Admiral Togo

by Jonathan Clements

  3. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 12, listed under her post-1871 name of Azuma.

  4. E Collache, ‘Une Aventure au Japon’, in Le Tour du Monde: Nouveau Journal des Voyages, no. 77 (1874) p 51.

  5. Collache, ‘Une Aventure au Japon’, p 51. Collache wrote his account some time afterwards, but there were clearly still sensitivities about the behaviour of the Frenchmen in ‘deserting’ their commissions to serve the Republic of Ezo. Consequently, Collache only uses his friends’ initials in his account. I have restored their full names.

  6. Collache’s account is at odds with what is generally believed in modern Japan. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 39, credits Admiral Enomoto with the idea for the entire operation and does not mention the French at all.

  7. R Hillsborough, Shinsengumi: The Shōgun’s Last Samurai Corps (Tuttle Publishing, Tokyo: 2005) p 172. E and J Barnes (eds), Naval Surgeon: Revolt in Japan 1868–1869, The Diary of Dr. Samuel Pellman Boyer (Indiana University Press, Bloomington: 1963) p 270, repeats the assertion of an observer at the time that the Kōtetsu may have been ‘under the management of Englishmen, several of whom are reported to be in the service of the Mikado and in this expedition’. However, these mystery Britons are even more obscure in the record than their French adversaries – Japanese accounts concentrate largely on the Japanese and have edged foreign participants out of history.

  8. Collache, ‘Une Aventure au Japon’, p 54.

  9. Collache, ‘Une Aventure au Japon’, p 55. This was a particular irritation to Collache, as neither he nor his men had eaten for 20 hours, and now knew that they would not eat again for some time. Collache surrendered several days later and was sentenced to death, but was reunited with his fellow Frenchmen after the fall of Hakodate and returned to France. Like the other Frenchmen, he was judged to be a ‘deserter’ by a military tribunal, but punished so lightly that he was back in French service by the time of the Franco-Prussian War. At least two of the French stayed behind in Japan and one, the non-commissioned officer Clateau, opened Japan’s first French restaurant.

  10. Andō Tarō, quoted in Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, pp 42–3.

  11. R Bodley, Admiral Tōgō: The Authorized Life of Admiral of the Fleet, Marquis Heihachirō Tōgō, O.M. (Jarrolds, London: 1935) p 54.

  12. ATAM, p 65, misdates this with the lunar calendar as 24 April.

  13. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 44.

  14. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 115. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 48, rates Matsuoka Bankichi, the commander of the Banryū, alongside the late Captain Kōga of the Kaiten, killed in the Battle of Miyako Bay, as ‘unequalled for bravery in the feudal government’s navy’. The Banryū had a long afterlife. She was salvaged by the Americans and returned to the Imperial navy after a refit as the Raiden. In 1888, she was struck off the naval lists and sold as a whaler, in which capacity she served for a further eleven years.

  3: Johnny Chinaman

  1. ATAM, p 66. Other sources give the name as Wagman, but Charles Wirgman is the most likely candidate among the foreigners then in Japan.

  2. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 54.

  3. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 12.

  4. A Capel, ‘Admiral Haihachi [sic] Tōgō as a youth’, in The Strand Magazine, April 1905 issue, pp 474–5. The article is illustrated by Tōgō’s signature in his own hand, demonstrating that ‘Haihachi’ was how he chose to romanise his name in his student days. Most sources claim that Tōgō was lodged with the Capels after his naval studies, but this seems unlikely. Not only does Capel himself state the opposite, but his account of Tōgō’s linguistic ability is that of a faltering newcomer to the language, not the fluent sailor of Henderson-Smith’s memories of Tōgō on the Worcester. Furthermore, the Imperial Japanese Troupe, featuring the famous ‘All Right’, toured England in 1868. If Tōgō did not arrive until 1874, surely young Master Capel would have been too young to have remembered a visit by Japanese acrobats some six or seven years earlier. Tōgō may have stayed with the Capels both before and after his service on the Worcester, which would help explain the discrepancies, although it would still not explain why Capel would think that a young Tōgō, believing himself to be going blind, would volunteer for active nautical training. One final explanation, rooted in Japanese etiquette, may be that Tōgō was not as happy with the Capel family as they believed and that his removal from their care ‘for medical reasons’ was a discreet brush-off.

  5. ATAM, p 66, says Tōgō was sent to Portsmouth. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 54, says Plymouth. Both, however, claim that Tōgō regularly went down to the docks to see Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, which makes Portsmouth a far more likely location. F Stafford, The History of the ‘Worcester’: The Official Account of the Thames Nautical Training College, HMS Worcester 1862–1929 (Frederick Warne, London: 1929) p 160, settles the argument by noting that Tōgō signed up at Greenhithe with the claim that his ‘former school’ had been the Royal Naval Academy at Gosport (i.e. close to Portsmouth). However, this does not explain how Tōgō could think he had attended a school that his biographers universally agree was closed to him at the time.

  6. E Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power (Longmans, Green and Co., New York: 1936) p 92.

  7. ATAM, p 244.

  8. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 91; ATAM, p 67. The ATAM version seems to have been lifted from a Japanese source, possibly Ogasawara, and retranslated back into English, hence the slight differences between the two texts.

  9. Stafford, The History of the Worcester, p 160.

  10. Stafford, The History of the Worcester, pp 160–1.

  11. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 56.

  12. ATAM, p 67.

  13. Ernest Vanderstegen, letter to the Times, quoted in Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 470. Vanderstegen, a resident of Reading, appears to be the same man who patented a device for ‘assembling or dismantling the pistons of engine cylinders’ in 1924.

  14. D Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World 1852–1912 (Columbia University Press, New York: 2002) p 247. See also R Eskildsen, Foreign Adventurers and the Aborigines of Southern Taiwan, 1867–1874: Western Sources Related to Japan’s 1874 Expedition to Taiwan (Academica Sinica, Taipei: 2005) p 238. Ironically, the imposition of Japanese rule, not only on the Ryūkyū Islands, but on Taiwan itself after 1895, was no guarantee of peaceable behaviour from the natives. In an embarrassing incident in 1904, a number of American sailors were murdered on an island off the coast of Taiwan. What had been a casus belli for the Japanese when the Chinese were in charge was left by the Americans for the new Japanese rulers to police. See H Toiviainen, Search for Security: United States Citizens in the Far East, 1890–1906. A comparative study of problems related to safeguarding Americans in China and Japan (Studia Historia Jyväskyläensia 33, Jyväskylä: 1986) p 348.

  15. J Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development 1839–1895 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1967) pp 61–2.

  16. The shipyard is no longer there, but it is now the Samuda Estate.

  17. ATAM, p 36.

  4: Delicate Diplomacies

  1. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, p 74. An inferior translation of the same passage is in ATAM, pp 74–5.

  2. Jingei: ‘Fast Whale’. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 88.

  3. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 108.

  4. ATAM, p 69, with which most other sources agree. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, p 67, claims February 1882.

  5. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 110. Some foreign sources call her Tetsuko, but Japanese sources agree on Tetsu. The -ko suffix is common in Japanese girls’ names, but seems to have been absent in this case.

  6. Amagi: ‘Celestial Fortress’, named for a mountain in Shizuoka. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 90.

&n
bsp; 7. Or so claims Lloyd, Admiral Tōgō (Kinkōdō, Tokyo: 1905), p 52.

  8. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 71.

  9. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 113; ATAM, p 71. Nire commanded the Kongō, Hanabusa was aboard the two-masted Meiji; the other ships were the Amagi, Nisshin, Seiki, Hiei, Moshun, Iwaki and Tōgō’s former ship, the imperial yacht Jingei. Falk claims there were eight warships, but appears to have discounted the Meiji, a schooner that is also not included in Jentschura et al.

  10. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, p 69, suggests that the idea came from Tōgō, an assertion not repeated elsewhere, although Bodley does claim that his biography is ‘authorised’. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 114, claims that the idea was Nire’s. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 73, claims that the vessel they tracked was ‘local’, and that the Chinese warships arrived afterwards. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 376, claims that the Chinese arrived first, saw the Kongō, which had arrived shortly ahead of the others, thought better of it and went away. The Chinese ships then returned shortly afterwards, hence technically arriving ‘after’ the Japanese although they had been in the vicinity for twenty-four hours.

  11. Keene, Emperor of Japan, pp 376–7.

  12. Bodley, Admiral Tōgō, p 69.

  13. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 116. Ogasawara, Life of Admiral Tōgō, p 71, notes that Tōgō fired a salute appropriate for a commodore, but that the captain demanded a salute fit for a ‘commander’ (sic) – presumably Ogasawara means that Tōgō had kindly upgraded the captain to a commodore because he was commanding a flotilla of several ships, but the captain insisted that he warranted an admiral’s salute.

  14. Daini Teibō: the name appears to be a reference to a famous date in the Chinese calendar (1636), when Abahai, the Manchu father of the first Qing emperor, invaded Korea. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 113.

  15. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 82.

  16. R Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy 1862–1945 (Chatham Publishing, London: 2000) p 62, claims that Courbet did notify the Chinese of his intentions to attack, but that the missive was lost in the confusion of local bureaucracy and not truly understood until it was too late. R Johnson, Far China Station: The US Navy in Asian Waters 1800–1898 (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis: 1979) p 210, notes that the Chinese commanders had wanted to initiate hostilities against the French, but had been prevented from doing so by their own superiors, because the Chinese thought it was improper behaviour to begin without an official declaration of war and had assumed that the French would act with similar discretion. See also Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 119.

  17. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 82.

  18. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 123.

  5: Princes and Prisoners

  1. Yamato: a classically poetic name for Japan. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 91.

  2. A daughter, Yachiyo, born 13 October 1891. She was the only Tōgō girl to survive, two elder sisters having died in infancy. ATAM, p 76.

  3. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 14. She appears in a Japanese naval list because she would eventually fall into Japanese hands in 1895, as would the Pingyuan, listed on the same page.

  4. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 92, notes that Ding’s homeward journey was a disaster. The Chaoyong was briefly stuck on a shoal while under Ding’s command, and the Yangwei unforgivably ran out of coal partway across the Mediterranean and drifted helplessly for two days. With such problems in mind, we can readily understand Tōgō’s refusal to be impressed.

  5. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 460.

  6. Times, 24 July 1883, quoted in Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, p 54. For ‘practically invincible’, ibid, p 50.

  7. ATAM, p 76. W Tyler, Pulling Strings in China (Constable, London: 1929) p 47, also notes Lin’s habitual reticence. Scandalously, neither Ding Ruchang nor Lin Taizeng (nor, less surprisingly, Liu Buchan) are included among the biographies in A Hummel’s landmark Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1614–1912) (US Government Printing Office, Washington: 1943), despite their service to their Emperor.

  8. Blond, Admiral Tōgō, p 87.

  9. ATAM, p 76. Tōgō’s superiors were sufficiently spooked by the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan that they ordered the construction of a ship in France with guns specifically designed to take them out. The resulting vessel, the top-heavy Unebi, was completed in 1886 but disappeared without a trace on the long journey to Japan, presumed sunk by her own unseaworthiness. Jentschura et al., Ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, p 96; Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, p 80. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 152, reports a similar ‘courtesy call’ made by three Japanese warships on the Fuzhou dockyard in 1894. The local authorities vainly suggested that the Chinese reciprocate by sending six ships of their own to shame the Japanese, seemingly unaware that the Japanese were only answering a previous Chinese challenge.

  10. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 349.

  11. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 792 n.14.

  12. Naniwa: a poetic name for the Osaka area. Jentschura et al., Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, pp 95–6.

  13. J Morgan, Senate Report 227, a.k.a. The Morgan Report (Washington: US Government, 53rd Congress, 2nd Session, 1894), pp 1106–7. Online version at http://morganreport. org. Accessed 21st July 2009. Consul Fuji’s obfuscating reply was crafted in a single unwieldy sentence and included in the US Senate Report 227 of the 53rd Congress as a ‘letter of recognition’, although it was nothing of the sort. Whereas, for example, the consuls of most other nations clearly and immediately acknowledged the Provisional Government, Fuji’s reply seems deliberately verbose and unclear: ‘The receipt of your communication, dated the 17th instant, inclosing a copy of proclamation issued on the same day, informing me that for reasons set forth in said proclamation the Hawaiian monarchy has been abrogated and a Provisional Government established, which is now in possession of the Government departmental buildings, the archives, and the treasury, and requesting me on behalf of [His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s] Government to recognize said Provisional Government as the de facto Government of the Hawaiian Islands, pending the receipt of instructions from H. I. J. M.’s Government, to whom advices of your action and of the position which I have taken in relation thereto have been despatched.’

  14. ATAM, p 79.

  15. Daily Bulletin, 21 March 1893, quoted in Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 141.

  16. The usually reliable Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 141, scoffs at the suggestion that a prince was aboard, although his rebuttal suggests that he has confused the young Prince Yamashina with his elder half-brother, Komatsu Akihito (1846–1903), who had a similar title but was demonstrably not the youthful nobleman described in the newspaper. In fact, the Daily Bulletin article, long derided, seems to have hit the nail on the head. ATAM, p 79, openly states that a ‘Prince Yamashina’ was aboard the Naniwa at the time. The presence of Prince Yamashina aboard the Naniwa in Hawaii is also clearly indicated in his naval record of service in Nishida’s Imperial Japanese Navy.

  17. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 143; ATAM, p 79.

  18. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 145.

  19. Daily Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 17 March 1893, quoted in Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, pp 145–6.

  20. Keene, Emperor of Japan, p 347. In fact, the promised revocation of extraterritoriality took until 1898 to implement, but it was the thought that counted.

  21. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 146.

  22. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, pp 148–9, cites the Philadelphia’s log as his source.

  6: Sink the Kowshing

  1. ATAM, p 81. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 157, claims that the larger of the two vessels was the Dingyuan, not the Z
henyuan, but ATAM seems to be correct here. ATAM adds a comment from Lin Taizeng, expressing his surprise that Tōgō’s men had manned their guns, although Tōgō’s own account implies that the Chinese had done likewise. There seem to have been similar tensions wherever the Chinese and Japanese were in sight of each other. ‘Vladimir’ [Zenone Volpicelli], The China-Japan War: Compiled from Japanese, Chinese and Foreign Sources (Sampson Low, Marston and Company, London: 1896) p 115 and pp 375–9, notes a grisly incident in Shanghai, where a witchhunt for Japanese ‘spies’ led to the arrest, torture and execution of two Japanese men. They were controversially handed over to the Chinese without trial by the American consul, shortly after the Chinese had tried to similarly apprehend a ‘Japanese spy’ who turned out to be an Arab stoker on a French steamer.

  2. Strictly speaking, the Mandarin romanisation should be Gaosheng, but the ship’s name appears variously as Kaosheng, Kowhsing and Kowshing in contemporary accounts, indicating perhaps the southern accents of her crew, many of who appear to have been Cantonese or Hokkienese speakers. Rawlinson, China’s Struggle for Naval Development, p 92, notes an unlikely accusation from Chinese sources that Tōgō did not merely stumble across the Kowshing, but had been tipped off as to her course by spies within the Chinese arsenal at Tianjin.

  3. ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 96; Wright, The Chinese Steam Navy, p 86.

  4. ATAM, p 84. See also Lloyd, Admiral Tōgō, pp 67–70, for an extensive appraisal.

  5. Testimony of Thomas Galsworthy, in ‘Vladimir’, The China-Japan War, p 367. Notably, the translation in ATAM, p 85, adds an additional comment from Galsworthy, that he was left ‘speechless’ at the ‘foolish words’ of the Chinese. Albeit wholly justified, this comment is not recorded in ‘Vladimir’s’ transcripts, and is presumed to be an invention of the Japanese.

  6. Falk, Tōgō and the Rise of Japanese Sea Power, p 167.