Chinese students went to Japan to study, the humiliation of weak countries and the encounter of exclusion, international students also rose up to resist, so various incidents occurred from time to time.
The enrolment incident that occurred in 1902 at Seijo School was anti-feudal in nature. In July of that year, 9 students, including Niu Yan and Li Xian, who stayed in Japan at their own expense, hoped to enter Chengcheng School to study military affairs. This is an army non-commissioned officer school, and the school stipulates that entering the school requires a guarantee from the Legation of the Qing Dynasty, and if there is no guarantee, it is not allowed to enroll. To this end, the students approached Cai Jun, the Qing minister in Japan, and hoped that he would guarantee it. However, Cai Jun refused to stamp the admission documents of the nine students studying in Japan. His reason was simple: these students had revolutionary tendencies.
Cai Jun held this view because in April of that year, the revolutionary Zhang Taiyan went to Japan to hold a rally in Tokyo to promote the revolution. At that time, hundreds of Japanese students attended the rally. In this incident, Cai Jun has begged the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the police to intervene. However, Cai Jun, worried about the expansion of the revolutionary situation, secretly reported the matter to the imperial court, saying that the overseas students were plotting revolution and demanding that the dispatch of students studying in Japan be stopped.
Cai Jun's move, students studying in Japan believe, is the Qing government's plan to obstruct self-funded students from studying military. Therefore, the group broke into the legation and demanded that Cai Jun stamp it and guarantee his admission to Chengcheng School. The international students also said that if the minister did not agree to their petition, they would not leave the legation. The two sides held each other until late at night, and Cai Jun called for Japanese police to arrest students in Japan, thus complicating the incident.
Behind Cai Jun's ming court students studying in Japan plotting revolution and demanding that the dispatch of students stop sending students abroad is that there is a growing number of students, and most of them are inclined to revolution. The Qing court feared that a source of chaos would form and endanger the imperial court's political system.
Before 1900, there were only more than 160 Chinese students studying in Japan, and after Gengzi, the number of students studying in Japan increased significantly. By the time of the Nareshiro School enrollment incident in 1902, there were more than 600 students studying in Japan. Among these students who stay in Japan, there are both official fees and self-payments. At that time, the imperial court stipulated that international students studying in Japan must be consulted by the minister in Japan, and the affairs of studying abroad should also be managed by the envoy in Japan.
In 1901, after Li Shengduo, Cai Jun was appointed by the Qing court as a minister in Japan. According to Cai Jun's report to the imperial court, the situation of self-payment by international students at that time was already very prominent.
The promotion of the ideal of studying abroad to strengthen the country has promoted the movement of staying in Japan into a boom. However, after 1900, the booming revolutionary wave made the Qing court fear that the revolutionary forces would endanger its political system and program, and regarded the revolutionary party as a "source of chaos" and began to restrict international students. In 1900, it coincided with the revivalist Figure Tang Caichang's uprising of the Self-Reliant Army, which shook the government and the opposition. To this end, Zhang Zhidong wrote a special article to international students, asking students studying abroad to "observe their great righteousness, concentrate on learning, and not support them for the rewards of those who are confused by Kang Liang's heresy; those who are mistakenly lured to echo the voice rather than willing to follow the chaos are sternly admonished and enlightened; if there are those who are obsessed with paradoxes and cannot hope that they will repent, then the principals of The Ming Dynasty will try to get rid of them."
At the beginning of 1902, Cai Jun, the minister in Japan, also secretly reported to the imperial court that after the students arrived in Japan, they were seduced by Kang Liang and the revolutionary party, so they went astray, failed to succeed in their studies, and were completely lost. At the time when Cai Jun played the Ming court, it coincided with Zhang Taiyan, Ma Junwu, Feng Free and others initiating the establishment of the 242nd Anniversary of the Fall of China in Japan. After the establishment of this organization, the Japanese military department intervened and sent a telegram to the Qing government, saying that there are now unscrupulous people in your country who have set up a meeting in Tokyo and will lure students to study abroad in the name of the commemoration of the fall of the country, and the Japanese authorities have strictly investigated and dealt with it. There is a suspicious element in Chengcheng School, who has now been ordered to withdraw from school.
Letters from the Japanese military department increased the Qing government's suspicions about international students, and the imperial court regarded international students as a big person who was in disorder with the party. Therefore, the imperial court also reduced the number of dispatches for japanese students. At the same time, the imperial court authorities and Japanese public opinion believe that the official-sent students are relatively peaceful, and most of the self-funded students are the source of chaos. The Japanese government has also imposed stricter restrictions on those who study at Chengcheng School, which must hold a letter from the governor of the country, and strictly restricts self-funded international students from entering Chengcheng School. Thus contradictions inevitably occur.
According to the record of this incident by Li Zongtang, who was studying in Japan at that time, the author restores the details of this incident.
On July 13, 1902, Wu Zhihui was ordered by the Governor of Liangguang to lead more than 10 students to study in Japan, of which 9 students wanted to enter Chengcheng School to study the army. However, according to the regulations, these self-funded students who entered chengcheng school to study military affairs must be escorted by the minister of the Qing government in Japan before they could enter the school. At that time, Wu Rulun, the chief teacher of the Beijing Normal University, was inspecting the academic affairs in Japan, and Wu Zhihui asked Wu Rulun to intercede with Cai Jun, the Qing court's minister in Japan.
On July 18, Wu Rulun wrote to Wu Zhihui saying that regarding the matter of inviting 9 people to enter Chengcheng School, Minister Cai had promised to select 5 of them to enroll, and asked to apply for the list and a letter of guarantee. After Wu Zhihui received a reply from Wu Rulun, he told the people who hoped to study military affairs at Chengcheng School, so Zhang Zongxiang and more than 20 other students prepared 8 letters of guarantee, and also obtained his letter of guarantee from Wu Zhenlin, the second son-in-law of Yi Zexiu. The next day, Zhang Zongxiang and others handed these pledges to Wu Rulun and asked him to help them.
In the days that followed, Wu Zhihui repeatedly inquired about the handling of the guarantee. Although Wu Rulun was a great Confucian, this time he was inspecting Japanese education as the chief teacher of Kyoshi University. Although he enjoys a high reputation in the academic circles, he is not a real official in the political circles after all, so Cai Jun does not buy it. He refused to stamp the letter of guarantee on the grounds that the students studying in Japan intended to revolutionize and the situation was dangerous. Cai Jun's move, Wu Rulun is also helpless.
On the morning of July 28, Wu Zhihui and the self-funded students met with Wu Rulun, who said that the General Staff Headquarters did not agree, and Minister Cai did not agree to personally guarantee it, and he was powerless. In this way, Wu Zhihui and others immediately went to the Qing Embassy in Japan to ask for an explanation.
When Wu Zhihui and the others went to the legation, the Japanese police received the news and had already waited in a strict position. The students asked Minister Cai Jun to come out to meet him, but Cai Jun refused to receive him. On that day, the weather was hot, the students were hungry and thirsty, and they already knew the news that Cai Junmi had said that some of the students were inclined to revolution, and these factors made the students' anger reach the extreme. Therefore, the students made a heart, they must see Cai Jun, otherwise they will never leave. The two sides insisted until seven o'clock in the evening, and Cai Jun came out to meet him with an arrogant attitude.
At this time, in order to promote the letter of guarantee, Wu Zhihui and others suppressed their anger, and they fell on their knees in front of Cai Jun and stated to Cai Jun the reason for requesting to see him. Wu Zhihui stated at the end, asking, this is the minister's hand raised, why he categorically refused, this question, the students have asked. In this way, Cai Jun's face could not be hung up, as a minister, he felt that his status was high, was it something that these grassroots could casually question? The etiquette system at the time led him to believe that the students were committing a crime. He was furious and rebuked the students for being purely unreasonable and unruly.
Cai Jun's stern rebuke finally broke out into the students' strong anger, and a fierce quarrel broke out between the two sides. In the end, Cai Jun's words were exhausted and he whisked away. After Cai Jun left, the legation staff asked the Japanese police to disperse the students. Therefore, thirty or forty Japanese policemen armed with red and white lanterns swarmed up, shot at the head and grabbed Wu and Sun and took them to the police station for one night.
After Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were taken away, the Japanese police handled them very cautiously and originally planned to send them back to the apartment, but Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu regarded this matter as a great shame and humiliation, and refused to return to the apartment in such an inexplicable way.
On the 30th, Wu Zhihui joined more than 20 international students to the legation hoping to meet Cai Jun, but did not get a reply, and Cai Jun also avoided seeing him. However, after this incident, the Japanese police notified Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu on the morning of August 5, saying that they were obstructing social order and ordering them to leave Japan. In this notice from the Japanese police, Wu Zhihui expressed strong dissatisfaction. On August 6, Wu Zhihui carried a pre-written desperate letter, "when escorted by the Japanese police through the moat of the imperial palace, he threw himself into the water in anger, was rescued by the Japanese police, sent to Kobe, forced to take a French mail ship, and sent someone to accompany him back to China." The two threw themselves into the water in the hope of using their deaths to arouse the "freedom of civil rights" ideology of international students, promote the legitimate demands of international students to study the military, and resist the intervention of the Japanese government. Wu Zhihui and Sun Yi's desperate letter bluntly said that "they died in the Great Japanese Empire" out of the intention of advising the Japanese government not to hinder international students from studying abroad, pointing out that self-funded students hope to study the military and the fate of the country.
After Wu Zhihui and Sun Yi were rescued by the Japanese police, they decided to postpone their repatriation to China until the afternoon of the same day. The news that the two were about to be repatriated to China spread rapidly among the international students, and hundreds of students studying in Japan, including Qin Yujun and Xu Jiashu, gathered to send them off. At that time, Liang Qichao, who was exiled to Japan due to the reform of the reform law, also went from Yokohama to the dock to see off Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu. Before Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were arrested and sent back to China, Liang Qichao said in the "Xinmin Series" edited and published in Japan, "Wu Junzhi was also arrested, thinking that soldiers could not be disgraced, and wanted to awaken the dreams of the masses with one death and arouse the idea of national rights..." Appealing to the students studying in Japan, "The princes work hard, and the servants will never die." At that time, fourteen Japanese newspapers reported on the matter, and all but two of them remained neutral, and all of them supported the students, which had a great impact.
Knowing of Wu Zhihui and Sun Yi's death-seeking behavior, Cai Yuanpei, who was traveling in Japan, was worried that they still could not think of it and had another accident, so he specially changed his itinerary and accompanied them back to China.
What was the result of this incident? After Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were repatriated to China, international students Qin Yujun, Zhang Zhaotong, Niu Yu, Shen Hongyu and others wrote again on August 9 to request to see Cai Jun. Qin Yujun claimed that this request for a meeting was completely different from the original request for a meeting by Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu. Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were enrolled in Chengcheng School for international students, and this time Qin Yujun's request to meet was to fight for the right to return to China.
Qin Yujun believed that the fact that Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were escorted back to China really hurt the national body and demanded that the minister fight with the Japanese government on the basis of reason. At the same time, Cai Jun was still required to make a guarantee and send 9 students, including Niu Yu, to enter Chengcheng School to study military affairs. International students also gathered in the Qing Dynasty to discuss solutions to the problem. The assembly decided to strike for the time being in order to make things reasonable. If things still can't be resolved, the group will withdraw from school. The students of Hongwen College responded most fiercely to this decision. At that time, there were more than 100 Chinese students studying in Hongwen College, and they organized and connected more than 200 Chinese students from other schools to respond to the resolution, and if the matter could not be resolved satisfactorily, they all had the intention of withdrawing from school and leaving Japan.
Lu Xun, who had already studied in Japan at the time, said in his diary that after Wu Zhihui and Sun Yun left, "the International Students Association held a meeting on this matter and decided that all schools would stop classes pending negotiations." The self-funded students of Hongwen College also continued to apply for withdrawal for this matter, and the college decided to suspend classes for a week to ease up."
At that time, Hu Hanmin had just gone to Japan to study for more than a month. However, he resolutely led his classmates to the door of the legation to protest against Cai Jun's lack of concern for the students, and demanded that the Japanese education authorities meet the chinese students' desire to study at Chengcheng School, and if the matter could not be resolved satisfactorily, they would return to China after a collective strike.
Hu Hanmin was the leader of his Classmates in Guangdong, and when he launched the protest, there were more than 100 responders. However, the Japanese government has adopted a method of differentiation and coercion, which has made some students worried and afraid, so they have written a letter of repentance to the school to express remorse. Such a situation made Hu Hanmin even more angry, "so he proposed to withdraw from school alone and returned to China." More than a dozen people returned to China with Hu Hanmin.
Wu Rulun, who was inspecting education in Japan at the time, was also indignant about the repatriation of Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu. The international students entrusted him with coordinating the entry into the Chengcheng School, but the refusal of minister Cai Jun and the non-consent of the Japanese authorities had made him dissatisfied. Now that things have reached such a point, he went to the legation to find Cai Jun the day after Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu were detained by the Japanese police, hoping that the matter could be eased and resolved satisfactorily. On July 3, Wu Rulun heard the news that Wu Zhihui and Sun Yu had thrown the river again, and felt that it was urgent to solve this problem. At that time, he immediately wrote a letter to Cai Jun, asking Cai Jun to find a way to rescue Wu Zhihui and Sun Yun, and Wu Zhihui's letter advised Cai Jun to attach importance to the national system, saying, "This matter should be regarded as one student, and the humiliation of the wall and the star envoy should be the most important in fighting for the right to protect the students. ”
Wu Rulun's letter, Cai Jun still ignored. At the same time, Wu Rulun also approached the Japanese counsellor of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and asked the Ministry of Education to retain Wu Zhihui, but in the course of their activities, Wu Zhihui had been escorted to the way back to Shanghai. Therefore, for this matter, Wu Rulun has both regrets and feelings. Later, Wu Rulun repeatedly mentioned in his diary that Wu Zhihui was sent back to China, believing that it was a disgrace to the country.
After Wu Zhihui was sent back to China, Wu Rulun and Cai Jun broke off contact. He said in his diary that Cai Jun's dismissal of Wu Zhihui was something he could do, but he did not hear about it again, which was really a disgrace to the country. Nevertheless, Wu Rulun knew that the matter of international students enrolling in Chengcheng School would eventually be solved. After that, due to wu Rulun's active representations with Japanese official figures such as Guan Zhentian, chief executive of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and because of the active mediation of Viscount Gomi Nagaoka, a friendly Japanese person, an agreement was finally reached between China and Japan. The agreement proposes:
Anyone who intends to enter a school directly under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan must be guaranteed by one of the three schools of Tokyo Tongwen Academy, Hongbun Gakuin, and Tsinghua School, and then sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be admitted.
The guarantee system of one of the three schools provided for in the agreement solves the problem that students who stay in Japan have the opportunity to study in schools directly under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan without the guarantee of the Qing Minister.
The chengcheng enrollment incident was resolved through active efforts, and it should be said that the student side is the winner. This incident also shows the support of all sectors of society for the study abroad movement. Forced by the trend of the times at that time, Zai Zhen, the special envoy who was tasked with investigating and handling this incident, said in his report: "The matter of study tour is really a top priority of the moment, and it is difficult to stop choking on food and curbing one's vitality. ”
Soon after Zai Zhen returned to China, Cai Jun was recalled and succeeded by Yang Shu. Cao Rulin, a student who studied in Japan, recalled that after Yang Shu came to Japan, he changed the style of his predecessor, was more gentle with international students, and "got along with students more harmoniously." Since then, the scale of international students has continued to expand, increasing to more than 1,300 in 1903 and reaching 12,000 in 1906, forming a spectacular trend of staying in Japan in modern history.