which ‘could sink every vessel in the port including H.M. Ships Rattler and Ringdove’.
Just when a fresh batch of wild rumours began to circulate in Nagasaki, the news broke – the shogun had agreed to pay a deposit on his indemnity for the murder of the marine and Richardson. Suddenly the pressure was off. The chances of war between Britain and Japan had faded although the Satsuma problem remained – they had still not surrendered their guilty men or paid their indemnity.
By mid-June the agents of Satsuma and Choshu were back in Nagasaki and business showed signs of picking up again. The Glover brothers and the others no longer spent every night at Alt’s home. Glover could write to Shanghai on 17 June:
. . . panic among the native inhabitants here has quite subsided and they are daily returning to their homes. The shops in town have opened and the merchants are resuming their business with foreigners.
But this peaceful interlude was the passing of the eye of the storm.
During the crisis month of May Glover was approached by rebel members of the Choshu clan. He was asked to help in the escape of five young Choshu samurai to the West. In typically reckless fashion he had quickly agreed and enlisted the help of Jardine, Matheson through their Yokohama agent, and their Shanghai and London offices would also become involved. His company’s own man in Yokohama, a Mr Weigal, was also in the plot, as was his family in Aberdeen although details are scarce – this clear breaking of the shogun’s strictly enforced law was not the kind of thing discussed in the company correspondence which has survived.
The ‘Choshu Five’, as they became known, wanted to study the West at first hand. Two of them, Hirobumi Ito and Kaoru Inoue, both of whom were lifelong friends of Glover, in time became very famous figures in post-shogun Japan. Ito was several times Japan’s Prime Minister and Inoue, among other top appointments, served as Foreign Minister. The others – Masaru Inoue (also known as Yakichi Nomura), Kinzuke Endo and Yozo Yamao – were among the brightest young men in the Choshu clan and also destined for major roles in the new Japan.
But in the early summer of 1863 Ito and Inoue were both, like Glover, in their mid-twenties and as they planned this great escape all three were almost certainly a little unsure and apprehensive at the pace of events. It was later said that Ito had been involved in the attack on the British Legation two years before – and certainly in his old age he did not deny this. But whatever had been the case in the past they were now convinced that much could be learned from the foreigners – blind hatred was no longer an option.
Consistently throughout this period Glover believed in the importance of getting the brightest young Japanese to the West to see for themselves the technical and other advances; it is clear that he felt this the best way forward, that on their return the rebels would be the best advocates of change and be listened to more than any foreigner. His involvement in the dispatch of the Choshu Five was the first and perhaps most important practical example of his belief; this was a very dangerous business indeed and he, perhaps more than any foreigner in Japan, knew it. The lifelong relationship he formed at this point with Hirobumi Ito of the Five would be crucial in the course of events.
Ito had been born of peasant stock in mid-October 1841 at Kumage in what is now Yamaguchi-ken but was then Choshu clan territory. His father was the adopted son of a minor samurai and young Ito was educated in the traditional way although not then a member of the warrior class. As an adolescent he became actively involved with the terrorist sonno-joi movement of Shoin Yoshida – a visionary and teacher opposed to the shogun and later executed for organising assassinations. Ito was only one of several young Choshu samurai led by Yoshida’s star pupil, Shinsaku Takasugi, then anxious to save their country from the West and the shogunate; others included Takayoshi Kido, Yozo Yamao and Kaoru Inoue. All of them became involved with Tom Glover. They were intelligent young men and with Glover’s help were beginning to appreciate that the military strength of the West was overwhelming.
The most likely reasons for Ito’s selection as one of the Choshu Five were his already obvious strength of character – despite later and justifiable accusations of whoring, drinking and blind ambition – and the fact that he had studied English and was considered competent in the language by 1863. For some time in that mid-summer of 1863 it was necessary for the Five to hide in the garden of Glover’s agent in Yokohama, fearful of being discovered by the shogun’s police. Their topknots had been cut and their hair fashioned in Western style and if they had been caught there was no possible explanation and death was certain. Ito later wrote calmly:
I was one of the first Japanese to visit foreign lands, and was only able to do so by stealth, escaping to Shanghai in 1863. The country was only just opened to foreign intercourse, and Japanese subjects were not yet allowed to leave the country.
But it had been far from calm, it was a harrowing escape. The ship which would take them to Shanghai and Europe at last dropped anchor in Yokohama harbour and they were bundled on board. Dressed in borrowed British seamen’s uniforms and talking gibberish in what they hoped sounded like a foreign language as they passed the guards on the waterfront, they hid in the steamer’s coal storage hatch and began a nerve-racking wait. Despite a farewell party before boarding, their fears and apprehension as the anchor was slowly dragged aboard the rocking ship can only be guessed at. They were well aware that until they reached the safety of the open sea their execution was certain if caught. Ito at least had the comfort of knowing his clan had conferred on him the status of samurai prior to his hurried departure. As an old man he never failed to acknowledge the help of the British and, in particular, Tom Glover, who smuggled him out of Japan at this crucial time.
Their first stop in Shanghai brought about a crisis of confidence. Kaoru Inoue viewed the gigantic Western steamships and warships manoeuvring in the Chinese harbour with awe – he reasoned that it would be impossible to defend Japan against such powerful forces, that theirs was a mission impossible. Ito turned on his friend with fury. How could he give up at the sight of a few warships? Yet it is clear that he had also been profoundly affected by what he saw.
It would appear Ito’s English failed him at this point. They had gone immediately on landing to the office of William Keswick, Jardines’ Shanghai manager. Here, in trying to explain their wish to get to England, of which Keswick was aware, they could only get over the word ‘navigation’. Keswick assumed that the Japanese wished to learn seamanship and arranged for the first two – Ito and Kaoru Inoue – to leave on Jardines’ 300-ton sailing ship, Pegasus, due to embark shortly for London. The other three would follow them later as passengers on the White Adder.
Ito and Inoue suffered terribly on the long voyage of the Pegasus to Europe. Treated as apprentice seamen and worked as such they found the food uneatable and were racked with seasickness and diarrhoea – at one point to the extent that a very weakened Ito had to be tied by Inoue to the ship’s side to prevent his toppling over into the sea. More than four months after leaving Shanghai they arrived in London; the second half of the voyage had been less stormy in every sense and the two had even consulted their pocket dictionary and tried to communicate in English with the crew of Pegasus. After an inevitable initial mix-up, they came under the care of Jardines’ in London and were treated accordingly. If Shanghai had seemed to them vast and wondrous, the port and city of London was a revelation, despite the prices, the jostling, the difficulty in communicating. They were quickly reunited with the other three of the Choshu Five who had arrived four days before them, despite leaving Shanghai weeks after they did.
At the time the getaway of the Choshu rebels was only one of several problems occupying Tom Glover’s mind, but the escape of these five young men to the West would have profound effects on the future of Japan.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN THE LAND OF THE ‘BARBARIANS’
