The Tongnyeong's Ambition (3)
At first Ito could only blink, utterly unable to grasp what Mutsu Munemitsu was saying. Then light gathered in his pupils, and from his throat burst a thin, piercing shriek no one would ever have imagined could come from a thickset middle-aged man.
A visit to Japan? A visit to Japan!?
"A visit to Japan...? A viiisit to Jaaapan?"
Ito's eyes flew so wide they looked ready to pop from their sockets. He shot to his feet.
"Good heavens! Good heavens!"
At the Prime Minister's gasp of astonishment, those who had stepped out into the corridor during the recess turned back toward them in bewilderment.
Feeling those prickling stares, Katsu Kaishū, the former Navy Minister, hastily seized the Prime Minister's collar and tugged him back down, whispering urgently.
"P-Prime Minister, please compose yourself first—"
"Do I look like a man who can compose himself, Minister!? The Korean Tongnyeong, visiting Japan! This is the event of my lifetime! This is on a level approaching the catastrophe of the day Saigo incited his entire faction to resign!"
"I know that, I do — please, just a little dignity..."
"A-ahem."
Katsura, the 3rd Secretary of Foreign Affairs, joined in the pleading, and Hayashi, the Minister standing beside them, chimed in with discreet entreaties of his own. Only then did Ito realize he had momentarily forgotten his station. He cleared his throat, his face flushing with embarrassment, and quietly sat back down.
"Huff... huff..."
Even so, Ito could not still the trembling in his chest at the Korean Tongnyeong's proposed visit, as conveyed by Ambassador Mutsu. He exhaled slowly, again and again, straining with everything he had to master his agitation.
A moment later, having barely wrestled his pounding heart into submission, he asked in a near-whisper.
"F-first, let me ask just one thing. This isn't some preposterous notion that the Korean government, invoking the traditional tributary relations of the East, intends to offer our court the rites of a vassal state, or to submit itself to His Majesty the Emperor — is it? It isn't, is it? Surely it isn't?"
"I beg your pardon...?"
"What on earth do you mean?"
Now it was Special Ambassador Mutsu and Hayashi, the Minister resident in Korea, who were thrown into confusion. What kind of out-of-nowhere nonsense was this? Korea petitioning to submit itself to Japan? That was the sort of talk that would get a man beaten in the middle of Hanyang.
"Ah."
Seeing the pair's thoroughly bewildered faces and eyes, Prime Minister Ito realized he had, indeed, misunderstood. He recovered his composure as best he could and hastily began to explain himself. In that brief interval he glanced sideways — the other two wore equally puzzled expressions.
This was a clear misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of Ito's own making.
"I— I misunderstood."
"What misunderstanding, sir?"
Looking at the two men, who still could not make head or tail of any of it, Ito crumpled his face, certain he had thoroughly disgraced himself.
"No, no! Don't misunderstand me. It's just that there are idle rumors being spread by a handful of masterless ronin and certain unhinged types still clinging to the Seikanron. Outsiders, mind you — outsiders! That talk about how our Japan, as Asia's sole civilized nation, ought to incite the enlightenment of the Asian countries and throw open the gates of our little brother Joseon and the barbarian Qing — there was talk like that, wasn't there?"
"Hmm?"
Fukuzawa Yukichi, who had been sitting beside them, seemed to recall something amid Ito's flustered, rambling excuse. He slapped his knee and chimed in.
"Ah, so Your Excellency the Prime Minister mistook the nonsense those former-domain ronin — those so-called patriots — have been spouting, and thought the Korean government meant to submit itself to Japan. Is that it?"
Thank you, thank you, Master Fukuzawa!
"Yes, that! That's exactly it! That's why I made this needless misunderstanding! I myself regarded it as a completely baseless rumor and only gave a verbal order to the Metropolitan Police to keep an eye on them—"
"But that sounds rather like the talk at my private academy, doesn't it?"
"...What?"
Ito, who had been enthusiastically welcoming Yukichi's support and shouting that yes, he had truly misunderstood, was immediately forced to lose face all over again. No: he was simply left speechless. What had this man just said?
"There is such talk?"
"Yes."
"..."
There were, apparently, idle dreamers who actually spouted such rubbish.
After a succession of stories and situations that left him no choice but to doubt his own ears, Ito decided he must have a problem with his hearing, and asked again, blankly.
"...What did you say?"
"It's one of the more popular topics among the politicians who come and go at my academy even now. The idea that Japan, which was first to adopt Western civilization, and Korea, which was first in the East to successfully carry out a republican revolution, should take the lead in enlightening Asia."
"Eh...?"
As Yukichi's explanation continued, Ito's face hardened. His mouth fell open.
Why on earth were such people at this man's academy, and why were they holding forth as politicians under the very person said to be the fountainhead of this country's Enlightenment thought?
"Hmm. Wait a moment, though."
Then Yukichi, as if something needed correcting, propped his chin in his hand and thought hard — and proceeded to launch into even stranger tales that the already thoroughly confused Prime Minister would find still harder to follow.
"Your Excellency is under a slight misapprehension. Among the guests at our academy, no one has ever discussed who would play the elder brother and who the younger in an Asian revolution. We have never even considered who ought to take the role of pioneer in Asia's enlightenment. If one had to say, it would of course be best if Japan took that part — but considering the circumstances and the dignity of the Korean people, it would be all the more rude, a matter certain to provoke controversy."
"..."
"The word 'submission' is also largely a misnomer. In the international diplomacy of the Western powers there is no proper institution corresponding to the values of Eastern diplomacy — no diplomatic rhetoric, for instance, that frames relations as brotherly affection, or as that between parent and child. In other words, the traditional vassal relationship that once bound the Qing and Joseon is now utterly inappropriate between our two countries. But for the two nations to be reborn as equal, independent states in a relationship of amity..."
As Fukuzawa Yukichi's explanation rolled on, Ito touched his cheek, which had twisted into a peculiar grimace.
What in God's name is this man talking about?
Frankly, from Ito's own standpoint, he could not even tell what kind of grotesque situation this was supposed to be.
Suddenly the Korean Tongnyeong had sent a secret envoy asking them to arrange a visit to Japan. The two men he had dispatched to keep watch on Joseon had become — if one were lucky enough to assume they had merely taken bribes — outright pro-Korean partisans.
And now, at Keio Gijuku — one of the great fountainheads of Japanese Enlightenment thought — they were earnestly debating the grotesque proposition that Japan and Korea should join forces and become the pioneers of Asia's enlightenment.
Never mind whether he believed any of it. Ito himself, amid the chaos of Japanese politics, no longer had the faintest idea whose tune he was supposed to dance to.
These people — hadn't they been going on, until quite recently, about how the conquest of Korea was essential if Japan was ever to stand independently of the Western powers and fend off foreign invasion?
Yukichi, who had been holding forth at length about his own circle's affairs, looked at the frozen Prime Minister, tilted his head, and asked.
"What is it? Is something strange?"
"...No, it's just. That is to say."
Ito had been about to ask, So why does that actually exist? — but the man's reaction, those wide, shining eyes and that look of perfectly innocent incomprehension, left him speechless.
He was finished. This mentally undergrown simpleton was a Pan-Asianist who preached Japan-Korea friendship and alliance — a fantasy even more preposterous than the Seikanron advocates who wanted to conquer Korea.
I should have known from the last time, when he kept going on about how we ought to extend a massive loan or military aid to that Joseon fellow — Kim Ok-gyun, or whatever his name was.
And the bleaker news was this: the number of politicians and outsiders — and sitting officials of the Meiji cabinet — who revered this same Fukuzawa Yukichi as their spiritual mentor, as the great elder of Japanese Enlightenment thought, was staggering.
"..."
The one consolation was that Ito himself was this country's Prime Minister — and that the sharp-minded Ito, even amid this banquet of preposterous nonsense, was already searching for the root cause of what needed to be fixed.
They've all been quiet for a while — so this is the sort of bizarre delusion they've been entertaining.
Ito, who had been too busy modernizing the fatherland, breaking the unequal yoke the great powers had fastened upon it, mediating the conflicts among the domains and between the army and navy, and clearing away the wreckage Saigo Takamori had left behind, grasped that he was in no position to worry about other people's houses.
He could see it now. This country was very far indeed from the "reason and rationality" the Western powers prized so highly.
Even as Ito conducted this close examination of his own nation's condition, Fukuzawa had no intention of yielding his point. On the contrary, Hayashi, who had long resided in Korea, and Ambassador Mutsu were both nodding as if they agreed with him — and Kaishū, the Navy Minister, was even proposing student exchanges as a peaceful means of improving relations between the two countries.
"Therefore, if this visit to Japan is successfully arranged, it is my dream to receive His Excellency the Korean Tongnyeong at my academy in person, and to provide a venue where he and my guests might envision the future of Asia—"
"Enough."
Having first stopped the dreamer's mouth, Ito returned to his native charisma and straightened his posture.
"First, I apologize for having misunderstood and led the discussion astray. Then, Ambassador Mutsu — what is the Korean Tongnyeong's reason for arranging a visit to Japan? Does it perhaps concern a renegotiation of the grain export ban, or the matter of the Japanese settlements?"
"Ah, of course those matters are not entirely absent."
Munemitsu straightened his back, drew in his chin, and answered Ito's question.
"To be precise, it is the establishment of a rice-futures exchange spanning both countries."
"A rice-futures exchange?"
"Yes. More precisely, a briefing on the rights to advance into southern Manchuria, and on Joseon rice-export commodities. It also includes the matter of contracting the submarine cable works connecting Osaka and Gunsan."
"There is far too much here I wish to ask about. Explain in a little more detail."
At Mutsu's explanation, Ito decided the Minister of Finance, the fiscal expert, needed to hear this as well. He gestured for his secretary to summon the man, and at the same time told Mutsu to continue.
"His Excellency the Tongnyeong of Korea sincerely hopes that our Japan and Korea will grow into a more economically cooperative relationship."
"That much I know well. The new Korean government has not particularly touched the grain-export-ban issue that once caused such trouble."
"Ah, I shall explain that part further later, Your Excellency. For now, the revolutionary government is also a government that is conscious of popular opinion, and so it takes a somewhat stubborn stance on restrictions on grain exports."
"Is that so?"
Ito exchanged a glance of greeting with the Minister of Finance, who had promptly taken a seat at his summons, and looked at Mutsu with an expression of surprise.
As late as the beginning of this year, Ito had, upon hearing of the upheaval in Joseon, immediately begun worrying about the price of Joseon rice imported into Osaka. But time had passed, the Korean government had not particularly restricted grain exports, and he had simply let it go with a if it's fine, it's fine.
"At present, the Korean government and the Dongmaenghoe are preparing for sweeping reforms in the aftermath of the war."
"Hmm. Reforms. You seem to have made quite a few close friends in the Korean government, to have acquired such high-level information so soon after being posted as ambassador."
"Ah — it isn't even an open secret. In the Korean press, large-scale land reform and tax overhaul are already treated as settled facts, and a constitutional drafting committee for the establishment of a constitution has long since been installed."
"Is that so?"
Startled by a reformist fervor in the Korean government more thoroughgoing than they had expected, Ito and the ministers around him were of divided opinions. And well they might be — such radical, extreme reforms were bound to be accompanied by considerable reaction.
Yet Mutsu, who was explaining all this, and Hayashi, the Minister assisting him at his side, wore expressions of perfect composure.
"The conversation has kept drifting, but I believe the purpose of His Excellency the Tongnyeong's visit to Japan can be summarized as this: an approach toward resolving, through an amicable economic treaty between both sides, our Japan's chronic problem of rural depopulation, the soaring price of grain, and the outflow of gold, silver, and other precious metals."
The Minister of Finance and Prime Minister Ito, stunned by the Korean government's keen eye — which had, in a single stroke, pierced through the chronic problems of their national economy, the trade balance being thoroughly plundered by hasty modernization and the opening of commerce, and the government's fiscal deficit — could not close their mouths for some time.