Every Day Is Special: May 11 - Sabers and Rickshaws

May 11 - Sabers and Rickshaws

Posted on May 11, 2019

Wow!

Any incident during which rickshaw drivers take a would-be assassin down, AND one prince is rescued by another prince, would seem to me to be pretty famous...

...and yet I have never before heard of the attempted assassination of Nicholas II back when he was still just a czar-in-training!

Nicholas Alexandrovich, who would later become Emperor (or Czar) Nicholas II of Russia, traveled in 1891 to the far eastern portion of Russia for ceremonies as the Trans-Siberian Railroad began construction. During the trip, he planned to make an official visit to Japan.

The Japanese government wanted to take advantage of this visit to make relations between the two nations better.

Nicholas showed himself to be interested in Japanese culture. He inspected the making of Japanese crafts, bought some artisans' handiwork, got a dragon tattoo, and even gave gifts to Japanese citizens.

But what happened on May 11, 1891, put a bit of a dent in the visit:

One of the Japanese policemen escorting Nicholas and his entourage suddenly drew his saber and slashed towards the prince's face, drawing blood.

The Japanese policeman quickly made a second slashing motion - but Prince George of Greece and Denmark (one of Nicholas's cousins) was even quicker and smacked aside the saber with his cane.

On the left is the hero of the story,
Prince George.

Tsuda Sanzō -
we have never known
why he attacked Nicholas.

At that point, the policeman, Tsuda Sanzō, fled the scene. Two of the rickshaw drivers for the entourage chased after Tsuda and were able to nab him.

This is a photo of Nicholas and George in rickshaws
before the incident. These may not be the particular
rickshaws nor the particular rickshaw drivers around
during the assassination attempt.

Of course, the Japanese government was horrified. They knew that the attempt on Nicholas might plunge their nation into a war they couldn't win. The Japanese emperor, prime minister, and princes apologized and fussed over Nicholas's recovery; the Home Minister and Foreign Ministers both accepted responsibility for the security breach and resigned; a judge sentenced Tsuda to life imprisonment (although he died of illness less than six months later). More than 10,000 telegrams deluged Nicholas with warm wishes that he recovery quickly.

The incident was so upsetting that some people did terrible things in misguided attempts to make things right. For example, a young Japanese woman committed suicide as a public apology on behalf of her country! Yikes! Also, not as dreadful, but really silly: one Japanese town passed a law making it illegal to have either the family name Tsuda or the given name Sanzō!

The Russian government officially expressed full satisfaction in Japan's response to the assassination attempt, but Nicholas was left with a 9-centimeter (3-and-a-half inches) scar on his head, and who knows how much emotional scarring?!

By the way, I found myself wondering why Nicholas's cousin had to save his life and rickshaw drivers had to tackle the would-be assassin when the Tsuda was described as "one of the escorting policemen." I mean, where were the other escorting policemen? Why weren't they saving Nicholas and arresting Tsuda?

But then I consulted several different accounts of the incident, and I realized that there are conflicting details in each, which makes me realize that we just don't know exactly how this dramatic event occurred!