Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/73

 enable her to insist upon the radically curative treatment of Korea's malady.

Up to this point the two empires were strictly within their conventional rights. Each was entitled by treaty to send troops to the peninsula, provided that notice was given to the other. But China, in giving notice, described Korea as her "tributary State," thus thrusting into the forefront of the discussion a contention which Japan, from conciliatory motives, would have kept out of sight. Once formally advanced, however, the claim had to be challenged. In the treaty of amity and commerce concluded many years previously between Japan and Korea, the two high contracting parties were explicitly declared to possess the same national status. Japan could not agree that a Power which for two decades she had acknowledged and treated as her equal, should be openly classed as a tributary of the Middle Kingdom. She protested, but the Chinese statesmen took no notice of her protest. They continued to apply the disputed appellation to Korea, and they further asserted their assumption of sovereignty in the peninsula by seeking to set limits to the number of troops sent by Japan, as well as to the sphere of their employment. Japan then proposed that the two empires should unite their efforts for the suppression of the disturbances in Korea and for the subsequent improvement of that kingdom's administration, the latter purpose to be pursued by