Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma

2017/12/12

Image: Stained glass at St. Andrew's Cathedral (King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma)

The Kanrin Maru, which had departed from San Francisco, sailed smoothly across calm seas, a stark contrast to its outward journey, and arrived at Honolulu Harbor in the Kingdom of Hawaii on May 23, 1860 (April 4, the first year of the Man'en era). On May 25, the day before their scheduled departure for Japan after finishing coal loading, Kimura Settsu-no-kami, the Warship Magistrate, was advised to pay a visit to the King at the Hawaiian Royal Palace. Since the captain, Katsu Rintaro, and other main officers were ashore on Oahu that day, Kimura went to the palace accompanied by four others, including the interpreter Nakahama Manjiro (John Mung) and his attendant Fukuzawa Yukichi. Thus, Fukuzawa, who was merely an attendant, had the opportunity to have an audience with a head of state.

The local Hawaiian newspaper, The Polynesian, covered the audience of the Japanese envoys in its May 26 article, recording Fukuzawa, who was present, as "Hookosoya Ukeokei." In his autobiography, "Fukuō Jiden," Fukuzawa recalled the scene as follows:

"I met the King as well, and while saying 'His Majesty the King' makes it sound grand, there was nothing surprising about it when I actually went there. The couple came out together; the King was simply wearing woolen clothes, and the house was what we would call a medium-sized Western-style building in Japan. They said they would show me their treasures, and I wondered what they might be, but they brought out a rug made of bird feathers and said it was their greatest treasure. I wondered if that man was the King's brother; that brother went out shopping carrying a basket, looking like nothing more than the head of a fishing village."

The royal couple who appeared before Fukuzawa at this time were King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma.

The Kingdom of Hawaii was born in 1810, half a century before the Kanrin Maru's port call, when Kamehameha (I), an Ali'i (noble) of the island of Hawaii, unified the Hawaiian Islands.

Kamehameha IV was born on February 9, 1834, as the grandson of Kamehameha, and was named Alexander Liholiho ʻIolani. Along with his older brother Lot, Alexander Liholiho became the hanai (adopted child) of his uncle, Kamehameha III, and was raised receiving education in both English and Hawaiian as a future king.

At the age of 15, Alexander Liholiho, along with Lot, accompanied Dr. Judd, an envoy of Kamehameha III, on an official visit to the United States and Europe. According to his diary, there were pleasant events such as riding a sled in Halifax, Canada, and experiencing fencing in Paris, but he also had experiences that would greatly influence his politics after his accession. One was deepening his friendship with Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria of England, and the other was an incident that occurred in Washington, D.C., on the return journey. While on a train, Alexander Liholiho was told by a conductor to move to another carriage because he was not suited for that one. The conductor's racist remarks and attitude were deeply etched in his mind, leading him to write, "I am disappointed in Americans."

Popular among Hawaiians for his intelligent and diplomatic personality, Alexander Liholiho was expected to be the successor to Kamehameha III from an early age, despite being Lot's younger brother. In December 1854, following the death of Kamehameha III, he ascended the throne and became Kamehameha IV. In the Kingdom of Hawaii at that time, while the Polynesian indigenous (Hawaiian) society was weakening, American missionaries were gaining actual power in politics and society. The King's first official act was to stop the negotiations for annexation with the United States that Kamehameha III had begun. Kamehameha IV did not want Hawaii to become part of America.

On June 19, 1856, Kamehameha IV married Emma Naea Rooke, who had attended the same school as a child, at Kawaiahaʻo Church. Her lineage included a grandfather, John Young, a British sailor who became a military advisor to Kamehameha, and her grandmother's father was Kamehameha's younger brother. Raised by a British physician foster father, Emma was pro-British like the King. Eventually, a son was born to them, and the prince was named Albert Edward, after Prince Albert of the UK. Hawaiians called the long-awaited child born to the House of Kamehameha "Ka Haku o Hawaiʻi" (The Prince of Hawaii). The family of Kamehameha IV represented a bright hope for the future of the Hawaiian people.

In a document titled "Report on Observations in America and Hawaii in the First Year of Man'en," which is believed to be a report submitted to the Nakatsu Domain after his return to Japan, Fukuzawa briefly describes Hawaiian customs. According to the report, both men and women went barefoot; men wore tight-sleeved clothes, and women wore what appeared to be muumuus based on Fukuzawa's drawings. Their staple food was "something like water yams" (taro) that was heated and mashed (poi). Fukuzawa also observed and recorded that the shops on the island were run by Europeans, Americans, and Chinese, with not a single Hawaiian-run shop, and that many Hawaiian children attended school carrying English books.

In his book "Guide to travel in the western world," published in 1867 (Keio 3) just after his third overseas voyage, Fukuzawa included "Sandwich" (the name James Cook gave the Hawaiian Islands after his superior when he "discovered" them) in the chapter "Stopover Points for Pacific Mail Steamships." Fukuzawa introduced the kingdom, saying, "There is a king on the island. His family name is Kamehameha. His residence is in the port called Honolulu. He maintains the status of a king and has already concluded treaties with Western countries." However, his description was harsh, much like in his autobiography, stating, "The customs of the islanders are very unsightly." Fukuzawa's descriptions, written while the excitement of his first direct contact with Western civilization in San Francisco had not yet cooled, should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

The USS Powhatan, which headed to America along with the Kanrin Maru, entered Honolulu on the outward journey to repair damage from a storm and to load coal. For the envoys aboard the Powhatan, this was their first encounter with a foreign land, and it was a series of surprises. Muragaki Awaji-no-kami, the vice-ambassador who had an audience with the royal couple, wrote of Emma in his diary that he "almost wondered if she were a living Amida Buddha." Furthermore, seeing the epaulettes on the King's shoulders and Emma's formal dress, Muragaki composed a poem: "The husband wears a sash / while the wife meets rare guests / with her shoulders bared."

The palace that Fukuzawa was invited to, which he described as a "medium-sized Western-style building by Japanese standards," was a ceremonial building called Hale Ali'i. The currently existing Iolani Palace was built about 20 years later. Incidentally, the name Iolani was taken from the name of Kamehameha IV. The bird feathers Fukuzawa saw were symbols of royalty in Hawaii. Objects made by binding the feathers of the now-extinct Hawaiian native bird called the "'O'o" to poles are called Kahili. Each royal family member had their own unique Kahili, and because making them required precious materials and an enormous amount of time and skill, they were treated with the same respect as the royalty themselves.

Kimura Settsu-no-kami described Kamehameha IV as follows: "The King's name is Kamehameha, aged about 34 or 35; though of native stock, he possesses a natural dignity worth seeing." In reality, the King was 26 and Emma was 24 at the time. While Fukuzawa wrote that he saw the "King's brother," the King did not have a younger brother; he may have been referring to his older brother, Lot.

What pained Kamehameha IV the most was the health of the Hawaiian people. Westerners had brought infectious diseases to Hawaii along with modern goods. Hawaiians, who had no immunity, became seriously ill even from minor ailments. The Hawaiian population, which Cook had estimated at 300,000, had plummeted to 73,000 by 1855. The King and Emma decided to build a hospital, but since they could not get a budget from the legislature, the two personally raised funds and finally managed to open the hospital. The cornerstone-laying ceremony for the hospital took place on July 15, shortly after Fukuzawa and the others had their audience.

In August 1862, tragedy struck the House of Kamehameha and the Hawaiian people. Prince Albert fell ill and passed away at the age of only four. After the prince's death, the royal couple took an even stronger interest in the Anglican Church. To build an Anglican church, which did not yet exist in Hawaii, they requested Queen Victoria of the UK to send a bishop and donated land for the church's construction. However, having lost hope for living due to deep despondency, Kamehameha IV passed away on November 30, 1863, without seeing the completion of the church.

The widowed Emma continued to devote herself to social activities after the King's death, working tirelessly to raise funds for the hospital and the church. The church was named St. Andrew's Cathedral because November 30 is St. Andrew's Day. In part of its beautiful stained glass, Kamehameha IV and his wife are depicted, with Prince Albert below them. The House of Kamehameha subsequently had no more children and ended with the generation of the King's older brother Lot (Kamehameha V). From the sixth monarch onward, kings were chosen by election. The election for the seventh Hawaiian monarch was contested between Kalakaua (who was also present during Fukuzawa's audience), an Ali'i from a different lineage than the Kamehamehas who advocated pro-American policies, and Emma, who felt a sense of crisis that America might eventually annex Hawaii by force. Although Emma received overwhelming support from the Hawaiian people, the vote in the legislature, where white Americans held the power, ended in a landslide victory for Kalakaua.

In his later years, Fukuzawa wrote in his autobiography, "Hawaii 30 years ago and now probably haven't changed much." However, just three months after he finished the manuscript, on August 12, 1898, exactly as Emma had feared, the flag of the United States was raised over Iolani Palace, and the Kingdom of Hawaii ceased to exist.

The hospital that Kamehameha IV and Emma worked so hard to build became The Queen's Medical Center, named after Emma. Today, it continues to support the health of the people living in Hawaii as the islands' premier general hospital.