In the first month of Bunkyū 3 (1863), the former domain lord of Tosa, Yamauchi Toyoshige, left Shinagawa Bay aboard the steamship Taihō-maru. At the time, the naval magistrate Katsu Rintarō had temporarily borrowed steamships from various domains for the shogunate and was using them for fleet maneuver drills. Toyoshige was accompanied by Kōnan Gorōemon, Inui Taisuke, Ogasawara Tadahachi, and others.
However, they met strong winds off the Enshū Sea, and the ship was pushed southward. The rocking was so severe that everyone aboard prepared themselves for sinking. Turning north again, they arrived on the 15th at Shimoda port, the very port they had set out from. Katsu, who happened to be there, made a request concerning men who had left the Tosa domain and were likely to be charged with crimes. His request was that he was sheltering 8 or 9 men, including Sakamoto Ryōma, under his own tutelage, and asked whether they might be pardoned or entrusted to him.
Toyoshige had a cup of sake poured for himself, then answered with a laugh that he would leave the matter to Katsu. As proof, he gave a fan painted with a sake gourd. Tokutomi Sohō writes that through this, Ryōma and the others were protected as Katsu’s disciples. The party left Shimoda on the 17th and landed at Osaka on the 21st. On the 23rd they went up the Yodo River, and on the 25th they entered Kyoto.
Toyoshige, 36 years old by the count of years, entered the capital riding a horse named Senzai. Tokutomi Sohō writes that onlookers, both young and old, praised him as a splendid commander. In Kyoto, the activities of the Tosa Loyalist Party were advancing, and Masaki Tetsuma and Hirose Kenta had received a written order from the Imperial court. Hirai Shūjirō, the deputy rusui who greeted them at Fushimi, put forward three proposals, including the restoration of the Imperial court. However, his remarks on the night of the 29th angered Toyoshige, and on February 1 he was relieved of his role handling relations with other domains.
Hirai was also forbidden from visiting the households of court nobles, and Tokutomi Sohō sees this as having discouraged his comrades. On the 21st of the first month, Ikeuchi Daigaku was killed, and on the night of the 29th, Kagawa Hajime, a retainer of the Chigusa family, was killed. On the morning of February 7, a severed head was placed at Kobashi Bridge on the Takasegawa, behind the domain residence to which Toyoshige had moved. A wooden placard was also set up, demanding that the deadline for expelling foreigners be decided quickly. In the margin of a letter to his close friend Matsudaira Yoshinaga, Toyoshige added that it was a useless killing, not even fit to serve as a relish for sake.
Matsudaira Katamori, the Kyoto Shugoshoku, proposed to Yoshinaga’s side a plan to use the radical rōnin who had gathered as an advance force against foreign ships. Yoshinaga avoided giving an immediate answer. On February 7, 12 court nobles went to the Imperial Palace to press for a deadline, and the answer given was that it would be carried out on the day the shogun returned to Edo. Even so, Kyoto did not settle down, and Tokutomi Sohō declares that controlling the shishi was impossible. Toyoshige left behind a poem, saying that he resolved in his heart not to raise needless waves on the Kamo River, and so passed his days.
The tenth day of the First Month of Bunkyū 3 (1863).Original
Off Shinagawa, a steamship lay at anchor.Original
The Taihō-maru.OriginalOriginal
At the time, there was a plan for the shogun to travel to Kyoto by sea.Original
Katsu Rintarō, the naval magistrate, had temporarily borrowed steamships from various domains for the shogunate in order to conduct fleet maneuvers.Original
Those accompanying him included Kōnan Gorōemon, Inui Taisuke, and Ogasawara Tadahachi.Original
They spent that night anchored off Shinagawa and cast off the following day, the eleventh.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibrarySouthward, ever southward, on the Enshū Sea
On the thirteenth, the weather was still unsettled.Original
But seeing Japanese-style ships raising their sails one after another and putting to sea, Toyoshige urged the captain, Hida Hamagorō, onward.Original
At last they set out.Original
Just as they tried to cross the Enshū Sea, they ran into a fierce northwesterly gale.OriginalOriginal
Midway they changed course, but the wind kept driving them south and south again.Original
The ship pitched so violently that everyone aboard is said to have braced for capsizing.Original
The next day, the fourteenth, they drifted amid a vast, boundless ocean.Original
Seeing the wind ease, they set a course due north and sailed on for roughly a hundred ri, yet not a single island came into view.Original
Turning northeast again for some tens of ri, land suddenly appeared, and on the fifteenth they finally made it back to the port of Shimoda.OriginalOriginal
Two days after setting out.Original
The port they reached was the very one they had left.Original
Shimoda, the sake gourd fan
At Shimoda, Katsu Rintarō happened to be in port, on his way back to Edo from Kamigata.Original
Katsu went ashore and called on Toyoshige, who was staying at Hōfukuji.Original
The exchange between them at this time survives in Katsu’s own writing.OriginalOriginal
Toyoshige received Katsu and asked about the recent state of affairs in Kyoto, and Katsu answered with what he had seen and heard.Original
He then made one request.
Among the retainers of Tosa domain, many had recently fled and were about to be charged with crimes for their extreme actions; “Sakamoto Ryōma and eight or nine others are at this moment hiding under my roof.”Original
They bore no ill intent.Original
He asked that they be pardoned with lenient treatment, or, if that could not be granted, that they be entrusted to him.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryToyoshige did not answer, but took up the sake gourd he was holding and spoke.Original
“Unless you drain a cup, I will not answer.”Original
Katsu forced himself to drain a cup.Original
Toyoshige clapped his hands and laughed loudly, saying, “Their fate I entrust entirely to you. See that they do not again go to such extremes.”Original
When Katsu replied, “A promise made in drink is hard to trust,” and asked for the sake gourd as proof, Toyoshige laughed all the more, drew out a fan, and wielding his brush, gave it to Katsu.OriginalOriginal
On the face of the fan was painted a sake gourd, and within it were written the words, “Drunk three hundred sixty times a year, the drunken lord of the whale sea.”Original
Three hundred sixty days a year, drunk.Original
Thus Sakamoto Ryōma and the other Tosa fugitives were sheltered as Katsu’s disciples and were able to preserve their lives, Tokutomi Sohō writes.OriginalOriginal
On horseback for a thousand years
On the seventeenth of the First Month, they set out from Shimoda once again.Original
Once more the winds and waves of the Enshū Sea ran high, and only on the eighteenth did they finally enter the port of Toba in Shima.Original
They set out on the twentieth and landed at Osaka on the twenty-first.Original
It was the eleventh day since leaving Edo.OriginalOriginal
Takechi Hanpeita and the other loyalist retainers of lower rank associated almost exclusively with the shishi of Chōshū.Original
On the other hand, those close to Toyoshige tended rather toward cooperation with Satsuma.Original
On the fourth day of the First Month, Inui and Ogasawara both called on Ōkubo Ichizō at the Satsuma domain residence in Takanawa, and on the ninth, Ōkubo in turn called at the Tosa domain residence.OriginalOriginal
On the twenty-third, they went up the Yodo River.Original
On the twenty-fourth, they stayed the night at Fushimi.Original
On the twenty-fifth, they entered the capital.OriginalOriginal
He wore hakama of maroon damask woven with a branch-and-oak-leaf pattern, a black-figured haori worn long at the hem, and at his waist a fine sword in a wax-finished scabbard.Original
That year he was thirty-six by count.Original
He stood five shaku six sun tall, his complexion fair, his face full-fleshed, with an unusual brilliance in his eyes.Original
Astride a fine horse named Senzai, he entered Daibutsu Chishakuin in splendid form on horseback.Original
Old and young alike who saw him praised him, saying, “What a magnificent lord!” and even the accompanying retainers are said to have felt a sense of pride.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet Library“Thus did Yamauchi Yōdō enter the capital in high spirits. One cannot know what he truly intended to accomplish.”OriginalOriginal
The decree and the reproof
In Kyoto at that time, the movement of the Tosa loyalist party was steadily advancing.Original
Hirai Shūjirō, serving as the domain’s junior rusui, was mediating between court nobles and the shishi of various domains.Original
Among the loyalist party were Masaki Tetsuma and Hirose Kenta.OriginalOriginal
Toyosuke, remaining in the domain, served as the backing for the conservative faction.Original
To reform the domain, Toyosuke had first to be moved.Original
Ordinary means would not move him.Original
So the explanation Sohō gives is that they sought the prince’s edict.Original
In their later confession, Mazaki and Hirose stated as follows.Original
It means that, since men of such low rank as themselves could not possibly convey the prince’s words orally, they had asked that, if he truly wished well for the Tosa domain, he grant them a written edict, and permission was given.OriginalOriginal
The Loyalist Party rejoiced so much that they pressed their hands to their foreheads, saying “our cause is accomplished.”OriginalOriginal
On the third day of the first month, the prince summoned Takechi Hanpeita and, with anger showing on his face, said that the various men of the cause doubted his true intentions, and that he had no choice but to retire from the world.Original
Takechi is said to have remonstrated with him through tears, and did not leave even after night fell.OriginalOriginal
文久三年正月三日、靑蓮院宮は、武市半平太を召し、予の心事を疑ふ者あり、長藩も不平を懷き、兵衞等を斥す-に議論あるやに聞く。此上は決然隱遁の外なしと、
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThen came Toyoshige’s entry into Kyoto.Original
On the twenty-fourth, when Toyoshige arrived at Fushimi, Hirai was the first to greet him, and set forth a three-point policy: to rectify the order of the court, to establish an imperial guard, and to demand new contributions from the shogunate and the daimyo.Original
On the night of the twenty-ninth, Hirai specifically requested an audience and laid out in detail his views on the situation of the times.Original
This suddenly provoked Toyoshige’s anger, and he received a reprimand.Original
On the first day of the second month, the anger still had not subsided, and Hirai was dismissed from his post handling relations with other domains.Original
Kusaka Genzui of Chōshū and Miyabe Teizō of Higo, who happened to be visiting, are said to have been greatly astonished to hear of this.OriginalOriginal
In his diary Hirai wrote that although he had taken upon himself the affairs of the realm, as soon as the old lord came from Edo he “suddenly met with abuse and scolding, and was forbidden to pass through the gates of the court nobles.”Original
His comrades were stunned and fell into despair.Original
Sohō observes that it was no wonder that the Tosa Loyalist Party, who had hoped to look up to Toyoshige as the foremost champion of expelling the barbarians, in their despair came to brand him with the name “the procrastinator.”OriginalOriginal
The Little Bridge on the Takasegawa
In Kyoto, heads were rolling.OriginalOriginal
On the twenty-first of the first month, Ikeuchi Daigaku, who had been denounced for betraying his comrades during the Ansei Purge and escaping with a light sentence, was assassinated on his way back from visiting Toyoshige’s residence at Nagahori in Osaka, and his head was exposed atop the Naniwa Bridge.Original
On the night of the twenty-ninth of the first month, Kagawa Hajime, a retainer of the Chigusa house, was killed, and at dawn on the first day of the second month his two hands were thrown at the Iwakura and Chigusa houses, and his head was thrown at the inn of the guardian officer Tokugawa Yoshinobu.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryWhen Toyoshige moved from Chion’in to the domain residence at Kawaramachi, not long after, on the morning of the seventh of the second month, a severed head wrapped in a cloth was abandoned on the little bridge over the Takasegawa behind the domain residence.Original
A wooden placard had been set up.Original
It read that this head belonged to Karahashi Sōsuke, who had infiltrated the Chigusa house as a traitor.Original
It said that if the old lord (Toyoshige) had come up to Kyoto to consider the safety of the realm, he should swiftly fix a deadline for expelling the barbarians and settle the direction in which the hearts of the people should turn, and that this head was offered before his gate as proof of that blood sacrifice.Original
Sohō writes, “This was indeed a measure meant as a slight against Yōdō.”OriginalOriginal
At the end of a letter he sent to his close friend Matsudaira Yoshinaga, who was then in Kyoto, Toyoshige added the following.Original
“This morning, at my gate, a single head was offered up. It is not fit even as an accompaniment to sake; what a pitiful, useless killing.”Original
This means: this morning a head had been offered before his gate; it was not even fit as an accompaniment to sake, a pitiful and useless killing.OriginalOriginal
The Vengeful Waves of the Kamo River
On the twenty-second of the first month he boarded a ship at the Tsukiji naval training school, and set out from off Shinagawa on the twenty-third aboard the Junto-maru, but owing to wind and rain he put in repeatedly at Uraga, Tago-no-ura, Ōshima in Kishū, and Yura, finally arriving at Osaka on the twenty-ninth.Original
Sohō writes that it seems Katsu Rintarō himself was aboard the Junto-maru as its captain.Original
On the first day of the second month, Katsu met with Yoshinaga and, in extremely vehement terms, urged him to make up his mind, saying, “the state of affairs in the realm today has already reached the extreme of danger.”OriginalOriginal
此の如く春嶽が乘船順動丸には、勝自身に艦長として乘組みたるものと思
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryYoshinaga had “leapt into the very midst of the great confusion of Kyoto.”Original
Matsudaira Katamori, the Kyoto Shugoshoku, was, even with the military strength of Aizu, unable to control the violence of the rōnin.OriginalOriginal
On the fifth of the second month, the day after his entry into Kyoto, Katamori visited Yoshinaga’s residence.Original
Yoshinaga had a fever from a cold, and Nakane Yukue, a senior official of Echizen, received him in his stead.Original
Katamori’s plan was to attach the extremist rōnin gathering in the city to the well-regarded Takeda Kōunsai, and to assign them as the vanguard for expelling the barbarians against the foreign ships that had come to Hyōgo harbor.Original
“As I myself hold the post of Shugoshoku, I wish to gather together these men of the cause, employ them as the vanguard for expelling the barbarians, and thereby let them fulfill their loyalist aspirations.”Original
This means: since he himself held the post of Shugoshoku, he wished to bring these men of the cause together, use them as the vanguard for expelling the barbarians, and let them achieve their loyalist aims.Original
Sohō regards this as having been a “desperate measure.”Original
Above, there were extremist court nobles; below, extremist rōnin.Original
It was likely a scheme born of being caught between the two.OriginalOriginal
Yoshinaga avoided giving an immediate answer.Original
This was because he thought that opening war with foreign countries merely to suppress violent men was no long-term plan for the state, and that the court’s deliberations must first be firmly settled.Original
In a letter dated the tenth, he stated that, “at this juncture when the great command to expel the barbarians has been issued,” if the men of the cause continued to harbor pent-up resentment, it would hinder the unity of the people’s hearts.Original
This means: at this time when the command to expel the barbarians had been issued, if the shishi remained resentful, the hearts of the people within the country would not become one.Original
But Sohō writes that as to what this “court deliberation” referred to, the wording “cannot escape being obscure.”OriginalOriginal
On the seventh of the second month, twelve court nobles suddenly appeared at court and pressed the regent to fix a deadline for expelling the barbarians.Original
The result of the deliberations was a reply that it would be carried out on the day the shogun returned to his castle in Edo, but the situation in Kyoto was not one to be settled by that alone.Original
The extremist faction had Sanjō Sanetomi at court and the Mōri house among the daimyo.Original
Sohō declares that unless these men could be restrained, controlling the shishi among the populace was “utterly impossible.”OriginalOriginal
Toyoshige had composed a waka poem.Original
“On the Kamo River, that needless vengeful waves might not rise—with this resolve in my heart, I pass the days and months.”Original
This poem means: resolved not to let needless rough waves rise on the Kamo River, he was spending his days with that determination.Original
Sohō calls this “truly a clear expression of his state of mind.”OriginalOriginal
He had ridden in atop a thousand years of praise, entering Kyoto hailed as a splendid commander.Original
Yet before his gate, a fortnight later, a head was placed.Original
Before the man who had resolved not to let waves rise, had the waves not already risen?
Beneath the lightness of the line he wrote—not even fit as an accompaniment to sake—what lay hidden?Original
Of that Sohō says nothing, leaving only the single phrase, “a pitiful, useless killing.”OriginalOriginal
| Source text | Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, vol. 49: Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians (1940). National Diet Library Digital Collections (PDM). PID 1228673 |
| Checked against | Ishin shiryō kōyō, vol. 4. PID 1046672 |
| Dates and names | All 6 dates in the text exist in the calendar for their year, and the Western years given alongside them agree. Of the 12 people named in the text, 11 also appear in Ishin shiryō kōyō, vol. 4. |
| English gates | 119 of 119 sentences passed the checks on the English text. |
This article is a reading of Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, vol. 49: Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians. 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.
