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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Takechi Zuizan was born in 1829, the eldest son of a gōshi in Nagaoka A district in Tosa. By 1856, when he was 27, he had become known as a leading master of fencing (kenjutsu) in Tosa. He then travelled to Edo, where he met and cooperated with fellow spirits from Mito, Chōshū, and Satsuma. H e returned home the undisputed leader of Tosa loyalists. For a brief period in 1862 and 1863 he controlled, as much as any one controlled, the turbulent extremists in Kyoto and Edo. But at the point of his greatest success he overplayed his hand. His lord, Yamauchi Yōdō, proved to be unsympathetic to Takechi’s goals, and on the national scene the excesses of the Chōshū loyalists swung the balance temporarily in the direction of moderation. Takechi was restricted in his movements, imprisoned for his complicity in political assassination and his clear guilt in a presumptuous forgery, and he was finally ordered to commit hara-kiri in the summer of 1865. His career provides a useful close-up for the study of the loyalist movement in Tosa.
The author is Professor of History at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen (1954) and articles on Japanese history.
1 Takechi Hampeita; Zuizan was his gō.
2 The fifteenth Yamauchi daimyo, Yōdō (Toyoshige) expressed this succinctly in an argument with Saigō Takamori of Satsuma in 1867; “We are after all in a very different position from you, since we bear the Tokugawa a moral obligation.” Quoted in Osatake Takeshi, Meiji ishin (Tokyo, 1947), HI, 773. I am indebted to Mr. Michio Hirao, formerly archivist of the Yamauchi family, for the preferred readings of this and several other Tosa names used here, as well as for much counsel.
3 For the most recent analysis, Irimajiri Yoshinaga, Tokugawa bakuhansei kaitai katei no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1957), p. 305. Pp. 207-344 treat Tosa developments, and represent a synthesis and, in part, republication of Professor Irimajiri’s numerous shorter publications on Tosa society.
4 The gōshi system is described by Irimajiri (See n. 3); Ozeki Toyokichi, “Kōchi han no gōshi ni tsuite,” Tosa shidan, No. 48 (Kōchi, 1934), pp. 117-154; Matsuyoshi Sadao, Shinden no benlyū (Tokyo, J936), pp. 233-311. Basic documents for the development of the class are contained in the recent volume of the Kinsei sonraku kenkyū kai, Kinsei sonraku jichi shiryōshū: Vol. II, Tosa no kuni chihō shiryō (Tokyo, 1956), pp. 383-431. In English there is a short appendix in E. H. Norman, Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription (New York, 1943), pp. 58-65, based largely on Matsuyoshi; and R. B. Grinnan, “Feudal Land Tenure in Tosa,” TAS], XX, 2 (Tokyo, 1893), 228-247, based on conversations with a Tosa karō (Shibata Kamichirō) and gōshi (Hosokawa Gishō.)
5 Nonaka Kenzan (1615-63) was a scholar and administrator who devised intellectual, economic, and political policies which established Tosa as one of the great fiefs. Extensive reclamation and riparian works extended cultivation, while han monopolies tapped other products to augment official income. Neo-Confucian scholarship was introduced, and scholars like Yamazaki Anzai and the Tani line of Confucianists were encouraged. Shortly before his death Nonaka was the victim of bureaucratic rivalry and demoted and banished on charges of oppressing the people. There are many biographies. For an account of Nonaka’s career and fall, Ozeki Toyokichi, “Kambun no kaitai ni tsuite,” Tosa Shidan, No. 24 (Kōchi, 1928), pp. 24-40.
6 Irimajiri, p. 281, and “Tosa han ‘chōnin gōshi’ no kaisei ni kansuru ichi shiryō,”Shakai kagaku tōkyū, I (Tokyo: Waseda University, 1956), p. 102.
7 Ikeda Yoshimasa, “Tempō kaikaku ron no saikentō: Tosa han o chūshin ni shite,” Nihonshi kenkyū, No. 31 (Kyoto, 1957), pp. 1-15.
8 For recent statements of this view, Ikeda, loc. cit., and also “Hansei kaikaku to Meiji ishin: Kōchi han,” Shakai keizaishi gakū, Vol. 212, No. 5, 6, pp. 561-582, and “Tosa han ni okeru Ansei kaikaku to sono hantai ha,” Rekishigaku kenkyū, No. 205 (Tokyo, 1957), pp. 18-29. For figures of one year which show fifteen chōnin among fifty-five entrants, Irimajiri, 286. Social origin, of course, need not determine outlook, although where relatives continued in trade it could be expected to condition it.
9 Hirao Michio, Nagaoka son shi (Kōchi, 1955), pp. 88-92.
10 For Nakaoka, the biography by Hirao Michio, Rikuentai shimatsu ki (Tokyo, 1942), p. 9; for Yoshimura, Hirao Michio, Yoshimura Toratarō (Tokyo, 1941), pp. 14-17. A convenient summary of monographic studies of shōya powers in other parts of Japan can be found in Kodama Kōda, Kinsei nōmin seikatsu shi (Tokyo, 1957), pp. 94-130.
11 “It is our great task to be entrusted with care of the rice fields, dry fields, mountains, rivers, and ocean. We encourage farming and fishing, we see to the payment of the yearly tax and the performance of public works, and, if it becomes necessary, even the conscription of workers for military preparations. In addition we are responsible for the management of numerous other matters. In the final analysis, ours is the office which is entrusted with carrying out all the really important affairs of the realm . . .” Quoted in Hirao Michio, Tosa nōmin ikki shikō (Kōchi, 1953), p. 126.
12 The full document can be found in Hirao, Tosa nōmin ikki shikō, pp. 128-140, and it will be included in a forthcoming volume of readings on Tosa social and economic history which is in preparation.
13 Shinzan was the gō of Tani Shigetō (1663-1718). For a discussion of his thought, Itoga Kunijirō, Kainan Shushigaku hattatsu no kenkyū (Tokyo, 1935), pp. 123—139. For a brief mention of his relation to the loyalist movement, Tokutomi Iichirō, Tosa no kjnnō (1929), pp. 10—11.
14 Matsuzawa Takurō, Man’yō to Kamochi Masazumi no shōgai (Tokyo, 1943), p. 254; and Ogata Hiroyasu, Kamochi Masazumi (Tokyo, 1944), reprint a good deal of Kamochi’s writings as well as describing his life and influence.
15 This, at least, is the version given by a source which is very hostile to the “upper samurai”; Zuizan kai, ed.,lshin Tosa kinnō shi (Tokyo, 1912), p. 32.
16 Sasaki Takayuki, Kinnō hisshi: Sasaki Rō Kō sekijitsu dan (Tokyo, 1915), p. 28. For shingaku, see Robert Bellah, Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, 111., 1957), pp. I33f. For Mabuchi Kahei, Hirao Michio, “Tempō ‘Okoze gumi’ shimatsu,” Tosa shidan, No. 36 (Kōchi, 1931), pp. 23-33.
17 Hirao Michio, Takechi Zuizan to Tosa Kinnōtō (Tokyo, 1943), p. 34.
18 Hirao, Takechi Zuizan, p. 4.
19 His followers often referred to him as Bokuryū Sensei, “The India Ink Dragon” because his appearance—great height, pale and intense face, a frame tempered and disciplined in fencing practice—suggested that of a dragon in monochrome paintings.
20 For one such estimate, that of Kabayama San’en of Satsuma: “at the first meeting I could see he was a courageous character.” Shiseki kyōkai series, Takechi Zuizan kankei monjo, Hayakawa Junzaburō, ed. (Tokyo, 1916), I, 53.
21 Takechi monjo, I, 26—30. Hirao, Takechi Zuizan, pp. 15—19. This “two rations” (Ninin fuchi) is described by Tanaka Kōken as follows: “This two rations meant five gō of unpolished rice a day per person, or in other words one shō, two gō, five shaku per day.” Seizan yoei: Tanaka Kōken Haku shoden (Tokyo, 1924), p. 49. Tanaka’s family tried to stay alive on this, but for Takechi it was of course extra income.
22 Iwasaki Hideshige, ed., Sakamoto Ryōma kankei monjo (Tokyo: Nihon shiseki kyōkai, 1926), I, 56.
23 The han policy was, for a time, extremely cautious because of fear of further punishment for Yōdō and his family. The administration was led by Yoshida Tōyō (Motokichi), one of the outstanding statesmen of late Tokugawa Japan. Yoshida was a vigorous reformer and modernizer who antagonized the upper and privileged groups by his attempts to limit their income and power; he also advocated a thorough-going attempt at trade and expansion to “uninhabited islands” in order to strengthen the han treasury. Fukushima Nariyuki, Yoshida Tōyō (Tokyo, 1927), one of several biographies; and Ōtsuka Takematsu, ed. Yoshida Tōyō ikō (Tokyo: Shiseki kyōkai, 1929).
24 Takechi monjo, I, 36-53.
25 Sasaki Rō Kō sekijitsu dan, p. 145.
26 Ishin in Tosa kinnō shi, pp. 105f. It was of course somewhat easier for low-ranking personnel, with less of a stake in their society, to flee, and yet even they were abandoning their families and jeopardizing their futures. Their letters home were full of efforts to explain such action, as when Sakamoto Ryōma wrote the parents of a friend, Ike Kurata, who had just fled: “The daimyo . . . do not understand the idea of returning the Emperor to a position of power, and yet it is the thing that needs most to be done. What, then, are men of low rank to do to ease his Majesty’s mind? You know that one should hold the Imperial Court more dear than one’s country, and more dear than one’s parents. The idea that in times like these it is a violation of your proper duty to put your relatives second, your han second, to leave your mother, wife, and children—this is certainly a notion that comes from our stupid officials” . . . from an unpublished letter in the Seizan (Tanaka) Bunko, Sakawa, Kochi Prefecture. And there were other attractions of leaving, as shown in a letter Sakamoto wrote his sister in 1865: “In a place like home,” he wrote, “you can’t have any ambition. You waste your time loafing around, and pass the time like an idiot.” Sakamoto monjo, I, 136.
27 For the details of the trip, Ishin shiryo hensan jimmukyoku, Ishin shi (Tokyo, 1943), III, 23of; for the gōshi, Hayakawa Junzaburō, ed., Kambu tsūki (Tokyo, 1913), I, 421. A few months later gōshi and Shōya initiative was shown again when a party of fifty, among them Nakaoka Shintaro, insisted on being allowed to go to Edo to protect their former lord, Yōdō. Hirao, Rikuentai shimatsu ki, pp. 18-30.
28 For documentation based on Takechi’s fragmentary diary showing how his residence served as planning center for a series of such murders, Hirao, Takechi Zuizan, pp. 136-142.
29 Text in Takechi monjo, I, 109f. For Takechi’s activities in connection with this, Ishin Tosa kinnō shi, pp. 168f. The suggestion for a change in attendance at Edo was, however, already in the process of implementation at the suggestion of Matsudaira Shungaku.
30 Takechi monjo, I, 138. Ishin Tosa kinnō shi, pp. 189f.
31 Memories by Lord Redesdale (A. B. Mitford), (N. Y., n.d.), II, 438-439. There are good biographies by Hirao Michio, Yōdō Kō kiden (Tokyo, 1943), p. 447; and Sakazaki Bū, Geikai Suikō (Tokyo, 1902), p. 419. Geikai Suikō, “Drunken lord of the whale seas,” was the way Yōdō styled himself.
32 Characteristic of his method was the way Yōdō responded to Takechi when he was shown the signed pledge of the Loyalist Party. Instead of discussing it, he first said, “Hampeita, do you like sake? Let me pour you some.” And then, after a bit, “Your intentions are fine, but it’s not good to form a party. Let’s burn the pledge.” Hirao, Yōdō Kō, pp. 126-127.
33 Ishin Tosa kinnō shi, pp. 247-315.
34 Ibid., pp. 560-572, 644-651. The “Noneyama Incident.”
35 Full details of the interrogations, many of them in Takechi’s own words, inTosa kinnō, pp. 514-814, and in Tahechi monjo, II; sentence in monjo, II, 258-259, July 3, 1865. Years later Kido Kōin, Takechi’s old friend, asked Yōdō over sake: “Takechi was a man whose like we are not likely to see again; why did you have him executed?” Yōdō answered that Takechi was a rascal who had assassinated his minister Yoshida Tōyō, who had been reforming the government according to Yōdō’s wishes, and that if he had let him live the realm would have disintegrated. Ōmachi Keipetsu, Hakushaku Gotō Shōjirō (Tokyo, 1914), pp. 141-142. Sasaki’s memoirs bear out the argument that it was difficult to re-store order in Tosa as long as Takechi remained alive as a focus for the loyalists. Sasaki Rō Kō, p. 308.
36 Thus Kamioka Tanji suggested to Takechi that Osaka merchants, if they resisted pressure for forced loans, could be intimidated by having shishi commit hara-kiri on the spot, and predicted that no merchant could resist more than three suicides. Ishin Tosa kinnō shi, pp. 294-296. Other loyalists, how-ever, responded with more rational schemes as the prospect of power brought new responsibilities, and Mazaki Sōrō and Hirai Shūjirō advocated the purchase of foreign ships and the export of more han products to Osaka—ideas they had objected to in earlier days. Ibid., pp. 166, 259.
37 Takechi monjo, I, 370. The failure of Takechi’s party to rally commoner support is contrasted to the policy of the Chōshū loyalists by Haraguchi Kiyoshi, “Bakumatsu seisō no ikkōsatsu: Tosa han o chūshin to shite,” Rekishigaku kenkyū, No. 142 (Tokyo, 1949), p. 41, who finds the Tosa loyalists more land-based and less “modern” than their Chōshū counterparts.
