The Merchant's Tale

by Simon Partner

  Historians have speculated that the influx of samurai from Satsuma was a deliberate policy by the Satsuma authorities to foment panic in the shogunal capital. The samurai were said to be warning the townsmen to flee the city in anticipation of a coming conflict. As a handbill handed out by the Satsuma men stated, “All determined men in the nation should gather together on the fourth day of the eleventh month and form a heavenly army to burn Edo Castle and set fires throughout the city and punish evil officials. The only thing we are afraid of is that the people may suffer because of this. You should quickly move your belongings and change your residence to avoid harm. We do not intend to harm the people, only to save them.”34

  Chūemon clearly found the Satsuma men terrifying—rough, violent barbarians who barely spoke intelligible Japanese and who seemed to obey no laws but their own.

  In the midst of all this trouble and uncertainty, an unprecedented wave of popular fervor swept through Japan. It began with the mysterious appearance of amulets and talismans (ofuda) bearing inscriptions and images of Shinto and Buddhist deities. The amulets were said to be falling from the sky in their thousands, landing on roads, roofs, and trees. They literally swept across Japan like a wave, starting in the west and spreading east along the major highways. They reached Odawara at the end of November, Fujisawa on December 1, and Yokohama on December 10. In Kōshū, the talismans appeared in the city of Kōfu on November 21 and spread throughout the province over the following two weeks. In one village to the west of Yokohama, a child found a talisman floating in the ocean on November 28 and brought it home to show his grandfather. A few days later he was given another talisman, by a traveler on the highway. And on the evening of December 9, a talisman fell out of the sky and lodged in the branches of a cypress tree in the family compound. On December 10, the family prepared rice, red beans, and sake for the entire village in celebration of the joyful appearance of the talismans, which they displayed in front of their household shrine. A priest came to chant Buddhist sutras in front of the talismans. On December 12, some sixty villagers, including the grandson of this family, set off on a pilgrimage to the great shrine of Ise, more than two hundred miles to the west.35 Similar scenes played out all over the central provinces of Japan, with huge crowds converging on famous pilgrimage destinations. In many cases, the pilgrims went dancing along the highways, chanting, “Everything’s good, isn’t it!” (“Ee janaika”) and reveling in crazy and even orgiastic behavior.

  The talismans were handwritten, in ordinary Japanese, and there is no doubt that they were being spread deliberately. But there is no consensus on the agents or their motives. Some historians have suggested there was a political motive behind the wave of talismans—perhaps a desire by Satsuma and its allies to stir up revolutionary fervor. Some of the talismans did indeed contain political messages, usually antiforeign. Others have suggested the motives were commercial, since the talismans encouraged townsmen and villagers to spend more money on entertainment and celebrations.36 Probably the motives were various: given their wide geographic distribution stretching across half of Japan, no one individual or group could have been responsible. Whatever the motives, the popular reaction was surely a response to the extraordinary upheavals that were engulfing the country, accompanied by widespread hardship and want. The talismans were perceived as signs of hope amid the darkness, and people celebrated their arrival by stopping work, giving food and drink to passersby, preparing feasts for the neighborhood, making donations to the poor, and setting off on pilgrimages. The celebrations and public demonstrations offered a kind of spiritual release from the terrible stresses of the time.

  The celebratory mood infected Yokohama, too. When the talismans fell on the townsmen’s houses, they displayed them in front of their homes and handed out rice cakes and sake to passersby, prompting the authorities to take measures to stop them from blocking traffic.37 Chūemon was stuck in Edo at the time, but Naotarō was caught up in the fervor. On December 15, he wrote to his brother,

  At present around Yokohama talismans bearing divine inscriptions are falling from the clouds. Every household is filled with a spirit of celebration. Every day feels like a holy festival. On the eighteenth of this month [Keiō 3/11/18, 12/13/1867] … an image of the thousand-handed Kannon bodhisattva appeared on the back of a two-bu gold coin. The people were spontaneously dancing in the streets, going around the houses and announcing a festival. These things are happening daily in every house. Is it the same where you are? All around us strange things are happening.38

  But as the end of the year approached, Chūemon faced a familiar reality. Once again, he was unable to settle his debts with his creditors. “I certainly would plan to send the money this year, but in Yokohama we are required to pay a tax of two ryō two bu on each tsubo of land … Because of the Mitsui affair I have no funds available. I cannot possibly repay Mr. Saijō this year. You must explain all this to him and ask for his patience. I will certainly return the money in the New Year. I am not a wrongdoer, but I must ask for an extension.”39

  By the turn of 1868, Chūemon was back in Yokohama. But rather than resuming trade, he spent most of his energy trying to buy more time on the large debts he owed in both Kōshū and Yokohama. Meanwhile, “in Edo, thieves and robbers are breaking into money-changing houses and large merchant houses and taking three, five, or even ten thousand ryō before returning to their ships. The highways, too, are very disturbed. Here in Yokohama, security is very strict, so there have been no such incidents. It is very peaceful here.”40 In one other piece of news, Chūemon mentioned in a letter that “Hyōgo [now known as Kobe] opened as a treaty port on the sixth of this month. Many foreigners from here have gone there, and many Japanese traders accompanied the foreigners in their ships. The construction there is still unfinished, but at present in the town of Hyōgo money is circulating and many people are able to make a living. That is what the merchants there are saying.”41

  On January 3, 1868, Chūemon announced good news: the Mitsui affair had been settled in principle. It is unclear what Chūemon’s final losses were, but he acknowledged that it “has cost me a great deal of money.”42 Finally, though, Chūemon could put the affair behind him and turn his attention back to his business.

  But even as Chūemon strove to return his life to normal, events were moving quickly around him. Throughout the decade of the 1860s, Chūemon had witnessed the slow undermining of the Tokugawa shogunate’s power and prestige as it struggled to respond to successive crises: the antiforeign insurgency, the rise of imperial loyalism, the campaigns of assassination and terror, the Richardson murder and its aftermath, the imperial command to close the ports, the Mito insurrection, the defiance of the western domains, and the disastrous military campaign to chastise Chōshū. Ironically, the catalyst that had set all these events in motion was the opening of the treaty ports, the most prominent of which was Yokohama. The very place that Chūemon had believed in so fervently for the opportunity and prosperity that it offered had undermined the political and social order on which Chūemon had built his entire life. Now, in the course of just a few days, the long-drawn-out crisis came to a head with the sudden and dramatic collapse of the Tokugawa regime.

  On February 11—two weeks after the decisive battle of Toba-Fushimi—Chūemon addressed a long letter to his son, heading it “Transcription of a Dream.” The title reflects his utter disbelief at the news that had just arrived in Edo.

  Since the middle of last month, rōnin from Satsuma have been running riot in Edo, robbing and stealing. The Edo residence of the lord of Satsuma was surrounded by the soldiers of the shogun and burned to the ground and the rōnin arrested. Since this affair, there has been great confusion. On the third [January 27, 1868] the lord of Aizu and others accompanied the Kantō taikun [the ex-shogun Yoshinobu, who had resigned three months earlier] to try to enter Kyoto. The forces of Satsuma, Tosa, Chōshū, Owari, Echizen, Bizen, and others that had been holding Kyoto now issued forth, and a battle followed, in wh
ich the men of the imperial court were victorious. The surrounding towns were burned to the ground. On the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh [January 28–31, 1868] a great battle raged, during which a prince emerged from the palace carrying the imperial banners. The Kantō side refused to bow to the banners and instead opened fire, while the men of Satsuma and its allies all prostrated themselves. Now, under the leadership of the imperial prince, a great battle followed, during which the Kantō side was betrayed by Lord Tōdō, who was in its vanguard. After that the Kantō taikun was thoroughly defeated. He retreated to Osaka, but the castle there was set alight by the enemy army and burned to the ground. In this way, the battle was lost. The lord of Aizu, together with the taikun, retired to the south of Osaka and boarded ships. They are said to have arrived on the twelfth of this month [February 5, 1868] in Edo … In this battle, around three thousand men were killed on the spot. The Kantō forces that remained now have nowhere to go. Around ten thousand of them went to Kishū [Wakayama]. Five officials set off from Yokohama by ship in order to retrieve these men. They left on the fifteenth [February 8, 1868], and it is said that they are bringing the entire army back to the Kyoto area.43

  Chūemon is reporting on the battle of Toba-Fushimi, the decisive battle that ended the Tokugawa shogunate. His report is generally accurate. The shogunal forces confronted the alliance of western domains in a final attempt to prevent the outright takeover of the country. The shogun was betrayed by one of his key allies, Tōdō Takayuki, the daimyo of the Tsu domain. And the shogunal alliance was thrown into confusion by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a prince carrying the brocade banners of the imperial family.

  The battle was the culmination of a decade-long confrontation between the shogunate and the powerful domains of western Japan. Both Satsuma and Chōshū had defied the shogunate at various points during the decade. Although Satsuma in particular had close ties to the Tokugawa family (in 1856 a Satsuma princess had married the reigning shogun, Iesada), both domains had gone through violent internal upheavals during the 1860s, resulting in their takeover by aggressive young samurai who were both antiforeign and anti-Tokugawa. While a part of the domains’ motivation may have been genuine outrage over the shogunate’s capitulation to foreign demands, their hostility to the Tokugawa was more deeply rooted. Both domains had been on the losing side in the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and it was rumored that they still held deep-rooted grudges against the shogunate.44 Certainly, from the viewpoint of a loyal shogunal subject like Chūemon, the western domains were troublemakers at best, enemy usurpers at worst.

  But the tone of Chūemon’s report suggests the confusion that he and many others must have felt at the turn of events. How was a loyal subject of the shogun to respond when the shogunal forces fired on an imperial prince? Now that the shogun was apparently defeated, to whom did they owe their loyalty? Surely not to the lord of the distant Satsuma domain. But to the emperor himself? How could they deny their loyalty to that august figure, whose family had (nominally at least) ruled Japan for more than a thousand years?

  The appearance of the imperial prince on the battlefield was in fact a brilliant piece of stage management by Satsuma. The banners had been specially prepared some months in advance by officials of Satsuma and had been stored by Satsuma for just such an eventuality.45 The prince himself, Prince Komatsu, was a young man of twenty-two who had been abbot of a monastery until taken out of seclusion to “lead” the anti-Tokugawa alliance. That same morning, Satsuma had secured an imperial edict stating that the ex-shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu was an enemy of the court and should be suppressed by military force. As a memo from the American consul in Yokohama stated, “The Mikado is now to all intents and purposes the vassal if not the prisoner of that bold and unscrupulous Daimio.”46 In this coup, the Satsuma leadership clearly demonstrated their understanding of the importance of controlling the person of the emperor—an understanding they were to put to extraordinary use in the following decades.

  Chūemon quickly went on to reassure his son that “Yokohama is right now the safest place in all Japan. So please set your mind at rest. If anything happens, I will return to Kōshū.” He reported that the defeated army was sending its wounded by ship back to the Kantō, and some of them were arriving in Yokohama for treatment. “On the fourteenth, thirty-six gravely wounded men were taken to the town office here in Yokohama, where they are being treated. Those who have died have been taken away amid great disorder. Those who are unlikely to survive are being sent to Edo to their relatives.”47 A top shogunal official, Katsu Kaishū, wrote in his diary, “A succession of boats filled with the troops defeated at Toba-Fushimi is arriving in Edo … They are disgruntled by shortages of food and lack of shelter. Moreover, they are angered by insufficient pay. They are forming secret bands and decamping … The townsmen are daily more distressed and suspicious. Officials repeatedly order increases in financial contributions without specific purposes in mind … Even if enemy troops do not come, it will not be long before Edo collapses from within.”48

  In a vivid additional detail, Chūemon added that “since the fall of Osaka Castle, foreigners, townsmen, and peasants have been going without permission to see the site of the battle and collecting bullets and other souvenirs. Nobody is stopping them or even watching over them.”49

  Clearly, this great defeat of the shogunal forces was ominous in the extreme. For the next several days, rumors swirled around Edo and Yokohama. Katsu Kaishū wrote in his diary, “Edo is in great confusion. There are many rumors. The truth of the morning is false by night. Will the imperial army halt at Kuwana? Will it advance on Sunpu? Will it come through the Hakone Pass? As a result the people are angry and upset. They run about blindly; the situation is like a boiling cauldron.”50

  A few days later, Chūemon tried to strike a more reassuring tone: “Here there has been all sorts of confusion, but unlike the situation in the Kyoto area there are no battles in evidence. The Kyoto area is a battleground, and with the daimyo all trying to get their way, the world has become a terrible place. But here in Yokohama, no one is invading us, nor are they killing us or burning us.” Chūemon went on to offer an optimistic assessment of the conflict: “At present, it is possible to stop the western army at the Oi River. And although their navy is patrolling the ocean, they have few ships, while the Kantō side has many, so it should be able to sink the entire western fleet … Moreover, at present the prince of Ueno has returned from Kyoto. It is said that this prince was not ordered to return here but came to be with his people. It is said that he will retire from the clergy in order to protect the east. There is also a rumor that the present shogun will retire to Kōshū.”51

  The “prince of Ueno” Chūemon refers to is the imperial prince Rinnōjinomiya, who was the abbot of Kan’eiji, the temple in the Ueno district of Edo where six Tokugawa shoguns were buried. He was the uncle of the emperor, who had now issued a rescript calling for the destruction of the Tokugawa, but as a longtime resident of Edo, Prince Rinnōjinomiya remained loyal to the Tokugawa faction. After the fall of Edo, he joined the remnants of the shogunal forces who retreated to northern Japan, and there was open talk about Japan being split into two, with Rinnōjinomiya being made the “Northern Mikado.”52 Chūemon hints at this outcome when he suggests that the prince might “protect the east.” It seems that Chūemon was willing to countenance the division of Japan into eastern and western kingdoms rather than face the alternative, which was to see the government fall into the hands of samurai from the western domains who, even if they were allied with the emperor, seemed to Chūemon frightening and alien. Chūemon’s attitude was, indeed, common among Edo townsmen, who were highly distrustful of the motivations of Satsuma and Chōshū. Cartoons and broadsheets circulating in Edo accused the western domains of exploiting the person of the emperor for their own ends and berated the ex-shogun for his spinelessness. One satirical cartoon depicted Yoshinobu as a child in a schoolboy fight: “It’s better to run away,” he says, as h
e disappears out of the top left corner of the picture.53

  Under the overall leadership of the Satsuma general Saigō Takamori, the imperial army split into three columns, advancing on Edo by different routes. One of the routes took them right through Kōshū. They occupied the city of Kōfu in mid-March, and they defeated the battered holdouts of the shogunal army in a second decisive battle at the post town of Katsunuma, in Kōshū, on March 29, 1868. From there, the imperial army descended on Edo, and by May it had surrounded the shogunal capital. After extensive negotiations aimed at minimizing bloodshed, Edo capitulated on July 4.

  Chūemon followed reports of army movements and battles from his home in Yokohama. His sense of unreality and disbelief mounted as news came of the fighting in his home province. “There is a rumor that Katsunuma post station was the site of a battle and has been burned to the ground … It is rumored here that Lord Iwakura [a Kyoto aristocrat who was soon to become leader of the imperial government] has entered Kōshū. Is that true?”54 Chūemon passed through Katsunuma every time he traveled to and from Higashi-Aburakawa, so the news of its destruction struck very close to home. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the communication routes to Kōshū continued to function. Indeed, the news of the battle of Katsunuma had taken only two days to reach him.

  Even the extraordinary dramas taking place in Chūemon’s home province paled into unimportance compared with the impending collapse of Edo itself. As the second column of the imperial forces advanced through Hakone Pass and down into the Kantō Plain, Chūemon faced the reality that they would soon be arriving on his own doorstep. And indeed, on March 31 Chūemon reported that some of the Satsuma troops were straggling into Yokohama.

  Yesterday six hundred Satsuma men arrived at Hodogaya, and now two hundred men have arrived at Kanagawa. Since yesterday these men have been visiting Yokohama, and today many of them came to look at the foreigners’ houses. I don’t understand their speech, and to be on the safe side I think it’s better not to go out … There are reported to be very many soldiers between Hakone and Kanagawa. All the inns are keeping their doors closed. The high-ranking people and even the merchants are not going out. The Kawasaki ferry stopped running yesterday. The people of Yokohama have stored supplies and evacuated their old people and children to the official buildings. Even now I am making preparations to that effect.