that their reputation has been trashed.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, ignoring the reputation thing which the media is desperately trying to massage, this looks like a fantastic deal for the Japanese. They secure fantastic deals out of the Chinese in their treaty negotiations. They send their navy down to the south and nick Taiwan at the end of it all as well, which we talked about at length in another podcast. And so Li Hongzhang, their main negotiator, is in Shimonoseki arguing with the Japanese about what this treaty should be. And the Japanese secure the Liaodong Peninsula. They get the Liaodong Peninsula, which means that Japan very briefly has this fantastic port that commands the sea road to Beijing. And suddenly there's the triple intervention. Suddenly, after the Japanese have done this deal and they've spent a huge amount of money on this war, but they've got a fantastic return Suddenly three European countries show up and say no, you can't do that.
Speaker 2:We're ever so sorry, but there would be a real kind of issue here if we let you have the liao dong uh peninsula. So I know that you've done this deal and I know that you've uh got this thing signed by the uh the chinese, but the russians, the germans and the french are all here to tell you it's not happening. And this you know as far as the alien game goes, this is an absolute slap from the referee. You didn't even know there was a referee and now three of them have shown up and said no, you can't do that, sorry, you've got to give the liao dong peninsula back. And so the japanese go. Well, the chinese can give us a bit more money then.
Speaker 2:And then they kind of slope away with their tails between their legs, and this is an absolute disaster for the japanese government that's promoted this war. They're doing these victory dances in the streets and then they're told oh, no, we have. I mean, we got. We got Taiwan. That's all right, isn't it? You don't mind Taiwan? I mean, we'd all get malaria and die, but apart from and there's a rebel alliance down there trying to fight this off, but apart from that, I mean, at least we got Taiwan right. But it's not the victory that they hoped for. And it was a real shock to them that this could happen, because they weren't told that this kind of thing could happen. They were basically told well, listen, the French and the Germans and the Russians have got enough naval ships in the Far East already to destroy your navy and your navy's down in Taiwan, stealing it, so it's not like you're anywhere around. You're going to do what we tell you, and that was a real shock to them, as kind of a message from the landlords.
Speaker 2:And what made it even worse is that afterwards the germans then got given the shandong peninsula and the, and the russians took the aldong for themselves, and so port arthur became this russian city, uh, which is a warm water port on the yellow sea, exactly the thing that the Japanese didn't want the Russians to have. And by 1898, I think, they'd handed it to the Russians. But because of the unequal treaties, because everybody gets to pile in, the British then showed up and said we don't like what you're giving to the Russians and the Germans, we'd like a bit more Hong Kong, please. And so the Chinese have to give the new territories of Hong Kong to the British.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's when they get the new territories, is it?
Speaker 2:That's when they get the new territories. A lot of people think it's all about the Opium Wars, but the Opium Wars were just two chunks in perpetuity. The big issue with the new territories is it was a lease for 99 years, right, and of course that's going to cause problems in geopolitics 100 years later, because then, you know, it's a whole other podcast. But basically, you know, the People's Republic of China shows up one day and goes oh listen, we've just seen that this is only temporary, so can we have the new territories back, and why not give us the rest? So, yeah, anyway. So the Triple N intervention was a huge deal, and in fact we kind of told this out of order, really, because it's the fact that the Russians could do that that made the Koreans take notice and say, well, maybe we should be dealing with the Russians, and so that's what creates the Queen Min issue.
Speaker 1:So what happens to Queen Min and her faction then?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, because we actually haven't got to Queen Min yet, have we? Sorry, I get so excited about the Queen Min story that I forget. So, yes, okay, so I forgot about queen min. So everyone in japan is sulking about the triple intervention, and the koreans are looking at it and saying well, clearly we should be dealing with these russian people because they they much more powerful than the chinese or the japanese, and so, and so that that thought is being planted by queen min and her faction, by the, by the min family, and queen min is getting the blame for it. And, as I said, that sounds like quite astute political thinking to me, but that's not how it's being spun in history.
Speaker 2:The Koreans think Queen Min is brilliant, the Japanese think the vampire queen and like she's some kind of evil, kind of Jedi running the Korean government. And so a group in Korea of Japanese people, a group of Japanese agents, these, you know, these shishi, these ne'er-do-wells who are busy trying to run, trying to manage up and do things and commit terrorist acts on behalf of the Japanese, they decide that they are going to do away with Queen Min. And so there's a man called Myura Goro who runs a newspaper in Seoul, but he's also this kind of Japanese white boy who fancies himself as a regime changer and he kind of gets together this posse of thugs and says what we're going to do is we're going to go into the palace, we're going to kill Queen Min and then we're going to put the Daewon Gun back in charge because he's on our side. So we're going to get this region and the former region and we're going to put him back in charge. They go and meet the Dai Wongun. It takes a lot of time to explain to him what's going to happen, but he's used to these kind of palace coups so he kind of goes. Okay, I think I can see what's going on here. I hate Queen Min, so I'm very happy if you remove her from power. I don't think they said they were going to kill her.
Speaker 2:And so they show up the diamond gun and then a bunch of people in fancy dress raid the palace. And by fancy dress I mean is that miura very deliberately dresses, some of them up as russians and some of them up as chinese. I don't know what russian costume looks like, I mean cossack hats or something, but anyway, he deliberately tries to make this look like it's a coalition of thugs. He tries to downplay the Japanese-ness of all of it and they run into the palace and there's this huge fight in the palace. The trouble is is that Queen Min has always been behind screens. She's never been seen in public, so no one knows what she looks like. So these thugs, they're running into every room, they're dragging out any woman they could find and demanding to know if she's Queen Min and figuring well, we'll kill her anyway, just in case. And this goes on for quite a while until the real Queen Min shows up.
Speaker 2:The Americans have got a bunch of soldiers there who are supposedly in charge of palace security and their leader, McDy, very famously, just takes off his hat and bows to the japanese, which has really caused a lot of uh drama in korean television shows ever, since mcdye is always the evil guy. I'm not, I'm never quite sure about this, because queen min is not a subject I know super well, but I get the impression that she she volunteered her her presence rather than see more of her handmaidens be tortured, and they beat her to death. I mean, there's a very graphic description of what they did to her, which I won't say on this podcast, but they, you know, they stamped on her and stabbed her and then they dragged her body out into the courtyard, doused it in kerosene and set fire to it. And Miura said and the Dai Wengong's there with this massive smile on his face like ha ha, ha, at last. I'm not so sure that was true. I think actually the Dai Wengong was pretty shocked at what had happened because there'd been a number of palace coups but it had never been quite so bloody in the past. This is a huge international scandal.
Speaker 2:And immediately the Japanese, sayonji Kinmochi, who's the Japanese leader at the time I think was he the foreign minister, I think he was the foreign minister at the time. But he's saying to Miura can you explain what just happened? And Miura's like not sure right now. Queen Min might be dead. Some people hurt her. And Sayonji's like who hurt her? Were they Japanese? He's like no, I don't think they were Japanese. I think they were Russians, maybe. And he just outright lies to Sayonji and Sayonji's not having it because he knows that something's up. And eventually the truth comes out and Miura goes back for a trial in which he's completely unrepentant. He actually says I took three draws on my cigarette to decide to do this was his account of his actions, and the reason was that he felt he was acting in the wishes of the emperor.
Speaker 2:Here we go again. This is what the emperor would have done if he'd only had the right advice. And me and my proud boys, we are doing it on his behalf, and that makes it very difficult to kind of argue with this, because this is a problem that goes to the heart of politics, uh, in the meiji period and beyond into the 20th century, which is that basically there are three things that are troubling the japanese nation. One of them is that the emperor is this quantum presence at the center of everything, who won't tell you what he wants, but you have to do what you think the emperor wants. And so then you have people acting on behalf of the emperor, giving orders on behalf of him, and people openly disobeying them, because they say, oh, he's had the wrong advice, or if I got to speak to him in person, things would be different.
Speaker 2:And you also have a nation that is hell-bent on expansion, and so every time something is done that actually ends up expanding Japan's influences, it's very difficult to police that properly. It's very difficult to say to Gora Mura you've done a bad thing, when actually what he's done is he's curtailed Russian influence in Japan, which secretly the Japanese government really wanted. And the other problem is that there's never any stop to this expansion. No, at this point no one has said, oh, we need to stop at this particular geographical point and then we'll have enough. No one's ever said that. So so japan just keeps expanding, and it's being done quite often at the instigation of these younger people uh, these younger officers and thugs who are, who are then being legitimized by the actions of the japanese government afterwards. Sometimes the government will resign, sometimes they'll apologize, but basically every one of these actions is increasing the impact of the Japanese on the world, on their borders.
Speaker 1:So they put Mura on trial, do they execute him, do they exile him? What do they do to him?
Speaker 2:He was very unrepentant in his trial with this whole cigarette smoking man defense. He argued that killing wasn't murder when it's done to achieve political supremacy. So he basically said this is an act of war that I am committing for you. I'm just kind of a one-man guy and, as a result of insufficient evidence, a full, a full-throated confession.
Speaker 1:You know, it's really not enough well, I think by insufficient evidence.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's really not clear what happened in the palace. I have to say, as we have discussed before, I have a strange obsession with a man called charles lejandra oh no, he's not yes yes, I'm afraid we're gonna have to bring him up one more time.
Speaker 2:So Charles de Gendre was this kind of American wide boy who tried to start a war in Taiwan and then went to Japan and became head of their barbarian colonising office, basically masterminded the takeover of Taiwan from there. He was the man who advised the Japanese that Manchuria would be a really cool place to hang on to, although I'm never quite sure to what extent that wasn't already obvious to the Japanese. And in 1890, so five years before this he had been a secretary to a Japanese politician who was blown up by a car bomb or a carriage bomb, I should say. And this guy lost his leg. And rather than run to his bedside and mop his brow and say I'm sure everything will be all right, as indeed it was, because this politician went on to serve for another 20 years with a false leg, legendre said well, I'm off. Then Meal ticket's gone. And he went to Korea and he became the advisor to King Gojong and he ended up as the vice president of the Korean Home Office. So he should have been in the palace at the time this event happened and this is sad and nerdy, but the library of congress has got all of his papers and they've digitized most of them recently.
Speaker 2:So I spent yesterday going through charles legendre's papers, trying to read his terrible handwriting, trying to see if there's anything he has to say about what happened in the palace. Because no one knows the precise course of events. Miura is lying through his teeth the whole time about it. The americans, as there are foreign witnesses, but they're only witnesses to kind of acts of separate violence. They, they can't see the whole picture, so no one knows to what extent who did what and whether you know who was in charge.
Speaker 2:And so you know. Miura does basically confess to it all, but but insufficient evidence is still good enough for the Japanese to let him off. And so he walks out as a national hero, and 10, 15 years later, when Korea is officially annexed by Japan, he actually becomes a member of the Privy Council. And so this is exactly the sort of reward for insubordination that creates so much trouble for everybody. It gives the Japanese expansionists what they want, but it also creates very dangerous precedence for people doing whatever they feel like, and so you didn't find anything in the Legendre papers that At the moment it only goes up to 1892.
Speaker 2:And I need later than that, I need 1895. And Legendre died in 1899. He's buried in Seoul actually. So yeah, I'm still poking around that and you know there's a book in it. That's why I'm poking around.
Speaker 1:You're going to do a book on Legendre, are you? Because you really should.
Speaker 2:I'd love to. There's an academic called, I think her name's Carruthers, and she's done two really good papers on him, but that was 40 years ago now and his papers about Taiwan have been published now, so they're very easy to get. The Library of Congress have digitized so much of his stuff, but what I need is his personal account of his 15 years in in japan and I need to know what happened in korea. What I'm really looking for is a diary. I'm looking forward to saying oh, you won't believe what queen min did today.
Speaker 1:God, if I get that, then I think I've got a book you know, it seems like it's an absolute theme of of japanese history. You know, these acts of insubordination. What I don't quite understand, is there no attempt by the Japanese government to sort of get on top of these things? The phenomenon you're?
Speaker 2:describing is called gekoku-jo, the domination of the low by the high, and it's been a symptom of samurai history for hundreds of years. So it shouldn't come as any real surprise that in this export of the samurai into an army and navy that this kind of action still continues. There are huge complaints about it within the Japanese government, but it's very difficult to manage this kind of level of thuggery if they have people who are going to blow up your carriage if you complain about them. There are Japanese governments that are forced to resign over some of these military actions. But you've also got a nation that is very enthusiastic about these actions. You've also got a sly admiration for some of these actions among the people. So there are all kinds of issues with it and the Japanese army and the Japanese navy have an interest in controlling their own, in policing their own actions as well, have an interest in in controlling their own, in policing their own actions as well.
Speaker 2:In 1900 there is a change in the law in japan which to some extent is designed to make the army and navy more accountable for their actions.
Speaker 2:But it actually backfires terribly and the idea of this change in the law is that it becomes mandatory for the army minister and the navy minister in the japanese government to be serving officers, so you can't put in a retired general who just waves his hands and go oh you know, boys will be boys.
Speaker 2:You've got to put a, you've got to put an actual serving officer in who is directly accountable to the army or the navy and should be able to to force through better control. Unfortunately, what this means is is the army or the navy and should be able to force through better control. Unfortunately, what this means is is the army and the navy get to control every government, because if they don't like the look of a cabinet, they can refuse to supply an officer and they'll bring that government down. And that didn't happen for another 12 years, but once that was on the statute books happen for another 12 years. But once that was on the statute books, it created a huge change in the power of the army and navy not to police these actions but to support them even more.
Speaker 1:So now seems like things are kind of running out of the control of the government. You know this alien game that they're in which they thought they knew the rules, but they don't know the rules and they find that are they really proper players in it, or is it just a game for the Western powers? It sort of feels like they're on really slippery ground now, and I think we're going to have to leave it here for today. I think we've got the first big war of the Meiji Restoration, but there's more wars. It's Japan at war in the Pacific. There's more wars to come, and so I would say thank you very much, jonathan, for today, but I'm looking forward to the next episode because I guess there's quite a lot more to come. Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.