Oguri Tadamasa, who had formerly been finance magistrate (the office responsible for the shogunate’s finances), was living at Tōzenji in Gonda, Jōshū. On April 1 of Keiō 4 (1868), about 800 soldiers from the three domains of Takasaki, Annaka, and Obata closed in on this temple. What they sought was a meeting with the 42-year-old former shogunate retainer.
Oguri stated that he had no intention of rebellion, and handed over 1 cannon and 20 rifles. There was neither a camp nor a gun battery around the temple, and the warriors of the three domains withdrew. The next day, the 2nd, Oguri sent his adopted son Mataichi, accompanied by 3 retainers, to report to the Takasaki office. Ninagawa Arata saw this as a scheme resembling hostage-taking, and added that he found the sentiment behind it sorrowful.
The order held by the three domains stated that it was clear Oguri had committed treason by setting up a camp and gun battery. An instruction was also attached: if he proved too much to handle, he was to be cut down. According to Ninagawa, no proper investigation was carried out; a rumor spread beforehand was merely used as a pretext. Ninagawa states that binding and cutting down a man who had complied with orders was an excessive and unlawful act.
Ninagawa reports that after the withdrawal, Toyonaga, the military supervisor (the office overseeing the army), and others threatened to attack the three domains. On April 3, Satō Tōshichi, the village headman, went after Oguri, who had left the temple and was resting at a farmhouse in Kamezawa in the same village. The message was that if Oguri returned and made clear he harbored no other intentions, it would be for the good of the village and of Mataichi. Ninagawa reads this as a procedure meant to call Oguri back in order to kill him. Oguri answered that he would return to the temple, and Ninagawa saw in this his final resolve to save the villagers.
That night, Oguri persuaded his mother Kuniko and his wife Michiko, and had them leave the village. Ninagawa records that Michiko, who was pregnant, hid in a palanquin and was carried on a farmer’s back, and gave birth to a girl in Aizu on June 14. On the 5th, about 1000 soldiers from the three domains surrounded the temple and captured Oguri. Early on the morning of the 6th, on the riverbed of the Karasugawa, the 3 retainers were cut down first, and then Oguri’s head was struck off. Ninagawa writes that a single stroke did not sever it, and a second stroke was needed.
The head was skewered on the tip of a green bamboo pole, set up by the roadside, and sent to Iwakura Tomosada in Tatebayashi. The next day, the 7th, Mataichi and the 3 retainers, who had been held captive in Takasaki, were also cut down. Father and son, 2 people, and 6 retainers. Later, Ōne Ryūtarō delivered 25 ryō in condolence money to the village and asked for memorial services, and Ninagawa interprets this change of heart as a confession of the atrocity. Efforts toward restoring his honor bore no fruit, and on October 10 of Shōwa 2 (1927), Ninagawa, together with local people, planted 2 young cedar trees before the grave.
From the soldiers closing in on the temple, through the cutting down of 8 people, to the later planting of cedars before the grave, all of it can be followed through Ninagawa Arata’s accusation in Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi.
The first day of the fourth month of Keiō 4, Tōzenji
The first day of the fourth month of Keiō 4 (1868).Original
Tōzenji, at the foot of Mount Haruna, in Gonda, Jōshū.Original
About eight hundred troops from the three domains of Takasaki, Annaka, and Obata approached the temple on the mountainside.Original
What they sought was a meeting with a former shogunate retainer living at the temple.Original
Oguri Kōzuke no suke Tadamasa.Original
The former finance magistrate.Original
Forty-two years old.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThis was a greeting to the effect that they themselves were merely retainers of retainers.Original
Ninagawa sees this as “a courtesy natural for a samurai.”Original
For his part, Oguri too was calm.Original
He argued that he had no intent of rebellion, and handed over to the men of the three domains one cannon and twenty rifles that he had brought from Edo.OriginalOriginal
Even when they examined the area around the temple, there was no camp.Original
Nor had any gun battery been built.Original
The men of the three domains withdrew, judging that “the situation was clear.”Original
The next day, the second, Oguri had his adopted heir Mataichi, accompanied by three retainers, report to the imperial army’s field office in Takasaki.Original
Mataichi was twenty-one years old.Original
This appearance was meant to show that he had no selfish motive.Original
Ninagawa calls this “a kind of hostage policy,” and adds, “how sad this feeling is.”OriginalOriginal
“Treason made clear”
The proclamation carried by the three domains had been issued by the Tōsandō Governor-General’s Headquarters.Original
It stated that Oguri had, in Gonda, “strictly built camps and the like, and moreover constructed a gun battery, engaging in some difficult undertaking,” and that “his treason is clear.”Original
The text stated that he had built a camp in the village, and moreover constructed a gun battery, undertaking some grave scheme, and that his rebellion was obvious.Original
At the end it read, “should he prove beyond control,” “he is to be struck down at once.”Original
This was an instruction that if he proved beyond control, it should be reported to headquarters, and the vanguard units should strike him down at once.OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa seizes upon two phrases in this text.Original
“Thorough investigation” and “treason made clear.”Original
But Ninagawa holds that nothing that could be called an investigation was carried out, and that only “a few petty men” had gone to spy on the situation.Original
Ninagawa’s judgment is that the basis of the proclamation was nothing but a pretext drawn straight from rumors spread by rioters incited beforehand.Original
This is precisely why he does not mince his words, calling it “a falsehood that utterly ignores the facts.”OriginalOriginal
What comes to mind here are the conditions written into the proclamation.Original
On the first day of the fourth month, Oguri had handed over his weapons and offered up his adopted son.Original
Far from being beyond control, he was a man who had obeyed the order.Original
Ninagawa says that binding and beheading him afterward was “an unlawful act exceeding authority.”Original
It can also be read to mean that the very side that wrote the text of the proclamation broke it themselves.Original
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryAt a farmhouse in Kamezawa
After the Takasaki domain retainers withdrew, the mood changed.Original
Ninagawa reports that Toyonaga and the other army supervisors were dissatisfied with the three domains’ handling of the matter, and threatened, “the imperial army should subjugate the three domains.”Original
They were blaming the domains for not having killed Oguri.Original
The public mood was not calm.OriginalOriginal
On the third day of the fourth month, Oguri left the temple at his attendants’ urging.Original
He stopped for a while to rest at the house of the farmer Ōi Akijirō in Kamezawa, in the same village, about one ri away.Original
There, Satō Tōshichi, the village headman of Gonda, came after him.Original
He said it was on the order of the imperial army.Original
“If you would return and tell the imperial army that you harbor no ill intent, nothing would be better for the village, and for Mataichi as well.”Original
The gist was that if he would return and convey to the imperial army that he had no ill intent, nothing would be better, for the sake of the village and for the sake of Mataichi.Original
If he fled, the headman said, all the villagers would suffer hardship, and it would also endanger the life of Mataichi, who was in Takasaki.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryNinagawa sees this as “a stratagem released by the imperial army side.”Original
Threaten the three domains, threaten the village farmers, and call back Oguri, who had left the temple.Original
Ninagawa’s reading is that this was a procedure for killing him just as had been intended from the start.OriginalOriginal
Oguri’s answer was short.Original
“I have never had any ill intent from the start. I shall return to the temple and tell the imperial army that I have no ill intent.”Original
He had no ill intent to begin with, he said, and would return to the temple to tell the imperial army so.Original
Ninagawa sees here “a final resolve.”Original
It was a resolve to sacrifice himself to save the villagers.Original
Ninagawa states flatly that the bold Oguri would never have done anything so “cowardly” as continuing to hide in a house in the same village.OriginalOriginal
That night, Oguri persuaded his mother Kuniko and his wife Michiko, and had them leave the village.Original
Michiko was, for the first time, pregnant.Original
Sixteen attendants accompanied them.Original
Ninagawa records, as something he heard, that Michiko hid herself inside a grass-cutting basket, had straw placed over her head, and was carried on the back of a village farmer as she fled.Original
She passed through Echigo and reached Aizu, and on the fourteenth day of the sixth month gave birth to a daughter.Original
It was a little over two months and ten days since the parting on the third day of the fourth month.OriginalOriginal
Early morning of the sixth day of the fourth month, the riverbed of the Karasugawa
On the fifth, about one thousand soldiers from the three domains of Takasaki, Annaka, and Yoshii surrounded Tōzenji and stormed in.Original
Ninagawa Arata writes that Oguri was seized without uttering “so much as half a word.”Original
Oguri did not resist.Original
He also writes that it is said in the world that Oguri remained perfectly composed.OriginalOriginal
Early morning of the sixth.Original
The riverbed along the Karasugawa.Original
It was a lonely spot within the neighboring village, several chō from the temple.Original
Oguri and three retainers were brought out here.Original
No sentence was pronounced.
The military inspector asked only one thing.Original
“Is there nothing you wish to leave as your last words?”OriginalOriginal
Oguri answered, “There is nothing,” and added only one thing.Original
His mother and wife had already been sent away to safety, he said, and he wished for lenient treatment for the women and children.Original
First, the three retainers were beheaded before Oguri’s eyes.Original
When one of them blurted out, “What a regret,” Oguri rebuked him and told him not to show attachment.OriginalOriginal
Then Oguri’s head was cut off.Original
It did not fall with a single stroke.Original
Ninagawa writes that two strokes were needed.Original
The executioner’s “heart was afraid and his arm dulled,” he writes.Original
It is said that the villagers trembled in fear and, dreading a curse, appealed to the imperial army.OriginalOriginal
The head was impaled on the tip of a green bamboo pole and set up by the roadside.Original
The notice board beside it read, “As it is clear that this person plotted great treason against the imperial court…”Original
It was a declaration that, since it was clear this person had plotted great treason against the imperial court, heaven’s punishment had been carried out.Original
The head was further sent to the supreme commander Iwakura Tomosada at Tatebayashi and presented for identification.OriginalOriginal
The following day, the seventh, at Takasaki.Original
Mataichi, who had been held in jail, was beheaded together with his three attendants.Original
Ninagawa records that the one who beheaded him was a foot soldier of the Takasaki domain.Original
Father and son, two men, and six retainers.Original
Ninagawa writes that this was the old injustice of the style “guilt extending to three generations” appearing in the fourth month of Meiji 1.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryTwenty-five ryō
Afterward, a single document was submitted to the office of the supreme commander.Original
It was the “report of the sentence of guilt” by Ōne Ryūtarō, a rōnin from Ōmi known as a schemer.Original
It claimed that Oguri had conspired with Aizu and Ogasawara to block the Usui pass, that he had used a farmers’ uprising as cover to burn houses and kill people, and that he had buried several dozen guns in the ground.Original
And then: “The Kōzuke father and son, along with the six retainers, were immediately cut down.”Original
That is, father and son and the six retainers were struck down at once.Original
Ninagawa dismisses this document as a “false document,” a “commonplace piece of work.”Original
Such writings, he says, are made to cover up traces of wrongdoing.OriginalOriginal
But what Ninagawa points to more forcefully is what happened afterward.Original
On the fifteenth day of the fourth month, the same Ōne appeared in Gonda.Original
He brought twenty-five ryō as a “condolence payment,” handed it to the village headman claiming it was “an order of the office of the supreme commander,” asked that memorial services be held for Oguri, and left.Original
Yesterday he had proclaimed heaven’s punishment on a traitor; today he had a grave built to console the spirit.Original
Ninagawa calls this change of face “too expedient, too lacking in dignity a measure,” and interprets it as a confession to the world of regret for the injustice done.Original
One could read it that way.Original
A month before the killing, in the third month of Meiji 1, the Charter Oath of Five Articles had been issued.Original
Its third article stated, “Officials and commoners alike, down to the ordinary people, shall each be allowed to fulfill their aspirations.”Original
Its fourth article stated, “It shall be based on the just ways of heaven and earth.”Original
He asks whether killing six people without any investigation was not a “trampling” of these two articles.Original
It was no longer, he adds, an age in which “the will of the military commander is law itself.”OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryAnd then he places a comparison.Original
Tokugawa Yoshinobu fought for four days at Toba-Fushimi and did not die.Original
Matsudaira Katamori, with over a hundred and ten cannons and three thousand troops, fought for thirty days and did not die.Original
Only Oguri, who had withdrawn alone to a cold village, was beheaded as a “traitor” and had his head exposed.Original
Ninagawa writes that this has “gone unwiped away for sixty years.”OriginalOriginal
Young cedars
Gonda lies in the mountains about eight ri northwest of Takasaki, up along the Karasugawa.Original
In the far left of the Tōzenji grounds, the graves of Oguri and his son stand side by side.Original
The gravestones were made using Ōne’s twenty-five ryō, competitively crafted by two renowned local artisans.Original
One tier below that, there is a grave for six retainers.Original
Ōi Isojūrō, Arakawa Yūzō, Watanabe Tasaburō, Tsukamoto Masahiko, Kutsukake Tōjūrō, and Tada Kinnosuke.Original
However, it is said that only their torsos are buried there.Original
Ninagawa writes that as for the whereabouts of their heads, besides a rumor that a loyal farmer dug them up from a temple in Tatebayashi and buried them at Kannonyama, only several strands of hearsay remain, pointing to Hōrinji and Mōrinji in Tatebayashi.Original
There were also moves to restore his honor.Original
Fukuchi Gen’ichirō and Shimada Saburō appealed to Inoue Kaoru, and Ōkuma Shigenobu’s wife also privately arranged for someone to act on the matter.Original
None of these efforts succeeded.Original
It is Ninagawa’s view that the powers of Satsuma and Chōshū still blocked them.Original
The adopted heir, Oguri Sadao, did not favor such campaigns, and upon receiving two hundred yen in privy purse funds from the Empress, he took it to mean that “the charge against Oguri Kōzuke no suke had already been atoned for.”Original
On the tenth day of the tenth month of Shōwa 2 (1927).Original
Ninagawa, together with local people, planted two young cedar trees before the grave.Original
“Young cedars, may you flourish forever together with the honored name of Kōzuke no suke.”Original
Ōne’s report document needed only to be written once.Original
Was it not that very writing brush that the man who planted the cedars sixty years later had been contending with?Original
How tall have the cedars grown by now?OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet Library| Source text | Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi (1928). National Diet Library Digital Collections (PDM). PID 1876405 |
| Dates and names | All 8 dates in the text exist in the calendar for their year, and the Western years given alongside them agree. The 5 people named in the text were checked word for word against the source text. No entries have been prepared yet for vol. 8, so no comparison with it was made. |
| English gates | 135 of 135 sentences passed the checks on the English text. |
This article is a reading of Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi. 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.
