Ch 23 - The Opening of Choson

The Mutan Village Incident

The murder of 54 Ryukyuans by aborigines in Taiwan in 1871 led to a Sino-Japanese agreement that effectively acknowledged that Ryukyu islanders were Japanese subjects, weakened China's traditional claim of sovereignty over the Ryukyus and opened to question other claims of Chinese sovereignty in East Asia.

For years, Western nations and Japanese diplomats sought a diplomatic resolution with the Qing government regarding the safekeeping and repatriation of shipwrecked sailors in Asian waters, but to no avail. In almost every case where European or American ships became stranded on Taiwan, the Qing authorities denied any responsibility in the matter claiming the aborigines were uncivilized people on the "outer fringes of civilization."

When the Chinese sent a messenger to Taiwan in 1867 with a request to settle age old problems, Chief Tauketok, ruler of eighteen aboriginal tribes on the island, replied:  "Tell the Chinese chief that his people have so often broken faith with us that we cannot trust them further, and the quarrel must last as long as there shall be two men on each side to conduct it."

On March 12, 1867, the American vessel Rover became stranded on Taiwan and the crew was attacked and killed by local aborigines. In response, Charles W. LeGendre, American Consul to Amoy and Formosa, persuaded the Governor General in Fuzhou, China, to dispatch a military force to southern Taiwan. LeGendre and a small contingent of Chinese troops under the command of General Liu sailed aboard the ship Volunteer for Taiwan on September 4. Before leaving on this mission, LeGendre told his superiors, "I am going there as a mere spectator. ... I have no jurisdiction over the Chinese forces."

Despite his claim to being only a spectator, LeGendre soon assumed de facto command of the mission from General Liu. The long, difficult march deep into the aboriginal lands of southeastern Taiwan required extensive road construction. When the party finally reached the village of Chief Tauketok, LeGendre, with the aid of William A. Pickering and James Horn, negotiated a maritime disaster relief agreement directly with Aborigine Chief Tauketok . Tauketok insisted that no one be allowed to visit the tribal villages or their hunting-grounds. "We are curious and glad to see you," he observed, "but I am sure a free access to our settlement would only lead to fresh quarrels, when the old state of affairs would have again to prevail."

Despite LeGendre's agreement with Chief Tauketok, many people expressed grave doubts as to its effectiveness, not just with Tauketok's tribes, but with tribes beyond his rule. The British consul at Fuzhou remarked that any agreement with one tribe would not be binding on others. In addition, there was no reason to assume that future shipwreck victims would end up where the crew of the Rover had landed. Anyone falling into the hands of some other tribe would likely meet with the same fate.

Just four years after the Rover Incident, on September 6, 1871, a trade ship from Miyako Island in the Ryukyu Kingdom (modern Okinawa Prefecture), encountered a severe storm on its return trip and ran aground on the Hengchun Peninsula at the southernmost tip of Taiwan. Badly shaken, the sixty-six mariners stumbled ashore into the Mutan territory ruled by Paiwan aborigines. The natives, stunned by the intrusion, nevertheless sheltered the mariners and gave them food and water.

Alone and isolated in a strange land, the fearful shipwreck victims inexplicably fled in the darkness trying to escape. The sudden departure of the mariners scared the aborigines, who chased after them. Mutual culture shock and misunderstanding led to a violent clash near the villages of Kaoshihfo and Mutan, in which 54 of the mariners were beheaded. The twelve survivors of the battle were rescued by Chinese settlers and returned to Miyako several months later to tell of their harrowing ordeal. The "Mutan Village Incident," as it came to be known, attracted world-wide attention.

The Japanese had always beleived they held suzerainty over Okinawa and, additionally, had long harbored designs on the island of Taiwan. Kabayama Sukenori and Mizuno-Jyun, accompanied by Charles LeGendre, sailed to Taiwan on February 29, 1872, to investigate the massacre of Ryukyuan sailors. As it had before, the Qing government sought to escape international responsibility for the massacre by maintaining that their sovereignty did not extend to the aboriginal areas of eastern Taiwan. Although LeGendre failed to extend his earlier agreement with Chief Tauketok to cover shipwrecked Japanese sailors, he did establish that two separate authorities coexisted on Taiwan: Qing China in the west and Chief Tauketok in the east.

Undeterred, the Japanese tried again in September 1872 to force China to accept responsibility for the Mutan Village Incident and punish the Taiwan aborigines responsible for the attack. Once again, China refused, claiming it had already settled the matter directly with the Ryukyu kingdom earlier that spring.

Word of the Mutan Village Incident spread around the world. In America, the New York Times printed a story on October 24, 1872, which reported,

"A number of Japanese seamen shipwrecked in Taiwan were cannibalized by its aborigines. The King of Okinawa sent an emissary to Edo [present-day Tokyo] in an attempt to secure assistance regarding measures for retaliation."

The same day, Shanghai's North China Herald reprinted a story first published in a Japanese paper that stated,

"Recent reports from Satsuma Prefecture of a cannibalization incident in Taiwan has made high-level Japanese authorities extremely horrified. A number of junk boats claimed to be under the jurisdiction of the Ryukyu Islands ruled by the Duke of Satsuma drifted onto the coast of Taiwan. According to Japanese news sources, the seamen of these junk boats were cannibalized by the island inhabitants. ... In this connection, the Japanese authorities are additionally facing problems with regard to their territorial claims on the Ryukyu Archipelago and related questions. It is our impression, however, that Japan's claims to suzerainty over the archipelago are internationally recognized."

Europeans and Americans new very little, if anything, about the state of affairs on Taiwan, but diplomats came to understand that trying to assign responsibility for the attacks on Ryukyuan seamen brought into question not only the sovereignty of Taiwan, but that of the Ryukyu Archipelago as well.

Western powers led by Great Britain and the United States intervened. Former Ohio Congressman John A. Bingham, who took his post as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan in October 1873, took a rigid stance on the matter and prohibited any American citizen or ship from taking part in such action against Taiwan.

The British were mainly concerned with the economic impact of any conflict between the Qing and Japanese governments. They were in no mood to see the economic interests of British traders in East Asia damaged. Pushed by Great Britain and America, Western nations expressed grave concern about Japan's mobilization of military force against Taiwan in the name of national security and took the position that such an action would not be tolerated by the international community.

Charles LeGendre's international experience in dealing with foreign shipping accidents and his reputation regarding Taiwan were well known in Japan. When LeGendre stopped in Japan while en route to the United States from Amoy in late 1872, Japanese officials offered him a position with the Foreign Service. After considering the offer, LeGendre resigned his position as United States consul on December 12, 1872, and entered the service of the Meiji Emperor as a second-grade foreign service official with a salary of $12,000 per year. Charles LeGendre became the first foreigner employed in a Japanese government post.

In March 1873, Charles LeGendre participated in a diplomatic mission to Beijing headed by Japanese Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi, to negotiate with the Qing government for reparations. In view of the "dual-jurisdiction" between China and Taiwan at the time, LeGendre developed his "barbarian-land anarchy" theory and even wrote a book on the subject entitled, Is Aboriginal Formosa a Part of the Chinese Empire? He correctly anticipated that the Qing government would continue to evade international responsibility and encouraged the Japanese to use military force against the aborigines responsible.

The following spring, in March 1873, four Japanese seamen on a trading voyage from Oda Prefecture became shipwrecked in a storm near Mawuku on Taiwan's east coast. The surviving crew fared much better than earlier shipwrecks. The local aborigines only made off with their clothing.

Using China"s earlier failure to punish the aborigines as an excuse and claiming that "the Qing Empire is unable to deal with this sort of affair," Japanese leaders began making plans to send an expeditionary force to Taiwan to settle the matter under the pretext of trying to protect the Ryukyuans. Even if LeGendre's "barbarian-land anarchy" theory had merit and the Qing government had no basis on which to base its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, China had also never expressed any evidence that it had renounced its claim over Taiwan. If it faced an attack by Japan, the Qing government could cite its own national security as sufficient pretext for mounting a major military response. Such action would be deemed perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the international community, which at the time was highly critical of Japan. The situation both stunned and bewildered the Japanese diplomatic community.

After meeting with only partial success in negotiating with the Qing government, Charles LeGendre was selected to personally assist the Japanese expedition to Formosa, set for May 1874. Ironically, LeGendre never actually made it to Taiwan. He found himself briefly, if not unexpectedly imprisoned in Shanghai on orders of the United States Consul-General for deserting the service.

The Beijing mission proved to be more controversial than successful. Nevertheless, in July 1874, LeGendre was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Second Class, for his service and became the first among either foreigners or Japanese to be awarded the decoration after its institution by the Emperor of Japan.

In defiance of British and American pressure, all the while representing to the Qing court that China had done nothing about the slaughter of Ryukyu residents in the Mutan Village Incident, Japan took matters into its own hands. Count Okuma Shigenobu and a contingent of 3,600 soldiers commanded by Army Lt. Gen. Saigo Tsugumichi sailed from Nagasaki for Taiwan on May 17, 1874, arriving on the Hengchung Peninsula just five days later. After setting up camp for a long stay, they began the process of seeking reparations from the aborigines involved in the Mutan Village Incident. During one fierce battle, Japanese soldiers marching along a river toward a steep valley, encountered a group of aborigines. Six soldiers and sixteen aborigines died in the fighting. Another large-scale attack followed that ravaged several remote villages and left dozens of locals dead.

This small military incursion shook the Qing court in Beijing almost as much as the Opium Wars a generation earlier. Given Japan's expressed interest in Taiwan and the Qing court's protests to Tokyo, the Chinese fully understood the seriousness of the Taiwan problem. In response, the Qing court dispatched a 10,000-man counter force to Taiwan under the command of Shen Baozhen, Director-General of the Fuzhou Navy Yard and a capable and experienced administrator. Acting as an imperial envoy, Shen had full power to deal with the situation and make plans for the military defense of the island. It would seem that China accepted some measure of responsibility for Taiwan after all.

Shen Baozhen evaluated the situation on Taiwan and discovered that China's military defenses were concentrated entirely on the western side of the island's central mountain range. No one had any knowledge of the territory east of the mountains. There were no roads traversing the mountains to the east and what little knowledge existed about eastern Taiwan came only from the occasional ship that sailed there. As a result, Shen submitted a plan to the Qing court that led to the construction of the famous Patungkuan Trail connecting east and west Taiwan, intended to "open the mountain regions and pacify the barbarians."

Despite tensions in the area, Chinese and Japanese troops avoided any conflicts. By early fall, the Japanese managed to establish a friendlier relationship with the local natives. Aborigine officials were presented with Japanese ceremonial banners and seals for use in subsequent official communications. Wary of inciting Japan's anger further, the Qing government consented to settle the entire incident by agreeing to pay an indemnity for the 1871 killing of 54 Ryukyuans and take punitive action against the natives. Through the arbitration of Sir Thomas Wade, British ambassador to the Qing court, a mutually agreed upon settlement between China and Japan was signed on October 31, 1874 . The simple, three article document set an interesting precedent with far reaching repercussions.

In the agreement, China acknowledged that "the subjects of every Government are entitled to its protection against injury" and that, "Certain Japanese subjects [had] been wantonly murdered by the unreclaimed savages of Formosa ... ." China also agreed to pay compensation to the murdered victim's survivors, with the funds disbursed to the families by the Meiji government. The agreement also called for reparations to be paid by the Qing government in return for the withdrawal of Japanese troops.

This simple agreement was tantamount to saying that Japan's Taiwan expedition was justified to obtain satisfaction and justice for its "citizens." It essentially legitimatized Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands and weakened the Qing government's claim of traditional sovereignty over the islands, which had paid tribute to China for centuries. The vague wording of the agreement allowed the Japanese government to stretch its interpretation to leave the impression with foreign observers that China had officially recognized the Ryukyu Islands as belonging to Japan. Five after the Mutan Village Incident, the Japanese government inferred nobility on the Ryukyu king and incorporated the islands into the Japanese Empire. China finally acknowledged Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands in 1881.

The Mutan Village Incident gave Beijing the first hint that the Qing Empire had already lost its stature as the lead character on the international stage in East Asia. It proved to be a costly agreement for Qing China that not only changed the future of Taiwan, but triggered a historical change in Sino-Japanese relations and planted the seeds of future enmity between Japan and China.