Katsu Kaishu’s Moral Lesson

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

Katsu Kaishu gave an interview to the Kokumin Shinbun which appeared in that newspaper’s September 21, 1898 issue, just months before his death in the following January. In the interview Kaishu imparted a moral lesson he had learned from “a holy man,” who had lived “long ago.” Since I didn’t include Kaishu’s moral lesson in Samurai Revolution, I present it here:

The holy man’s “prayers worked well in the lottery, which was popular back then—and for that reason he had a very good reputation,” Kaishu said. “Since my father was friendly with him, I visited him sometimes.” But eventually strict government controls were placed on the lottery and the holy man “was reduced to poverty. . . . But that holy man was quite a fellow. Not only did he eat meat and have a wife of his own, but he had no qualms about being with someone else’s wife. . . . Having wound up in such reduced circumstances, however, he grew weak in body and spirit. One day when I visited him, I brought a little something with me. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re still young, but perseverant and reliable. So I’m going to tell you a little story.’”

According to the holy man’s story, there were two other reasons that his prayers for the lottery stopped working. One had to do with a beautiful young woman who “came to ask for my prayers in the lottery. But since she was so beautiful I couldn’t help but desire her. I seduced her then gave her my prayers.” The prayers worked; the woman won the lottery. A few days later she returned to the holy man’s home to thank him. “I tried to seduce her again. But she only stared at me with frightening eyes,” saying that the only reason she had been unfaithful to her husband was so that he would get the lottery money. “Her eyes and the hissing in her voice pierced me to the quick.”

The other reason that the man’s prayers no longer worked had to do with a large snapping turtle he had bought because “I needed something nutritious to eat.’” But “’when I went to cook it, the damn turtle lifted up its head and stared right at me with its big eyeballs. I said, ‘What’s this?’ Then I cut off its head, cooked it, and ate it. But somehow I was bothered.” And because he felt guilty about those two incidents, his “prayers gradually stopped working.”

Katsube Mitake, in his biography of Katsu Kaishu, attaches a Buddhistic moral to the story: Never do evil. Always do good. When Kaishu “heard this story, its truth burst upon me like a sudden flash. And to this day I have not forgotten it. The reason that even at my present age [seventy-five] I am still mentally and physically sound is because its power remains with me at all times—and looking back upon my own personal experiences I don’t remember ever having mistaken the way that a human being should live.”

(The photo is of Katsu Kaishu in his old age.)

Kaishu old man

Sources

Hikawa Seiwa (Katsu Kaishu Zenshu 21) Tōkyō: Kodansha, 1973 (pp. 296-97)

Katsube Mitake. Katsu Kaishu. vol. 1. Tokyo: PHP, 1992 (p. 348)

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Samurai Revolution is the only biography of Katsu Kaishu in English.

Samurai Entourage in San Francisco, 1860

Posted on August 8, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

In early 1860 the Tokugawa Bakufu (i.e., the Japanese government) dispatched a delegation of seventy-seven samurai to Washington to ratify a trade treaty with the United States concluded in Japan in the summer of 1858. The Japanese delegation sailed aboard an American naval ship, the Powhatan, while the Bakufu sent the warship Kanrin Maru to San Francisco, as an auxiliary vessel to the delegation. The Kanrin arrived in San Francisco on March 17, as the first Japanese vessel to reach the United States. The captain, Katsu Kaishu, is the “shogun’s last samurai” in my book Samurai Revolution. I gave a whole chapter to the stay of the Japanese in San Francisco, which was closely covered by the local press. Upon landing at Vallejo Street Wharf, the press reported, the officers of the Kanrin, including its captain, took carriages to the International Hotel. The following is from Samurai Revolution (pp. 119, without footnotes):

International Hotel, from “The Annals of San Francisco,” by Frank Soule, et al, originally published in 1854

The International Hotel stood on the corner of Jackson and Kearney Streets in the center of the city. When the samurai alighted in front of the lobby, their strange appearance attracted crowds of spectators, who must have watched their every move. “One wore a light blue gown and trowsers the colors of the sky at sunset, spangled, starred and barred with gold and crimson,” reported the Daily Evening Bulletin on March 20. Each man displayed on his jacket his family crest in white “circular, oval or square patches,” which were “of an import quite unknown to us.” And each wore his long and short swords in the polished scabbards at his left hip, “almost horizontally.” One of them “carried a fan [in his right hand], in his left a walking cane. . . . Almost every man wore sandals generally of grass.” [end excerpt]

As the local people admired the grand spectacle of the samurai entourage, the samurai entourage admired the International Hotel, the likes of which they had never before seen. It was “a beautiful redbrick building four stories high,” Kaishu noted in his journal. Passing through the lobby, they ascended the staircase to a spacious parlor, furnished with “a huge glass mirror, chairs and a harp. The floor was covered by a thick woolen carpet of a floral pattern.” They must have been mesmerized by the sumptuous and spacious parlor illuminated by an enormous gaslight chandelier. Picture them traversing the luxurious carpet to seat themselves awkwardly upon the couches and chairs upholstered with fine woven fabric, and sipping French champagne, as their hosts spoke to them in a language they could not understand. And what would they have thought of the likely spectacle of mustachioed and bearded men sporting Victorian frockcoats, ruffled shirts, neckties, top hats and long black boots, and smoking fat cigars, as they promenaded hand in hand with hoop-skirted ladies? Certainly the samurai would have found it odd that American gentlemen were unarmed and tipped their hats in an uncomely gesture as they passed by.

To be sure, both the Americans and the Japanese experienced culture shock. Kaishu, for example, noted his astonishment that “a man accompanied by his wife [in town] will always hold her hand as he walks. Or he will let his wife walk before him, remaining behind her.” (I wish I could have seen him watching this.)

Nonetheless, unlike most of their countrymen, the ship’s captain, along with the official interpreter, Nakahama Manjiro (aka John Manjiro), who had been educated in the United States, had previous experience with foreign cultures. Years later Kaishu commented that during his training at the Bakufu’s naval academy in Nagasaki in the late 1850s, “I met everyone who came [there] from foreign countries”—including ship captains “with whom I spoke candidly about anything and everything.” That Kaishū had (at Nagasaki and through his extensive reading of foreign books) familiarized himself with Western dress and furnishings, and even cigars and champagne (though he rarely drank alcohol), while certain others at the naval academy had not, denotes the flexibility of his very open mind. That he did not blindly follow standards of dress but rather wore his thick black hair tied in a loose topknot, so that, as the Bulletin reported on March 23, “he looked as if he knew nothing of pomatum and gloried in its frizzled, shaggy look,” reveals his outsider’s nature. That he seemed, in the Bulletin’s words, to be “acquainted with the [English] language, and to appearances every inch a gentleman,” bespeaks his self-possession, because Captain Katsu, like the rest of his company except Manjiro, did not understand English.

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Read more about the San Francisco experience of Katsu Kaishu in Samurai Revolution, the only biography of the man in English.

Remembering Two Warriors of Peace on 70th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

11709620_131201433879737_5402870527297746320_n

11659288_131201073879773_5929836316449749938_n

On the 70^th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, I think of two warriors of peace in 19^th century Japan, Yokoi Shōnan (on the right) and Katsu Kaishū, during their country’s most turbulent era thus far. The following is a slightly edited excerpt from my Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen Through the Eyes of the Shogun’s Last Samurai:Shortly after Perry’s arrival in the summer of 1853, Yokoi had advised the Tokugawa Bakufu that refusing to communicate with foreign nations would make Japan look bad to the rest of the world. Rather, the government should “communicate with righteous nations, but reject unrighteous nations.” But, he professed, if any country should illegally threaten Japan with warships and troops, then Japan must fight to defend itself. Kaishū thought Yokoi so profound as to be frightening. “I’ve seen two frightening men in my life,” he recalled many years later. “Yokoi Shōnan and Saigō [Takamori]. . . . Yokoi didn’t know that much about the West; I taught him a thing or two [on that subject]. But there were often times, when it came to the high tone of his ideas, that I felt I could never reach [his level]. . . . Although Yokoi was not very good at working on his own, if there was anyone around who could implement his ideas, I thought that the two of them [could accomplish great things.]” In the coming revolution, Katsu Kaishū’s confidants on the anti-Tokugawa side—Sakamoto Ryōma of Tosa and Saigō Takamori of Satsuma—would implement Yokoi’s ideas.

Yokoi was a famous admirer of George Washington. He admired the man who had led the American revolutionary forces against the British, for his selflessness in stepping down as president when the time came. Calling Washington a “red-haired, blue-eyed saint,” Yokoi believed that the world would never again see the likes of such a selfless leader. Like Kaishū, Yokoi hated war. Once he told a fellow Kumamoto samurai of his desire to travel to America to meet the president and “conclude a peace treaty. Then I’d like to travel to other countries and do the same, until there is no more war in this world.”

Yokoi was assassinated in early 1869, a year after the fall of the Bakufu, by reactionaries opposing the Westernization of Japan, for which they blamed Yokoi and others, including his close friend Katsu Kaishū, the “shogun’s last samurai.”

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Samurai Revolution is the only biography of Katsu Kaishu in English.

A Few Words on the Samurai of Satsuma

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

“We are both warlike and wise, and it is our sense of order that makes us so. We are warlike, because self-control contains honour as a chief constituent, and honour bravery… Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.” (Archidamus, king of Sparta, in advising his people not to rush to war against Athens, before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War – as quoted by Thucydides, trans. Richard Crawley.)

The samurai of Satsuma, who embraced “bravery and strength as the ultimate virtues,” were probably every bit as warlike as the warriors of ancient Sparta, and severity was certainly a hallmark of their character. The young men of Satsuma played a deadly game wherein a group of them would gather at a martial arts training hall, sit around a wide circle, fasten a rope to a loaded musket, hang the musket from the wooden rafters above (face-level at the center of the circle), light the matchlock and spin the gun so that it would alternately point in the direction of each of them – as they calmly waited for it to fire. Their purpose, of course, was to train their minds for combat, steeling their nerves in the face of imminent death.

So why were the samurai of Satsuma so particularly warlike? The characteristics and history of the Satsuma clan, focusing on the last years of the samurai era (1853-1877), are analyzed in Samurai Revolution.

Quintessential samurai Saigo Takamori, the military and moral leader of the samurai of Satsuma during this most turbulent period in their history, is used in Samurai Revolution, courtesy of Japan’s National Diet Library.

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

A Few Words On Bushido

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

Bushido, “way of the warrior,” was fundamental to samurai society. It was an unwritten code which incorporated the eight virtues of Confucianism: benevolence, justice, loyalty, filial piety, decorum, wisdom, trust, and respect for elders. Its most cherished values were courage and loyalty to one’s feudal lord. Chapter 8 of Samurai Revolution is titled “A Brief Discussion on Bushido.” I included it because a fundamental understanding of bushido is essential, I think, to understanding Japanese history.

Bushido Kyokai (武士道協会), a Tokyo-based NPO, describes bushido as “the spiritual foundation of the development of modern Japan.” The organization, which exalts life and world peace, states that its purpose is to “revive bushido in the hearts of modern Japanese people and people from around the world who live in Japan.” (http://www.bushido.or.jp/index.html) Kudos to Bushido Kyokai!

Yet there is another side of bushido which should be considered. In the spring of 1862, Shimazu Hisamitsu, the father of the Satsuma daimyo, sent a squad of nine expert swordsmen to the Teradaya inn near Kyoto to dissuade fellow Satsuma samurai from taking part in a planned uprising against the Tokugawa Shogunate in Kyoto. If they could not dissuade them, they were ordered to kill them. In other words, Hisamitsu ordered his men to kill some of their closest friends. The nine swordsmen readily acquiesced, a fact which is “almost incomprehensible to people today,” comments Kaionji Chogoro in his acclaimed biography of Saigo Takamori. Kaionji, himself a native of Satsuma, explains that the nine stoically accepted their orders based on “the aesthetics of the samurai of Satsuma,” who “held meanness, irresolution, and cowardice as the greatest immorality, and bravery and strength as the ultimate virtues. In a word, bushidō is the beauty of stoicism itself, but in a way it is also inhuman, brutal and almost immoral.” I wrote about the “Teradaya Incident” in Chapter 7 of Samurai Revolution.

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.