THE REVISION WAS the issue that dominated the foreign affairs of the New Japan for almost three decades. Yet it has been one of the neglected subjects in the field of Japanese diplomatic history. This is the more inexplicable because, at the one end of the spectrum, the Meiji restoration has been intensively studied in both its foreign and domestic aspects, while at the other, the story of Japan's wars with China and Russia is still being examined in detail. This article is an attempt to explore one small part of this field: the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation of 1894, which brought Japan within sight of achieving her goal of treaty revision and was an important landmark in her struggle for recognition as a world power.

The governments responsible for negotiating this treaty were the Itō ministry (1892-6) and, in Britain, the Liberal ministries of W. E. Gladstone (1892-4) and Lord Rosebery (1894-5). Count Itō Hirobumi, one of Japan's elder statesmen, presided over a ‘cabinet of all the talents’ and his foreign minister, Mutsu Klunemitsu, cautious, prudent and secretive, was responsible for taking this new initiative in amending the treaties. By contrast, the revision of Japan's treaties was a small issue for cabinets in Britain, which were preoccupied with problems nearer home. The constant factor was Lord Rosebery who, as foreign secretary under Gladstone and later as his successor as prime minister, bore the ultimate responsibility for conducting the negotiations. Lord Kimberley, who became foreign secretary for the critical half-year of negotiations in 1894, was over 70 and suffered from poor health.

The Liberal ministries were in real disarray over foreign affairs. The problem was that Sir William Harcourt, an influential member of the party, was opposed on most points to Rosebery and Kimberley. As leader of the House of Commons, Harcourt was inconveniently privy to diplomatic secrets and was inclined to be opinionated and meddlesome. Kimberley complained of his sending a letter on the affairs of China and Japan which ‘displays in its worst form his combined ignorance and arrogance’. For this among other reasons, Kimberley felt that the cabinet was bereft of a definite foreign policy on almost all the most important questions of the day.