Admiral Togo

by Jonathan Clements

  In 1856, the eight-year-old Tōgō took full advantage of a day off school for the Feast of Lanterns. Instead of joining in local festivities, he was found in a nearby stream, slashing at passing fish with a short sword. In the space of only a few minutes, Tōgō managed to slay over fifty fish, although the story seems to lack context. How would Tōgō find so many carp in such close concentration? Were they really just swimming past, or did the young Tōgō go on a killing spree in a nearby pond? If so, there is no record of any punishment he may have received. Nor is he known to have been chastised for another incident, in which he stole and ate an entire jar of candies from his mother’s kitchen. Tōgō had asked his mother if he could have some of the sweets, and Masuko had replied with a parental deception: that all the candies were gone. Tōgō then reportedly waited until his mother was out of the house, climbed up to the cupboard and ate the contents of the entire jar. Berated by an angry Masuko on her return, Tōgō replied with an icy rationalisation, calculated to strike at his mother’s sense of fair play: ‘What wasn’t there can’t have disappeared.’3

  At around the age of ten, Tōgō argued with his brother Sokuro about an unknown point of contention. Later in the day, his brother came out of an inn’s communal bath parched with thirst and ordered Tōgō to bring him a drink. Quarrels or not, Tōgō was obliged by custom to obey his elders and he dutifully fetched some water. However, he added a liberal seasoning of raw pepper. Sokuro drank deeply from the cup, only realising his mistake as the hot pepper caused him to choke and splutter.

  The errant Tōgō was dragged before the family and ordered to apologise. He refused to do so, immediately elevating fraternal high spirits to a matter of honour – he was not now teasing his brother, he was disobeying his father, a far more serious offence. With Tōgō refusing to budge, he was sentenced to ten days ‘exile’ from the family, confined under house arrest at the home of one of Kichizaemon’s subordinates. He returned to the family when his sentence had passed, unrepentant.4

  Tōgō’s education followed traditional lines, even in progressive Satsuma. He would wake before dawn each day, leaving at sunrise for the house of Saigō Kichijirō, a local dignitary who taught the boys calligraphy. In this capacity, Tōgō also met Saigō’s elder brother Takamori, who would become a famous military hero. Two hours later, the boys would return home for their ablutions, the ‘tying-up of hair’ before heading out for a second home school where they studied the Confucian Classics – long regarded as the only education worth having. In the afternoons, Tōgō would practise for an hour each day with a sword, and any energy that may have remained after such exhausting studies would be dissipated in afternoon play by the banks of the River Kotsuki. Among Tōgō’s childhood playmates were at least two men who would go on to military careers, Kuroki Tamesada, who would become a general in the Russo-Japanese War, and Ijichi Hiroichi, who would be Tōgō’s companion in his early naval days.

  History and Japanese literature were added to Tōgō’s curriculum at the age of eleven, and by 1860, when he was twelve by Western reckoning, he was officially recognised as an adult. The teenaged Tōgō was put to work for his clan as a minor clerk in one of the Shimazu clan offices. As with all samurai, his salary was paid in rice, half a bushel a month. But it would be inaccurate to describe Tōgō as a mere clerk – he was also a sometime farmer, tending the family’s vegetable patch and studying gunnery.

  The samurai expected trouble, and largely expected it from foreigners. While there were still ample quarrels among the various noble houses, the Japanese were united in their mistrust of the Europeans and Americans and their constant agitations for trade. Even progressive Japanese, keen to learn from the new arrivals, often couched their rhetoric in terms of knowing one’s enemy. The Japanese may have been isolated, but they were well aware of the behaviour of the Westerners in China, where they had ignored Imperial edicts, peddled drugs to the populace, and carved enclaves for themselves out of Chinese territory. The Westerners constantly spoke of ‘trade’ as if buying and selling might solve all the world’s ills. The Japanese, whose social system placed merchants at the very bottom of the hierarchy, below bold warriors and honest farmers, preferred to keep foreign trade corralled into specially delineated ghettos, and opened new ports to foreigners only with great reluctance.

  The other favourite subject of the foreigners was religion, which the Europeans and Americans were keen to force upon the Japanese. Christianity had been one of the most unwelcome foreign imports in the samurai era and its practice was still an offence punishable by death. This would only add to the unease of the government in years to come, as the foreign visitors began to insist on freedom to worship and, eventually, to proselytise.

  The peculiar rules of Japanese diplomacy made it difficult to mount a concerted defence. It was, supposedly, the Shōgun’s job to keep out foreigners. With every indignity or incursion, the Shōgun’s competence was called into question. The Emperor would order him to deal with the foreign problem, and he would promise to do so. Meanwhile, the Shōgun’s rivals would fume that they could do a better job themselves, and in some cases took matters into their own hands.

  The southern domains of Satsuma and Chōshū were particularly notorious. Chōshū even commenced firing upon foreign shipping in the Straits of Shimonoseki, leading to the arrival of a punitive multinational task force. Not to be outdone, Satsuma soon manufactured an incident of its own in 1862. The catalyst was outrageously disproportionate to the response, amounting to a scuffle on the road in the small village of Namamugi, near Yokohama. Shimazu Hisamitsu, father and regent to the young ruler of House Shimazu, had completed his most recent period of mandatory attendance in the capital, and was returning to Satsuma. As was usual for samurai potentates, he travelled in a long caravan of horsemen, retainers and palanquins. Outriders galloped ahead announcing the approach of a feudal lord, ordering all in the Satsuma lord’s path to avert their eyes, bow low to the ground and above all, to stand aside.

  At Namamugi, the Satsuma group ran into a small party of mounted foreigners, who refused to give way. Charles Lennox Richardson, a British merchant with a bullish reputation, was accompanied by his associates Mr Marshal and Mr Clarke, and by a lady, Miss Borodaille. Reputedly proclaiming, ‘I know how to deal with these people,’ Richardson deliberately rode into the path of the Shimazu lord, intent on forcing his way through.

  Neither side can be relied upon for an unbiased account. The British survivors would claim that they had simply refused to dismount – which would have been rude, but was still legal under the extraterritorial agreements that allowed British subjects to disregard Japanese law. The samurai saw things differently, and interpreted their behaviour as a direct challenge. Even if Richardson had merely crossed in front of the baggage train, that would have been tantamount to an assault in the eyes of jumpy henchmen – the Satsuma finances were being carried in the foremost boxes.

  In the melee that followed, the Satsuma retainers drew their swords, killed Richardson and seriously wounded the other two men. Miss Borodaille escaped with ‘only the loss of her hair’, implying perhaps that a samurai had hacked off her braid before she fled. One of the foreigners pelted off back to the safety of the foreign concession in Yokohama, while the Satsuma party continued on its way.5

  The samurai knew that there would be trouble. On the advice of Ōkubo Toshimichi, a young tax administrator in the group, they did not spend the night in nearby Kanagawa as originally planned, but ran for the more distant Hodogaya instead. It was a deliberate attempt to get away from the scene of the crime, but whose crime remained a matter of some dispute.

  When the news reached Britain, the blame was immediately laid at the feet of the Japanese. An angry diplomatic communiqué ordered that the lord of Satsuma was to pay substantial damages in atonement for his regent’s misdeeds. Furthermore, an even more substantial sum was to be handed over by the Shōgun himself. The incident was an awful loss of face for the Shōgun, who had been embar
rassed enough by the requirement of dealing with foreigners at all, and was now obliged to pay damages on account of his inability to guarantee the safety of foreigners within his own domain.

  Vice Admiral Augustus Kuper, commander of the British fleet in China, was ordered to send ships to Yokohama. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Neale arrived in August 1863 with seven ships and a total of 121 guns.6 Shōgunate officials had little choice but to pay their share of the indemnity. But with the Satsuma samurai refusing to acknowledge their supposed crime, Neale was ordered to sail south to Kagoshima. This was, pleaded the Shōgun’s envoys, a matter of great embarrassment to the Shōgun. The Shōgunate even offered to send one of its own ships to accompany the British to Shimazu, although the promised support never arrived. Nor did it seem likely, since in actively resisting ‘barbarians’, the samurai of Shimazu were effectively showing greater obedience to the Emperor than the more accommodating Shōgun.

  The imposing British ships dropped anchor in the deep water between the harbour town of Kagoshima and the nearby island of Sakurajima on 11 August 1863. Tōgō, it is said, watched them as they arrived, his fists clenched in frustration. Satsuma envoys rowed out to the ships, where they were presented with a 24-hour ultimatum to pay up. Instead, as the weather turned stormy in poetic sympathy, the guns of the Satsuma forces fired a series of blank charges. It was a signal to the samurai of Kagoshima to prepare for battle.7

  The 15-year-old Tōgō reported for duty, along with his father and two elder brothers. Kichizaemon was posted to the Yamaguchi Fort, which sat at the entrance to the bay. The boys served at the headquarters, Kagoshima Castle, set back from the coastal batteries. The boys donned their long coats and their broad hakama trousers, before placing lacquered helmets on their heads, each decorated with the family crest: five ivy leaves. At his waist, Tōgō wore the two swords of a samurai, but at his shoulder he carried a matchlock musket. The boys stood to attention outside their home, waiting for their mother Masuko’s word. She waved them off with the laconic command of a samurai mother: ‘Do not lose.’8

  The Shimazu samurai were more prepared than the British had assumed. The small bay was guarded by a total of ten gun batteries, mainly armed with Dutch-made cannons, fifty-four siege guns, thirteen field guns and fifteen mortars. Twelve boats, each mounted with a single gun, were intended as suicide rams for use against the British. There were even three mines in the water, each attached to a long copper wire awaiting an electrical charge to detonate them.9

  Out in the bay, the envoys continued to stall, claiming that the Lord Shimazu was away at distant Kirishima and there was nobody in port with sufficient authority. They asked if Neale could wait a while. Used to Japanese delaying tactics, Neale curtly told them that he was waiting twenty-four hours and no longer. His orders from Vice Admiral Kuper were to deliver Richardson’s murderers and a £25,000 indemnity, otherwise there would be dire consequences.

  Meanwhile, the dozen suicide boats attempted to put men aboard the British vessels by posing as merchants and hawkers. They were given short shrift by the British, who refused to let them approach. A second espionage mission also foundered, when an envoy approached the flagship HMS Euryalus and asked to be permitted onboard with his entourage to deliver the Satsuma samurai’s answer. This ‘answer’ was intended to be a suicidal attack, in which the members of the entourage would draw their swords, hack at the British sailors and either scuttle the Euryalus or die trying. This, too, was a damp squib, when Captain John Josling of the Euryalus sternly noted that it only took one man to deliver a message.

  His bluff called, the commander of the samurai was allowed aboard the Euryalus by Vice Admiral Kuper and Lieutenant Colonel Neale, where he offered the entirely pointless suggestion that the British might consult instead with the Shōgun. Neale’s ominous and angry reply was that negotiations were at an end, and the Japanese officer was sent back to the shore.10

  The streets of Kagoshima were quiet. In many of the temples, the womenfolk had gathered to pray to Buddha for a supernatural intercession. The last time Japan had been threatened by foreign invasion, at the time of the Mongol Armada in the 13th century, the prayers of the Japanese had, they believed, successfully summoned not one, but two fierce storms to destroy their enemies. It was hoped that the prayers of the people of Kagoshima would rustle up a similar Divine Wind, or in Japanese, Kamikaze. Miraculously, the weather seemed to be obliging. The skies darkened noticeably after noon; and aboard the British ships, the barometers fell with alarming speed. As the waters of the bay grew choppier, the British changed their anchorage, moving closer to the volcano of Sakurajima in order to shield themselves from the worst of the oncoming storm.

  The following morning, determined to fulfil his orders to the letter, Vice Admiral Kuper decided that three foreign-built steam vessels, merchant ships owned by House Shimazu, had a value roughly equivalent to the money that was owed for the Satsuma indemnity. Accordingly, he ordered a group of his men to sail closer to the shore and commandeer the ships. The drizzle rendered visibility so poor that many of the Japanese could not see what was going on. By the time riders had relayed the news to headquarters, the British had already seized the three vessels and moved them over to their own part of the harbour.

  Finally, the samurai opened fire. As the Japanese guns began to boom, Kuper ordered his men to take out their aggression first on the three newly captured steamers. It was only as the column of flames and smoke began to twist up from the captured Satsuma ships that the British vessels returned fire. The Japanese were using old-fashioned cannon, employing the antiquated method of ‘red-hot shot’ – cannonballs pre-heated in a furnace. It was hoped that these would start fires within the enemy ships, but they also added extra dangers for their gunners. Mere contact with the hot shot would be enough to set off gunpowder, forcing the Satsuma gunners to wad their powder down with a divot of earth before gingerly dropping the glowing cannon ball from their tongs into the gun’s mouth.

  The British, however, had modern weapons, with shaped, tapered shells. The long line of British ships erupted in a series of bright flashes, milliseconds behind the roar of the explosions and dozens of simultaneous impacts on the shore. Amid the British bombardment, the samurai raced to reload their cannon and return fire. The fires that broke out in Kagoshima town were largely left to rage, while the samurai womenfolk scurried from battery to battery with pots of Satsuma-jiru, a pork and vegetable stew.

  At one moment in the bombardment, Tōgō caught sight of his own mother, down by the shoreline, calmly combing her hair. A British shell landed perilously close to her, throwing up a massive cloud of dust and rock shards, but Masuko seemed undaunted. She rose to her feet, continuing to run her comb through her hair, staring out at the enemy ships in silent contemplation.11

  Despite their military strength, the British were taken by surprise – it seems that they had genuinely been expecting the Satsuma resistance to collapse as soon as faced with the threat of force. The ships chugged into action, brashly sailing along the coastline into the path of the Satsuma guns, firing their guns into the town of Kagoshima. The shells were devastating the wood and paper houses of the town, but the population had been largely evacuated in anticipation of hostilities. HMS Havoc, a small gunboat, directed her fire at a cluster of trading junks from the Ryūkyū Islands, sinking five ships. Other British vessels did not fare so well. HMS Racehorse briefly ran aground in the mud right in front of the fort, while the captain and first officer of the flagship, HMS Euryalus, were both decapitated by the same enemy cannonball. The Racehorse was soon retrieved, towed out of danger after a tense hour in which the grounded ship maintained a constant barrage of shellfire against the shore batteries, while her sister-ships attached cables and dragged her out of the shallows.

  Time after time, the flotilla of British ships sailed along the Kagoshima shoreline, pounding the forts into rubble and lobbing explosive shells into the combustible streets of the town. The British only gave up when nig
ht fell once more and another storm threatened. With Kagoshima in flames, the British pulled back to their starting position beneath Sakurajima, and whiled away the night celebrating and listening to their bandsmen play a series of martial toe-tappers. The sound of their party drifted in snatches across the water, where it could occasionally be heard through the roar of the fires in Kagoshima.

  Tōgō and his fellow warriors had been led to expect that the British bombardment was merely the opening phase of an attack. Samurai leaders were sure that once the Satsuma defences had been sufficiently softened up, the British would land in force. The samurai had assured each other that a land battle would be the great equaliser, and that the British would be no match for samurai when they came out from hiding behind their modern guns. The British, however, considered their mission to have been largely accomplished. The following morning the ships weighed anchor and steamed out of the bay and back to sea. Quite literally as a parting shot, they trained their guns on a couple of small forts they had previously missed and shelled them as they passed. Out on the shoreline, Tōgō and his fellow young samurai stared in disbelief. Some of their number even ran into the water, hurling abuse from the shallows or making futile efforts to swim after the departing ships.

  The differing priorities of the opposing forces live on to this day. British history books usually refer to the incident simply as the Bombardment of Kagoshima, in which a group of ships arrived, punitively scuttled a trio of merchantmen, shelled Kagoshima and then set off again, the fractious samurai of Satsuma having been taught a lesson they would not forget. Japanese sources, however, refer to the exchange of fire as the Anglo-Satsuma War, and regard it as a Japanese victory. After all, the British ran without attempting a landing, no Satsuma cannon fell into enemy hands and the murderers of Charles Richardson remained at large. Moreover, just as a true battle – the clash of swordsmen – was due to commence, the cowardly British had turned tail and fled.