Ii Naosuké, regent to the shōgun, was the archenemy of Tokugawa Nariaki, daimyo of Mito. As regent, he was the most powerful man in Japan. He was assassinated in broad daylight at the gate called Sakurada-mon, a main entrance to Edo Castle, on an unseasonably snowy morning in spring 1860, by seventeen Mito samurai and one from Satsuma. The murder was the most brazen offense ever committed against the Tokugawa Bakufu and the most politically significant assassination in an era plagued with assassination and bloodshed. The Bakufu collapsed around eight years later. Following is an excerpt from Samurai Revolution (without footnotes):

The regent’s sedan was surrounded by more than sixty men of [Ii Naosuké’s] Hikoné Han, including bodyguards, foot soldiers, luggage bearers, and sandal carriers. The Hikoné men wore wide-brimmed sedge or lacquered hats and cloaks of oiled paper. Since the hilts of their swords were covered with small cloth pouches to protect against the falling snow they could not readily draw their blades. Suddenly one of the assassins threw off his hat, removed his jacket, drew his sword and cut one of Ii Naosuké’s guards across the forehead, then slashed another man diagonally across the body. One of the assassins fired a pistol, at which signal several others drew their swords and charged. “Look out!” one of the Hikoné men shouted, as the regent issued an order for his guards to remain by his side. But in the chaos all but one of them became separated from the regent, brandishing their swords and spears against the sudden attack. Several of the assailants managed to penetrate the guards’ line and reach the sedan. They stabbed the regent through the side of the vehicle and pulled him to the snowy ground. The one Satsuma man, Arimura Jizaémon, beheaded him, and holding the head up high triumphantly announced that he had killed Ii Naosuké. [end excerpt]

I wrote in detail about the political rivalry between Ii Naosuké and Tokugawa Nariaki in Samurai Revolution. Part I of Samurai Assassins, entitled “The Assassination of Ii Naosuké and the Beginning of the End of the Tokugawa Bakufu,” provides a detailed account of the so-called “Incident Outside Sakurada-mon.”

S

The powerful feudal lords Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito (left) and Shimazu Nariakira of Satsuma (right) fit, to a certain extent, the definition of Platonic “philosopher king.” They were of course contemporaries; and Nariakira supported Nariaki’s son, Yoshinobu, in the political fight against the shogun’s regent, Ii Naosuke, to succeed Shogun Iesada.

Tokugawa Yoshinobu was the last shogun. The most powerful driving force behind the overthrow of Yoshinobu’s government, the Tokugawa Bakufu, and Yoshinobu himself, was Saigo Takamori of Satsuma. Saigo was Nariakira’s favorite vassal (samurai).

I will not discuss the relationship between the two feudal lords here. Nor will I explain why I call them “philosopher kings,” other than to mention that both realized some very important technological, pedagogical and philosophical changes in their respective domains. I have written about both of these feudal lords, and of course about Yoshinobu and Saigo, in my two most recent books, Samurai Revolution and Samurai Assassins.

[The photo of Tokugawa Nariaki is from the Tokugawa Museum. The photo of Shimazu Nariaki is from the National Diet Library.]

---

 

S

 

Tokugawa Nariaki was the ninth daimyo of Mito and father of the last shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. He was a reactionary who despised everything Western. He advocated answering foreign demands on Japanese sovereignty with cannon fire and the tempered razor-sharp steel of the Japanese sword. His Mito domain, the cradle of Imperial Loyalism, attracted Imperial Loyalists throughout Japan; and it was Nariaki who coined the Loyalists’ war cry of Sonnō-Jōi—Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians (abbreviated as Son-Jō). (excerpted, in part, from Samurai Revolution, without footnotes)

As I wrote in a recent post, in 1841 Nariaki established the famed Kōdōkan within the precincts of Mito Castle, as the official school of Mito Han. The famous “Sonjō” tablet (below) hangs on the back wall of a room beyond an entrance to the Kōdōkan.

[The photograph of Nariaki is from the Tokugawa Museum in Mito.]

On the 12^th day of the Second Month of the year on the old Japanese calendar corresponding to 1868, the last shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, went into seclusion at Daijiin, a subtemple of Kaneiji, the Tokugawa family temple at Uéno in Edo (modern-day Tokyo), to demonstrate his allegiance to the Imperial government—leaving the task of picking up the pieces of his fallen regime to Katsu Kaishū and Ōkubo Ichiō, two of his most trusted vassals. Two months later, Yoshinobu left Daijiin to return to his native Mito and place himself under house confinement at the Kōdōkan, the official school of the Mito domain. When the last shōgun finally left the capital, it was a “spectacle beyond words,” Kaishū wrote. “Everyone wept.” People lined the roadway, kneeling on the bare ground and facing downward. Around the same time, troops of seven feudal domains entered Edo Castle. Twelve or thirteen samurai from each of them inspected the interior of the castle; the citadel was placed in the custody of the Owari domain, and the troops and weapons were surrendered to Kumamoto. [The above is a slightly edited excerpt from Samurai Revolution, without footnotes.]

In the Ninth Month of the following year, Yoshinobu was released from house confinement. Around that time he composed the calligraphy shown above, which he sent to Kaishū, as a token of appreciation for his loyalty and service. Today it hangs on a wall in a room of the Kōdōkan.

Mitogaku: Cornerstone of Imperial Loyalism

In the early part of the nineteenth century an ultra-nationalistic school of thought attained prominence in Mito Han, one of the Three Tokugawa Branch Houses (Go-sanké), whose heads were direct descendants of Tokugawa Iéyasu, the first shōgun of the Tokugawa Bakufu. The school of thought was called Mitogaku. It has been translated as “Mito scholarship”; but from its union of mythology and religion with government and politics, and the fervor by which it was embraced, “Mitoism,” I think, is a better rendering. No matter how it is translated, it was the cornerstone of Imperial Loyalism and the foundation of the revolution which got under way with the assassination of Ii Naosuké in 1860.

Mitoism had originated much earlier, under Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628-1700), the second daimyo of Mito who had ruled during the early Tokugawa era. It was taken up in the early nineteenth century by Aizawa Seishisai, a Mito samurai and Confucianist. Both men are associated with two highly influential literary works which have been called the “Old Testament” and “New Testament” of the early Meiji Restoration period. Begun under Mitsukuni was Dai Nihonshi, a history of Japan, which emphasized loyalty to the Emperor. Aizawa, who lived until 1863, four years before the fall of the Bakufu, wrote Shinron (“New Theses”) in 1825. Since ancient times China, the “Central Country,” had been the pinnacle of civilization and culture. But Aizawa affirmed the superiority of Japan and Japanese culture. Shinron, whose teachings of Japanese superiority and Imperial Loyalism would be revived by Imperial Japan’s fascist government in the twentieth century, begins by stating that “our Divine Realm is where the sun emerges. It is the source of the primordial vital force sustaining all life and order. Our Emperors, descendants of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, have acceded to the Imperial Throne in each and every generation, a unique fact that will never change. Our Divine Realm rightly constitutes the head and shoulders of the world and controls all nations.”

The spirit of “Imperial Reverence” (Sonnō) did not originate in Mito. Rather, it took root throughout Japan among the educated classes, including samurai, wealthy merchants, landowning peasants, and shōya (peasant officials who oversaw rural villages), under the rule of the Bakufu, based on Confucianism, particularly Neo-Confucianism. But Mito incorporated an intense ultra-nationalism that developed into Imperial Loyalism under the slogan Sonnō-Jōi (abbreviated as Son-Jō)—“Imperial Reverence and Expel the Barbarians”—coined by Tokugawa Nariaki, the ninth daimyo of Mito, and father of the last shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu.

In 1841, Nariaki established the famed Kōdōkan within the precincts of Mito Castle, as the official school of Mito Han. In 1856 he directed the physician Matsunobé Nen, a distinguished calligrapher, to compose the now-famed “Sonjō” tablet, which hangs on the back wall of a room beyond an entrance to the Kōdōkan.

Photos from top to bottom: Sonjō tablet; entrance to Kōdōkan, with Sonjō tablet visible at rear; a volume of Dai Nihonshi