Admiral Togo

by Jonathan Clements

  Moreover, although the Shimazu clan did supposedly agree to pay an indemnity in the end, the amount was eventually reduced, paid for with a loan from the Shōgun (which Satsuma never repaid) and used, ironically, to buy several ships from the British.12

  Tōgō, like his superiors, had been impressed with the performance of the British. In years to come, he would cite the appearance of the Royal Navy as a turning-point in his life, when he realised that the only way to fight a sea power was on the sea. The British ships had also been a revelation to Tōgō – until hostilities broke out, he and many of his associates had believed that the technology possessed by the foreigners would be little different to that possessed by the Japanese. It was time, believed the Satsuma leaders, for their clan to learn from their enemies.

  Within a year, Kagoshima was home to a school of modern skills. The likes of Tōgō, who had learned old-fashioned artillery methods, were now instructed in naval gunnery, fortification against modern aggressors, astronomy, mathematics and navigation, ship-building, physics and even medical science. By 1866, the school had been renamed the Naval Institute, and Tōgō and two of his brothers had signed up as pupils.

  In 1867, the 19-year-old Tōgō was a star pupil, chosen for minor duties on a Satsuma mission to the Imperial capital of Kyoto. His duties did not extent far beyond guarding the Kyoto residence of the Shimazu envoy, but it gave him a window on momentous changes in the Japanese government. The white lies that had preserved harmony in Japan for centuries were unravelling. The Shōgun, charged with keeping barbarians out, had failed in his duties. The Emperor, although powerless, continued to chastise the Shōgun for his failures. Among the Japanese nobility, factions sprang up among local rulers who hoped to replace the errant Shōgun. Strangely, however, House Shimazu was not among them. Having experienced ‘barbarian’ aggression first-hand, the men of Satsuma were fully aware that the Shōgun was helpless, and that nobody could stand up to foreigners without first adopting foreign technology. Consequently, House Shimazu now advocated closer contacts with the outside world, so that Japan could learn from its enemies.

  The former Emperor, who had ruled Japan for two decades, died in February 1867, leaving the throne to his teenage son, the Meiji Emperor. The last Shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, pointedly requested that the new Emperor define the parameters of his job on 9 November. Ten days later, the Shōgun officially resigned. These seemingly innocuous events would set off a chain reaction in the Japanese government. The Shōgun had expected his resignation to shame the Emperor into begging him to return, or perhaps even offer to reinstate him under more realistic terms, but the Shōgun’s enemies within the noble houses greeted his departure with glee and began manoeuvring to replace him.

  The result was a brief and violent civil war, usually known as the Meiji Restoration. A baffling array of combatants duelled over who was the most loyal. The question of ‘loyal to what?’ would be answered with the deaths of thousands. Some clung to the notion that Japanese spirit would oust the foreigners, just as soon as the right man was put in charge as Shōgun. Others argued that Japan should invite foreign contact, all the better to learn how to defeat the new enemy. The factions were broadly divided into those who supported the old Shōgun, and those who nominally supported the Emperor. These groups were further divided into those who wanted to use their ‘loyalty’ as an excuse to overthrow the old order and those who wished to cling to it.

  Satsuma nominally supported the Emperor, as one of the fiefs that offered military support and modern weaponry to the Emperor’s faction. Buried somewhere within Satsuma’s rhetoric was a replay of the wars of centuries before, a long-awaited chance for revenge against House Tokugawa in the Emperor’s name. As a sea-faring domain, it was perhaps unsurprising that Satsuma soon constituted a large part of the nascent Imperial navy. At the time of the outbreak of the conflict, the young Tōgō was just old enough to qualify for service.

  Tōgō was ordered to report to his first naval posting as a gunner on the Satsuma clan vessel Kasuga. The Kasuga was a fully-rigged paddle frigate, originally built by a British firm to meet an order from the Chinese navy. When the Chinese had reneged on their contract, the vessel instead found a ready buyer in Satsuma. She had barely arrived at Kagoshima before she was dispatched north to bolster Satsuma’s bargaining power against Shōgunate forces.13

  Unfortunately, the Shōgunate forces had the upper hand and blockaded Hyōgo harbour, damaging the Satsuma steamship Heiun. The Heiun and her fellow vessel, the Shoho, were now stuck in port, along with the Kasuga, the pride of the Satsuma fleet – and, if truth be told, its sole warship. An official protested to Enomoto Takeaki, leader of the Shōgunate naval forces, and got an unambiguous reply.

  ‘The Tokugawa and your clan have already fought in Edo,’ said Enomoto. ‘From this fact, I can safely conclude that your clan is our enemy. How could one suffer an enemy’s vessel to leave port? You may give this message of mine to every vessel of your clan.’14

  The Kasuga’s new captain, Akatsuka Genroku, was with Tōgō when the news arrived of his appointment at New Year. The group of samurai immediately left their quarters at Fushimi near Kyoto and made the short trip downriver to Osaka. The Kasuga, however, was down the coast at the port of Hyōgo (now a district of modern Kobe), which was already blockaded by Shōgunate forces. Nor was there any marine transport available from Osaka, as all boatmen had been ordered to stay off the water.

  With no time to lose, Tōgō and his fellow officer Ijichi were ordered to requisition a boat at all costs. This Tōgō managed by bodily seizing crewmen by their collars and threatening to kill them unless they followed his orders. With a sulking but compliant crew, the Satsuma officers were able to make the relatively short distance to Kobe, where they sneaked aboard the Kasuga during the night.

  There, they heard of Admiral Enomoto’s threats and of the Kasuga’s response, which was to stoke up her boilers ready for action. Captain Akatsuka ordered that at dawn the ships would run the blockade of Tokugawa vessels. The Kasuga, towing the slower Shoho, would engage the enemy, while the Heiun ran for Kagoshima to report developments.

  However, before Captain Akatsuka’s plan could be put into action, the Satsuma ships received some unexpected assistance. Late that night, Admiral Enomoto’s lookouts reported the flashes and orange glows of fires, and the distant rumble of explosions on the horizon. Believing that Shōgunate forces were under attack elsewhere, the blockading Enomoto gave the order for his fleet to weigh anchor and head back towards Osaka.

  At dawn on 28 January 1868, Captain Akatsuka could not believe his luck. While the crew of the Kasuga, Tōgō among them, sulked that they had missed the chance for battle, Akatsuka ordered his ships out of port before Enomoto could return. All three ships successfully made it out of the harbour, and the Heiun steamed at full speed for the west, out of harm’s way.

  The Kasuga and Shoho continued towards the south in the winter mist, until a lookout reported the news that Akatsuka had been dreading. There was a column of black smoke on the horizon growing steadily nearer – one of the Shōgunate vessels was in pursuit. It was the Kaiyō, the majestic triple-masted flagship of the Tokugawa fleet, a state-of-the-art propeller-driven cruiser, whose construction Admiral Enomoto had personally overseen in the Netherlands. Her coal-fired engines topped out at 400 horsepower and her guns were European-standard, manufactured by Krupp.

  The Kasuga’s guns were no match for those on the Kaiyō, but Enomoto trusted in blind luck. When the distance between hunter and hunted closed to 2,800 metres, the Kaiyō let loose one of her 100-pound rounds. It splashed harmlessly into the sea, but the battle was on.15 The smoke columns of two more Shōgunate ships were now closing in. Captain Akatsuka was forced to give up on towing the Shoho, and ordered for the hawser attached to the slower ship to be cut. The Shoho peeled away from the battle and steamed after the Heiun. Had Enomoto been interested, he could have easily caught the Shoho, but his eyes were on the biggest prize, the Kasuga h
erself.

  The gunners on both ships opened up, with little success at long-range. As the range dropped to 1,200 metres, Tōgō’s piece scored a direct hit, as did two of his fellow gunners. Another of Tōgō’s shots carried off part of the Kaiyō’s rigging. The Kaiyō wheeled to the side, letting off a broadside of thirteen guns. All, however, missed, although one glanced off the outer cowling of the Kasuga’s paddle wheel. Had the Kaiyō’s cannonball hit squarely, the Kasuga would have been crippled, but now she was pulling steadily ahead. The Kaiyō might have had superior guns, but the Kasuga had superior speed and she steadily began to leave her pursuer behind.

  The Battle of Awa, as this exchange of fire became known, was the first occasion that Japanese ships had fought with European technology. It showed that the Japanese still had much to learn – of the 138 shots fired, only three, including Tōgō’s own, hit their targets. The Kasuga successfully evaded pursuit, and the Heiun made it safely back to Kagoshima. The Shoho, however, barely made it more than a few miles before she ran aground and was burned by her crew to avoid falling into enemy hands.

  2

  The Republic of Ezo

  The smoke and fires on the horizon that had lured Admiral Enomoto away during the blockade had been the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, a four-day conflict between Shōgunate samurai and forces proclaiming themselves to be loyal to the young Meiji Emperor. It was a chilling presentiment of the differences between the old and new orders. The Shōgunate forces were armed with swords and pikes, charging a line of soldiers from Satsuma and Chōshū who were armed with machine guns and artillery. The Shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, was greatly troubled by the appearance of the Meiji Emperor’s brocade banner among the hostile forces of Satsuma and Chōshū, which was sure to cost him support from some of the less sure samurai. He got a taste of his diminishing power-base when he sought refuge in nearby Yodo castle, only to be curtly refused entry. The lord of the castle, a noble who knew which way the wind was blowing, announced he could not be seen to be offering support to a man who had opposed the Emperor’s own flag, regardless of the Tokugawa claim to be doing so out of ‘loyalty’ to what he thought the Emperor ought to be commanding. Although Tokugawa did not know it at the time, the influential Imperial banner was actually a Satsuma forgery – but it had the desired effect.

  Running out of options in the Kyoto/Osaka region, Tokugawa Yoshinobu fled for the coast, where he passed an uneasy night aboard the sloop uss Iroquois. The Iroquois was one of several American vessels that had been sent to the area, ironically to protect the interests of the self-same foreigners that the Shōgun had been ordered to expel. Instead, Tokugawa was obliged to sleep on a ‘barbarian’ vessel until the tardy arrival of Admiral Enomoto the following day. Fresh from chasing the Kasuga, and still missing part of her rigging thanks to Tōgō’s gunnery, the Kaiyō arrived off the coast in time to pick up the fuming Shōgun, along with as much gold as he could pilfer from the local treasure houses. The Kaiyō and her important passenger then sailed for Edo, where he hoped to fight another day. His refusal to accept the new order led to the next phase in the upheavals of the Meiji Restoration, the Boshin War – the War of the Year of the Dragon.

  The Kasuga was only back in port in Kagoshima for a few days before she was ordered north once more as an escort for a troop transport. Tōgō and his fellow officers passed a tense few days sailing back through the Inland Sea, towards the site of their recent chase off Awaji Island. However, in the aftermath of Toba-Fushimi, forces hostile to Satsuma had quit the Inland Sea, and the Kasuga’s trip was uneventful.

  Tōgō returned home in February 1868, granted shore leave while the Kasuga sailed on without him to Shanghai for a four-month refit. He went to see his mother, who tried to put a brave face on her solitude. A mother who had given birth to six children, she had already seen two, a boy and a girl, die in infancy. Now, in the space of twelve months, her husband had died and all her surviving sons had marched off to war. Tōgō passed the spring dividing his time between Masuko and his duties in Kagoshima, which now included teaching at the Naval Institute.

  Tōgō and Captain Akatsuka rejoined the Kasuga in Shanghai in midsummer and sailed her back to Kagoshima. News drifted down from the north that Edo, too, had surrendered without a fight to the Imperial forces, and was now renamed Tokyo. The Shōgun had surrendered to the Meiji Emperor and had been ushered into a quiet retirement.

  However, merely because the Shōgun had given in did not mean that the other samurai clans would do so. Many in the north of Japan regarded the Meiji ‘Restoration’ with some justification as little more than a power-grab by the clans of Satsuma and Chōshū, and refused to back down. They argued that merely because the former Shōgun had failed in his duties, that was no reason to abolish all the old institutions. Furthermore, whether Japan was to be ‘modernised’ or not was largely moot if the decisions were all being taken by Satsuma and Chōshū. Northern noblemen, such as Lord Matsudaira of Aizu, protested that they were not being asked to submit to the Meiji Emperor, but to the Emperor as a figurehead for usurpers. With that in mind, out of ‘loyalty’ to what the Emperor might have otherwise wanted, they refused to submit, and the civil war continued to rage in the north.

  Tōgō now had new orders to sail for the north, and waved his mother goodbye once more. Soon after he left, Masuko would receive more unwelcome news. Tōgō’s youngest brother Shirozaemon had succumbed to an unspecified illness while serving with the Satsuma forces, and died in September 1868, aged seventeen.

  The Kasuga steamed up the western coast of Japan, accompanied by two other Satsuma vessels. On the coast opposite Sado Island, she took another VIP onboard. Saigō Takamori, a hefty Satsuma military leader, boarded the Kasuga with some of his men in order to be transported further north to new battlegrounds. Remembering the young Tōgō from his brother’s childhood calligraphy classes, Saigō playfully referred to him as a ‘dunce’. Despite the implied insult, the sharp words had the reverse effect on Tōgō’s shipmates, establishing that he was on first-name terms with the Satsuma clan’s best-known military leader, a man renowned for his gruff, belligerent nature.1

  The typhoon season was looming and the seas were becoming increasingly rough, but Saigō was full of praise for the sailors, whose efforts allowed him and his men to leapfrog ahead of the Shōgunate dissenters. The Kasuga shuttled back and forth on Japan’s west coast for over a fortnight, forced on nine separate occasions to seek shelter from the frequent storms in the waters off Sado Island.

  On the other coast of Japan, Admiral Enomoto was suffering the same storms, but without any convenient shelter. Enomoto’s flagship Kaiyō and her fellow warships, the Kaiten and Chiyoda,2 were escorting four troop transports north, hoping to reach a stronghold at Hakodate, on the coast of Ezo. There, Enomoto hoped to regroup with the remnants of the land forces and make a stand on the northernmost island. The storm cost him two of his transports and caused substantial damage, but after repairs made on the run in several harbours, Enomoto reached Ezo and put his men ashore.

  Enomoto’s resolve paid off. While the Imperial forces were still huddling out of the rain further down the coast, his men were able to land and reinforce the troops already there. A dual land and sea action saw the Shōgunate forces snatch three important towns in south Ezo, ending with the occupation of Goryōkaku (‘The Pentagon’), a massive modern fortress in the shape of a five-pointed star. The victory, however, was tainted by a great loss – Enomoto’s beloved Kaiyō ran aground and sank in one of the autumn storms. The Admiral, who had personally supervised the Kaiyō’s construction, sailed her all the way from Europe, and commanded her in countless battles, was inconsolable.

  Despite their losses, the Shōgunate forces had a secure base on Ezo, where they rightly believed that they would be left unmolested until the passing of the winter. With the Shōgun’s surrender, however, they no longer regarded themselves as Shōgunate forces. Indeed, the bulk of Japan was lost to them, with only Ezo in their hands
. Consequently, the rebels ended the Year of the Dragon by taking a bold step. They proclaimed that Ezo was no longer part of the Japanese Empire proper, but a newly independent nation.

  The Republic of Ezo, with Admiral Enomoto as its president, would be a place where traditional values still held, where samurai would be free to live as they had in the old days and, most importantly, where the usurpers from Satsuma and Chōshū would not enjoy any authority. Even in proclaiming a Republic, the rebels maintained a sense of loyalty – their flag retained the chrysanthemum symbol of the Japanese Empire. As far as Enomoto could see, Ezo was still an outlying region of the Japanese Empire and not part of the Japanese ‘homeland’. The Tokugawa clan, which had ruled Japan in the Emperor’s name for two centuries, could not simply be struck off and cast out. Surely, it was better to give the Tokugawa a parcel of land on the borders, Ezo itself? This would save honour on all sides, prevent the many loyal Tokugawa retainers from destitution, and help firm up Imperial control over Ezo. So sure was Enomoto that this suggestion would work that he even formally presented it to the Emperor. The Imperial faction, however, was not prepared to let its bitterest enemies set up a semi-independent state at the edge of the Empire. That was, after all, how Satsuma and Chōshū had come to power in the first place.

  Enomoto’s Republic was funded with the 180,000 gold coins he had managed to snatch from the south. It was supported by his own troops and conditionally recognised by both the British and the French, whose consuls on Ezo saw new opportunities for treaties and concessions. The French were particularly keen on the Republic of Ezo. The second-in-command of Enomoto’s land forces was Jules Brunet, a former military adviser to the Shōgun, who had ‘resigned’ his commission after the Shōgun’s surrender in order to stay with the rebels. Brunet led eight samurai brigades, each commanded by a French lieutenant, and was instrumental in the incorporation of French military discipline into the nascent Republic.