A Tactless Diplomat in 19th-c. Japan
In 1880, a Dutch diplomat suffered the dishonour of being the first Westerner to be declared 'persona non grata' by Japan. This incident reveals much about the problematic negotiations between Japan and Western nations about the so-called 'unequal treaties' and Japan's attempts to be taken seriously in the Great Game of the late nineteenth century.
By HERMAN J. MOESHART
Soon after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, in which a new government had been formed with the emperor as its nominal Head of State, the Japanese government announced its desire to revise the 'unequal treaties' of 1858, a move for which there was very little enthusiasm in the West. To the disadvantage of the Japanese, the treaties denied them jurisdiction over foreigners on Japanese soil, and the imposition of tariffs for imported and exported goods. Although the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs stressed the friendly relationship with Japan, the Dutch attitude was not different from that of other Western nations. The Netherlands found it difficult to accept that an Asian, non-Christian country, should be treated like an equal. For Japan, this equality was of the greatest importance.Because of internal difficulties, the Japanese government was not ready to start negotiations for new treaties until 1878. It had to maintain a balance between domestic criticism if it granted too much to the foreigners and failure of the negotiations if they did not grant enough. In the spring of 1879 the negotiations were at a deadlock.
At that time, a new Dutch resident minister, Edmond Willem Wttewaell van Stoetwegen (1840-1908), was appointed to Tokyo. He had no experience in the Far East and, from the time of his arrival in Japan onwards, he irritated the Japanese authorities with his unfriendliness and arrogance.
In June of 1880, the Japanese government asked the foreign representatives to collect their copies of the new proposals for the revision of the treaties. In this way the government wanted to prevent leaking of the proposals to the press. After wild speculations in the local press, the Japan Daily Herald published the text of the proposals on 16th and 17th of July. A frantic search was organized to find the person responsible but, as the publisher protected his sources, the search was unsuccessful.
In reaction to a letter by the British representative in Japan, J.G. Kennedy, Stoetwegen boasted that he was the one who had given the Japanese proposals to the press. Kennedy had written that he could not imagine that one of the representatives would leak such information. Subsequently, Kennedy informed the dean of the diplomatic corps, who informed the Japanese minister of foreign affairs, Inoue Kaoru.
On the 18th of August, Stoetwegen received a letter in which Inoue informed him that the Japanese government would no longer communicate with the Dutch resident minister. Stoetwegen had been declared persona non grata, which was a unique first in Japanese diplomatic relations. An exchange of telegrams followed and Stoetwegen was received by the Japanese deputy minister of foreign affairs. Stoetwegen gave the Japanese government three days to change its mind. However, the deputy minister did not change his decision.
Earlier, Stoetwegen had forwarded a copy of the Japanese proposals to the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs. In a commentary he rejected the Japanese proposals because he thought the Japanese were unfit to make laws which would apply to Europeans. Dismissing them as 'half-civilized heathens', he suggested that the Japanese government should 'come back after two hundred years, then we shall see what we can do for you!' In this, he was not corrected by the Dutch Minister, which shows that the attitude in The Hague was not much different from his.
During the August crisis, Stoetwegen seemed to have lost his mind when he wrote to The Hague that he had received 'an insane, impertinent letter of Mr Inoue'. He denied the Japanese the right to stop communications with him and was outraged that even his endeavour to reconciliate by giving the Japanese minister three days to reconsider his decision had not led to a change in the Japanese attitude.
Meanwhile, Inoue had sent the Japanese representative in Berlin, Mori Arinori, to The Hague to ask for Stoetwegen's recall. King Willem III ordered Stoetwegen to leave Japan before October, a ruling which effectively ended his career in Japan.
Feelings of superiority ruled the relationship of Western countries with Japan. The attitude in the Netherlands was no exception. As an inexperienced Dutch diplomat, Stoetwegen was influenced by other foreigners in Japan who were unwilling to see the treaties revised. However, if Stoetwegen had been a man with a more pleasant character, the affair might have been hushed up. But as matters stood in 1880, Stoetwegen presented the Japanese government with this excellent first occasion to demonstrate its independence by declaring a foreign diplomat persona non grata. *
Herman J. Moeshart is a historian, currently working on Dutch-Japanese relations in the nineteenth century.
E-mail: moeshart@let.leidenuniv.nl.