Abstract
The date is Friday 26 March 1868. The place is the Shishinden chamber of the Kyoto palace. The emperor reclines south-facing against a chair placed on the michodai. He is clad in Heian court garb, his eyebrows shaved, his cheeks rouged and his lips painted red and gold. To the emperor’s left sits Sanjo Sanetomi; Iwakura Tomomi is outside the canopy to the emperor’s left. Both men are first ministers in the new government. Yamashina no miya, head of the Foreign Bureau, stands to the emperor’s right. The daimyo and nobles of gijo rank sit in relative proximity to the emperor, according to court rank (Plate 1).
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References
The audience is fully described in Naikaku Kiroku Kyoku (ed.), Hoki bunrui taizen, Gaikomon, Gaihin seppan (hereafter Gaihin seppan), p. 101. See also Ernest Satow, A Diplomat in Japan (London: Seeley, Service and Co., 1921), pp. 359–62. The reader is referred to the 1931 painting by Hiroshima Koho which is on permanent display in the Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan, Tokyo. The painting in fact shows not Parkes’ audience but that of the Dutch minister. As will be seen, Parkes’ audience had to be postponed.
Parkes was referring to the etiquette normalized after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and disseminated in such handbooks as Baron Carl von Martens’ Guide Diplomatique (Leipzig, 1832) and J. C. Bluntschli’s Le Droit International Codifié (Paris, 1886).
Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 197–223.
Such was the experience of Date Munenari just a few days earlier. He describes his experience in Nihon Shiseki Kyokai (ed.), Date Munenari zaikyo nikki (reissue: Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1972). See also Satow, A Diplomat in Japan, p. 358.
On Okuni Takamasa, see in English John Breen, ‘Shintoists in Restoration Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 24, no. 3 (1990) pp. 579–602. Okuni Takamasa was, it should be noted, a keen advocate of open-country politics. See, for example, his treatise on international law (‘Okuni Takamasa’s Shinshin kohoron’, translated and annotated in Tetsuo Najita (ed.), Readings in Tokugawa Thought, Select Papers, vol. 9, translated and annotated by John Breen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Takagi Shozo, Tenno no shozo (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1998), p. 9.
Lord Redesdale, Memories, vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1915), p. 460.
Gaimusho chosabu (ed.), Dai Nihon gaiko monjo (hereafter DNGM) (Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Kyokai, 1939), pp. 632–3.
On the duke’s visit see, in English, Hugh Cortazzi, ‘Royal visits to Japan in the Meiji period, 1868–1912’, in Ian Nish (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, vol. 2 (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1997).
On the Oath, see John Breen, ‘The Imperial Oath of April 1868: ritual, power and politics in Restoration Japan’, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 51, no. 4 (1996), pp. 407–29.
Kunaicho (ed.), Meiji Tennoki, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1970), p. 626.
Iguchi Kazuki, Nihon kindai shi 4: Chosen, Chugoku to teikoku Nihon (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten), 1995, pp. 8–9.
For a full discussion of Soejima’s strategy, the reader is referred to McWilliams’ excellent study: Wayne C. McWilliams, ‘East meets East: the Soejima Mission to China, 1873’, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 30, no. 3 (1975), pp. 243, 257, 259.
Rekishigaku kenkyukai (ed.), Nihon shi shiryo 4: kindai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997), p. 115.
Iwakurako Kyuseki Hozonkai (ed.), Iwakura ko jikki, vol. 2 (Tokyo, 1906) p. 320.
Tokyo daigaku shiryo hensanjo (ed.), Hogohiroi: Sasaki Takayuki nikki (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1973), p. 140.
On this incident see Sawa Nobukazu, ‘Eikoku genshu keisho mondai no tenmatsu’, in Shidankai (ed.), Shidankai sokkiroku, vol. 30 (Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1975), pp. 133–42; see also ‘Igirisu koshi ekken no sai no futsugo no shidai ni kansuru ken’ in DNGM, vol. 3.
James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995).
Akira Iriye, Japan and the Wider World (London: Longman, 1997), p. vii.
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Breen, J. (2002). The Rituals of Anglo-Japanese Diplomacy: Imperial Audiences in Early Meiji Japan. In: Daniels, G., Tsuzuki, C. (eds) The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000. The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373600_4
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