The Person at Umoregi no ya Was Waiting ―― In the Fourth Month of Ansei 5 (1858), Hotta Masayoshi’s Return to Edo and Two Difficult Problems

A letter at Warabi Station

There, an envoy of Matsudaira Yoshinaga, the leader of the Hitotsubashi faction, caught up with him.Original
Tokutomi Sohō writes that Yoshinaga, unable to wait for Hotta’s return to Edo, had deliberately sent an envoy to meet him.OriginalOriginal

The private letter handed to him was far from mild from its very opening.OriginalOriginal

Its closing was even stronger.
“The Tokugawa’s rule is being destroyed by you and your associates, and I believe you cannot escape that blame.”Original
It was a severe warning that if things continued to be handled as before, the Tokugawa’s rule would be destroyed by them, and that blame could not be escaped.Original
Tokutomi Sohō imagines that if the Hitotsubashi faction was this agitated, the moves of the Kishū faction were likely just as fierce, or even more so.OriginalOriginal

Let us trace back Hotta’s journey.Original
On the seventh day of the fourth month, at Akasaka Station in Mino, he received a letter from a colleague.Original
On the tenth, at Ochiai Station in Shinshū, he met Hayakawa Shōjirō, an oku-yūhitsu traveling west from Edo, gave him instructions in confidence, and sent him back east ahead of him.OriginalOriginal

Sixty days in Kyoto

Hotta had gone to Kyoto to obtain imperial sanction for the treaty.Original
What he brought back was not imperial sanction, but an imperial reply that amounted almost to a rejection of the treaty.Original
Tokutomi Sohō’s way of putting it is that he came back having only compounded the trouble.OriginalOriginal

It was not that no one had made an effort.
Tokutomi Sohō sees it as not only ineffective, but as having actually intensified the mood of opposition.Original
The two months spent in Kyoto, he says, worsened rather than improved the situation there.OriginalOriginal

The assessment from Bakumatsu Seijika that Tokutomi Sohō cites is merciless.Original
Hotta was a senior councillor of discernment, but he was corpulent and lacked an elegant appearance, and bound by unfamiliar court dress and unaccustomed ceremony, his dignity suffered.Original
Moreover, being naturally inarticulate, he could hardly match the court nobles’ skill at long-winded speech, and he fell behind from the very first exchange of argument.Original
Kawaji excelled at the cunning of winning people over amid friendly talk, but grand argumentation was not his strength.Original
Iwase was brilliantly eloquent, but at court his rank was only Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade, Chōsan Taifu, and he could not sit alongside Hotta and the court nobles.OriginalOriginal

The court nobles, too, had their own circumstances.Original
According to the account of Hashimoto Sanai’s private audience with Sanjō Sanetsumu, the assessment was that Sanetsumu understood domestic affairs well and was clear in reasoning, but had no grasp whatsoever of foreign matters.Original
The power of gold won over the regent and others, and matters proceeded to the very brink of an imperial sanction that would have entrusted all diplomacy to the shogunate.Original
But it was thwarted there by the argument of the group of committed court nobles, and Hotta left behind in Kyoto nothing but a history of failure, the book concludes.OriginalOriginal

On the following day, at the hour of the dog, Emperor Kōmei wrote a letter addressed to the Minister of the Left, Konoe Tadahiro.Original
Hotta was returning to Edo, and things would for the time being settle down.Original
But how the Kantō would respond from now on was important, and there was no small cause for worry, the letter began.OriginalOriginal

The emperor was concerned about a change of heart on the part of the regent Kujō Hisatada.Original
He asked that if the regent’s heart wavered in the least, they should consult with Sanjō, Koga, and the other “loyal-spirited men.”Original
The meaning was that even if something unforeseen should happen in the future, they must never be alarmed nor lose heart, still less accept the arguments of the Kantō.Original
He added that even if there were rumors of moving the capital, this must be firmly stopped, and it was essential to remain in this Heian capital as much as possible.OriginalOriginal

Tokutomi Sohō conjectures that this refers to a poem composed by Arima Shinshichi, a shishi of Satsuma.Original
Upon careful reflection, he sighs, one cannot let down one’s guard.Original
The passage that follows reads: “Whatever becomes of my person, I am resolved to pay it no heed.”Original
Tokutomi Sohō reads in these words, a resolve not to let it matter whatever becomes of one’s own person, a spirit bursting forth, ready to sacrifice oneself for the country.OriginalOriginal

Umeda Unpin, too, a central figure among the independent scholars of Kyoto, submitted a written opinion in response to an inquiry from the Prince of Shōren-in.Original
He argued that since all the people of the realm were subjects of the sovereign, an imperial command should first be issued to the lords, and if any lord failed to comply, the three ministers, the ranked court nobles, the hundred officials, and men of resolve throughout the realm should carry out an “imperial personal expedition.”Original
He also wrote that, since the resolute decision had been sworn before the Grand Shrine of Ise, the shogunate should be told that no amount of petitioning, even a hundred times over, would gain approval.Original
Given that the prince was the sovereign’s foremost advisor, Tokutomi Sohō considers it almost certain that this came before the emperor’s eyes.OriginalOriginal

The day after Hotta’s departure, the sixth day of the fourth month.Original
Umeda wrote thus in a letter addressed to someone.Original
“The purport of the imperial decree is a matter for gratitude. The hearts of the people of the realm have been washed anew, and I cannot contain my reverent joy.”Original
The meaning is that the purport of the imperial decree is a cause for gratitude, that the hearts of the people of the realm have been washed clean anew, and that he cannot contain his reverent joy.Original
Tokutomi Sohō says this should be called a song of triumph for the Kyoto side.OriginalOriginal

Lord and vassal

The Kyoto side’s position was clear.Original
They opposed signing the treaty, and recommended Hitotsubashi as the adopted heir.Original
Regent Kujō and his associates probably harbored, at heart, support for signing the treaty and for backing Kishū, but they could not bring it out openly.Original
Tokutomi Sohō explains that the most fervent opponent of signing the treaty was Emperor Kōmei himself, so that if the regent forced approval through, he risked a direct clash with the sovereign.OriginalOriginal

The question of the heir apparent was not regarded in Kyoto as weighty as the treaty.Original
Still, word had reached them that Iesada was frail in health and not of clear intelligence.Original
Even in Kyoto they must have had to acknowledge that one who would act as the shogun’s deputy and eventually become his successor needed the three qualifications of wisdom, popular trust, and seniority.OriginalOriginal

What of Hotta himself?Original
To the Ii faction he showed an attitude of not rejecting Tokugawa Yoshitomi, and to the Matsudaira Yoshinaga faction, an attitude of not rejecting Tokugawa Yoshinobu.Original
Tokutomi Sohō says that, put favorably, this was open-mindedness, and put unfavorably, it was a lack of any settled opinion.Original
But on the journey back empty-handed, his original expectation of imperial sanction having failed, a resolve and a proposal must have taken shape in his mind.Original
That since the prior agreement with Townsend Harris could not be cancelled, the treaty should be signed without waiting for imperial sanction.Original
Sohō surmises that this was the view held by Kawaji Toshiakira, and especially by Iwase Tadanari, and that Hotta’s sixty days of experience in Kyoto must have pushed him toward it.OriginalOriginal

However, how firm that resolve was cannot be guaranteed.Original
Sohō adds that Hotta was not the sort of character who would sweep aside all obstacles and carry through his first resolve.OriginalOriginal

Hotta wished to preserve the old customs of three hundred years, and it was only that, given circumstances beyond his control, he resigned himself to the idea that signing the treaty could not be helped in order to avoid a clash with foreign countries while Japan’s military preparations were incomplete.Original
Sohō says that it is therefore not right to regard him as a wholehearted advocate of opening the country, and that such praise would probably be, in the man’s own words, an unwelcome embarrassment.OriginalOriginal

For Hotta, the treaty was primary and the matter of the heir apparent secondary.Original
For Ii, the heir apparent was primary and the treaty secondary.Original
Sohō contrasts the two, saying that Matsudaira Yoshinaga, who was impatient to achieve his aim by overcoming any difficulty whatsoever, and Ii stood in exactly opposite positions, a perfect matched pair.OriginalOriginal

The Man of Umoregi no ya

What sort of origins did this Ii Naosuke have?Original
A daimyo’s illegitimate son had no choice but to go out as an adopted son, to enter the priesthood, or else to live out a wretched existence on a meager stipend.Original
Naosuke was eager to find a place as an adopted son, but things did not go as he wished.Original
Sohō records that he finally resigned himself to a life of obscurity, going so far as to name his residence Umoregi no ya.OriginalOriginal

But then good fortune turned his way.Original
His middle elder brother, who had been the presumptive adopted heir of the eldest brother, died, and Naosuke succeeded to his position, then later succeeded to that of the eldest brother as well.Original
He became the head of the western thirty-three provinces’ banner lords, of a line that had traditionally guarded Kyoto, held Tamarinoma-zume status, and at times served as great elder, now the current lord of Hikone castle.Original
It was the eleventh month of Kaei 3 (1850), and he was thirty-six years old.Original
It was truly the season of his most vigorous vitality.OriginalOriginal

Sohō says that no one knows what great ambitions he carried as he emerged into the world.Original
At the very least, though, there is no doubt that he emerged as a man of hard bone and thick skin, possessed of endurance and stubbornness.Original
Whether this was innate nature or whether his circumstances had made it into a second nature is beyond inquiry.Original
Even so, it is Sohō’s view that it would hardly be strange if he sought to vent, during his years as daimyo, the pent-up frustration of his years of obscurity.OriginalOriginal

A Lone Boat in Swift Rapids

Sohō writes that Ii Naosuke remains, to this day, a focal point of both praise and blame.Original
His enemies call him a great schemer likely to repeat the precedent of the Jōkyū affair, a grave criminal who defied the imperial edict, and a great villain who slaughtered the shishi of the realm.Original
Sohō says that Naosuke was neither so great a man of virtue nor so great a villain, neither so great a statesman nor so petty a schemer.OriginalOriginal

Had he been a great statesman, he would surely have practiced a somewhat different kind of politics, whether for good or for ill.Original
In reality, however, he had neither scheme nor strategy, and simply pressed forward all at once with brute force.Original
To sum up his conduct in a word, it was as though a lone boat caught in a swift current had been drawn along by the force of the water and had plunged, boat and all, into the basin of a waterfall.Original
One might call it courage, Sohō writes, but it would perhaps be more fitting to call it a “reckless, blind act,” that is, conduct that pressed forward heedlessly through the dark.OriginalOriginal

Sohō cautions, however, that it would be too harsh to say that even his motives were wicked.Original
His term in office lasted only one year and ten months, from the fourth month of Ansei 5 (1858) to the third month of Man’en 1 (1860).Original
Sohō concludes that his promoting, within that short span, the momentum toward the shogunate’s collapse was unmatched before or after, and that in that sense there would be no harm in calling him a meritorious figure in the opening of the country at the time of the Restoration.OriginalOriginal

Let us return once more to Warabi Station.Original
From the Kyoto side, perhaps a thin thread linking these events could already be glimpsed.
But Hotta surely did not imagine that the man waiting at the end of that thread was the man of Umoregi no ya.Original
Sohō writes that Hotta, being no god, never dreamed even in his sleep that his own downfall would eventually come at the hands of Ii.Original
Might one not also read this as saying that the senior councillor had boarded the boat bound for the waterfall’s basin, still unaware of what was to come?Original

This article is a reading of Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, vol. 39: The Administration of Ii Naosuke. 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.