This essay examines the sensational reporting by Western media over the Port Arthur incident, the counter-testimonies that challenged those reports, and the reality that the Meiji government, fearing damage to the ongoing treaty-revision negotiations, had already anticipated hostile international opinion from the very beginning of the war.
Through coverage by newspapers such as The New York World and The Times, counter-evidence from de Gerville and the Danetan report, and the concerns of figures such as Hirobumi Ito and Mutsu Munemitsu, it shows that Japan faced not only military conflict but also an international battle over information and opinion.

2019-03-20
They had, from the very beginning of the war, anticipated the need to deal with international opinion critical of Japan that would arise if Japan were to win overwhelmingly,

What follows is yet another article proving that journalism now exists on the Internet.
Reports in the Western media.
The first reports.
The foreign journalists who had witnessed the incident at Port Arthur had withdrawn to Japan in order to telegraph their articles.
They were reporters attached to the Second Army, and the four most deeply involved in reporting the incident were Thomas Cowen, correspondent for The Times, James Creelman of The New York World, A. B. de Guerville of The Herald, and Villiers of The Standard and Black and White.
After November 26, reports of the occupation of Port Arthur began to appear.
The Times published the testimony of officers who had landed at Port Arthur accompanying Vice Admiral Fremantle of the British Far Eastern Fleet, as well as articles by correspondent Cowen after his return from Port Arthur, and thus the incident became known overseas.
However, it was Creelman’s article in The New York World of December 12 that truly began to attract attention.
“The Japanese army entered Port Arthur on November 21 and cruelly massacred almost all of the inhabitants.
Defenseless and unarmed residents were killed in their own homes, and their bodies were mutilated beyond words,”
the article reported in sensational fashion.
He continued his reporting after the occupation of Port Arthur as well.
Other newspapers and magazines followed his sensational reporting, and the Japanese government was placed in a difficult position.
The most sensational report of all was Frederick Villiers’s article, “The Truth about Port Arthur,” in the March 1895 issue of The North American Review, which wrote that “after three days of massacre only 36 Chinese survived.”
Counter-testimony.
Testimony by de Guerville.
Amedee Baillot de Guerville, the New York Herald correspondent who witnessed the fall of Port Arthur, testified in Leslie’s Weekly of January 3, 1895, that no massacre of the kind reported by Creelman had taken place, and in his 1904 book Au Japon he further argued that the massacre had been a fabrication.
The Danetan Report.
In addition, in the report Albert Danetan, the Belgian minister, sent back to his home government, the incident was described as “greatly exaggerated by the reporter of The New York World,” and Viscount de Labry, the French military attaché, stated that those killed were Chinese soldiers who had taken off their uniforms, that women and children had not been killed, and that most of the inhabitants had evacuated several days before the occupation of Port Arthur harbor, so that only soldiers and workers at the arsenal had remained in the town.
The response of the Meiji government.
What troubled the Meiji leaders Hirobumi Ito and Mutsu Munemitsu was not so much the existence of the incident itself or the gap between report and reality, but rather the effect on the ongoing negotiations with the United States for revision of the unequal treaties, because if matters stumbled in America, treaty negotiations with other countries might be affected as well.
After the reports of the incident, the American and Russian ministers in Tokyo visited Mutsu and questioned him about the measures to be taken, and in the United States Senate a few voices began to arise against ratification of the newly signed Japan-U.S. treaty.
From the actual condition of Qing China beforehand, the Meiji government had regarded victory as certain, and from the very beginning of the war had anticipated the need to deal with international opinion critical of Japan that would arise if Japan were to win overwhelmingly, while Mutsu Munemitsu and the envoys of various countries were also reporting on articles appearing in foreign newspapers.