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KOMURA JUTARO, 1855-1911 Great Statesman; Struggling Diplomat [London, 1906-08]

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KOMURA JUTARO, 1855-1911 Great Statesman; Struggling Diplomat [London, 1906-08] 11 KOMURA JUTARO, 1855-1911 Great Statesman; Struggling Diplomat [London, 1906-08] IAN NISH Komura ]utar6 INTRODUCTION his is an account of one of the strong characters of the late Meiji period and T one of the great Japanese statesmen of the twentieth century, Komura Iutaro (1855-1911). It concentrates on his dealings as a diplomat with Britain and especially his years as ambassador to the Court of StJames's (1906-8). At one level, it is a story of success, demonstrating how someone from a comparatively humble background could be promoted to a position of leadership in Meiji Japan. At another level, the paper argues that Komura who made a success of international conference diplomacy was less at home as a diplomat at one of the major courts of Europe, London.' Komura came from a bushi (samurai) family in the small Obi clan in the south of Kyushu. In 1871, he received clan assistance to study in Tokyo and four years later went to Harvard University where entrance standards were less exacting in those days. He studied in the Law School and later worked in New York. In 1880, he returned to Japan via London where he met up with Kikuchi Dairoku and other students studyin~ there (ryiigakusei). He also visited France before sailing home from Marseilles. Recruited into the Foreign Ministry in 1884, he became head of the translation bureau. But Komura was plucked from this backwater by Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu who probably felt some fellow-feeling for him as the product of one of the lesser clans which had found difficulty in placing their sons in the bureaucracy since the Meiji restoration. Appointed to Peking (Beijing), he became charge d'affaires there in November 1893. When war broke out between China and Japan, he was posted to Manchuria to act as civil administrator (minseichii chOkan) under the commander of the first army, General Yamagata Aritomo. In this office he got to know General Katsura Taro, a contact which was to bring him preferment for the rest of his career. After brief 110 JAPANESE ENVOYS IN BRITAIN experience in Korea, he served as deputy foreign minister from 1896 to 1898 while he was still only in his early forties. Komura then served briefly as minister, first at Washington (1898-1900) and later at St Petersburg (1900). At the end of that year, he was appointed to Peking to act as Japan's representative at the Peking conference which had to resolve the China problem created by the Boxer Uprising there. FOREIGN MINISTER In May 1901, while he was still in Peking, Komura was invited to serve as Foreign Minister in General Katsura's first cabinet at the comparatively young age of forty-five. He accepted but could not take up the assignment until the Peking conference ended in September. When he took office, he found that Japan was moving ahead with overtures for an alliance with Britain but that the country's leaders were divided over the issue. He threw his weight on the side of the alliance." He had to try to persuade Prince Ito Hirobumi (then in Russia) and overcome his reluctance to make an exclusive commitment to Britain. From this time onwards, Komura tended to be aligned with General Katsura and those of the Yamagata group. He steered through the negotiations until the alliance came to fruition on 30 January 1902. He had not been the initiator of the alliance but had taken a positive line during the stalemate in November. The alliance might not have come into being but for his persistence, which was rewarded with the title of baron (danshaku).4 The next years were years of strain for Foreign Minister Komura. After the abortive negotiations with Russia, there were the diplomatic problems thrown up by the outbreak of war. It was Komura's strategy that Japan's diplomacy towards Europe during the Russo-Japanese War should be concentrated on Stockholm and London. Komura withdrew the Japanese Minister to Russia early in February 1904 and relocated him in Stockholm. Japan's purpose was for the diplomats, in collaboration with an active military attache, Colonel Akashi Motojiro, to subvert the Russian war effort by encouraging disaffected groups inside Russia and the Russian Empire in Europe, like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. But Minister Kurino and Akashi had to act alongside the Japanese Legation in London, which was indispensable as a source of finance and reliable because of the British alliance. They therefore acted along with Minister Hayashi Tadasu and Colonel Utsunomiya Taro, the military attache. Between them they conducted a sophisticated intelligence operation throughout the war period." It was perhaps fitting, therefore, that Japan should in the dying days of the war have put the finishing touches to the second Anglo-Japanese treaty which was signed in August 1905 and published the following month. At the end of the war Komura had two difficult assignments: his appointment as plenipotentiary at the Portsmouth peace conference in 1905; and later his mission to Peking to conclude the Manchurian agreement with China. When Komura returned from the first of these on the Empress ofIndia and landed at Yokohama, the people who did not know the circumstances greeted him coolly without even a welcoming flag. In their view he had been forced to make too many concessions in order to secure peace. He was greeted with curses and even told 'it is better you should go back to Russia than come here to Japan'. He faced a disappointed people who felt that they had not obtained at the negotiating table the reward for the sacrifices they had made in the war, notably an indemnity. His unpopularity was moreover unjust because Komura had been in.
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