Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1)

by Stephanie R. Sorensen

  Edo was an enormous city, one of the largest in the world, had its citizens only known it, teeming with every class of person, each engaged in pursuing his or her own goals, whatever those might be. Never in all of its history as the Shogun’s capital had so many armed men peacefully walked its streets, wearing the crests of hundreds of different han.

  Quietly but resolutely and in numbers too great to ignore, the rebel daimyō defied the laws that had kept the peace for two and a half centuries and entered the Shogun’s city at the head of their own armies, turning daimyō households into swarming barracks and defended castles.

  The commoners, the farmers, merchants, distillers, geisha, craftsmen and priests and monks who decided to stay in Edo, went about their daily pursuits for the most part as they always had, enjoying the boost in business. They wondered at the sight of so many samurai and the strangeness of uniformed commoner soldiers bearing guns within the city, but no word came down from Chiyoda Castle. Other than a few at the gates, no bakufu soldier challenged the entry of the Hundred Armies.

  Word of the Americans’ imminent arrival had not generally reached the ears of the commoners, although whispers flickered ear to ear in the ukiyo Floating World of the pleasure districts as the summer heat grew and all waited for the cooling summer rains.

  The commoners may have been blissfully unaware, but the great lords and high-ranking bureaucrats of the bakufu were not. Within the halls of the daimyō compounds, and the walls of Chiyoda Castle, the tension grew as they waited.

  They waited for Perry. They waited for the Shogun to strike against the rebels. They waited for the sickly Shogun to die and the succession battle to begin. They waited for the summer rains.

  CHAPTER 19

  KUROFUNE

  BLACK SHIPS

  “Awoken from sleep

  of a peaceful quiet world

  by Jokisen tea;

  with only four cups of it

  one can’t sleep even at night”

  “The steam-powered ships

  break the halcyon slumber

  of the Pacific;

  a mere four boats are enough

  to make us lose sleep at night”

  – anonymous kyoka pun poem about

  Perry’s ships as translated by Julian Cope

  The summer rains were late that year and did not come, but Perry did.

  On July 8, late in the afternoon, two black-hulled sailing ships towed by black-smoke-belching steamships dropped anchor in Uraga Harbor at the entrance to Edo Bay. Perry’s flagship, the steamship frigate Susquehanna, had the Saratoga in tow, while the steamship Mississippi had the Plymouth in tow.

  As they entered the harbor, Commodore Perry ordered the firing of several shells, as notice of his arrival and salute to those on shore. Fisherman near the shore either ran to town, shouting of dragons belching black smoke.

  They leapt into their boats for a closer look. Soon a crowd gathered at the shore, pointing and exclaiming over the novel sight.

  As soon as the foreign ships anchored, a flotilla of Japanese fishing vessels swarmed around them. The telegraph wires burned up with the news, sharing it with the connected hans. The Americans had come at last, on four black ships that could move straight into the wind without the use of sails.

  Local magistrates shouted warnings to the invaders and attempted to board the Susquehanna. They were easily repelled. A second wave of a dozen Japanese small boats surrounded the flagship. This time, Nakajima Saburosuke, a local police magistrate, and his interpreter, Dutch-speaker Hori Tatsunosuke, came alongside the Susquehanna. They were allowed to remain there when Nakajima claimed to be the governor of Uraga.

  Commodore Perry gave orders that a senior official of the Emperor be summoned to receive from him a letter from the American President. Through a tortuous chain of interpreters, Japanese to Dutch to English and back again, most of it badly translated, the imperious American, who remained hidden in his stateroom throughout the exchange, the better to preserve his dignity and power, communicated with the “governor.”

  “We are here to deliver a letter from our President to your Emperor,” Lieutenant Contee shouted down to the “governor.” “You must summon a high ranking official to receive our letter.”

  “I am the most senior person here,” replied Nakajima.

  “Then receive this letter.”

  “Oh no, for that will be my death, by the Shogun’s order. You are in violation of our laws and must leave immediately. This is the command of our Emperor and the law of our land for centuries.”

  “We will not leave until we deliver this letter.”

  “You may sail to Nagasaki and deliver your letter to the Dutch there.”

  “To force us to sail back to Nagasaki would be a grave insult to our President, possibly even a cause of war between our peoples.”

  “If you wish, I will send a messenger to Edo notifying the Emperor of your request. It is a two-day journey each way.”

  “We will wait three days. On the fourth day, we will sail north to Edo and deliver the letter to the Emperor ourselves.”

  For the next several days, the American ships explored the harbor, heading as far up as ten miles along the coast toward Edo. They sent smaller cutters out to sound the depths of the bay and perfect their crude maps. They were accompanied by hundreds of small fishing vessels, some filled with soldiers, others with curious villagers who simply wanted to see the foreigners and their ships.

  Tōru’s underwater ships swarmed the black ships as well, returning each hour to shore to transmit their discoveries to the command center in Lord Tōmatsu’s spacious compound. They were careful never to surface in sight of the Americans, although they frightened fishermen when docking to disgorge their crews.

  The moon being nearly full, it was deemed imprudent to send a dirigible crew to investigate from the air. The rebel leaders agreed to hold back knowledge of the airships from the invaders while they waited to see what the Americans would do.

  On land, panic gripped the people as they learned of the foreign ships for the first time. The price of rice skyrocketed. Virtually no fish was delivered to the coastal markets along Edo Bay, as all the available boats were engaged in examining the great foreign ships.

  A command came down from the Shogun’s court to ignore the ships and not discuss them, on pain of death. Such a command was useless, for no one was speaking of anything but the black ships. Even without the telegraph, the news arrived in Edo nearly instantly, carried there by frightened bearers who had run even faster than usual on their stiff-legged gait with their noble passengers. Rumors swept Uraga and Edo with outrageous stories, claiming the Americans had come to burn Edo to the ground and capture and kill the Emperor or the Shogun or both.

  The Emperor did not hear the news for days. Cloistered in his hidden court in Kyoto, he had no telegraph, and no one from the Shogunate court thought to notify him through other channels.

  The foreigners were obviously confused about who the Emperor and Shogun were, but their confusion did not remove the need for the Shogun to respond. Lieutenant Contee had made it clear to Magistrate Nakajima that the President’s letter would be delivered, by force if necessary, to officials in the capital if their request for a meeting was not met.

  Lord Abe, in the Shogun’s name, summoned the Council upon the sighting of the black ships off the shores of Uraga. He invited also the rebellious tōzama lords, most of whom were already in Edo, promising them on his own honor safe passage through Chiyoda Castle and the streets of Edo.

  The greatest of the tōzama lords sent emissaries in their stead rather than trust the Shogun to honor Lord Abe’s pledge, but many attended in person, trusting in their numbers and the gravity of the situation to protect them.

  Once they were all gathered in the great reception hall, crushed together and spilling out into the hallway, the Shogun presided over the Council. Lord Abe deftly guided the meeting, carefully asking the Shogun for permission to move through the
discussion at each step, but even his skills could not hide the obvious.

  The once fearsome Shogun was dying. He was too enfeebled to lead or make the decisions facing them. The response to the Americans would fall upon young Lord Abe’s shoulders, together with all the blame for whatever came to pass.

  Lord Abe gave a formal report to the assembly on what was known about the Americans. He shared intelligence rooted in the work of Satsuma’s spies and the observations being made by the flotilla of boats surrounding the four foreign ships.

  “They violated our laws when they entered the bay,” he said, in summary, “But—”

  He was interrupted by shouts from the assembly. “Drive them out!” “Destroy them!”

  Lord Abe waited for silence. The Shogun was too weak to gesture, but sat stone-faced at the front of the room glaring balefully at his Chief Councilor.

  Lord Abe continued when the shouting died down.

  “Although they violate our laws, they do not act with violence, but merely request the privilege of delivering a letter from their leader.” He paused, expecting outbursts, but this time the silence held. “I share your desire to enforce our laws and maintain our dignity, but we have no navy to drive them away. We must, I believe, accept this letter peacefully for now and take war to them later.”

  This led to more shouting. “We drove away Glynn and Biddle. We can drive these away as well.”

  Lord Abe sighed. “Our spies report this Commodore Perry is different, that he has orders to deliver the letter by force if necessary. Where the earlier commanders were courteous men, this Perry longs for an excuse to fight. The others were ordered not to create problems, and so retreated. Perry will not retreat, but will attack Edo if provoked.”

  Tōru’s heart pounded within his chest. He knew, and the rebel lords knew, that they did have the power to drive the Americans away, at least for the moment. He waited for his superiors to rise, the great rebel lords, but none did. Lord Aya and Lord Tōmatsu were not in attendance, as the Shogun had not rescinded their execution orders. Nor were Lord Date nor Lord Shimazu, who did not trust the Shogunate enough to put their heads in danger. While trusted men represented them at the council, those retainers would not speak for their lords on such an important and sensitive topic.

  Tōru knew what Lord Abe wanted. He wanted the rebel leaders to step forward with their technology and their defenses to give him the backbone and means to stand up to the foreigners.

  Tōru remembered the conversations with Lord Abe he and Takamori had had during the months of his debriefing. He recalled how the Chief Councilor had often hinted that he favored a policy of opening the country to trade, if it could be accomplished with dignity, not under the shadow of a warship’s guns like the Chinese agreements had been. Tōru also understood the Chief Councilor could never be the one to mention first such an unthinkable possibility, no matter how much he might favor the idea.

  Tōru dared not speak. He was still under sentence of death, relying on Lord Abe’s slender promise of safety during this meeting. He was no lord, just a newly minted samurai known as “the fisherman” throughout the land, suspected of being an American spy by more than one lord, and not just those daimyō allied to the Shogun. None of the great lords were present to protect him or speak up for him.

  The Council devolved into chaos, as the sullen and silent Shogun looked on, barely able to hold himself erect.

  The young Lord Abe repeatedly called for order. In the hubbub, Tōru found himself rising to his feet and standing, from his humble position near the door. He hadn’t even intended to rise but there he was, standing, as all eyes turned to him. He saw the faintest twitch of a smile flicker across Lord Abe’s stern face.

  “Himasaki! Fisherman!” Lord Abe called out to him, silencing the room. “You have come for your execution?”

  The room full of lords and bureaucrats laughed, a moment of levity lost on Tōru, who had trusted Lord Abe’s promise of safe passage after all he had done to help them escape. For a moment he thought the usually earnest young lord was serious. He wondered if he should attempt to run out the door and make his way to safety through fifty thousand bakufu soldiers. That, he knew, was suicide. But so was voicing what he wanted to say to the assembly.

  “No, Lord Abe. I am relying on your oath promising safe passage for this meeting…but if I might have permission to speak?”

  Lord Abe nodded his permission, forgetting to pass the request through the feeble Shogun, an omission that earned him a glare from Tokugawa.

  “We should accept the letter, for it comes to us peacefully enough, and a confident nation can take part in such conversations with other leaders.”

  The room murmured. Against or in support, Tōru could not tell. Or out of shock at a junior person, the traitorous fisherman, speaking up in such a meeting.

  “But we should make clear to the Americans we accept their letter out of courtesy and not weakness.”

  The murmur was clearly supportive.

  “Those of us,” here Tōru struggled to find the right words, for it would not be polite to mention in the Shogun’s presence the cold civil war now seething under the surface throughout the land, or the rebellion of hundreds of daimyōs against time-honored decrees by the Shogunate, or the presence of tens of thousands of troops from the Hundred Armies inside the capital walls. Finally he settled on the slogan they had rallied around to identify the lords who could help. “Those of us who pursue the path of fukoku kyōhei believe we can and should open the country to trade and relations with other great powers.”

  The murmurs turned hostile again. Tokugawa Ieyoshi himself roused and straightened, glowering down at Tōru with new energy, channeling the fearsome Shogun he had been of old.

  “We believe we can do so from a position of strength. We lack a navy, true. But we do have an air force and a considerable number of fighters…here…in the capital.” This earned him yet another glare from the Shogun. Lord Abe shot a glance at the Shogun, concern on his face. Tens of thousands of troops illegally stationed within Edo’s walls against all custom and law was not a topic for polite conversation nor public announcement in the Shogun’s own reception hall, even if everyone knew it to be true.

  Tōru thought it quite difficult to navigate political matters when no one was allowed to state the obvious or the true. No wonder the country’s leaders had stumbled for so long.

  “I cannot speak for the lords, but I believe they would place their dirigibles and underwater ships and their soldiers under command of the Emperor’s Shogun,” Tōru bowed deeply to the glowering Shogun at the front of the reception hall as he defiantly asserted the Emperor’s nominal superiority over the Shogun, “to send a message of our strength, unity and resolve to the Americans. Let us accept this letter. Then we shall peacefully but firmly drive the Americans from our harbor. Aided by the great lords, prevent them from approaching our Shogun’s capital. Let them return more respectfully next time. I humbly suggest that the aid of these lords be requested to defend our capital and our Emperor’s dignity.”

  Tōru sat down, as the murmur rose to a roar.

  Lord Abe nodded approval, even as he shouted for order. The Shogun shrank, barely able to sit upright, his eyes gazing vacantly on the tatami in front of him. The fight faded from his eyes as he stifled a gasp of pain. Asano, Sugieda, Obata and other emissaries for the great lords met Tōru’s eyes and nodded approval as well.

  The Chief Councilor held his hands out for order, finally calming the roar in the reception hall. “Asano-san, does Lord Shimazu support this?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Sugieda-san, your lord as well?”

  “Lord Tōmatsu agrees. Open negotiations while defending with firmness. He will commit troops, dirigibles and underwater ships to the fight and drive these invaders from our shores. Let us teach these barbarians some manners.”

  This met with cheers.

  Lord Abe questioned each of the lords or their emissaries.
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br />   Most agreed to accept the letter. The rebel lords or their chief retainers in their names all offered men and ships for the expulsion of the foreign barbarians. When all the assembly had been thus queried, Lord Abe turned to the Shogun and bowed deeply.

  “Lord Tokugawa, it is the consensus of your council and the great lords that we should in peace and courtesy accept this letter from the American President and then drive the foreigners from our waters with the help of…” he hesitated, struggling like Tōru to find words to describe the great lords who were even now in bold defiance of Shogunate law without enraging the Shogun or insulting the tōzama lords. Lord Abe finally settled on “daimyōs who have prepared defenses for your realm.”

  The dying Shogun looked up at his Chief Councilor and shut his eyes, as though to shut out the sight of his defeat as the defense of the realm was turned over to his political enemies.

  Lord Tokugawa waved his hand weakly and nodded assent.

  Lord Abe accepted the Shogun’s grudging approval. He swung into action, assembling a committee to write a response, officials to receive the letter, and generals to organize the defense of the capital. With one final command, he placed Tōru on the team to receive the letter from the Americans. “Do not reveal your understanding of their speech or your knowledge of America. Be our eyes and ears in the room, and learn of this Perry so we can better understand how to fight him. We’ll execute you after we’ve driven away your barbarian friends.”

  Tōru did not appreciate the Chief Councilor’s attempt at developing a sense of humor.

  The agreed-upon day for the formal reception of the American President’s letter arrived, July 14.

  In a frenzied burst of building, workers had hastily erected a great reception hall near the shore at Uraga. A wharf had been built into the water to allow the American cutters to come ashore without beaching their boats. At a few minutes before ten in the morning, small cutters from each of the four American ships filled with officers, two marine bands, an honor guard and finally the much-discussed but never seen Commodore Perry himself.