Chapter LXXXVIII: The Emperor of Japan

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DECORATES HENRY CLEWS WITH THE ORDER OF COMMANDEUR
OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED ORDER OF
THE RISING SUN—ON THE INSIGNIA IN JAPANESE
LETTERS IS “KUN-KO-SEI-SHO”—WHICH
MEANS “EXALTED MARK OF MERITS
AND SERVICES.”

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LETTER FROM VISCOUNT KANEKO.

_New York Tribune_, March 21, 1908.

TOKYO, March 23, 1908.

MY DEAR MR. CLEWS:

Please accept my heartiest congratulation on the new honor which
has been added to your already distinguished life by His
Imperial Majesty, the Emperor, who was pleased to confer upon
you the Imperial Decoration, in recognition of your valuable
service to this country. In due time, I know, Ambassador
Takahira in Washington will officially present it to you. I
hardly need say how gratefully I am appreciating your kind
friendship which enabled me to perform whatever was entrusted to
me, though to a very modest extent, during my sojourn in your
land in 1904-1905. And in this connection, I assure you that I
now look back, with much feeling, to those pleasant times I had
with you in America. I sincerely hope that our next meeting will
soon be in this country where your special interest in us is
already so greatly appreciated, as is shown in the recognition
which has been given you by the Emperor this time.

With my renewed assurance of the warmest regards to yourself,
and hoping that this will find you well, I remain,

Very sincerely yours,

(Signed) KENTARO KANEKO.

MR. HENRY CLEWS,

NEW YORK CITY.

COPY OF LETTER TO VISCOUNT KENTARO KANEKO.

April 25, 1908.

MY DEAR VISCOUNT:

I am in receipt of your most highly appreciated letter of March
23d, for which I cordially thank you; and I am daily expecting
to be honored by receiving the Imperial Decoration which you
state is to be conveyed by Ambassador Takahira. Upon its receipt
I will formally express my gratification to his Imperial
Majesty, the Emperor, for the great honor conferred.

If Japan were nearer to New York I might be able to promise that
our next meeting would be in your own country—the Land of the
Rising Sun—but as you have achieved so much good for Japan, in
the United States, I doubt not that business, or international
diplomacy, of which you are one of the masters, will bring you
here again, when, I assure you, you will be received with the
honor and respect which your distinguished services and your
high personal character entitle you to expect.

With assurances of the highest regard and friendship for you and
your countrymen, I have the honor to remain,

Very sincerely yours,

HENRY CLEWS.

VISCOUNT KENTARO KANEKO,

TOKYO, JAPAN.

CONSULATE GENERAL OF JAPAN.

60 WALL STREET, NEW YORK CITY,
April 27, 1908.

ESTEEMED SIR:

Referring to the official dispatch of even date, I take liberty
to ask you to appoint some afternoon in the near future which
will be convenient for you to receive me at your home or
elsewhere when I will have the honor and pleasure of carrying
out the important mission of presenting you with the
distinguished mark of honor. With kind regards,

Yours very respectfully,

(Signed) K. MIDZUNO.

MR. HENRY CLEWS,

630 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY.

I named Sunday, May 3d, at half-past one o’clock, at my residence, 630 Fifth Avenue, and invited a large number of friends to luncheon, which made the occasion a most enthusiastic and enjoyable one.

The Honorable Kokichi Midzuno, said: Mr. Clews, acting under the
instructions of His Excellency Count Tadasu Hayashi, Minister of
Foreign Affairs, I have the honor to inform you that His
Imperial Majesty, the Tenno of Japan, my August Sovereign, as a
special token of Imperial good will, has graciously been pleased
to confer upon you the decoration of Commandeur of the most
distinguished order of the Rising Sun, and I have the honor to
present to you the said decoration. In performing this most
pleasant duty, I deem it my privilege to avail myself of this
occasion to tender my hearty congratulations and to convey to
you, Esteemed Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration.

Which was replied to by me as follows:

MR. MIDZUNO:

In receiving at your hands under the instructions of His
Excellency Count Tadasu Hayashi, Minister of Foreign Affairs for
the Empire of Japan, the decoration of Commandeur of the most
distinguished order of the Rising Sun, bestowed upon me by His
Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan, as a special token of
his good will, I respectfully acknowledge my high appreciation
of the honor, and shall always value the distinction as one of
the greatest that could be conferred upon me. I shall ever
regard it not alone as a flattering compliment to myself, and a
recognition of such services as I have been able to render, but
as an emblem of the friendly relations that bind Japan and the
United States together in a bond of sympathy; and I trust that
this tie of friendship will never be weakened. I at least will
always endeavor to strengthen it.

I have long been intimately conversant with the affairs of
Japan, and been deeply and sympathetically interested in the
rapid and wonderful development of the Empire, and all the more
so in consequence of my good fortune in having had the personal
acquaintance, while they were in New York, of those two
distinguished Japanese Statesmen, who are now Prince Ito and
Viscount Kentaro Kaneko. Moreover, the correspondence that has
passed between us since their return to Japan has only quickened
my regard, and heightened my admiration for them and their
Country. Both have proved themselves great in peace as well as
war, and may the light of the Land of the Rising Sun never grow
dim, and America and Japan be joined by their mutual interests
in unbroken peace and concord forever.

With many thanks to His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor, for this
great honor, and to His Excellency Count Tadasu Hayashi, as well
as yourself, for your courtesy in the fulfilment of your duties,
and for the evidences of your personal friendship for me, which
touches me deeply, I assure you that my appreciation cannot be
expressed in words.

This symbol of the Rising Sun indicates the coming of the day of
greatness of your nation, and my fervent hope is that darkness
may be unknown in your land.

In the midst of our festivities to-day there is a cloud, and I
desire to express my deepest sympathy to the people of Japan in
the loss of so many young lives in the disaster which visited
them during the past week. Though dead, these young men still
live as an example to others that a life given to country in
time of peace deserves the same lasting glory as though given in
battle.

I then requested the ladies and gentlemen to fill their glasses and rise and drink to the health of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan.

The Consul General of Japan answered the toast as follows:

MR. CLEWS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

As the local representative of Japan, I have the pleasure and
honor to thank you for the toast to His Imperial Majesty,
proposed by our esteemed Host and so heartily joined in by you
all. It is high honor as well as great pleasure that I was in a
position to personally present that high mark of honor to Mr.
Henry Clews. But what makes me most happy is that this came in
most opportune time, when the international horizon which was
said to be more or less clouded for some time has become
clear—so clear that even the yellowest journals of this country
which are sparing no efforts to stir up anti-Japanese feeling
among American people, can no more find any meteorological item
for a pessimistic weather forecast. Now that all transient and
incidental questions between your country and ours have been
settled in an amicable way, now that your government, on behalf
of your people, have gladly accepted our invitation to
participate in the Grand Exposition to be held in Japan in 1912,
and now that my fellow countrymen in Japan have most pleasant
anticipation to welcome the officers and men of your mighty
fleet of battleships in our beautiful ports, I hope and trust
that the most friendly relations between two nations, which have
existed and are happily existing, will be an everlasting one.

In conferring upon you, Mr. Clews, that high mark of honor which
I have just had the pleasure to present, His Majesty is
reflecting the friendly feeling and unfeigned affection that
fifty millions of His faithful subjects entertain toward the
people of this great Republic for their kind guidance and
unshaken sympathy shown to Japan and her people from the time
when your great Commodore knocked at the door of our Island
Empire to invite its secluded people to the comity of nations
down to the present day, not to speak of the most trying time
Japan passed through a few years ago, and their gratitude for
the most valuable service rendered by American people to effect
the termination of hostilities and restoration of peace through
the far-sighted, active, and able good offices of your great
President, whose toast I beg to propose.

My acknowledgment by letter of the honor conferred upon me:

May 2, 1908.

DEAR SIR:

Please convey to his Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan, my
sincere thanks for bestowing upon me, as a token of his good
will, the Imperial decoration of Commandeur of the most
distinguished order of the Rising Sun. No words of mine can
fitly express my high appreciation of this honor, and I shall
always value the distinction as one of the greatest that it has
been my good fortune to achieve. I consider it a symbol of the
friendly relations existing between Japan and the United
States—a friendship which, I assure you, I shall endeavor to
foster and promote to the best of my ability.

With many thanks to his Imperial Majesty for the honor conferred
upon me, of which I am justly proud, and to your Excellency for
your kind offices in my behalf, I have the honor to remain,

Most sincerely yours,

(Signed) HENRY CLEWS.

HIS EXCELLENCY COUNT TADASU HAYASHI, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
OF THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN.

The following letter from Prince, then Marquis, Ito is interesting as a part of the world’s history, and shows the feeling and friendship of that great statesman:

TOKYO, April 14, 1904.

DEAR SIR:

In answer to your letter of February 17th, let me first of all
thank you most sincerely for the constant sympathy you have
shown to our country’s cause. Your friendly efforts on the
occasion of the Chino-Japanese war are still fresh in my memory
and in the memory of all those who have heard of them. And, in
general, the sympathetic attitude of public opinion of your
country is a great encouragement to us in our faith that in
fighting for our own future security and undisturbed enjoyment
of the fruits of civilization, we are to a certain extent
fighting also for the common cause of all. Just as you say, the
supremacy of Russia in Corea would mean not only a constant
menace to the very existence of our island empire, but would
also mean the wholesale destruction of our commercial and
industrial interests already legitimately vested there in the
past, not to mention the loss of natural outlet for our
expanding people. The constant policy of Russia in this part of
the globe has steadily inclined toward monopolization of natural
resources of the country she conquers and annexes. Her
Manchurian policy is the irrefutable evidence of the above
statement. So that in fighting for our own interests we are at
the same time fighting for the principle of “fair competition
all around” in these new markets of the world. I am indeed very
sorry that the negotiations carried on on our side, with sincere
“bona-fide,” were not crowned with success so earnestly desired.
If the Russian Government were a little more inspired by the
spirit of moderation and of toleration for the legitimate
interests of others things would not have come to this pass. As
it was, there remained no other way for us but to try to enforce
by arms what we could not do by reason. And we had to do so ere
it would have become too late, for Russia was steadily and
rapidly augmenting her fighting forces available in this part of
her empire, so that before long the sheer mass of her fighting
power would have made it a folly for us to attempt to resist the
unscrupulous march onward. It has been nothing but a coolly
thought-out step in the cause of State necessity. And I am much
gratified to see that you as well as the general public opinion
of your country, have understood our motives in their true
light.

Hoping that you are enjoying as robust a health as when I saw
you last in New York, and also hoping to be able to see you
again in no distant future,

I remain, yours sincerely,

(Signed) MARQUIS H. ITO.

HENRY CLEWS, ESQ.,

New York City, U. S. A.

The following article, which I wrote at the time for one of our leading magazines, contains matter which may be instructive to my readers:

May 24, 1904.

The success of the Japanese in the present war with Russia is
due to their great zeal. What they undertake to do, they
generally do with great earnestness of purpose, which calls
forth sacrifice, energy, courage, and determination. The
concentration of all these qualities is the basis of success in
all undertakings whether large or small. The success of the
Japanese is easily accounted for also by the fact that they love
their Emperor as a people—they are willing to fight for him and
to die for him, added to which, they are fatalists and are not
afraid to face death on the battle-field, because they firmly
believe that the next world is better than this, and therefore
to die in a good cause, especially in fighting for the salvation
of their country, secures a high and honorable position there.
Against these characteristics, which back the Japanese in the
present war, their antagonists, the Russians, fear their
Emperor, and under the autocratic rule of the nation soldiers
are very often put into the army through force and kept there.
There is a vast difference, therefore, on the battlefield, in
the fighting qualities of soldiers who are backed by love of
their Emperor and soldiers who are backed by fear of their
Emperor. Then again, the discipline of the Japanese soldiers is
of a more intelligent and up-to-date order than that of the
Russians. Each regiment in Japan is composed of 400 men with a
captain in command who carries a sword. Their training provides
that if anything should happen to the captain, and his sword
should fall to the ground, it must be taken up on the instant by
the next in rank, and if anything should happen to him, the next
in rotation takes his place, and so on all the way through to
the last man; and each man to the end of the 400 is capable of
picking up the sword and commanding with it, which also means to
continue the fight until the last man in each regiment is killed
or disabled; in other words, the fight is never to be given up
except by total extinction. As an evidence of the interest and
earnestness of the Japanese people, it is customary, amongst the
trades-people, whenever a family that they have been supplying
with the necessaries of life is deprived of the father of the
family, in consequence of his going to the war, to continue to
supply all their needs the same as before and without sending
any bill therefor. It is pretty difficult, therefore, for the
Russians, notwithstanding that they so largely outnumber the
Japanese, to whip such a determined, forceful people either on
land or sea.

There is scarcely an important college anywhere in the world in
which Japanese students are not to be found studying for all
vocations, and they are bent upon acquiring the best and most
up-to-date methods in all walks of life. Admiral Togo was
educated at Annapolis, and the American, English, and
Continental colleges have educated many of Japan’s best army and
navy officers now engaged in the war.

The Japanese are not given much to invention, but they possess
great discernment and discrimination; they know a good thing
when they see it, and are very skilful in imitation. Fifty years
ago, when Commodore Perry successfully negotiated for the
opening of the Japanese ports, that nation’s intercourse with
the outside world commenced. A few years thereafter a commission
was appointed to frame a constitution. This commission visited
all the great nations in pursuit of information. They
familiarized themselves with the American constitution and the
basis of the government of other nations; they culled the best
from all and put it into their constitution. It took them seven
years to accomplish it. When they made their report to the
Emperor he accepted it without any modifications whatsoever, and
notwithstanding the great changes that have taken place in that
country in consequence of its growth and development, there has
been no occasion up to this date to in any way change that
document.

They also appointed thirty-five years ago a commission, with the
present great statesman, Marquis of Ito, at its head, to visit
the various nations with a view of obtaining the best
information possible in order to establish a financial system.
On their trip around the world to study the various foreign
financial systems with a view of adopting one up to date for
Japan, they first came to this country and brought official
letters to General Grant, then President. General Grant turned
them over to me to teach them our financial system. I posted
them up thoroughly on our financial methods. They then went to
England, France, and Germany, and returned to Japan via the Suez
Canal. On their return, their report strongly favored the
adoption of the American system. It was accepted by the
Government, and their Secretary of the Treasury appointed me
their agent to get up the engraving of their new currency and
bonds, similar to those of the United States Government. I sent
the phraseology and denominations of all our different demand
notes and various bonds to them, and they transferred the same
into their own hieroglyphics and sent them to me. I had the same
beautifully steel engraved through the Continental Bank Note
Company, who were the lowest bidders, in competition for the
work. Since that time I have kept up a most interesting and
exceedingly friendly acquaintance and correspondence with
Marquis Ito, and his recent letter to me contained much of
interest, as it gave most excellent reasons for Japan being
involved in the present war, which he said was not from his
country’s desire, but through necessity, as a matter of defense.

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