Japan felt disrespected by the treaty of Portsmouth provisions, because "it did not get to keep all of the territory that it was promised"--mostly due to the fact that there was very little oversight of the treaty terms.
He was trying to claim he was no longer a slave because his master had taken him to states in which slavery was illegal.
I would say that these terms illustrate that directions and words like "middle" are relative. For the Europeans China was far east from their point of view, but for China it was in the middle of what was relevant for them. It also shows that each place considers its own place as the center of their world: every other place will be seen through its relation with it.
