Manabe Akikatsu’s Deception ―― The Document of the Kogosho and “Nothing But Lies,” Tenth Month, Ansei 5

The Imperial Decree on Opening Hyōgo

The lower chamber of the Kogosho.Original
Present together were the court liaisons to the shogunate, Hirohashi Mitsushige and Madenokōji Masafusa.Original
The matter was taken up at the fifth hour of the night, eight o’clock in the evening.OriginalOriginal

“As the opening of the port of Hyōgo concerns the vicinity of the imperial capital, it must by all means be withdrawn; an imperial decree to this effect has been repeatedly issued, and it must without fail be excluded.”Original
It continues further: “Even should this lead to the opening of hostilities, as the decree states, preparations shall be made to keep this port closed.”Original
It says that even if it should come to the opening of hostilities, preparations are in place to close Hyōgo as commanded.OriginalOriginal

Though a short passage, Tokutomi Sohō writes that it is “a document of considerable significance.”OriginalOriginal

“Entirely Manabe’s Fabrication”

Had the shogunate truly resolved to close Hyōgo even at the risk of war?Original
Tokutomi declares flatly, “There could have been no such resolve.”Original
Reading this passage, Tokutomi writes, it becomes clear that it is “entirely Manabe’s fabrication.”OriginalOriginal

The document goes a step further still.Original
Using the foreign affair as a pretext and watching for an opening, there is a “conspirator” who caused the signing to be carried out without the emperor’s consent.Original
Among the court nobles too there are those who “took part in this inner scheme.”Original
Once the wicked plot has been suppressed, “you must by all means give careful consideration so that Hyōgo may be set aside.”Original
Once the disordered plot has been put down, you are asked to give careful consideration so that matters may proceed without Hyōgo, it says.OriginalOriginal

In other words, Manabe is saying that the signing of the Japan-US treaty was not the responsibility of Ii or the shogunate’s senior officials, but the result of Tokugawa Nariaki and his faction driving the shogunate into a corner.Original
He says that the righteous faction in Kyoto too belongs to that same party.Original
This amounts not only to shifting responsibility for the signing onto others, but to turning the opposing faction into grave criminals while making himself a loyal and righteous retainer, and moreover using this as a weapon to sweep away his political enemies.Original
Tokutomi writes, “Even sophistry that calls the crow a heron and the heron a crow could go no further than this.”OriginalOriginal

At the time, a letter from a certain person in Kyoto states as follows.Original
It means: surely he has told nothing but lies.Original
Though this is a judgment from the Mito faction’s side, Tokutomi adds that on this point alone, “Manabe would have no excuse to offer.”OriginalOriginal

Kin Chūsuke and Takano Chōei

The “separate sheet” attached to the document is stranger still.Original
Around the Bunka and Bunsei eras, there was a man in Sendai named Kin Chūsuke.Original
Acting together with Takadaya Kinbei of Matsumae, he sent Sendai rice to Russia and profited from it, and later crossed to Kamchatka and became king of that land.Original
Around Tenpō 10, Takadaya’s dealings with foreigners came to light and were investigated at the Hyōjōsho.OriginalOriginal

Further, the Dutch-medicine physician Takano Chōei, a man of the same mind as this Chūsuke, told Tokugawa Nariaki that it was inhumane to drive off foreign ships with cannon fire.Original
Nariaki said this was “entirely reasonable” and persuaded Mizuno Echizen no kami, so that the order to drive off foreign ships was relaxed—so the separate sheet states.OriginalOriginal

Tokutomi dismisses this outright as “nothing but a piece of fiction. A fabrication.”Original
It is true that the order to drive off foreign ships was relaxed in Tenpō 13, but Nariaki had no part in it.Original
Tokutomi writes that documents of the time rather “eloquently tell” of Nariaki’s dissatisfaction with this.Original
One must say it is not merely groundless but “contrary to the facts,” he says.OriginalOriginal

The separate sheet also touches on Nariaki’s troubles in the Kōka era.Original
The account runs that Nariaki, reproached for destroying temples within his domain and confiscating their bronze bells, bore a grudge over this and plotted to install Hitotsubashi in the Nishinomaru.Original
Tokutomi says this too is “history manufactured at will.”Original
What goes furthest of all is the phrase, “as he had originally been in secret communication with the foreigners.”Original
It claims that Nariaki had from the start been secretly in league with foreigners.Original
Tokutomi writes, “Irresponsible rhetoric too reaches its utmost extreme here”—on what evidence could such a claim have been made to the court?OriginalOriginal

Even the senior councilors Hotta Masayoshi and Matsudaira Tadakata are made out to have been drawn into Nariaki’s faction.Original
But Nariaki was one of those who disliked Hotta’s appointment, and Matsudaira Tadakata was “one of the greatest taboos.”Original
It even writes that there were doubts about the death of the former shogun Tokugawa Iesada, and that the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi had faced two or three crises even while he was in Kishū.Original
Tokutomi is indignant that such claims—that Nariaki had poisoned the former shogun, or had repeatedly tried to poison Iemochi—”could ever have been submitted to the court as so baseless a theory.”OriginalOriginal

Ii Naosuke’s Signing and His Resolve

Manabe issued yet another attached letter.Original
This part alone, Tokutomi admits, is true.Original
It is not that war actually broke out that is true, but that Harris claimed it would, that is true.OriginalOriginal

The attached letter continues as follows.Original
Ii Naosuke insisted that even if tens of thousands of warships were to descend upon them, he could not sign without first reporting to Kyoto.Original
It claims that on the nineteenth Ii was ill and unable to attend the castle, and that the signing was carried out in that interval.OriginalOriginal

“This is entirely groundless,” Tokutomi writes.Original
It is true that Ii was reluctant to sign without waiting for imperial sanction.Original
But he resolved, “one cannot choose one’s belly over one’s back,” and gave his consent.Original
He attended the castle at his usual hour and left at four in the afternoon.Original
Absence due to illness is out of the question.OriginalOriginal

“I am resolved to bear alone the grave crime of not waiting for imperial sanction; say no more of it.”Original
It was a resolve to bear alone the grave crime of not awaiting imperial sanction, and to let the matter rest there.Original
Utsugi Rokunojō recorded what he heard from Ii that very day and night.Original
Why did Manabe not report such a perfectly obvious fact? Tokutomi Sohō asks whether this was not “exceedingly contemptible.”OriginalOriginal

Japanese townsmen are skilled traders

In his separate written reply, Manabe defended the opening of the port as follows.Original
The Westerners had come “for the sake of trading profit.”Original
In the time of Tōshōgū, various foreign peoples had requested trade, but England had refused because there was no profit in it.OriginalOriginal

If they were refused now, they would become angry and it would lead to war.Original
If war came, “ill-intentioned schemers would long have been waiting to exploit the opening, and rebellion would arise within Japan,” so even the imperial palace would not be secure.Original
At present the military preparations were incomplete and defeat certain, but victory would eventually be certain—such was the logic.OriginalOriginal

When Madenokōji Masafusa asked the same question, Manabe gave the same answer, adding at the end, “This is a matter of my having no wisdom, and I am ashamed.”Original
He himself said that he was ashamed for lacking wisdom.OriginalOriginal

Here Sohō also quotes a passage from the *Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, vol. 41: The Ansei Purge, part 2*.Original
It was later attacked as a case of the shogunate having already settled on a policy of opening the country while feigning to the court that it favored expelling the barbarians, but Ii had no such deep scheming; he was in his heart truly committed to the policy of national seclusion.OriginalOriginal

“A scheme to place it all upon Mito”

The emperor did not meet with Manabe that day.Original
The regent and the court liaisons to the shogunate held a long conversation from around the hour of the sheep, about two in the afternoon, until the hour when lamps were lit, after which the regent reported the content of the written document and the spoken explanation.Original
Having seen this, the emperor’s words were as follows.OriginalOriginal

“I believe this to be a scheme to place it all upon Mito.”Original
That is, he thought it was a plot to shift all the blame onto Mito.Original
Tokutomi Sohō calls this single phrase “truly an imperial remark that strikes at the heart of the matter.”Original
It is an observation that, though spoken in a strangely gentle tone, was by no means mild in substance.Original
“One can see as if before one’s eyes the crafty countenance of Manabe Akikatsu,” Sohō writes.OriginalOriginal

That evening, the emperor privately showed the document to Tokudaiji Kinito, Nakayama Tadayasu, Sanjō Sanetsumu, and Bōjō Toshikatsu.Original
This was kept secret from the regent.Original
It was said that the regent seemed to genuinely believe the matter concerning Mito.Original
Here, Sohō writes, the three circumstances become clear: that Manabe had given false testimony, that Kujō had believed it blindly, and that the sovereign had come to harbor doubt.OriginalOriginal

Because the shodaibu Kobayashi Yoshisuke had been summoned by the city magistrate and placed in confinement, Takatsukasa had offered to resign his office and take the tonsure.Original
For the moment he was persuaded to reconsider, but who could have foreseen that this single incident would later flare up again and lead to an attempt to “wipe out the righteous faction all at once,” Sohō asks.OriginalOriginal

“A time will come to draw it back”

Manabe is also said to have told the regent, “I am striving so that it may be drawn back to the level of the Shimoda treaty.”Original
That is, he claimed he was working hard to pull matters back to the standard of the Shimoda treaty.Original
The emperor listened with the reservation that “I do not know whether this is merely my own usual partiality,” that is, whether it might just be his habitual bias in Manabe’s favor.Original
On the one hand Manabe had urgently pressed for the signing like fire and had completed the signing without waiting for imperial sanction, yet now spoke of drawing it back to the Shimoda treaty—this, Sohō writes, is “an all too inconsistent story.”OriginalOriginal

What Sohō regards as most significant is a single phrase within the document.Original
“As there will eventually be an occasion to draw it back.”Original
This is the wording meaning that there would, in time, come an occasion to pull things back.Original
This amounted to the shogunate promising the court that its true aim was national seclusion, that the opening of the port was merely a temporary expedient, and that once military preparations were complete, it would be drawn back to the Shimoda treaty.Original
Seclusion and the expulsion of barbarians thus became “purely a matter of time,” and the shogunate had given the court a guarantee looking toward the future, Sohō says.OriginalOriginal

Had Manabe plainly stated opening the country as the great policy, even if the court could not accept it at the time, no later harm would have remained.Original
But because, wishing only for immediate peace, he explained it as if it were a temporary expedient, it ended up as “a situation in which an intractable problem would one day have to be shouldered.”Original
Manabe, Sohō writes, was, if not the only one, “one of the principal men responsible.”OriginalOriginal

Within that very same document, he had written in, with his own hand, the single phrase that would bind him like a rope.Original
The day on which a person in Kyoto wrote “nothing but lies”—was that day, for the shogunate, a day of victory, or the beginning of defeat?Original
The single phrase written on that day—whose neck it eventually tightened around—it reads as though Sohō’s pen is gazing fixedly upon that very point.OriginalOriginal

This article is a reading of Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, vol. 41: The Ansei Purge, part 2. Tokutomi Sohō’s views are those of the 1920s and 1930s and may differ from current scholarship. The source text is a century old and may differ from current scholarship.