CHAPTER 2: 1869–1870
Intrigue, Influence, and Incompetence as Railway Planning Begins in Earnest
The artist Utagawa Kunitoshi has depicted a Yokohama-bound train headed by one of the Avonside locomotives departing Shimbashi station, while a crowd watches the departure from behind the ticketing wicket.
On March 8, 1869, the Stonewall was at last delivered to the new Imperial Government. She was promptly rechristened the Kotetsu (甲鉄) meaning “Ironclad,” and upon her commissioning became undisputedly the most formidable ship of either fleet. The Chōshū-Satsuma Imperial Cause lost no time in putting the newly christened warship into service, bound for Hakodate. According to Van Valkenburgh, after some delays brought on by the accidental sinking of one of the squadron’s most serviceable ships due to an on-board explosion caused by an inexperienced crew member during target practice, and an abortive start thwarted by heavy seas, the squadron left Uraga at the entrance to Edō Bay, where it had put in to wait out the squalls, on April 21st. Only a few days later, the crew of Kotetsu saw their first real action, repulsing an attack from the rebel fleet’s flagship Kaiten (a paddlewheel steamer formerly known as the Eagle) on her way to the final Battle of Hakodate, where she was the backbone of the new Imperial fleet consisting of eight ships. The battle was the first victory for the modern Imperial Japanese Navy by the time it had finished, sealing the fate of the remaining Tokugawa loyalists on land, which by then had dwindled to between 800 to 2,000 men according to Van Valkenburgh’s dispatches. Within a short time, the remaining Tokugawa commander Enomoto Takeaki and the remnants of the Tokugawa army in Hakodate surrendered. They were allowed to march out of their last redoubt at Kameda, on the outskirts of Hakodate, with military honors, the recently deceased Komei Emperor’s 17 year old son and designated heir to the throne, Mutsuhito, who had more likely than not grown up being prepared for a lifetime of cooperation with or quiet, tactful passive opposition to the Tokugawa régime by turn of fate found himself undisputed Emperor of Japan and sitting at the head of government. His coronation in 1868 thus came officially to mark the beginning of a reign that was given the title of “Meiji,” meaning “Enlightened Government” in Japanese, and he posthumously came to be referred to by his reign name.
To mark the momentous import of the Imperial restoration and to put himself closer to what had become the nation’s de facto capital in the eyes of the populace, the Emperor moved his permanent residence eastward from Kyōto to the former Shōgun’s castle in Edō soon after it had fallen in 1868. As if to underscore the beginning of an entirely new era, Edō was renamed Tōkyō, meaning “Eastern Capital.” While many might argue that, in large part, the “reigns but does not rule” axiom was never entirely abandoned, few would argue that there was not a distinct increase in the prestige, prerogatives, and the political power of the Emperor over the course of his reign. Instead of doing business in the manner his predecessor the Kōmei Emperor had done, putting a mere imprimatur on Tokugawa edicts, the Meiji Emperor sat at the head of a government council, later a cabinet, advised by ministers who had replaced the Shōgun, not altogether unlike the manner in which a European monarch sat at the head of his or her ministers who advised and executed the functions of government.
Once faced with the hard reality of governing, the Chōshū-Satsuma clique quickly realized that the foreigners could not be expelled, as the more radical elements of the faction had desired and it gradually became more pro-reform and pro-Western (at least insofar as adopting technology to strengthen the realm was concerned); progressive ministers emerged as most influential and elected to set the country upon a radical course of rapid modernization. The decision that the Tokugawa Shōgunate had made to build a lighthouse system to aid in shipping and navigation was ratified.1 In 1869 the old edicts outlawing ocean-going ships would be rescinded. That same year, another significant act of the Meiji Government in respect of industrial development occurred with the erection of the first telegraph line in the realm. In a radical change of course from the policies of the preceding 200 years, the Imperial Government unabashedly began retaining Western advisors to help modernize the nation. It has been observed that technological change is a political process, and while this certainly is often the case, in Meiji Japan, the inverse could be argued: political change was a technological process. By the time the realm had absorbed needed Western technology, it had become acclimated enough to Westerners that the political agenda of the Chōshū-Satsuma oligarchy had been changed to the point that complete expulsion of foreigners was no longer a goal.
Probably only around a half-dozen known photographs were permitted to be taken of the Meiji Emperor, Mutsuhito, during his life. This accounts for the many photomechanically reproduced (what we would today think of as “digitally altered”) images of him such as this, showing him around the 1880s or 1890s.
The shape of things to come: the bustle of Kōbe as a treaty port is evident in this photograph of two locomotives steaming along the quadruple-tracked section of line in the 1890s. By this time it was relatively commonplace to see British locomotives such as the 4-4-0 on the right working beside American locomotives, such as the tank engine at the left.
Inoue Masaru, shown here at about the time he assumed his duties, was the first Director of the Railway Bureau when it was created in 1871 and would serve in that capacity for a period of over twenty years until 1893. By that time he had been instrumental in the creation of virtually all the important railways in Japan, either directly or indirectly. Within three years of his resignation, he would found the company that would be the predecessor of the celebrated locomotive-building company that would become Kisha Seizo Kaisha. By the time of his death in 1910, he had become known as the Father of Japanese Railways, and a statue of his likeness was placed in the forecourt of Tōkyō Station.
Initially, Japanese of all political stripes could agree that the planned naval base and a navy were an absolute necessity to defend the homeland against foreign aggression or intervention, so the essence of the Yokosuka agreement with the French was re-affirmed by the new government. In an effort to avoid reliance too much on any one power, which could too easily lead to dependence (and in those times in Asia, dependence was never far removed from annexation and colonization), the new government exercised a delicate balancing act, retaining different nations to accomplish different areas of reform and to be used as models to approximate, while the new régime strove not to become too reliant on any one power. The Tokugawa régime had asked the French to assist in modernization of the army, which they did up to their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, when the Germans replaced them as a model. The régime leaned on British advisors for the navy, while the Dutch were retained for civil engineering projects involving land reclamation and river and harbor improvements. Later, the German legal system was emulated and the American educational and agricultural systems were studied; all according to areas where, in the conventional wisdom of the time, the particular country chosen as a model had demonstrated notable success.
Not surprisingly the newly formed government that surrounded the Emperor consisted mainly of men picked from the cream of the Chōshū-Satsuma Alliance. There are more than a few coincidences in the history of Japanese railway development that occur during this period, one of which is found in Thomas Glover’s assisting five youths from Chōshū to slip secretly out of Nagasaki (on June 27, 1863 when travel abroad was still forbidden to all Japanese) on board the ship Chelswick bound for Shanghai, sent to study in England on a stipend from the Chōshū domain. These five young men were Endo Kinsuke, Inoue Kaoru, Inoue Masaru, Itō Hirobumi and Yamao Yozo. Once on the mainland they were split into two groups and aboard the ships White Adder and Pegasus they were soon bound for England, where they landed in early November. In July 1864 they enrolled at the University College of London. By this time Inoue Masaru, then known by his adoptive name of Nomura Yakichi (he had been adopted by another samurai family, which was a manner of networking common to Tokugawa Japan), had acquired the sobriquet of Wild Drinker and his enrollment records reflect a sense of humor and of ‘putting one over’ on his hosts, as he managed to be officially enrolled using the name of Nomuran; Japanese for “Wild Drinker.” Itō and Inoue Kaoru only stayed half a year before returning, but Inoue Masaru stayed among the longest and became the most proficient in English. He focused most on railway studies among the Five, and with Yozo was the last to return in 1868, when he reverted to his Inoue family name. The Chōshū Five formed an old boys network that their English benefactors profited from more than once, and while studying in England, collectively came away deeply impressed with its technology, social structure, financial institutions, and of course, railways. All were destined to go on to greatness in Japan; three of them played pivotal roles in the railway history of Japan.
Railway travelers in Meiji Japan were no more immune from being bombarded with advertising imagery than are their present-day descendents, as this photograph illustrates. In this view a 6300 class locomotive draws a train past a bank of billboards at an unknown location. Note the curious short wooden platform at the right, the exact purpose of which is open to speculation.
First and foremost to the fledgling government was the necessity of continuing incipient Tokugawa programs of development (with such modifications as were deemed fitting), of building a modern economy, a modern army, a navy and adequate naval facilities, and commensurate navigational facilities to protect the navy and commercial shipping, which was a key to foreign trade revenues; all as cajoled by Parkes. Warships continued to be ordered from the shipyards of Europe and the US, to supplement the first squadrons of the Imperial Japanese Navy that had seen action at Hakodate. Parkes was successful in obtaining appointment of a British subject to act as the first customs commissioner for the government, and the Ōsaka mint project was resurrected and awarded to British interests, later built and equipped with machinery purchased through Glover & Co. (Endo Kinsuke, one of the “Chōshū Five,” became the Ōsaka Mint’s first head.) Parkes had already volunteered the good offices of the Royal Navy to survey and recommend the appropriate sites on which to construct a comprehensive system of lighthouses at critical points throughout Japan (undoubtedly coming to be viewed by the new government as a necessity to safeguard its precious new warships).
The man chosen to implement Japan’s lighthouse network was Richard Henry Brunton, a Scot with a receding hairline, mustache, and mutton-chop sideburns. Henry Brunton was every bit as obdurate as Sir Harry Parkes, but evidently lacked his charm. At a time when, on departing Japan at the end of their service, the first foreign technical advisors employed by the Japanese Government were customarily given an audience with the Emperor as a fitting farewell, routinely given an extra sum of money—not infrequently a lifelong pension—and decorated with an order of merit and medal in appreciation, by contrast, it is reported that at his farewell audience, Brunton was simply given £500 and a gracious verbal “thank you” from the Emperor. His prior training and experience, by his own admission, was not in the area of lighthouses, but in railways. Accordingly, he spent several months in the UK bringing himself current with the engineering issues peculiar to lighthouse design, construction, and operation before departing Southampton on June 13, 1868. After a voyage that took just five days short of two months, his ship dropped anchor at Yokohama on August 8. Van Valkenburgh (who was about to leave Japan) noted his arrival with approval in a dispatch to Washington a week later. Brunton lost no time setting about constructing lighthouses at strategic points in the archipelago and in locking horns with his Japanese employers. Chief among his complaints was the constant commandeering by government officials of “His Ship,” (the former steamer Sunrise according to one of Van Valkenburgh’s dispatches) which he had persuaded the Japanese government to buy for the transport of building materials to the construction sites and to serve as a lighthouse tender. Brunton left a memoir of his work in Japan that contains more than one recorded episode of his lecturing his employers or complaining about some perceived irregularity or other to his set ways. But, as prickly a character as he may have been, he was one of the first professional engineers in Japan based in proximity to Tōkyō, and as such, was indispensable to the Japanese Government not just concerning lighthouses, but other matters as well. To let Brunton tell his own tale,
“Being one of the first foreigners resident in Japan who possessed any technical knowledge, my assistance was eagerly sought for from the most diverse directions. I had come out as a lighthouse engineer, but I became unexpectedly the builder of the first telegraph line in the Far East. It was decided to build one line of wire twenty-two miles long between Yokohama and Tokio, and to stretch another between the newly opened port of Ōsaka and the city of Kyōto. I was instructed to order the necessary material and appliances from England, and to obtain the services of an expert to execute the work and also to give instructions to Japanese [sic] as to its equipment and manipulation. The material arrived in September 1869 and the lines were successfully erected under the supervision of Mr. G. M. Gil-bert, who initiated the Japanese operators in their routine of work. Beyond a few of the poles being slashed by fanatical Samurai who must find some use for their swords, there was no evidence of any hostility on the part of the people. Messages were sent in both English and Japanese... The first message was transmitted on the 7th January, 1870 and on the 26th the line was opened for Japanese telegraphy.”
By that date, foreign governments and high-placed Japanese officials were not alone in pushing for railways. A notable example was the particularly astute Yokohama entrepreneur, Takashima Kaemon, who immediately seized upon the advantages of many of the new technologies he was daily observing around him from the technologically privileged vantage point in Yokohama, the primus inter pares treaty port, and became himself an advocate. Takashima too had approached Vice Minister of Finance Ōkuma Shigenobu and his Assistant Vice Minister, Itō Hirobumi (one of the “Chōshū Five” prematurely returned from England, and later four time prime minister) with his proposal that he be allowed to build a railway, which he proposed be financed by daimyō wealth. His request was denied in part because of government objections to setting the precedent of private, as opposed to government, ownership. Takashima, as we will see, was undaunted and was not to be dissuaded from being a part of Japan’s projected modernization. Ultimately, he went on to build the first gas light system in Yokohama.
As the seeds of a navy, naval base and repair facility, lighthouse system, customs system, mint, postal service, and telegraph system began to germinate, the new Japanese Government started to turn its thoughts to railways and naturally the projected line between the two capitals that the Tokugawa régime had preliminarily surveyed and projected was reconsidered. To be sure, there was a formidable anti-foreign conservative element that was vehemently opposed to the concept. Indeed railway proponents within the new government were hard-pressed to marshal every conceivable rational argument in support of the proposal, but were still opposed by radical conservatives. One Victorian Western source relates that a gentleman identified as “Ōki Tamihara,” the governor of Tōkyō and later Minister of Railways,2 seized upon the relocation of the Emperor to Tōkyō to argue that it would be necessary for him to travel frequently between the two capitals and it would likewise be an act tantamount to lèse-majesté to subject him to the hardship of those trips by traditional means when he could travel comfortably by rail, which, it was said, went a long way to silencing opposition.
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The new US Minister, Charles Egbert De Long, arrived on October 30, took charge of the US Legation on November 1st, and presented his credentials to the Emperor ten days later. De Long was what we would today call an arriviste who had been born in Duchess County New York, in the farmlands north of New York City. By the time of his appointment in 1869, he had moved to the West, lured by the California Gold Rush—working initially as a miner then later in other menial capacities, educated himself in law by self-study, practiced his newfound profession in various Nevada and California towns, joined the Republican Party and served one term as a legislator in the California State Assembly. Along the way, he had married, and at the time of his appointment, found himself living with his family in the Nevada boom-town of Treasure City (destined to become a ghost town by 1880 when the silver discovered there had been mined out). De Long was a Wild West frontier type in the truest sense; a self-educated lawyer and one-term phenomenon who had bootstrapped his way to mediocre notoriety through his Republican political connections and had utterly no previous diplomatic experience. By 1868, he had lost a series of elections and was burdened with the taint of “un-electability.” His appointment as Minister to Japan was said to have been purely a political move by the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant after the first candidate had withdrawn from consideration. That candidate was Chauncey M. DePew, who declined the appointment in order to take a position as Counsel for the New York Central Railroad, and would eventually serve as its President. De Long’s nomination was reportedly a political exile for past ineptitude cloaked as a reward, to remove him from the US political scene in a quiet and dignified manner.
De Long lost no time plunging headlong into his duties and sent long dispatches to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in Washington. Among the topics discussed: his pay was inadequate; security at the Legation was inadequate; the furniture at the Legation was inadequate; the Legation’s US flag was old and tattered, he had had to pay for a flag pole outside his residence out of his own funds and at 30 feet, it was shorter than that of other Legations and could not be seen from Yokohama harbor; as a mere Minister Resident he was junior in rank and title to the British and French Ministers Plenipotential and Envoys Extraordinary, to which rank he deserved a promotion: “I frankly submit to your Excellency, with most profound respect, that I feel the indignity of my position daily, when brought into contact with the Representatives of the other Great Powers, and even of the people accompanying them...” He promptly embroiled himself in the hue and cry surrounding reports of suppression of the practice of Christianity by native Japanese in Nagasaki, the likes of which would bring sheaves of letters in the direst of prose from missionaries with excessive time on their hands and which his predecessor Van Valkenburgh once characterized as “almost invariably exaggerated.” In so doing, De Long effectively ignored a basic lesson in diplomacy from the first days of Dutch—Portuguese rivalry in Japan that was by then 300 years old. But while De Long expected much of Hamilton Fish and the State Department in Washington, he pointedly cautioned his superiors not to expect much of him. In a dispatch to Hamilton Fish, he wrote, “I trust that your Excellency will remember that I am young and inexperienced in the fields of diplomacy...”
Another Imperial carriage, showing the Imperial Salon, the sofa being centered beneath the wide window in the car center over the imperial kiku no gomon device that appears on the car side. The narrowness of early Meiji railway cars is amply shown here by the crowded space between the sofa and the traditional-style console table in that it faces. The kiku no gomon is visible in the large sofa antimacassar and in the carpet pattern, while the attendants’ compartment is visible through the open door. One of the Imperial carriages is still in the collection of the Railway Museum. Its interior is gilt and cinnabar, while the upholstery of the sofa and armchair is gold brocade. Note the humble spittoon through the console table legs and the rack for the Imperial dress sword in the foreground beside the sofa.
A view of Imperial Carriage No. 3 as used in the 1890s, built along the same lines as many of the long wheelbase bogie stock for the Tokaidō line that opened in 1889. The Imperial Salon was in the center, with compartments for attendants on either side of the doors. The lavatory compartment with its two small windows is visible at the far right. No fewer than six Imperial carriages were built during the Meiji reign.
While the disgruntled American parvenu settled in to his inadequate Legation that, to be fair, then consisted only of a rented outbuilding in a temple complex in Tōkyō, across town in better circumstances, Her Britannic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotential was ever active, eager to promote the political and commercial interests of his native country to his host nation, as diplomats have done since antiquity. Little opposed by either the newly arrived French or Prussian Ministers (both of whom were presumably more interested in establishing themselves before venturing into the fray) or the naïve, political hack cowboy fresh from the boomtowns of Nevada silver country, the indefatigable Parkes persisted in his promotion of British railway building interests and in badgering his hosts for a chance to discuss that matter. There were few other countries in a position to compete. The only other Ministers present in Japan at the time were those of Italy and Holland; neither of which had any domestic locomotive-building industry from which to order locomotives. The Austrian mission had only arrived at the beginning of October that year, and likewise was focusing simply on learning their way about the diplomatic landscape.
Portman had briefed De Long on the existence of the Yokohama railway concession shortly after arrival. De Long reported its existence to the US Department of State in his Dispatch No. 12 of January 12, 1870, which is the first indication in the official records that the US Government received formal notice of the existence of the Portman grant. In the midst of the confused political terrain of the Boshin War, as the Chōshū-Satsuma/Tokugawa civil war of 1868 would come to be known, Van Valkenburgh and Portman had agreed upon a self-imposed moratorium on building the Yokohama line granted by the Tokugawa régime. They regarded this as the best policy to safeguard Americans building the line from the danger of attack by Imperial forces who naturally would have been very eager to prevent Yokohama—and its supply and support—from being connected to Tōkyō by rail. This policy also supported Van Valkenburgh’s acute sense of strict neutrality and desire not to draw the US into the conflict. The railway matter had accordingly not been reported to Washington during the pendency of the Boshin War.
A view of another of the Imperial Carriages, late in Meiji, this one being intended principally for use by the Crown Prince, also shown in the view. The Hokkaidō rubber stamp dates the postcard to before Meiji 44 (1911). By this time, clerestory profile roof and a wider body permitted by expansion of the loading gauge had permitted construction of a much roomier private carriage.
Once peace had been restored, Portman tested the waters by writing a letter under date of January 5, 1869 to Ogasawara Iki no Kami in Hakodate where he had gone (possibly to avoid capture, imprisonment, or worse) with the Tokugawa bitter-enders who were attempting to establish a Tokugawa government-in-exile. In that letter, Portman sought his blessing in commencing the project in earnest. Portman received a favorable reply, although having been stripped of his official titles, Ogasawara signed his letter under date of February 9, 1869 by his actual name, Oi Yosuke.3 Portman, then in ill health, gathered up his grant signed by Ogasawara from the Legation’s files, and called upon the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he met with the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sawa Nobuyoshi, whom he addressed by the title of Highashi Kuze Chiujio, to discuss its implementation sometime between February 9 and March 11, 1869. The meeting evidently did not go as well as Portman would have hoped.
It cannot be determined from the record transmitted in the two US Diplomatic dispatches dealing on the subject of the Portman grant whether Sawa Nobuyoshi was aware of the Portman grant before that meeting. We do know, from a letter he wrote to Sawa on March 11th, that Portman showed him the original grant and furnished him with a copy of it on the day following their meeting. About a week later, Portman received a reply signed by three of Sawa’s assistants, setting forth for the first time in writing, the new government’s objection to the grant. The grounds stated were simply that the new government had already been considering construction of a railroad and intended to build it “with the united Strength of our own people,” pointing out that the grant had been given “before the change of government took place” and raising the spectre of the new government repudiating the grant.
Although ill, Portman continued on in his quest. In his next letter to Sawa dated April 5th, he mentioned the fact that he had met with Vice Minister Machida Goi where the subject of the grant was again raised. Portman pointedly reminded Sawa in that letter that the new Imperial Government had agreed to assume all the obligations of the prior régime and by implication had assumed the obligation contained in the Portman grant. He reminded Sawa that Sawa had not denied that point at one of the prior meetings that had occurred between the two of them. Understanding that the new government might wish to take credit for a major and significant national improvement and public works modernization project that had really been instituted by the former régime, Portman wisely offered to exchange his grant for a grant issued in the name of the new government so that the new government could claim the honors. Sawa gave the letter to his assistants for reply, which came under date of April 13 and which contained rather amusing and novel grounds for refusing the grant. According to the reply, as of the date of the Ogasawara grant on January 16, 1868, Japanese technical prowess was so backward that “there was no prospect of its [the railway’s] being built by our own people” but (in the short space of a year) it asserted, “They are now greatly progressing in Civilization—and we think it is not at all impossible that some [native Japanese] will wish to build it whenever a public notice to that effect shall have been issued.” The letter then went on to assert that the new government apparently thought it would be feasible to manufacture the railway material at the Yokosuka Naval Facilities, then under construction.
Pictured in this group is US Minister to Japan Charles Egbert De Long with members of the Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe in 1872. Iwakura Tomomi is shown seated in traditional dress while the bearded Minister De Long shares the table with him. Between the two is the son of Elisha Rice, the US Consul at Hakodate. Standing at right is the future prime minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi.
Sawa’s April 13 assertions were probably untrue at the time they were made, as will be shown below, but were in any event ludicrous on their face. No one took seriously the proposition that, within the short space of one year, the Japanese had absorbed enough technological skill to build and equip an entire railway—the Tōkyō–Kyōto route would have required bridging and tunneling far in excess of the state of Japanese engineering abilities—let alone the far trickier technological capabilities required to design, fabricate, and erect the myriad parts needed to construct a steam locomotive. Japan as yet didn’t even have a modern iron-producing industry capable of turning out high-grade iron plate, castings, or rail on a large scale, let alone a steel industry. Yokosuka was not yet complete, and when it was complete, an entire cadre of Japanese machinists, smiths, pattern makers, castings specialists, and engineers would have to be trained before any such activities could seriously be undertaken. And when the scant resources available to educate them had produced a result, everyone knew that they would be far too valuable in building Japan’s most pressing need: a navy with its attendant armaments. There would be inadequate personnel available for works of secondary importance such as the manufacture of railway equipment. On its face, no one in any way knowledgeable with the industrial capabilities and capacities of Japan on that April 13th date would have believed the assertions in that letter for a moment, unless the plan for building such a railway was to occur decades hence.
Portman certainly must have found the letter most amusing and rather than rise to the bait, he ignored its substance and replied the next day to request another meeting, in a typical American attempt to “cut through the red tape.” He received a curt one-sentence refusal in reply under date of May 7th.
It is reported that in 1869, Van Valkenburgh wrote to the Japanese Government bitterly protesting its refusal to honor the railway concession granted to Portman the prior year, but his complaints undoubtedly fell upon deaf ears that remembered all too well the difficulties he had imposed over the Stonewall. With his health also an issue and his attention directed to his future, Van Valkenburgh decided to leave the matter of the railway concession for Portman or his own impending replacement, for Van Valkenburgh too was ill and was about to leave Japan.
Whether it was due to Van Valkenburgh’s intervention on his behalf, the press of more important official business, personal preoccupations, his own ill health, or other matters, Portman did not again contact the Department of Foreign Affairs (as he styled it) until November 6th. Given the promptness and efficiency with which Portman usually conducted his official correspondence generally, and the conscientiousness with which he conducted official business in the capacity of chargé d’affaires when Van Valkenburgh was absent, it is hard to attribute the delay to any lack of diligence on his part. The new Foreign Ministry simply didn’t reply.
Unknown to the US Legation, the Japanese had good reason not to reply to Portman’s November 6th communication. (Portman styled it a note verbale.) Apart from the weariness of replying to Portman’s by now monotonous entreaties, the Japanese Government had apparently never taken its own assertions as to the technological and engineering capabilities of the Japanese people seriously, or if it did, it had very quickly disabused itself of it’s illusions, and had concluded that it wanted railways now and with the assistance of foreign technical advisors; and was willing to suffer the consequences of any negative domestic public opinion or opposition. Unfortunately for the small staff of two at the US Embassy, the new government decided that, despite the fact that the Portman grant matter had apparently not been conclusively laid to rest, they preferred the British.
Sawa Nobuyoshi, shown here, was the Japanese diplomat who negotiated American Minister De Long to a stalemate over the issue of the new government honoring the railway grant previously issued to Anton Portman by the Shōgunate. As such, he paved the way for the new government to employ British technical advisors to build the first railway in Japan.
The energetic Parkes at last had his chance, and undoubtedly if he had by then gleaned through intelligence any inkling of the Portman grant, his bulldog instincts took over. He was given his opportunity to make a case for railway building using British interests on December 7, 1869 (November 5th under the traditional Japanese lunar calendar—Japan had yet to adopt the Gregorian calendar) when he was invited by his ever-more-interested hosts to the residence of Prince Sanjo Sanetomi, Minister of the Right and acting Premier, to meet with government heads, among whom were Ōkuma, Itō, and as well as the Finance Minister Date, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sawa Nobuyoshi, and Vice Premier Iwakura Tomomi. They would discuss the possibility of introducing railways and of expanding the telegraph system then in course of construction that was so annoying Mr. Brunton by distracting his attention from his “not-in-my-job-description” approach to building lighthouses. Masaru Inoue, who by then was acting as the government’s chief of mining affairs, was asked to attend as an interpreter, due to his proficiency in English. By that point, the government had focused on three proposed routes of Tōkyō–Yokohama, Kōbe–Kyōto, and Tōkyō–Kyōto. Not surprisingly, the meeting was held in considerable secrecy as the government had not only to fear the inevitable American cries of foul play and double-cross, but feared that premature public knowledge of any proposals to build a railway would play into the hands of reactionaries who still were hoping to expel all foreigners and foreign influences from Japan.
British rail-building prowess, as much as its early support in the recent struggles, was probably very much at the fore in the minds of some government officials as they began to consider which nation should be chosen as a model for railway development. If it wasn’t, Sir Harry Parkes never lost the opportunity to refresh the recollections of his estimable hosts. The memories of the recent past undoubtedly colored how the new government would go about awarding future contracts for foreign technical assistance. At the time, the British had unquestionably the best reputation in the world for railway building, not to mention for railway building overseas, having built not only their own network, but having also been significantly instrumental in early engineering and/or equipping of railways in France, the Netherlands, to a lesser extent Germany and Canada, and having moved on to apply their rail-building skills with notable success in India, the Cape Colonies, and more recently, Australia and New Zealand. The Americans had a growing reputation, of course, but theirs was a second-place position.
Parkes pointedly argued on that December day for introduction of railways, using the results of the failed rice harvest of 1868-1869 in the northeastern region of Japan as a justification. Railways could be used, he argued, to speed famine relief efforts and supplies to affected areas. The allusion was assuredly not lost on a new government composed of some men who had a living memory of and had seen the Tokugawa régime considerably weakened by its inability to mitigate the Great Tempō Famine. It was in any event a government that was increasingly predisposed to build a railway, despite any domestic opposition.
Parkes’ arguments and proposals were made against a backdrop of action by his Japanese counterparts. Well in advance of the December meeting with Parkes, probably sometime late in 1868 (and again apparently unbeknownst to the US Legation), the officials responsible for such undertakings had done some investigation themselves, had contacted Henry Brunton, and had asked him to advise as to the feasibility of introducing rail service to Japan. It should have come as no surprise to them that Brunton’s curt reply, set down in his memoirs, was to the effect that,
“I had formed an opinion, which I repeatedly expressed with great emphasis, that the immediate and pressing need of the country was not so much an elaborate and costly railway system as the formation of good roads. Besides the main thoroughfares between Tokio and Kioto, themselves merely crude mud traveling ways, almost impassible in wet weather, the only tracks by which journeying could be accomplished or merchandise conveyed overland were narrow footpaths forming the dividing ridges between the irrigated fields. It was only by pack horses, walking in single file, that the products of one part of the empire could be transported to other parts... It appeared to me that the energies of the country would be more suitably expended on making good public roads... Common roads are not so much the supplements of railways as railways are of common roads... To begin with railways before there are roads is generally to begin at the wrong end.”
Iwakura Tomomi was one of the founding fathers of the new regime created by the return of political power from the Shōgun to the Emperor. He served as Minister of the Right after Sanjo Sanetomi and was present during the deliberations with Sir Harry Parkes that led to the adoption of a government policy to build the first railways in Japan using British technical advisors. Iwakura would later lead the renowned two-year diplomatic tour now known as the Iwakura Mission to the United States and Europe around the time the first railway was being built and came back to Japan with much inspiration for modernization after that fact-finding and diplomatic mission.
Prince Sanjo Sanetomi held the office of Minister of the Right in the early Meiji Government at the time the first meetings were held within the new government to address the issue of railway development in Japan. The fateful meeting with Sir Harry Parkes, from which issued the decision to build Japan’s first railway, was held in the Prince’s private residence.
Undoubtedly, this seemed a well-reasoned opinion from strictly an engineering standpoint for a modestly-sized, densely-populated country like Japan (nonetheless ignoring thirty-five years of accumulated experience of the “American model” of railway development, demonstrating quite to the contrary that by penetrating vast tracts of wilderness first by railroads, economic development and “good public roads” would follow). In fact, Brunton’s was a complaint still made by foreign engineers as late as the 1890s in respect of Japanese land transport infrastructure development. However, there were more than mere engineering practicalities to be considered from the perspective of those at the helm of the Japanese Government. Those men quite correctly saw the matter also as being one of national prestige and of “credibility as a progressive country” in the eyes of the Western Powers and properly reckoned that much more prestige and international respect could be leveraged by building railways than building a system of roads could ever have accomplished. To have used what limited funds the Japanese Government could afford to budget—Western technology and warships did not come cheaply to an agricultural nation just emerging from a feudal economy—for the purpose of building new roads and thereupon to have marshaled those roads in evidence of Japan’s progress to the West would have risked inviting a collective and patronizing reply from the world community somewhat to the effect of “Hasn’t Japan always had roads?” However, to have built a railway system was irrefutable evidence of palpable modernization. Patronizing replies and the attitude from which they sprang were precisely what Japan most needed to avoid in 1868–1869. One fairly winces in sympathy for Brunton’s Japanese employers, who did some cajoling of their own and convinced him that railways it would be. Brunton relented and took up the issue.
In due course, the headstrong Mr. Brunton produced his report in March of 1869 (on the subject of railways not roads), which concluded, “In order to get the general public to recognize the usefulness of the railway, the route must be carefully selected. The distance must be short, the construction project must not be difficult, yet it must yield a reasonable profit. Moreover, there must be a great possibility that the fledgling railway line will sometime be linked to the nation’s trunk line. The ideal site meeting all these indispensable conditions would be an area linking Tōkyō, the nation’s political center, and Yokohama, the newly opened port city. Also, the railway service should be placed under the direct management of the Government.” Brunton pointed out that the terrain between Tōkyō and Yokohama presented no great engineering difficulties, as it was essentially alluvial plain and the route would follow the coast of the Tōkyō Bay, and estimated the cost to be approximately £1,000,000; about $5,000,000 at the exchange rates prevailing at that time. The seeds of discord had been planted. British interests would compete for the same route that was subject of the Portman Grant.
Quite logically, Brunton set his sights on Yokohama as being the appropriate place to commence rail building. At the time Perry landed at Mississippi Bay just to the south, Yokohama was a paltry fishing village of some 350 souls, situated some 18–20 miles south of Tōkyō. It was not the first choice for Japan’s first “treaty port,” but came to be agreed upon as one in part to keep foreign influence at arm’s length from Edō and the Tokaidō (the national highway leading to Kyōto that ran through Kanagawa, the port originally selected), as suited the Bakufu, and in part because the waters off both Edō and Kanagawa were too shallow for ocean going vessels even of that day and Yokohama provided the closest deep water for development of a port suitable for accommodating ocean-going vessels, as suited the Western treaty nations. By 1869, Yokohama had become the principal port of embarkation for the newly re-named capital and was one of the fastest growing cities in the realm, thanks largely to the influx and influence of foreign trade. There was developing a constant stream of business, shipments and travelers between the two cities. Despite his initial misgivings, Brunton had succeeded in setting forth the initial rough strategy that would be adopted by the Meiji Government in respect of building the first railway in Japan, and Messrs. Iwakura, Itō, Ōkuma, and Sawa were undoubtedly familiar with Brunton’s proposal when they met with Parkes that December seventh.
One can imagine the gleam in Parkes’ bright blue eyes on leaving the meeting that day, for he was destined to become one of the key facilitators of building the first railway lines in Japan. By the outcome of the meeting, a decision had been made in favor of building a few experimental lines and a rough program for building the first lines of a national system had been hammered out. The planners that day envisioned a rail line running from Tōkyō, through the old capital of Kyōto, thence to Ōsaka, the second largest city of Japan and it’s commercial center, to terminate at Hiogo, which was an insignificant village some 20 miles from Ōsaka—again (as with Yokohama) the closest prospective deep water port site for vessels that couldn’t anchor in Ōsaka’s shallow and silted waters. (Hiogo or “Hyogo” was destined to become known as Kōbe.) This single line was to run roughly east to west the length of the most populous area of the island of Honshū, the principal island of Japan. It would, on completion, have linked the three most important cities and (with a contemplated branch to Yokohama) what would become the two most important ports of Japan. Kyōto lies only some 11 miles west of Otsu, on the southern tip of Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. The northern tip of Lake Biwa is only about 15 miles as the crow flies to the port of Tsuruga on the opposite coast of Japan (the northern or Sea of Japan shore). Thus, the value of a continuing the line from Kyōto to Otsu and building an isolated railway from Lake Biwa north to Tsuruga was immediately self-evident. (This extension is said to have been attributable to the foresight of Ōkuma.) By addition of these two short lengths, and in conjunction with the private lake steamers already starting to appear on the lake, a continuous line of north-south steam transportation would exist, stretching like a belt around the waist of Honshū, neatly conquering its mountainous backbone, and connecting Kōbe on one coast to Tsuruga on the other.
The Tsuruga–Kōbe steamer and rail line seems primitive by today’s standards, but was entirely consistent with transportation planning of the day, and indeed even later times, which often made use of navigable waterways when cost or engineering obstacles made completing a rail line difficult. In the late 1830s, a passenger traveling the earliest “rail” route between Philadelphia and New York, for example, started in Philadelphia by taking a ferry across the river to Camden, New Jersey, then north by rail to South Amboy, New Jersey across the mouth of the Raritan River from the southern tip of Staten Island, thence by ferry steamer to New York. New York to Boston in the earliest days was similar: one took a ferry from Manhattan to the Long Island Railroad terminal in Brooklyn, traveled the length of that line to its end on the extreme northeastern tip of the island, then by steamer across Long Island Sound to the railhead leading on to Providence and Boston. Even the highly touted US “Transcontinental Railroad” did not initially bridge the Missouri River between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska where passengers detrained and traffic was ferried between the two railheads. And of course, initially the Transcontinental Railroad fell short of its claim and terminated well inland at Sacramento, where riverboats were taken to complete the trip downriver to San Francisco. Later still, at a time when rail-steamer combinations were coming to be disfavored on grounds of increased transshipment cost, slower speed, and inconvenience, for a number of years the Trans-Siberian Railway was interrupted by Lake Baikal, where traffic was transshipped via ferry, as building of the Trans-Baikal line posed numerous engineering difficulties that would have delayed completion of the line to Vladivostok.
After his unanswered November note verbale, Portman apparently felt he had done all he could do and referred the matter to the newly arrived Minister De Long. The new Minister, unaware of what had transpired with Parkes ten days before, took up the matter and met with Sawa on December 17th. In a letter addressed to Sawa and Vice Minister Terajima Munemori on December 20, 1869 (although a subsequent transcription error when it was copied long-hand indicates the year 1870), De Long was unable to resist his training as a self-educated lawyer. He opened it with a lecture in the nature of a recital of hornbook law on the legal principles of the binding nature of a grant as a contractual arrangement, the fact that a contractual obligation, once given, cannot thereafter be withdrawn or revoked without the consent of the other party, and upon a successor government’s obligations fully to honor the binding commitments made by it’s predecessor government. He also asserted what he admitted privately to the State Department in Washington was untrue: that Americans experienced in railway building had already been selected and designated by Portman, and that the designees had met with his approval. De Long quickly dismissed for what it was the Japanese claim of newly found Japanese technical capabilities to construct and equip a railway without foreign assistance, “... it cannot be questioned that as yet [the] Japanese do no more possess the Skill to build a railroad than to build a Steamship or other foreign construction, as fully shown in the tardy and very costly building of the small iron bridge at this port.” (With considerable difficulty, Brunton, overseeing and supervising a staff of native workers, was at that time just about to complete Japan’s first wrought iron bridge in Yokohama, using iron plate imported from Hong Kong.)
From this point forward, Sawa, who had been present at the December 7th meeting with Parkes, and who knew of Portman’s persistent correspondence, had to walk a fine line between diplomacy and dissemblance. It was henceforth in his interest to delay any meaningful resolution of the Portman grant short of outright abandonment by the US Legation and to keep undisclosed the agreements reached with Parkes for as long as possible in hopes that the Americans would become discouraged with those delays and eventually go away. In De Long, he had the perfect counterpart for his diplomatic game of delay.
In their first written reply to De Long, Sawa and Terajima tested their adversary’s mettle with a rather disingenuous ploy. They used a two-fold approach. Firstly, they stated that the Japanese had received no letters from Portman since their one-sentence May 7th refusal (blithely ignoring the November note verbale), such that they felt justified in concluding that Portman was satisfied with that refusal and had abandoned his claims. Secondly, despite the fact that Sawa had been shown the original Ogasawara grant and had kept a copy of it in hand for at least some ten months (since before the March 11th Portman letter), they announced they would now have to ask the former Tokugawa régime officials (some of whom who were then still fugitives) if they had proper authority to sign and issue the grant, and warned De Long that due to this “a long time may elapse” before he could expect to receive a formal reply.
Itō Hirobumi is shown here later in life. Originally one of the Chōshu Five, Itō would go on to serve as Foreign Minister and as four-time Prime Minister of Japan (the first to hold that office). Itō was assassinated by the Korean nationalist An Jung-Geun in 1909, by which time he had become known as the senior statesman of Japan.
Ōkuma Shigenobu also served as both as Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, like his contemporary Itō Hirobumi. And like Itō, he too was the subject of an assassination attempt. Ōkuma survived but lost a leg (hence the cane). It was Ōkuma who presided over the opening ceremonies for the inauguration of Tōkyō Station in 1914 during his tenure as Prime Minister.
Incredulously, De Long took the bait. Rather than resort the sort of vigorous action Parkes would have taken when apprised of the fact that, despite having been on notice of a document apparently valid on its face for at least ten months, the government had not taken any steps whatsoever to determine it’s validity, De Long penned a milquetoast reply to the effect that he had just learned that the Mail steamer bound for American was leaving a week early, and intimating, not even requesting, that the Japanese Government might please be disposed to give him a satisfactory reply lest he should be required to send a troublesome dispatch to Washington. When no reply was forthcoming, De Long penned a letter on January 24th that was like a small boy’s “I told you so” saying merely that he had informed the US Government of the existence of the Portman grant. Once he saw this mild-mannered reply, particularly given how he knew Western diplomats such as Parkes could bring pressure to bear, Sawa must have correctly concluded that he was dealing with a lightweight.
De Long made good his threat to notify Washington. In his official Dispatch No. 12 of January 20, 1870 he wrote to the US Department of State, his first mention of the Portman Concession. His dispatch reported, “The Mikado’s Government, while not denying that all the obligations of the former government were binding upon them, specially insisted, in a correspondence on the subject, upon such Railroad or other public work being carried out by their own people and not by foreigners.” and elsewhere “The priority of this grant is well established.” De Long reported that during a meeting with Sawa, he had told Sawa he was “... prepared to receive such proposals, as would obviate the difficulty urged by them, if consistent with the principle that this Railroad shall be constructed by Americans” presumably intending to reach a compromise where the Japanese would own the railway if Americans built it.
De Long’s dispatch reports:
“In the course of this Conference however it became clear that the financial difficulties of this Government stood at least as much as the alleged political embarrassment in the way of a fair and satisfactory settlement of this interesting matter at present; the Minister stating that in order to be relieved from the payment of a high rate of interest on various sums of money due from them to foreigners the Mikado’s Government had borrowed through Mr. Lay, formerly General Superintendent of Customs in China and who had been introduced to them by Her Brittanic [sic] Majesty’s Minister in this Country, a Sum of one Million Pounds Sterling, which would enable them to pay off all their debts. The Minister did not deny that the plant of a Railroad between Yedo and Kioto or Osacca [sic] was to be furnished by the Capitalists who loaned the Sums of money named, and while it is not admitted, it would appear to be sufficiently clear, that this Concession to English subjects, under the patronage of the Minister or Government, is intended to cover or embrace the line between Yedo and Yokohama; the Mikado’s Government from the delay [by the US in enforcing the Concession agreement due to the uncertainty of the Boshin War] until my arrival in Japan having probably conceived that Mr Portman’s grant would not be officially supported [i.e., insisted upon by the United States], and therefore could be suspended with impunity.”
Nonetheless, De Long was confident and self-congratulatory:
“I trust a suitable arrangement with the Japanese Government in this respect will soon be made by me probably in the course of the next month or soon after the Japanese New Year. I do not therefore transmit all the papers at present but hope to do so at an early day and on that occasion to be able to announce to You that the matter has been settled and to apply for such action or instruction as You may deem proper.”
When Sawa and Terajima saw fit to reply to De Long’s January 24th letter on February 5th, 1870, they did so by enclosing a copy of a letter to the former head of the Legation Van Valkenburgh dated “the 10th Month of the 3rd year of Ke Wo” (October 3rd by the lunar calendar Keio period, roughly November 1867 by the Western calendar) from Tokugawa Yoshinobu, which apparently recited that the Shogun was resigning the administrative powers of government. The original enclosure does not exist in the US State Department records, but apparently was a courtesy copy of one of the letters Tokugawa Yoshinobu had sent to the Emperor in the Fall of 1867 offering to tender his resignation, that De Long rightly pointed out to the State Department, ultimately had been refused by the Emperor. The records of the US Legation, as reflected by the Dispatches in the State Department files now in the keeping of the National Archives, reflect that formal notification that Tokugawa Yoshinobu had “surrendered governmental power” to the court of the Emperor and that all foreign affairs “shall henceforth be transacted by the Court” was dated September 23, 1868 and was received shortly thereafter. Sawa and Terajima also enclosed a letter by one of the Tokugawa officials who were still in attendance on Tokugawa Yoshinobu in Shizuoka stating that he knew nothing about the railroad grant. Sawa was questioning Ogasawara’s legal authority to issue the grant, which they characterized as a “contract arbitrarily made.”
De Long’s initial reply of February bears a note of astonishment at the Sawa letter’s tenor. With a lawyer’s eye to dates, De Long noted that despite his letter of resignation in November 1867, the Shogun had continued to transact the governmental business of Japan up to and including the date of the conclusion of the Battle of Fushimi, after the date of the Portman grant, and observed that the letter in the name of the Emperor formally notifying the diplomatic community of the Emperor’s assumption of sovereignty didn’t occur until the tenth day of the first month of the lunar new year that followed the Battle of Fushimi (i.e. in early February 1868) and that up to that date “all acts of the former or Tycoon’s Government are considered legal and binding.” This was probably the better argument as between the two sides. Within only weeks of the Shōgun’s tender of resignation in the Fall of 1867 and the Imperial Court’s assumption of the reins of government, it came to the realization that it was ill equipped to do so, and had instructed Tokugawa Keiki to remain in place and to act in a pro tempore capacity. By the 20th of November, Van Valkenburgh had received confirmation of that fact from Ogasawara Iki no Kami. To make matters worse for the new government’s position, the Imperial rescript accepting the Tokugawa resignation was ambiguous enough that it could have plausibly been susceptible to an interpretation that the Shōgun was to continue as the government until a grand council of state could be convoked. The government had also allowed Ogasawara to communicate the fact that, “Orders were then issued by the Mikado that until the Daimios should come up to Kioto, on which further orders would be issued, The Taikun should attend to business as heretofore,” which he did in writing to Parkes on December 4th, 1867. Finally the State Department had received intelligence from Paris confirming that the Japanese Minister had likewise confirmed to the French that the Tokugawa régime was to remain in place pending further developments. In point of fact, the foreign powers continued to treat the Shōgunate as the de facto government of Japan and had dealt with it as such up to the Battle of Fushimi, without any protest from the Imperial Court in Kyōto. This was not, after all, the first time that Yoshinobu had used the threat or act of resignation as a political gambit. Earlier, when he was serving as Regent for the Shōgun Iemochi, he had also resigned that office in writing as a power-play and had been asked by the Emperor to reconsider and had in fact subsequently resumed his duties. The foreign governments dealing with Japan knew only too well that they were conducting their foreign relations with a country where feudal intrigues were still very much a way of business. Further confusion was caused by the Imperial Court’s contradictory decrees, the fact that active resistance had at the time been on-going (today that resistance is largely played-down as a “bloodless revolution” but at the time, when thousands of partisans were known to have been killed in the struggle, it appeared to be anything but), and by the inherent ambiguity the power-sharing arrangement between Emperor and Shōgun by it’s very nature. In short, if there was any question as to the validity of the Portman Grant, that confusion was largely the fault of the Japanese Government and not of the US Legation. The legal position of the new government’s assertion concerning Ogasawara’s lack of authority would probably have been the losing one had the matter been submitted to international arbitration. Given the fluidity with which the Imperial Court at times acceded to or acquiesced in the Shōgun’s exercise of Japanese sovereignty, it is perhaps more likely than not that the outcome of international arbitration reasonably could have held that the Imperial Court was estopped from contesting the authority of the Bakufu to have issued the Portman Grant in the name of and as the legitimate Government of Japan.
This 1885 map shows the original proposed route between Tōkyō and Kyōtō (shown in red) and roughly approximates the railway network as it was originally conceptualized in 1872. Lines existing in 1885 are shown in black, while lines to be constructed are in solid red. Note the prominent break of Lake Biwa between the two existing lines reaching it from north and south. The Nippon Tetsudō line was of course not envisioned in 1872, but by the time this map was published in 1885 it had reached Utsunomiya and was under construction farther northward. The tiny Hankai Tetsudō from Ōsaka to Sakai, which had begun construction by 1885 is also shown in solid red. Auxiliary lines (built to aid construction and supply) and lines intended to be built later are shown in red dashes: the two supply lines to aid in construction of the trunk line that were envisioned by Inoue Masaru, the Kotō (East Lake) line around Lake Biwa, and the Nippon Tetsudō extension beyond Utsunomiya to the north.
A mixed train headed by an unidentified tank locomotive, possibly on the Tokaidō Line, is seen passing over one of the many bridges doubtlessly encountered along its route. In earlier times, mixed trains were much more commonplace on scheduled runs. Freight haulage had a relatively late start in Japan compared to how traffic patterns developed in other countries.
De Long also pointed out that whether “the late Tycoon does not remember or does not wish to remember the past is a matter that can require no explanation from me.” Any first year law student will tell you, De Long was in effect saying, that the whole reason for requiring contracts, or grants, to be in writing in the first place was because the people who made them often found it convenient to want to forget that they had ever made them when circumstances had changed. In a more considered follow-up of February 12th, De Long went to some length to point out that Sawa and Terajima’s reliance on the November 1867 tender of resignation (that had been declined by the Emperor) was “not quite correct... but immaterial whether correct or otherwise” and pointed out the disingenuous nature of the denial of knowledge of the Portman grant by “subordinate and unknown persons in Suruga or Shidzu-Oka” who if they did see fit to remember the grant, as De Long charitably characterized it, “would be subjected to great inconvenience by Your government in their examination, if not also censure and ill-treatment.” Who was going to remember, De Long indignantly observed, knowing that to do so would be to risk severe punishment or perhaps death at the hands of the new régime? De Long knew this only too well, as an Imperial Edict had been made public that called for the punishment of “all those who have aided Yoshihisa,” (i.e., the so-called “Northern Emperor”) to quote a contemporary New York Times translation of 1868, and because the commissioners who had negotiated the purchase of the Stonewall and returned with it to Japan had been threatened with decapitation and had been under protection of the US Minister, as a second New York Times article of September 23, 1868 confirms. De Long also pointedly did some reminding of his own, calling to Sawa’s attention: “You never denied and fully admitted the validity of the grant... and again at our recent interview at the Department of Foreign Affairs,... you offered to exchange it for something else [i.e. some other concession], which was respectfully declined.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affair’s reply of February 28th cleverly consisted of a one paragraph restatement of the legal conclusions of the two sides as to the legal validity or not of Ogasawara’s signature on the Portman grant and noted that the very secrecy of what it characterized as a private agreement between Portman and Ogasawara was somehow proof of its questionable validity. This position was rich in irony, if not simply duplicitous, given that Sawa was, as of the date of that very writing, keeping the new government’s own agreements with the British secret. It went on to insist that the validity of the Portman grant would only be proven “on inquiry from Iki [Ogaswara] in person when his residence shall be known.” Sawa was undoubtedly feigning ignorance of Ogasawara’s whereabouts, as Portman had little trouble reaching him by a letter sent by means of regular mail, and knew that he was in Hakodate, then a town populated by only a few thousand. It is inconceivable that Sawa would have had much difficulty in finding Ogasawara, had he truly wanted; even less so that Terajima could have, as Terajima had in fact been sent to Hakodate to assist in resolving the final matters attending the surrender of the Tokugawa hold-outs.
On March 7, De Long wrote Sawa and Terajima a curt note demanding to be apprised of the details of the financial arrangements the government had concluded with Mr. Lay. Sawa and Terajima helped themselves to an entire month’s delay before bothering to render a two-sentence reply on April 7th stating in essence that those arrangements were still private and that De Long would have his details when the details were released to the public.
De Long knew that the Japanese were about to borrow money from Britain and that it was to be used to build railways, but the details as to where the projected line would be built was the key piece of information he lacked. He was accordingly confined to reminding the Japanese that any railway arrangements they had made with the British could not supersede the Portman grant for the line between Yokohama and Tōkyō. In his April 12th reply, De Long did just that, renewing his demand for financial details, reminding them of the liability they were likely to incur for having given a conflicting grant to the British, employing the magic word indemnity, the implications of which could not have been clearer to the Japanese, who were still unable to pay the final installments of the Shimonoseki Indemnity, and had found themselves in the embarrassing position of having to approach the Western Powers to whom the indemnity payments were due to arrange for an extension to 1872. Perhaps De Long hoped that the possibility of another indemnity claim would bring the Japanese to their senses. For good measure, he followed up on the 30th with yet another one of his ineffective sabre-rattling letters, stating that he had received a “highly satisfactory” reply from the State Department, but not stating what the content of that reply was. (This in fact was embroidery if not untrue—he had simply received an acknowledgement that the dispatch had safely reached Washington.)
Sawa must have been close to concluding by this time that De Long was all bark and no bite, for he bought himself another two week’s delay, and when he and Terajima saw fit to reply on May 19th, they again feigned surprise that De Long should insist upon the validity of the Portman grant; repeating their assertion that it had been made after the Tokugawa régime had formally surrendered the governmental powers and was therefore invalid, and the fact that the secrecy surrounding it rendered it specious. De Long, for some reason, failed to recognize that he had been drawn into a diplomatic game of “Is Not!... Is So!... Is Not!” during which he personally had wasted 5 months time going around in such circles, which was a game “highly satisfactory” to Sawa. De Long penned off yet another of his worthless letters pointing out the evasions and demanding proper answers on May 21st, to which Sawa and Terajima simply didn’t reply.
Matters stood in this stalemate for yet another month, by which point there was growing proof from the newspaper reports that were reaching Japan from London of the true extent of the Japanese involvement with British interests, at which point, as will be seen, De Long had the satisfaction that did indeed prove to be a wake-up call to the Japanese, albeit for other purposes. By August 1870, De Long had finally had enough of his correspondence with Sawa and Terajima, gathered up the entire series of letters, translations, and the original grant, had Portman faithfully copy them in his steady hand, and sent the entire packet to Washington seeking instructions as to how he should proceed. For reasons unknown, the State Department acknowledged receipt of De Long’s dispatches concerning the railway grant, but never rendered a reply of any nature.
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Interestingly, other Americans were still determined to challenge the British, and had during the course of the year 1869, hatched a plot to build a railway. What is incredible is that the locus of this intrigue was neither in Tōkyō nor Yokohama, where one might expect. Rather, it emanated from Hakodate of all places, the final hotbed of Tokugawa resistance in the remote north of Japan. Hakodate is the southern-most port of Hokkaidō, far removed from Tōkyō. Few details of the scheme remain, and from the scant traces that do, one surmises that perhaps it never proceeded beyond the initial proposal stage. The U. S. Consul in Hakodate was Elisha E. Rice. What makes his scheme all the more intriguing is that it was made right at the time Parkes was doing likewise in Tōkyō. Colonel Rice was a consul who had spent many years in service there, and according to Van Valkenburgh, was the oldest foreign official then resident in Japan. He too was in poor health, suffering from chronic rheumatism. For reasons unclear, he claimed to have been approached by “a few high and influential Japanese Officials residing here and in Jedo, greatly in favor of progress, and who particularly desire the aid of American enterprise” and to have been in negotiations concerning the scheme with an individual he identified only as the Japanese ‘Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs’ who had been sent to Hakodate to the clean-up aftermath of Tokugawa loyalist Enomoto Takeaki’s abortive attempt to set up a provisional Tokugawa government there. (One suspects of course Oi Yosuke, the former Ogasawara Iki no Kami, or then Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Terajima Munemori, but this would have been a truly astonishing combination, given the extent of Terajima’s involvement in the Sawa/De Long correspondence. The true identity of who the unidentified group of “influential Japanese” would have been is still a tantalizing mystery.) According to two consular dispatches Rice sent to the U. S. Department of State, he had been advised that the government was very interested in building “a Rail Road through the Silk and Tea districts, connecting the two Capitals Miaco4 and Yedo, about four hundred miles.” This would have come as no great surprise, as tea and silk were Japan’s top two export items and source of foreign exchange revenue well into the 1920s. The projected line seems intriguingly similar to the Tokugawa Grand Trunk Line proposal, but this is perhaps mere coincidence, as anyone could see that the most important railway to build in Japan was that between Tōkyō and Kyōto/Ōsaka. The prime instrumentality of the scheme was the formation of an “International Mercantile and Banking Company” under the laws of the United States and Japan. This bank was to build the railway from Tōkyō to Kyōto along a route designated by the Japanese Government, which would guarantee a ten percent return on the railway and retain the right to purchase it “at cost price.” It was proposed that the charter of the bank would also permit it to make loans to the government not to exceed one-third of its capital, which was proposed to be set initially at fifty million US dollars, and to enable it to issues notes that could be in “free circulation in every part of Japan.”
Rice was unsettlingly blunt in tone. He began one of his dispatches by framing the issue in the following terms: “The great question now is, shall England or America have the controlling interest in this rich country?...” dangling the bait of international influence before the State Department. He was also aware of the considerable efforts and progress that Parkes had been making on the issue of railway building. He wrote, “The English Minister is experimenting in this direction, but it is the opinion of most business men that he will not succeed.” On this point, Rice severely underestimated Parkes. But he did not underestimate De Long in Tōkyō: he sent along with one of his dispatches an article from one of the English-language newspapers of the day, The Japan Herald, that was purportedly severely critical of the bumbling new Minister, and blithely characterized it as “but too true in the main,” presumably to convince the State Department that he should be the primary agent for the negotiations, as he requested temporary leave of absence from Hakodate from time to time in order to visit Tōkyō “where my presence shall be actually required, for the advancement of this measure” and went so far as to propose that he leave the Hakodate Consulate in charge of his son during those visits. What Rice wanted from the State Department first was a “private note to our Minister Mr. De Long, to be presented by me to him, securing his cooperation, when the proper time shall arrive for legal and diplomatic aid.” Finally, Rice insisted on the secrecy of the matter, stating that “For the present, it is desired to keep this from [the] Satsuma [clan officialdom in Tōkyō] and the English Minister, until a majority of the Government are pledged to its support, which I am assured is merely a question of time” and later underscoring and capitalizing the word “PRIVATE” elsewhere in his dispatches. He claimed that only he and a few officials knew of the scheme, and advised that those officials “deem it advisable to keep it as private as possible, until they can find their way certain, as in event of failure they might lose caste.”
Rice estimated that “It will take some time (a year or more) of careful diplomacy, and business tact, to make all necessary arrangements and to overcome English intrigue and energy...”, again woefully underestimating the unflagable Parkes. As a matter rich in historic irony, Rice penned his two dispatches to US Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on December 7, 1869: the very day that Parkes was meeting, unbeknownst to him, with the leading members of the Japanese Government in the comfort of Prince Sanjo’s residence.
While De Long was learning a hard lesson in diplomacy at the hands of Foreign Minister Sawa in Tōkyō and before the letter outlining Rice’s ill-fated and half-conceived plot had even the chance to be put onboard a mail steamer bound for a weeks-long voyage to San Francisco and another week-long journey to Washington via the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad, Parkes had prevailed and the Japanese Government’s plan had come to be set. The rail network would consist of a mainline from Tōkyō, via Kyōto and Ōsaka, to Kōbe, with a branch at Tōkyō to Yokohama, a branch at Kyōto to Ōtsu, and a short isolated line from the northern tip of Lake Biwa north to Tsuruga on the coast. All in all, much was accomplished between Sanjo, Iwakura, Ōkuma, Ito, Sawa and Parkes in that December 7th meeting, and virtually nothing was to come of all the efforts of Portman, Van Valkenburgh, De Long, and Rice.
For the record, when the US State Department, unaware of Parkes’ recent success, received Rice’s two dispatches on Friday, February 25th 1870 (according to the rubber stamp on one), the matter was assigned to a State Department minor functionary named Jasper Smith to report his recommendations. Mr. Smith presumably enjoyed a good weekend and upon returning to his desk on Monday, took a mere two business days to consider and render his report on the matter. The next day, Tuesday, March 1st, Smith rendered a terse one page four-paragraph report, noting that the “great Rail Road and Banking Co.” venture was based upon nothing other than Mr. Rice’s representations. His conclusion was contained in three short sentences: “... it appears to me that the Department should not take any action in the matter. By so doing it may involve itself in some dispute with the local authorities which may lead to unpleasant complications. I advise that the whole matter be referred to the Minister [De Long].”
De Long of course had dithered and so had wasted the US advantage, while Rice had been approached by the wrong faction: those nobles who were not on the inside of the Chōshū-Satsuma clique, and this alone doomed the scheme presented to Rice from the start. One presumes that Rice was not conversant enough with the nuances of insider politics in Tōkyō to have realized this; as there is no evidence of skepticism or assessment of the relative political weakness of his Japanese counterparts in either of his dispatches. Naturally, by the time the matter could have been referred to De Long in Tōkyō, a process that would have taken another one or two months, Parkes’ success had become a fait accompli. Rice’s railway aspirations and the great intrigue of the International Mercantile and Banking Company were “dead on arrival” when the mail steamer bearing the US State Department dispatch to Minister De Long dropped anchor at Yokohama.
In the end, the Wild West parvenu was simply out-maneuvered by Sawa and was bested by Parkes. The brash frontier country lawyer was simply no match for two seasoned diplomats. The result was probably inevitable absent US resolve to make an international incident out of the affair. Even the New York Times correspondent could see the realities of British influence. He had reported as early as January 1869 that, “Sir Harry Parkes,... leading man with the new Government,... holds all the trump cards in the diplomatic game just now; and the French are next. I fear the American representative does not wield as strong an influence with the present Government as he did with the Tycoon.” Parkes had backed the winning horse, and had stolen a march on the Americans. Roches had backed the losing horse and had gone home. Van Valkenburgh had proven to be a thorn in the side of the Imperial Cause with his pro-Tokugawa sympathies and the Stonewall affair and De Long had been a thorn in their side with his officious intermeddling in the Nagasaki Christianity affair, but an ineffective one. Moreover both Van Valkenburgh and Portman were in poor health and probably lacked Parkes’ zeal. By September of 1870, the relationship between De Long and Portman had become so acrimonious due to other issues between the two men that De Long had dispatched the resident US Marshal to Portman’s residence to remove papers and files under force of arms and had engineered Portman’s removal from the Diplomatic Service. (In assessing blame, one commentator felt no need to explain beyond making the piquant observation that Portman was a gentleman known to have served quite creditably under three US Ministers to Japan without complaint, while De Long quarreled with almost every one with whom he had dealings.) One could hardly have expected successful results under such circumstances, and quite naturally, the American efforts withered on the vine. Portman, forced to resign his post as a result of De Long’s machinations, undoubtedly lost interest in further pursuit of the grant, left Japan, and perished in the sinking of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique’s ocean liner Ville du Havre in 1873.
The artist Inoue Yasuji captured this scene of a Yokohama-bound night train on the Takanawa causeway sometime in the mid 1880s. Inoue was the pupil of the renowned Meiji print artist Kobayashi Kiyochika. Kiyochika had done an almost identical version of this print in 1879, but in his work, the master inexplicably appropriated the image of an 1850 vintage American locomotive taken from a book or American print he had seen. Inoue was obviously unhappy with his master’s inaccuracy, and remedied matters by reworking the exact same composition into a print of his own, but depicting a locomotive that actually ran on the Shimbashi line.
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According to one commentator, there was little, if any, true cost-revenue analysis made by the Japanese Government, Brunton, and Parkes combined, or any one of them, to determine if the proposed line would be profitable prior to making a start on the venture. Baron Maejima, a government employee in the Ministry of Finance had published his brief Tetsudō Okusoku (“Surmises about Railways”) which was one of the first attempts at systematic estimates covering the initial lines proposed, but little had been done other than this. Nevertheless, the government had committed itself to building railways in principle and the contours of a modest but coherent initial rail network had been plotted, not just one railway. This was perhaps ambitious for the young government’s coffers without foreign assistance and backing, but building would progress in stages. It remained merely to procure funding, equipment, supplies, qualified engineers, surveyors, and a host of native labor. This would prove to be no simple task.