Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito was a person who was reprimanded by the shogunate and ordered into retirement and confinement. On the 13th day of the 3rd month of Kaei 2 (1849), the shogunate lifted the order it had issued to Nariaki forbidding him from involvement in the domain’s administration. The occasion was, in the 7th month of Kōka 2 (1845), a request to borrow a telescope from Abe Masahiro. Sohō records this as the first window that the shut-in Nariaki opened to the outside.
After this, long letters urging the rebuilding of the domain and coastal defense arrived at Abe’s without ceasing. Sohō identifies Mito as the head house of the idea of expelling foreigners, and calls Aizawa Seishisai’s Shinron the book of its teaching. Kawaji Toshiakira, the Nara magistrate, who read this in Kaei 2, gave a harsh assessment. While calling it an argument that would place men in a position of death to fight, he wrote 7 days later that Aizawa was probably a considerable figure. Fujita Tōko, who was close to Nariaki, also wrote to a friend that he wished to quickly return to the Bunsei 8 order to drive away foreign ships.
Yet though there was thought, there was no preparation, and only a little coastal defense was built at Uraga and Bōsō. Nariaki submitted opinions on coastal defense many times from the Tenpō era onward, but Sohō writes that the shogunate did not adopt them. What the shogunate adopted instead was a policy of not letting people know of affairs abroad. Fujita Tōko lamented that this was like covering one’s ears after the thunder had already sounded. Sohō praised as an excellent argument the words of Katsu Kaishū explaining the harm of shutting off information.
Another thread toward revival was Nariaki’s child, the later Tokugawa Yoshinobu. In the 9th month of Kōka 4 (1847), he succeeded to the Hitotsubashi house. Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi repeatedly visited his residence, joining him in chanting and dance, and Sohō records that they were like father and son. On the 2nd day of the 5th month of Kaei 1, Yoshinobu visited his father at Komagome for the first time, and on the 11th day of the 12th month he astonished people with his skill in archery. In the same month, senior councilor Matsudaira Noriyasu conveyed word of an engagement with Chiyohime, daughter of Ichijō Tadaka.
Conditions were attached to the lifting of the order. These were that he refrain from acting on his own judgment, and that he not employ Toda Ginjirō and Fujita Toranosuke again. On the 15th day of the 3rd month, Nariaki sent a letter to Yoshiatsu, who had become domain lord at age 13, urging him to end discord within the domain. At the deer hunt at Koganehara on the 18th day of the 3rd month as well, he looked into old regulations and sent them to Abe. The closing of the poem he presented expressed a wish to drive out foreigners.
On the 21st day of the 9th month, Ieyoshi visited the Mito residence at Koishikawa, and himself worked a boat at Kōrakuen. At the evening banquet, Nariaki presented a folding screen of chrysanthemums that he had painted himself. Sohō writes that the gloom since Kōka 1 seemed to have lifted, yet the domain’s administration remained in the hands of those opposed to him. Yoshiatsu did not accept his father’s arguments, and even into Kaei 2 father and son had not become reconciled.
From the request to borrow a telescope to the boating party at Kōrakuen, these 4 years can be traced through Sohō’s Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, The Situation before Perry’s Arrival.
The Seventh Month of Kōka 2, a Single Telescope
The seventh month of Kōka 2 (1845).Original
The matter was a request to borrow a telescope owned by Abe.OriginalOriginal
In the fifth month of the previous year, Nariaki had been reprimanded by the shogunate and ordered into retirement and confinement.Original
He was forty-five at the time.Original
In the eleventh month of that year his confinement was lifted, but he was not permitted to take any part in the domain’s administration.Original
Tokutomi Sohō writes that the borrowing of the telescope was the first small window this shut-in man opened toward the outside world.OriginalOriginal
而して彼の雄心は固より已む能はず、弘化二年七月、彼は閣老阿部正弘所藏の望遠鏡借用を申込、機緣として、彼と信書を往復するに至つた
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryFrom this occasion, an exchange of letters began between Nariaki and Abe.Original
On domain reform.Original
On national defense.Original
Tokutomi Sohō reports that long letters were sent to Abe “almost without interruption.”OriginalOriginal
Mito’s Pure Expel-the-Barbarians Doctrine
The true wellspring of the expel-the-barbarians doctrine was Mito.Original
So Tokutomi Sohō determines, calling Aizawa Seishisai’s Shinron its “gospel” and “scripture.”OriginalOriginal
That Shinron was read by the magistrate of Nara, Kawaji Toshiakira, in Kaei 2 (1849).Original
He was a capable official of the shogunate.Original
His assessment was harsh.Original
It was, he said, a doctrine that placed men in mortal danger and made them fight to the death, intending to follow the precedent of Hōjō Tokimune beheading the envoys of the Yuan, but now, in an age that relies on daimyo, things could not go as they had in the past.Original
Even so, seven days later he wrote in his diary that the author “must be quite a figure,” and wanted to know who it was.Original
He had been stirred, Tokutomi Sohō reads.OriginalOriginal
新論の意、先づ人を死地に置て、必死の場より、戰をなす積りに御座候。故に北條時宗が、元の使を斬たりし例による積りにて候。これ孫子より出たる論にて、おもしろきことには候得共、其時の大將は、誰にすべしと云、人選論は、素より前以出來申間敷義に有之。又當時大名を御遣ひなさるゝ世になりては、少もいにしへの風にはまいり不申候
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryFujita Tōko, called Nariaki’s trusted blade, was also an uncompromising advocate of expelling the barbarians.Original
In a letter dated the seventeenth day of the fourth month of Kaei 1, sent from his retreat at Takekuma to Takahashi Taichirō, this is written.Original
It means that his earnest wish was to return, even a single day sooner, to the expulsion order of Bunsei 8.OriginalOriginal
Tokutomi Sohō says there could have been no posturing in a letter to a close comrade.Original
Before Perry’s arrival, lord and retainers in Mito were all purely for expelling the barbarians, and their argument came down to the single word “war.”Original
And with this view, Nariaki continued to provoke the shogunate’s officials.OriginalOriginal
Expelling the Barbarians Empty-Handed, a Secretive Shogunate
But though there was doctrine, there was no preparation.Original
Tokutomi Sohō writes that only a little coastal defense had been built at Uraga and Bōsō.OriginalOriginal
In the third month of Kaei 1, the magistrate of Uraga, Asano Nagayoshi, went to Uraga on the shogun’s direct order.Original
What he carried was Nariaki’s Meikun Ippanshō.Original
This was a copy made by the shogunate’s junior inspector Andō Masayoshi, who added a preface and gave it as a parting gift.Original
Even Mito, the home of the expel-the-barbarians doctrine, had no preparation.Original
If so, then both shogunate and the various domains had merely chanted “expel the barbarians” with folded hands, letting precious years pass in vain.OriginalOriginal
Tokutomi Sohō declares flatly that the responsibility for this did not lie with Mito.Original
Since the Tenpō era, Nariaki had repeatedly submitted proposals on coastal defense, but the shogunate adopted none of them.OriginalOriginal
What the shogunate adopted instead was a policy of secrecy.Original
Tokutomi Sohō cites the case of Matsudaira Sadanobu suppressing Hayashi Shihei’s Sangoku Tsūran and Kaikoku Heidan.Original
Even though Britain was invading Qing nearby, they tried not to let even this become generally known.Original
Fujita Tōko lamented in a letter dated the twenty-seventh day of the third month of Kaei 1.Original
“It is as though one stops one’s ears only after the sudden thunder; the state of the times is truly lamentable.”Original
It means that it was like covering one’s ears only after the thunder had already struck, and that the state of the times was lamentable.OriginalOriginal
Here Tokutomi Sohō quotes at length the words of Katsu Kaishū.Original
As a result of forbidding the study of Western books and the making of instruments, and of stopping up the eyes and ears of the people, when a foreign ship merely asked for firewood and water they suspected it of harboring malice, and when it took soundings they raged that the national dignity had been insulted.Original
They knew neither the enemy nor themselves.
“The harm of secrecy is the very source of this.”Original
Tokutomi Sohō called this “truly a sound argument.”OriginalOriginal
Please consult the original page images for this source.
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThe Boy Who Came to Komagome
There was another thread in the path of Nariaki’s revival.Original
This was his child Shichirōmaro, later Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu.OriginalOriginal
In the ninth month of Kōka 4 (1847), Shichirōmaro succeeded to the Hitotsubashi house.Original
Tokutomi Sohō considers it beyond doubt that this measure by shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi took Nariaki’s feelings into account.Original
Ieyoshi said that Shichirōmaro closely resembled the late Yoshimasa, and his reputation in the Ōoku was also good.OriginalOriginal
Please consult the original page images for this source.
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryOn the sixteenth day of the third month of Kaei 1, Ieyoshi visited the Hitotsubashi residence.Original
After that he visited often; when the shogun sang, Yoshinobu danced, and when Yoshinobu sang, the shogun danced.Original
Tokutomi Sohō writes that it was “just as if they were father and son.”OriginalOriginal
On the second day of the fifth month of that year, Yoshinobu visited his father at the Komagome residence for the first time.Original
Nariaki came out as far as the second chamber to greet him.Original
In the inner hall there was singing and dance performance, and Yoshinobu danced wearing a Yamato-brocade dance robe granted to him by the shogun.Original
On the eleventh day of the twelfth month, together with his elder brother Gorōmaro, he shot five targets of straw bundles, astonishing everyone.Original
Nariaki’s joy “overflowed between his brows,” it is said.OriginalOriginal
On the fourth day of the same month, senior councilor Matsudaira Noriyasu, as shogunal envoy, conveyed to Yoshinobu the engagement with Chiyohime, daughter of Ichijō Tadaka.Original
This was arranged through the Ōoku senior lady-in-waiting Anekōji.Original
On the third day of the previous month, it had been privately conveyed to Mito’s attendant chief retainer that Itonomiya, daughter of Arisugawa no Miya, would be adopted as the shogun’s daughter and married to the Mito domain lord Tokugawa Yoshiatsu.Original
A single boy had thus fulfilled the role of a “messenger of peace” linking his natural father and the shogun.OriginalOriginal
The Thirteenth Day of the Third Month of Kaei 2
Thus the day came.Original
On the thirteenth day of the third month of Kaei 2 (1849), the shogunate released the three branch-house guardians—Matsudaira Yoritane, Matsudaira Yorinobu, and Matsudaira Yorinawa—from their duties, and the domain lord Yoshiatsu came to govern in person.Original
At the same time, the order forbidding Nariaki from interfering in domain governance was also lifted.Original
Yoshiatsu had become domain lord at the age of thirteen.Original
Its governance had lain in the hands of the three branch-house guardians and the senior officials whom Nariaki called the treacherous faction.Original
For nearly six years, a man of vigorous fighting spirit had watched this from the sidelines.Original
Two days later, on the fifteenth day of the third month, Nariaki wrote a letter to Yoshiatsu.Original
He wrote that he was “like a defeated general,” but since there was also a saying that one becomes a good physician by breaking one’s arm three times, he would set aside his shame and send his words.Original
He urged that discord within the domain be ended, and that all but those who violated the way of the warrior be treated with leniency.Original
However, the lifting of restrictions came with conditions attached.Original
Rewards, punishments, and personnel matters within the domain were to be discussed with the domain lord and chief retainers, and unilateral, decisive action was to be refrained from.Original
And it was explicitly stipulated by name that the reappointment of Toda Ginjirō and Fujita Toranosuke “shall not occur”—that is, it must not happen.Original
Tokutomi Sohō writes that this shows how heavy a reputation the two men bore, and how much they were regarded as dangerous figures.OriginalOriginal
其政は三連枝-松平讃岐守賴胤、松平大學頭賴誠、松平播磨守賴繩-の後見によりて、專ら齊昭を排斥したる所謂る藤田黨の天狗派に對する姦黨の手に歸し
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryDust at Koganehara
On the same eighteenth day of the third month, shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi held a deer hunt at Koganehara.Original
This was a house law dating from Ieyasu’s time that Yoshimune had restored, and which Ieyoshi had revived once more.OriginalOriginal
狩獵は、家康以來の家法とも、家傳とも云ふ可く家光の如きも、屢ば之を試み、中興の主、吉宗に至りて、大いに之を恢復した。而して將軍家慶亦た嘉永二年二月に於て、之を擧行した
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryNariaki was well versed in ancient precedent.Original
On the fourteenth day of the second month, he sent Abe a document of research, and repeatedly petitioned that sake be bestowed upon the farmers around the hunting grounds, and that the game be prepared and given to the attendant servants.OriginalOriginal
Abe Masahiro went ahead to the post station of Matsudo from the previous night.Original
The shogun arrived at the hour of nine at night, rested briefly at Shōryūji at the half-hour of seven, and went on to the hunting ground on foot and on horseback.Original
At the signal cannon, the guns fired all at once, and the dust rose so thickly that boar and deer could not be told apart.Original
“It was truly like a battlefield,” Abe wrote to Nariaki.Original
The shogun himself speared two hares, and gave the battle surcoat he was wearing to Abe.Original
Abe took one boar and two hares with a bamboo spear.Original
Game was also bestowed upon Nariaki by the shogun.OriginalOriginal
Nariaki presented a eulogistic poem on this hunt.Original
Its closing line read: “I pray, by sacred authority, to drive out the barbarians of the four directions.”Original
By sacred authority, may the barbarians of the four directions be driven out.Original
Tokutomi Sohō records that Nariaki’s intent “lay wholly, to the very end, in driving out the barbarians of the four directions.”Original
Perhaps, within the dust of the hunt, he was after all seeing a battlefield.Original
The Autumn Leaves of Kōrakuen
On the twenty-first day of the ninth month of Kaei 2 (1849), Ieyoshi visited the Mito residence at Koishikawa.Original
The stated purpose was to inquire after the health of Hōjuin, wife of the late Narinobu.Original
Tokutomi Sohō surmises that it was in fact to meet Nariaki.OriginalOriginal
Nariaki had written to Abe on the eleventh day of the seventh month.Original
Since his wife would be having her first audience, he wrote: “In part it is a joy, in part a worry; day by day I count the days and await it.”Original
It was, he said, both a joy and a worry, and he was counting the days as he waited.OriginalOriginal
Ieyoshi left the castle early in the morning and arrived at around eight o’clock.Original
In the first chamber he granted audience to Nariaki and the others, and past noon he strolled through Kōrakuen.Original
The attendant ladies-in-waiting numbered over a hundred, and the autumn leaves of the garden shone upon the vermilion-lacquered boat on the pond.Original
The shogun himself took up the pole and moved the boat.Original
In the evening, candles were lit at Kantokutei and a banquet was held.Original
Nariaki presented a folding screen of chrysanthemums in his own hand, and Ieyoshi received it with pleasure.Original
Tokutomi Sohō records that the pent-up gloom since Kōka 1 “seemed to clear all at once.”OriginalOriginal
But in that same residence, domain governance still lay in the hands of the opposing faction.Original
The domain lord Yoshiatsu, having been raised among those men since the age of thirteen, tended not to regard his father’s words and conduct as right.Original
Mito’s misfortunes were the result of his father’s willfulness having offended the shogunate, and submission alone would bring good fortune to the domain and filial duty to his father.Original
Nariaki stopped going to the Koishikawa residence, and though Fujita Tōko wrote a letter of remonstrance in the winter of Kōka 4, even by Kaei 2 father and son had not reconciled.OriginalOriginal
而して豫て利かぬ氣の齊昭は、之を苦々敷事に思ひ、愈よ父子疎隔を來たし、小石川邸へも往來せず、その爲めに藤田東湖の六三-六七〕如きは、憂慮の餘、齊昭の反省を希うてゐる。〔參照藤田の諫書は、弘化四年の冬であつたが、嘉永二年に至りても、父子の關係、今以て融和せず
Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryWhat, then, was it that Nariaki had regained over the course of four years?Original
Beginning with a telescope, and passing through a boy’s dance, the spoils of a hunt, and a shogun rowing a boat, he had been restored as a relative of Ieyoshi.Original
Yet the policy of expelling foreigners remained empty-handed, Toda and Fujita were forbidden, and the lord of the very residence where the screen had been presented kept his distance from his father.Original
It can also be read that what returned was the man Nariaki himself, not Nariaki’s governance.
The shogun gripping the pole beneath the autumn leaves, and the retired lord gazing upon him.Original
Does not the brightness of that single day, rather, foretell the darkness that was to follow?Original
| Source text | Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, The Situation before Perry’s Arrival (1929). National Diet Library Digital Collections (PDM). PID 3431221 |
| Checked against | Ishin shiryō kōyō, vol. 1 (1937). PID 1046665 |
| Dates and names | All 12 dates in the text exist in the calendar for their year, and the Western years given alongside them agree. Of the 16 people named in the text, 13 also appear in Ishin shiryō kōyō, vol. 1. |
| English gates | 120 of 120 sentences passed the checks on the English text. |
This article is a reading of Kinsei Nihon kokuminshi, The Situation before Perry’s Arrival. 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.
