Almost no one takes up Oguri Tadamasa, who was a senior official of the shogunate, the historian Hanami Sakumi wrote at the opening. This was in the pages of the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun on December 12, Shōwa 3 (1928). The work he discussed was Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi, published by the doctor of law Ninagawa Arata.
Ninagawa included this review just as it was in chapter 8 of the sequel. There were also 4 newspaper reviews, 1 private letter, and a passage from a novel. Hanami called the writing style, which declared outright that Saigō and Katsu Kaishū were not equal to Oguri, exhilarating. The founding of the navy and a French-style army, and a system for gathering troops limited to bannermen. This was the basis of Japan’s conscription system, and it was not the original idea of Ōmura Masujirō of Chōshū, Hanami writes. He also lists the advocacy of the prefectural system as a forgotten achievement.
Fukura Torao, who contributed a review to the Osaka Shimbun, began his writing from a single photograph that had been among his travel belongings nearly 40 years earlier. It had been given to him by Mutō Sanji in Washington. Originally, Tanaka Ikkō, the head librarian of Keiō Gijuku, had obtained it from the master of a local inn and copied it. Fukura had known Oguri Sadao, the husband of Oguri’s daughter, for 30 years. Given Ninagawa’s book by Sadao, he lamented Oguri’s death at 42, comparing it with Sakuma Shōzan’s death at 53.
Fukura further cited the work that had supported the finances. The founding of the Yokosuka shipyard, the costs of customs and lighthouses at the opening of Hyōgo port, and the formation of a company by merchants of Osaka. When told that the shipyard was a waste, Oguri is said to have replied as follows. Even when a house passes into another’s hands, it has worth if a storehouse comes with it, Fukura relates.
Noda, who sent a private letter, pointed out that the dates in the account concerning Shōnai did not match. He also wrote to convey the circumstances of Ōu that he had heard from his father. While the emperor’s envoy was persuading each domain, a decision was made to subjugate the Ōu domains together with Aizu. Noda writes that the secret letter was seized and Sera was killed. Noda called this underhanded, lamenting that the flaws of the victorious side are erased while their merits are exaggerated.
Nakazato Kaizan, author of the novel Daibosatsu Tōge, writes that the one who should have faced Saigō was not Katsu but Oguri. Ninagawa’s mother was the younger sister of Oguri’s wife, and his own preface stated that he had been told of the false charge since childhood. Oguri was said to have plotted rebellion, was captured, and on the morning of April 6 was beheaded on the riverbed of the Karasugawa. His 21-year-old adopted son, Mataichi, was also killed. 60 years had passed, those who killed him had also died, and the trees at his grave had grown tall, Fukura concluded.
How Oguri Tadamasa, a retainer of the shogunate, was spoken of 60 years after his death can be followed through the six responses contributed to Ninagawa Arata’s book, Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi, Continued.
The Osaka Mainichi Shimbun, the Twelfth of December
In the pages of the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun on the twelfth day of December, Shōwa 3 (1928).Original
The historian Hanami Sakumi discusses a newly published book.Original
Its title is Ishin zengo no seisō to Oguri Kōzuke no shi.Original
Its author is the doctor of law Ninagawa Arata.OriginalOriginal
Hanami first writes that almost no one names men of the shogunate side such as Iwase Tadanari or Oguri Kōzuke no suke.Original
Yet history is “not formed by splendid scenes alone.”OriginalOriginal
Ninagawa included this review just as it stood in the eighth chapter of the sequel.Original
It is not only Hanami’s review.Original
Four newspaper reviews, one private letter, and a passage from a novel are gathered there.Original
What came back, and from where, in response to the book he had published a year before.Original
This chapter was written to show it to the world.Original
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Open the original page at the National Diet Library“A Great Man of Cunning Schemes”
What Hanami called delightful was the way Ninagawa passed judgment.Original
He calls Saigō “a great man of cunning schemes” and Katsu Kaishū “a crafty man of talent,” declaring flatly that neither is a match for Oguri.Original
Hanami comments that this is not a passing outburst of feeling but is backed at every point by argument.Original
The two phrases Hanami quotes are, as the note at the end of the chapter states, in Ninagawa’s own hand.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryWhat Hanami dwells on with force is the listing of forgotten achievements.Original
The founding of the navy, and the founding of a French-style army.Original
Though limited to the bannermen, the establishment of the “system of levied troops” was the foundation of Japan’s conscription system, and not the original idea of Ōmura Masujirō of Chōshū.Original
At the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the founding of the Yokosuka shipyard in Taishō 4, the Empress bestowed two hundred yen toward the cost of a bronze statue, and this single fact speaks to his contribution.Original
And that he had advocated the enforcement of a “prefectural system” leaves one with nothing but astonishment at the keenness of his insight, Hanami writes.OriginalOriginal
At the head of the chapter, Ninagawa himself introduces letters from readers.Original
One person reported in detail that the Tōhoku war had been a sinister challenge mounted by Satsuma and Chōshū.Original
One person told him that an American newspaper from around Man’en 1 (1860) is with Ikeuchi Daigaku in Kyoto.Original
A disciple of Ikeuchi Daigaku and a student of the Normal School wrote to say they had come to realize the error of having worshipped the men of the Restoration as great heroes.Original
Some said Oguri should be compared not to Saigō but to Ōkubo, but Ninagawa dismisses this, saying that since Oguri represents the shogunate side and Saigō represents Satsuma and Chōshū, the comparison between the two is proper.OriginalOriginal
The Photograph from Washington
Fukura Torao, who sent a review to the Osaka Shimbun, begins with a journey nearly forty years earlier.Original
At the bottom of his luggage was a single photograph.Original
It had been given to him by Mutō Sanji in Washington, and had originally been copied by Tanaka Ikkō, head librarian of Keiō Gijuku, from the owner of the hotel where the party had stayed.Original
Fukura notes that he had thirty years of acquaintance with Oguri Sadao, Oguri’s son-in-law, and that it was from Sadao that he received Ninagawa’s book as a gift.Original
A senior official of the shogunate, who had gone as far as Washington as an envoy of Japan, was killed by the imperial army once the times had utterly changed.Original
Fukura mourns that death alongside that of Sakuma Shōzan.Original
Shōzan was fifty-three, and Oguri was forty-two.Original
“Misunderstanding and the doubts of the crowd killed these two great men.”Original
Fukura further recasts the loyalist and shogunate factions as a radical party and a gradualist party.Original
Both, he says, believed that reform of the national government was necessary.Original
The difference lay in whether one held that the shogunate had to be overthrown, or that reform could be achieved through the union of court and shogunate.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryA bannerman with a stipend of two thousand five hundred koku, as finance magistrate, supported the impoverished finances of the shogunate right up to the Restoration.Original
He raised funds for the campaign against Chōshū and established the Yokosuka shipyard.Original
At the opening of the port of Hyōgo, he covered the costs of the customs house, the wharf, and the lighthouse, had the merchants of Osaka form trading companies, and had them petition for a license to issue paper money.Original
Fukura writes that this was the very first commercial company in Japan, and also the first convertible paper currency.OriginalOriginal
Fukura quotes the closing lines of that memorandum.Original
All of these were realized only after the Meiji era began.OriginalOriginal
When the Yokosuka shipyard was being built, there were those who said it was useless, since the shogunate’s days were already numbered.Original
Oguri is said to have answered them.Original
Even when a family falls into poverty and must hand its house over to another, if a storehouse comes with it, the house still has worth.Original
Fukura passes on these words as proof that Oguri understood how things stood at large.OriginalOriginal
A Letter from Fukushima
Ninagawa further includes a private letter.Original
It states that “the subjugation of Shōnai was the work of Ōyama Nagato and Sera of Satsuma,” but Noda points out that Sera of Chōshū was killed in Fukushima before the campaign against Shōnai, was he not.OriginalOriginal
The course of events in Ōu, as Noda says he heard it from his father in childhood, runs as follows.Original
Before the Restoration, the imperial envoy Daigo went to persuade Sendai, Fukushima, and Nihonmatsu, and met Sera, who had come from Edo, at an inn in Sukagawa.Original
Sera showed Daigo a secret document stating it was the view of headquarters that Ōu domains should be subjugated at the same time as Aizu.Original
This was seized by a spy of Sendai.Original
The two men fled toward Fukushima disguised as merchants, were captured by watchmen of the Sendai domain, and Sera was killed.Original
Daigo was nineteen at the time.Original
Noda’s father, who remembered his face and declared him to be the imperial envoy, is said to have had him escape to Sendai by boat.Original
Noda writes that his father met Daigo in Meiji 18, and was thanked by him as the one who had saved his life.OriginalOriginal
Using an imperial envoy to make Tadamasa swear an oath and lower his guard, they would crush him in a single stroke.Original
Noda called this “truly underhanded,” and told Ninagawa that, just as his judgment had held, Oguri had fallen victim to a trick of the imperial army.OriginalOriginal
This meant that he had greatly misjudged Oguri, but that thanks to this his eyes had been opened.Original
Noda laments that, as the saying goes that the victor becomes the imperial army, history erases the faults of the winning side and exaggerates its merits many times over.Original
He expresses admiration that a high-ranking bannerman who crossed to the United States at thirty-three had understood convertible notes, and adds that when he met Yuri Kimimasa in his later years, he could not think of him as either an extraordinary hero or a brilliant elder.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryThe Star Actor and the Man Behind the Curtain
Ninagawa also quoted a passage by Nakazato Kaizan, the author of the novel Daibosatsu Tōge.Original
It is installments 686 and 687 of the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun.Original
The stage was carried by two men, and the other actors became unnecessary.Original
But behind the scenes, on the Edo side, there stood one actor greater than Katsu.Original
Kaizan writes that if the stage had turned properly, it would not have been Katsu but Oguri who stood opposite Saigō.OriginalOriginal
Kaizan places Oguri in the same position as Ishida Mitsunari of the Toyotomi house.Original
But he distinguishes them: Mitsunari was the daimyo of Sawayama with two hundred fifty thousand koku, an ambitious schemer, while Oguri was a bannerman of two thousand seven hundred koku, a loyal and practical hereditary retainer.Original
He had a meticulous mind, studying the weights of gold and silver in the United States and, after returning home, raising the value of the koban threefold.Original
He did not drink, worked diligently at his duties, spoke bluntly to his superiors, and was demoted or dismissed more than seventy times.OriginalOriginal
Kaizan recounts three strategies of Oguri’s.Original
First, to let the allied forces cross Hakone and then strike them down.Original
Second, to use the shogunate’s navy to bombard from Suruga Bay, cut off their communications, and let the advancing troops destroy themselves.Original
Third, to use the navy to cut off communications from the Hyōgo direction as well.Original
Five thousand elite troops trained in the French style, twenty-two domains of Tōhoku centered on Aizu, and a navy unmatched in modernity.Original
Kaizan writes that he pressed this on the shogun rather than merely proposing it, but everything came to an end when the shogun personally dismissed him—the first such dismissal in three hundred years.OriginalOriginal
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Open the original page at the National Diet LibraryKaizan poses one more question, the reverse of this.Original
What would have happened if Saigō had succeeded in the Satsuma Rebellion of Meiji 10 (1877)?Original
A Saigō shogunate would surely have been formed, the Restoration would have remained on the level of the Kenmu Restoration, and Saigō would have been enshrined like Ashikaga Takauji.Original
Oguri lacked the “capacity” to become such a figure.Original
Kaizan considers that even if he had succeeded, things would not have returned to the height of Tokugawa power, and that the prefecture-county system and the importation of Western culture might have proceeded all the more smoothly.Original
The Elder Sister’s Husband
The commentator Nakamura Shūji, after noting that Ninagawa was not a scholar specializing in national history, reads this book as having two focal points.Original
One is to make Oguri known to the world.Original
The other is to serve as a stimulus toward the historical facts before and after the Restoration.Original
Nakamura quotes that, in response to Katsu Kaishū’s careless remark that “in Oguri’s eyes there was only the Tokugawa house,” Ninagawa pities the mindset that would entrap a former colleague.Original
Nakamura transcribes the final scene as Ninagawa records it.Original
The men of Satsuma and Chōshū, saying that “Oguri has armaments enough to repel seven thousand men, and Oguri has a plot to rebel against the court,” bound Oguri and took him away to the camp at Mikura.Original
According to Fukura’s commentary, the three domains of Takasaki, Yoshii, and Annaka were made to surround the temple, and the adopted son Mataichi, aged twenty-one, was sent as a hostage to the Takasaki domain, but this was deemed too lenient.Original
On the morning of the sixth day of the fourth month, on a coarse straw mat on the riverbed of the Karasugawa, the heads of three retainers were struck off first, and then Oguri’s head was cut.Original
The blade was dull, and it did not end with a single stroke.Original
Mataichi and three retainers were also killed.Original
Nakamura quotes a line from the preface written by Baron Yamakawa.Original
“For a warrior house to have weapons is like a merchant house having goods; how could this be counted as a crime?”Original
This means that a warrior house having weapons is the same as a merchant house having goods, and that it could not possibly be a crime.Original
Ninagawa’s own preface, quoted by Nakamura, answers this.Original
The author’s mother was the younger sister of Oguri Kōzuke no suke’s wife, and from childhood Ninagawa had been told of Oguri’s character, his achievements, and his “false charge.”Original
At the end of his letter, Noda too surmises “the hardship of your aunt.”Original
For Ninagawa, Oguri was his aunt’s husband.Original
That same Ninagawa, though he knew the name of the low-ranking official who beheaded Oguri, deliberately did not write it down.Original
To publicize only the deeds of one’s own faction and to erase the other side is narrow-minded for a person of learning.Original
Ninagawa asks for what purpose Japanese historians have written history.Original
Fukura also writes that he cannot entirely agree with this book’s view of the Restoration.Original
To argue that things should have been settled peacefully by a single brave decision of Yoshinobu, and that the ambitions of Satsuma and Chōshū turned it into civil war, is “to go to an extreme,” he says.Original
Ninagawa included this dissenting view too, without cutting it.Original
Was not this itself one form of the “good faith” involved in discussing a person correctly?Original
Sixty years have passed.Original
Fukura writes that even those who killed him have gone to the world below, and that the trees at his grave have also grown tall.Original
Under the trees grown at the grave of the temple in Gonda, a single photograph taken in Washington still stands the three envoys side by side.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, Continued (1931). National Diet Library Digital Collections (PDM). PID 1179005 |
| Dates and names | All 1 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 | 114 of 114 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.