Ninagawa Arata believes that Katsu’s faction, reluctant to sacrifice former shogun Yoshinobu, chose surrender. On the 16th day of the 7th month of Keiō 4 (1868), the new government office issued an order to confiscate the residences of former bannermen and those below them in Edo. This came a little over 3 months after the surrender of Edo Castle.
The order explained that this was because the government of the Imperial Court had been renewed and a military office was to be placed in Edo. Those subject to it ranged from Tokugawa retainers, physicians, ladies-in-waiting, and merchants under contract, to ordinary townspeople. Only that one year’s land rent was to be paid as before. It also stated that those who newly became retainers of the Imperial Court would be granted land anew. Ninagawa looks coldly on the single sheet of paper that called this one year’s allowance a very generous treatment.
Ninagawa records that after the handover, the bannermen’s residences were disposed of with a single notice saying they were needed for official use and must be surrendered. A bannerman of high rank had a main residence of about 2000 tsubo and a secondary residence of about 5000 tsubo. There were as many as 50 or 60 rooms, retainers’ tenement rows surrounded the grounds, and the storehouses held treasures accumulated over 300 years. The residence of a certain Sagami no kami in Kanda Ogawamachi had a plot of 1700 tsubo, a built area of about 700 tsubo, 60 rooms, and 15 horses. Bannermen were warriors directly under the shogunate, a status distinguished from daimyo by the boundary of 10,000 koku.
Ninagawa explains that they bore the burden of government for 300 years as magistrates and inspectors. They were of the same rank, repeatedly forming marriage ties with daimyo. After the Restoration, bannermen lost their stipends, were driven from their residences, and by the early Meiji era had their means of livelihood cut off. Ninagawa writes that their sons and daughters became geisha and teahouse women, and that many took their own lives or disappeared without a trace. Ninagawa compared this to the methods of the Russian Revolution, and asked why the daimyo’s residences were not confiscated as well.
It is said that those who left their residences sold their household belongings, moved to Suruga, Tōtōmi, and Mikawa, and lived meagerly without working. Ninagawa reports that the victors who moved into the vacated residences became instant lords and looked down on the people of Edo. Even before the order, the atmosphere in Edo had already been tense. Ninagawa’s father was shot at during dinner at the secondary residence in Koishikawa, but the bullet struck a crossbeam of the room and he was unharmed. It was Mikawaya Kōzaburō, keeper of a laborers’ lodging house in Kanda Hatagochō, who buried the dead of the Shōgitai left abandoned at Ueno.
Ninagawa enumerates that in the 10 years of the late shogunate, commissioners of foreign affairs, the navy, shipyards, and schools were all put in place. He declared that the Meiji government had merely inherited these. Ninagawa admits that it is no wonder the descendants of bannermen are still looked down upon today. Yet he directed the blame toward those who had led the losing side and toward the arrogance of the victors. A household that had once had 60 rooms and 15 horses became a family living without work in Suruga. The map of that residence still remains in that family today.
From the confiscation of the residences to the collapse of the bannermen’s way of life can be traced by combining Ninagawa Arata’s account with Hirayama Narinobu’s Recollections of the Meiji Restoration War, Banrikaku’s Boshin Monogatari, and Yamakawa Kenjirō’s preface.
The Sixteenth Day of the Seventh Month of Keiō 4, Edo
The sixteenth day of the seventh month of Keiō 4 (1868).Original
It had been a little over three months since Edo Castle was handed over.Original
The new government issued an order to confiscate the residences of the former bannermen and those below them in Edo.Original
Ninagawa Arata presents the text of that order just as it was, in this chapter.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThe text begins as follows.
“As the government of the court has been renewed, and a garrison headquarters is to be placed in Edo, this concerns the retainers of the Tokugawa house, as well as physicians, women of the inner chambers, and further the merchants who serve the government and the ordinary townspeople.”Original
This means, roughly, that because the court’s government had been renewed and a garrison headquarters was to be placed in Edo, it concerned the Tokugawa retainers, physicians, women of the inner chambers, merchants who served the government, and even ordinary townspeople.Original
It continues that, for land in Edo held according to status or lineage, “this time the land is ordered to be surrendered.”Original
This is to be read as an order that the land now be confiscated.OriginalOriginal
However, since those who had lived there for many years would suddenly be in difficulty, it states, “the land rent for this year of the Dragon shall be paid as before.”Original
And the land held by those who had been newly taken into service as retainers of the court would be granted again.Original
Ninagawa looks coldly upon this single document, which called one year’s worth of land rent “an especially generous measure.”OriginalOriginal
According to Ninagawa, after the handover of Edo Castle, all the bannerman residences were dealt with by a single document stating, “ordered to surrender the land for official use.”Original
It was an order stating that the land should be handed over because it was needed for official business.OriginalOriginal
Kanda Ogawamachi, One Thousand Seven Hundred Tsubo
What sort of thing were the confiscated residences?Original
Ninagawa records their size in numbers.OriginalOriginal
For bannermen of the highest rank, the upper residence was about two thousand tsubo, and the lower residence about five thousand tsubo.Original
Some residences had as many as fifty or sixty rooms, surrounded by the row houses of their retainers.Original
Ninagawa says that the residence of Kira Kōzuke no suke, known from the stage, took this very form.Original
The largest houses had as many as five or six storehouses, in which were kept “rare treasures preserved for three hundred years.”OriginalOriginal
As one example, Ninagawa cites the house of a certain Sagami no kami.Original
His upper residence was in Kanda Ogawamachi, with a land area of one thousand seven hundred tsubo and a building area of about seven hundred tsubo.Original
It had sixty rooms, and fifteen horses were kept there.Original
Ninagawa notes that the map of that residence is still preserved by the family today.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThen what sort of men were the bannermen?Original
The bannermen were warriors directly under the shogunate, that is, holders of the rank called direct retainers, and were “landholders” on a par with the daimyo.Original
The boundary between the two was ten thousand koku; those above were called daimyo, and those below were simply called bannermen.Original
Bannermen could not become senior councilors or junior councilors, but under the titles of “magistrate” and “inspector” they governed the affairs of the state for three hundred years.OriginalOriginal
Daimyo and bannermen were of equal standing, and marriages took place between them.Original
Ninagawa notes that there were many cases in which even quite large daimyo houses took in an adopted son from a bannerman family.Original
The Kitsuregawa house, descendants of the Ashikaga, held only five thousand koku, but generation after generation received the junior fourth rank from the court.Original
This was higher than daimyo of the junior fifth rank.Original
Daimyo of about ten thousand to thirty thousand koku had no castle of their own, only a residence hall, and in this respect were no different from great bannermen.Original
Ninagawa writes that even though their stipends were smaller, the bannermen lived more comfortably, and it was only natural that houses with three thousand koku or more were wealthier than daimyo.OriginalOriginal
What became of these warriors of equal standing after the Restoration?Original
Their stipends were taken away, they were driven from their residences, and they fell into a poverty that domain retainers in the provinces could not even imagine.Original
In the early years of Meiji, having lost their means of livelihood, their sons and daughters became geisha or teahouse women, and countless numbers, driven to the depths of poverty, took their own lives or vanished without a trace.Original
Ninagawa calls this “what is today called unemployment.”OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa likens this confiscation to “the same kind of method” by which the Russian Revolution of 1917 seized the land and property of the bourgeoisie.Original
And he asks a question.
Why were not all the daimyo residences confiscated as well, to preserve fairness?Original
Can this be called a proper social policy?OriginalOriginal
Those Who Argued for Surrender
Why did the bannermen become “cowards”?Original
To this question, Ninagawa answers that it has “deep significance for public morals and human hearts” to seek out the reason rather than simply to revile the bannermen.OriginalOriginal
Among the bannermen there were men whose talent and courage were not inferior to those who opposed the shogunate.Original
There were, besides them, many other outstanding men.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryAnd yet “their fellows, numbering in the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, were entirely sacrificed and given no thought.”Original
Ninagawa’s view is that, had it not been for the strange phenomenon of “the victory of those who argued for surrender,” the faction led by Katsu who, out of concern for Tokugawa Yoshinobu’s own safety, communicated secretly with the enemy, the bannermen would not have fallen into such sorrow.Original
“When the source is muddied, the downstream waters are foul.”Original
Whether or not a party finds the right man to stand at its head, Ninagawa says, determines its rise or fall.OriginalOriginal
All of the Toyotomi clan died, and thereby the history of the warrior houses gained its luster.Original
Edo Castle surrendered in vain, and tens of thousands of warriors “merely lived on forever, exposed to shame.”Original
“How pitiful,” Ninagawa concludes.OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa relates that the bannermen, thinking it “against loyalty and honor” to remain in Edo under the rule of Satsuma and Chōshū, sold all their household possessions and moved to the region of Suruga, Tōtōmi, and Mikawa, where they barely managed to live, doing no work.Original
The victors who occupied the vacated residences became “instant lords, risen like the newly rich,” dreaming of glory while mocking the people of Edo.Original
This was “a great transformation of Edo society.”OriginalOriginal
A Scrap of Brocade
Even before the order for confiscation was issued, the air in Edo had already turned murderous.Original
Ninagawa conveys that atmosphere through a story about his own family.OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa’s father had served the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi, and at the start of Keiō 3 (1867) he gave up the main residence in Ogawamachi and moved to the lower residence in Koishikawa, which was then a remote countryside area.Original
One evening, while eating dinner upstairs, he was shot at from the shade of the trees in the former shogunate’s medicinal herb garden adjoining the property.Original
The bullet struck the lintel of the room, but the father was fortunately unharmed.Original
Ninagawa even records the exact location: that two-story house stood where the students’ assembly ground now is, within what is today the Tokyo Imperial University Botanical Garden.OriginalOriginal
On the night of the Shōgitai battle, three stragglers hid in the hills of the lower residence.Original
The family braced itself, thinking, “Surely tonight the imperial army will attack and put the whole family to the sword.”Original
The stragglers left in the middle of the night, and nothing happened.OriginalOriginal
The soldiers of the imperial army wore small scraps of brocade on their shoulders.Original
Those wearing this brocade were “extremely arrogant and rude,” and it was said that if one so much as touched them, one would be cut down on the spot.Original
Ninagawa says this too was something he was constantly told as a child by old men of that time.Original
If a corpse lay in front of a residence, its burial was ordered upon the master of that residence.Original
Ninagawa writes that he heard this from Kawachi Zensetsu, a practitioner of Chinese medicine from the shogunate era, and that it was a case of being “granted leave to cut down and go free.”OriginalOriginal
The same thing appears in Baron Hirayama Narinobu’s “Recollections of the Meiji Restoration War.”Original
The memoir records that the father of Kawashima, a schoolmate at Shōheikō, went out of curiosity to watch the fighting at Hirokōji, was cut down by one of the imperial soldiers, fled back as far as the gate of his own house, and collapsed there dead.Original
Ninagawa cites this as an example of an innocent person of Edo being cut down “for no reason.”OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa also draws several passages from “Boshin Monogatari,” published by Banrikaku.Original
There is the story that the imperial army gouged flesh from the inner thighs of the Shōgitai dead, and that the people of Edo whispered that “they must be planning to make it into meat stew and eat it.”Original
There is the story of the Kisshōkaku in Kuromonchō, whose owners felt safe because it bore an imperial plaque and so would not be bombarded, only to see it catch fire, with blue flames rising from its copper roof.OriginalOriginal
It was Mikawaya Kōzaburō, a man of standing among the laborers’ lodging houses of Kanda Hatagochō, who could not bear to see the corpses of the Shōgitai piling up and rotting on the hill of Ueno, and so buried them.Original
He consulted with the head priest of Entsūji in Miwa, and together they took in the bodies of the soldiers and buried every one of them.Original
Ninagawa writes that the imperial army simply killed people and left it at that, and that it appears neither their commander Saigō Takamori nor Chōshū’s Ōmura Masujirō paid any attention at all to the “humane task” of burial.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThe achievements of the late shogunate and Edo’s power of governance
From memories of bloodshed, Ninagawa’s pen turns toward achievements that have been erased.OriginalOriginal
In the ten years of the late shogunate, Ninagawa says, the shogunate “was never in the least negligent” in absorbing foreign culture.Original
Commissioners of foreign affairs were appointed, and men of talent from among the bannermen took up the task.Original
Under the training of French officers, the three arms of infantry, cavalry, and artillery were established, and Ninagawa has heard from old men that soldiers were recruited not only from the samurai but from ordinary people as well, with many tattooed townsmen among them.Original
A navy was also created, and shipyards and ironworks were built.OriginalOriginal
According to Ikeuchi Daigaku, Shōheikō, Kaiseijo, and Igakusho were the forerunners of today’s Imperial University.Original
The medicinal herb garden is today’s Koishikawa Botanical Garden.Original
The money exchangers were the forerunners of today’s banks, and paper currency, coinage, and foreign exchange had already been studied.Original
Hokkaido and the Ogasawara Islands were also developed.OriginalOriginal
Diplomacy, military affairs, finance, economy, education, and colonization were all begun in the last ten years of the shogunate through the efforts of magistrates and inspectors, and merely handed on to the Meiji government.Original
“There is absolutely no truth to the idea that these governmental matters suddenly made great progress because of Meiji and Keiō,” Ninagawa declares.Original
He also notes that it was not until Meiji 5 that Iwakura, Kido, Ōkubo, Itō, and others traveled abroad and came to understand Western culture, and that from Meiji 1 through Meiji 10 domestic uprisings of discontent followed one after another.OriginalOriginal
It was Ōta Sukemochi who founded Edo, and Tokugawa Ieyasu who opened it up as a great city.Original
Saigō Takamori was not the founder of Edo, and Ōmura Masujirō was not its builder.Original
Yet Tokyo is filled with nothing but bronze statues of men from Satsuma and Chōshū.OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa quotes four passages from the writings of Doctor of Letters Takayama Rinjirō.Original
One argument holds that although Saigō was a meritorious figure of the Restoration, “in his final act he was a traitor to the nation,” and that erecting his statue in the foremost park of the imperial capital is “a disgrace.”Original
Another asks whether, among the people of Edo so enthusiastic about the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the capital, even one had welcomed the entry into the capital of the former shogun Yoshinobu.Original
Another laments: while a man of Kōshū takes off his hat to speak of Shingen, and a foot soldier of Sendai raises his hand to his brow to speak of Lord Teizan, why are the people of Edo so cold toward the “Gongen”?Original
Ninagawa lines these up as support for his own argument.OriginalOriginal
At the time of the great Ansei earthquake, warning reached every one of the eight hundred and eight blocks of the city at once, no disorder broke out, and people immediately worked to prevent fires.Original
This, Ninagawa says, was the ability of the city magistrates, and it was “far more orderly” than the great earthquake of Taishō.Original
What he mourned may not have been the residences themselves, but the very power of governance that vanished together with them.Original
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThat a warrior house should possess weapons
In the middle of this chapter Ninagawa places a preface by Baron Yamakawa Kenjirō.Original
That piece, dated August of Shōwa 3, contains the following passage.OriginalOriginal
Oguri was dragged out to the riverbank without a single interrogation, made to sit on rough matting, and put to death by hanging.Original
They held it as a crime that the encampment held many weapons, but “for a warrior house to possess weapons is just like a merchant house possessing goods; how can this be treated as a crime?”Original
For a warrior house to have weapons is the same as a merchant house having goods, Yamakawa wrote, and this cannot be made a crime.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryMight the same logic not apply to residences as well?
For a warrior house to have a residence should have been the same as a merchant house having a shop.Original
That was wiped away by a single note reading “on official business.”OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa admits that it is “no wonder” that the descendants of bannermen are still looked down upon today.Original
He also writes, “There is probably nothing in the whole world so spineless as a samurai’s surrender.”Original
Yet the blame he directs is not at the defeated, but at those who led the defeated astray, and at the arrogance of the victors.Original
“Victors are arrogant by nature.”Original
“The past is a warning for the future.”OriginalOriginal
The document of the sixteenth day of the seventh month of Keiō 4 (1868) called one year’s land rent “exceptionally generous.”Original
After that generosity, the house that had once had sixty rooms and fifteen horses became a family living idly in the countryside of Suruga.Original
With what expression, one wonders, do the descendants now open the map of the mansion that still remains in that house’s possession.Original
| Source text | Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi, Continued (1931). National Diet Library Digital Collections (PDM). PID 1179005 |
| Dates and names | All 3 dates in the text exist in the calendar for their year, and the Western years given alongside them agree. The 3 people named in the text were checked word for word against the source text. This period lies outside the volumes of the Ishin shiryō kōyō. |
| English gates | 124 of 124 sentences passed the checks on the English text. |
This article is a reading of Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi, Continued. Ninagawa Arata’s books (1928-31) are written from the standpoint of the shogunate’s retainers. The source text is a century old and may differ from current scholarship.
