Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 459, The Empty Throne, Part 2.

In 1858, when Townsend Harris was busily negotiating what became the Harris Treaty with Japanese

officials, he was also keeping a diary of his experiences.

The diary, naturally enough, has some fascinating observations of Harris's time, working

with some of the leading officials of the Tokugawa Shogunate, including one absolute gem.

Quote, they spoke almost contemptuously of the Mikado, and roared with laughter when I

quoted some remarks concerning the veneration

in which he is held by the Japanese. They say he has neither money, political power, nor anything

else that is valued in Japan. He is a mere cipher.

Though openly laughing at the Emperor's power was not something one normally did in public,

indeed it's a bit surprising shogunal officials did so in front of a foreigner,

regardless of how unseriously they took the emperor,

Harris's observation still fit the dominant narrative of the Mikado or emperor given to outsiders.

Officials of the shogunate spent a great deal of time reinforcing with the foreigners that the

Shogun was the real governor of Japan. The emperor, they said, was a spiritual figurehead at best.

And to be frank, that's a pretty fair position to take

in relation to many of the emperors of the Edo period.

But as we've already seen, under Emperor Komeh, things had already begun to shift.

His threats to abdicate over the matter of the Harris Treaty

represented the most direct intervention in politics by

the emperor in hundreds of years.

Homme himself quite possibly did not think of it in those terms. He seems to have been more

...