by Donald Keene
Kōmei grew up in the Gosho, the area in the center of the city of Kyōto (about 220 acres) where the buildings of the palace were situated and where most of the kuge (nobles) lived; this was the imperial family’s entire world. According to Higashikuze Michitomi (1833–1912), it was the policy of the shogunate to cloister the emperor as if he were some sort of living god removed from the world of mortals, and it was strictly forbidden to inform him of new or unusual happenings.5 Higashikuze, who was selected to be Kōmei’s playmate when he was ten years old, related in his old age everything he could remember about Kōmei’s boyhood, fearing that unless he set down his remembrances, the old traditions might be lost forever. His memory was extraordinary, extending to minute details of the many ceremonies he witnessed—exactly who was present, how they were dressed, what gifts were offered, and so on. Here is his account of a typical ceremony:
On the seventh day of the sixth month, his ninth birthday,6 there was the ceremony of “first reading.” It was not that the prince had never read anything before he was nine. He had in fact already read the Classic of Filial Piety and the Great Learning—Takatsukasa, the general of the left, was his tutor—and the ceremony was purely a formality. The prince sat at the middle level wearing an ordinary court costume, his sleeves held back by threefold purple cords and laced trousers with violet hexagonal patterns. The middle counselor Koga Takemichi brought forward a desk and placed it before the prince. Then Kiyohara Arikata of the third rank came forward and seated himself before the desk. He read the preface to the old text of the Classic of Filial Piety three times. The prince immediately afterward read through this text in the same way. Kiyohara of the third rank withdrew, and Koga, coming forward, removed the desk. The prince then withdrew to the inner quarters.7
The education of a prince consisted largely of reading aloud, with the aid of a tutor, Confucian texts such as the Classic of Filial Piety. At first he would read the words without understanding their meaning, but eventually he would be able not only to read texts in classical Chinese but to compose poetry in that language. Calligraphy was an equally indispensable attainment of a prince, and the selection of the proper calligraphy tutor was a matter of crucial importance. Finally, a prince was expected to be able to compose Japanese poetry in the classic verse form, the tanka.
Apart from these elements of a traditional education, a prince seems to have learned little else from books—perhaps no more than the essentials of Japanese and Chinese history and geography. Some emperors were fond of reading Japanese fiction, and others enjoyed such entertainments as the bugaku dances performed at the court as they had been for a thousand years; there are records also of nō being performed in the imperial palace. But these avocations were considered to be merely diversions, distinct from the serious study that the shogunate had enjoined on the imperial household as its principal occupation.
In 1615 a code of approved behavior for the nobility was drawn up by the former shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, his son Hidetada (the titular shogun), and the nobleman Nijō Akizane, who had served as kampaku, or chancellor. This code, known as Kinchū narabi ni kuge shohatto (Regulations for the Imperial Palace and Nobility), consisted of seventeen articles, presumably in imitation of the Seventeen Article Constitution drawn up by Prince Shōtoku in 604. The first and most important article enjoined the emperor and his courtiers to devote themselves to scholarship and the arts. The emperors of the Tokugawa period seem to have taken this to heart: scholarship (the study of a limited number of Confucian classics) and the arts (chiefly tanka and calligraphy) were the central elements of their education. The Confucian classics were studied not in the hopes that a prince might one day rival scholars of the Tokugawa period in reinterpreting the texts; it was enough for members of the court to be familiar in general with the teachings of Confucius and to be able to quote his words at appropriate times. The remainder of the seventeen articles dealt with specific matters, such as appointments to court offices, inheritance of property by nobles, precedence among the various noble houses, and the treatment of members of the nobility who had entered priestly orders.
Even if they resented the supremacy of the shogunate and recalled nostalgically the distant past when the emperor reigned supreme, most emperors and members of the aristocracy did not chafe under the regulations to which they were subjected. The world they lived in was tiny, but they seemed unaware of its limitations, and matters of the most minute concern could occupy their minds for decades. Even those who resented the interference of the shogunate in their lives and the presence in Kyōto of officials sent from Edo who monitored their every action were well aware that they could not survive without the annual stipends the shogunate paid them.
In the case of the lower ranks of the aristocracy, the stipends they received were often insufficient to maintain their households even at a modest level, and many resorted to working on the side, preferably at pursuits that were not considered to be demeaning, such as making copies of the calligraphy of old masters or painting cards for the New Year’s game of karuta (cards); they counted on the appeal of their illustrious names to sell their handiwork. The family of Iwakura Tomomi (1825–1883), who emerged as the most prominent noble of the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods, was so poor that they had to rent their house as a gambling den, taking advantage of their immunity as nobles from police regulations. But even the poorest of the nobles were proud of their lineage and their social status, and they were respected by society as a whole, although some of them, as we know from the testimony of the nobles themselves, behaved outrageously, stopping at nothing in their desperate eagerness to make money.8
The poverty of the emperor and the court has often been exaggerated, especially by popular historians who have fabricated tales of the drastic expedients to which even emperors resorted merely to stay alive. In fact, they lived reasonably well, even by the standards of the daimyos of the time, whose wealth similarly tends to be exaggerated.
The life of an emperor during the Tokugawa period must have been extremely boring, however. Apart from the consolation of nocturnal pleasures (Gomizunoo had thirty-seven children and Gosai, twenty-seven), each day seems to have been occupied mainly with ceremonies, repeated identically from year to year. But perhaps the aspect of an emperor’s life that we would find most oppressive was the narrow confines of the area in which he could move. This had not always been true. Although the emperors never traveled very far from the Gosho, they made occasional imperial progresses to different parts of the city. For example, in 1626 Gomizunoo was entertained for four days at Nijō Castle, the official residence of the shogun in the capital. But from 1632, the year when the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu (1604–1651) began to rule in his own right after the death of his father, Tokugawa Hidetada, the shogunate did not permit the emperors to leave the Gosho. On a few occasions, it is true, fires in the Gosho might compel an emperor to take refuge at a temple elsewhere in Kyōto, but it is not much of an exaggeration to say that the successive emperors were prisoners of the state.
Abdicated emperors were freer to travel outside the Gosho. The Shugaku-in, in the hills northeast of the city, was originally built about 1650 as a pleasure resort for the retired emperor Gomizunoo. It was visited from time to time in later years by other abdicated emperors, but it had not been used for many years, and when the retired emperor Kōkaku requested permission in 1823 from the shogunate to visit the Shugaku-in, hasty repairs had to be made before the visit could take place. The occasion passed splendidly:
The cloistered emperor Gomizunoo was the first to visit the tea pavilion of the Shugaku-in, at the foot of Mount Hiyoshi. The cloistered emperor Reigen had also frequently stopped here. After the death of the cloistered emperor Reigen in 1732, for a period of about a hundred years, the place fell into rack and ruin, and the imperial visits ceased. In the autumn of 1824, the military were commanded to make fresh repairs, and reverting to their old practice, they performed this service. Accordingly, on the twenty-first day of the nin
th month of 1825 the retired emperor [Kōkaku] paid his first visit. The route he took was as follows: he left the Gosho by the Seiwa-in Gate, proceeded to Masugata, crossed the Kamo River, and then rested a while at Nitta Yamabana. Great crowds of people cheered him, shouting “Banzai!” They filled the streets, gazing at him reverently. Truly this was proof of an auspicious reign.9
Although emperors who had abdicated and entered priestly orders were allowed this degree of freedom by the shogunate, this was not true of reigning emperors; from 1632 until 1863, when Kōmei went to worship at the Kamo and Iwashimizu Shrines, the successive emperors hardly ever left the Gosho, and then only because of some disaster. None of them had seen the sea or Mount Fuji or the city of Edo, where the shoguns reigned. During his entire lifetime, an emperor would never have seen more than a few hundred of his subjects, and virtually none of the Japanese would ever have had even the barest glimpse of him. The people of Kyōto were, of course, aware that the emperor lived behind the walls of the Gosho, but except for such rare occasions as when the retired emperor Kōkaku visited the Shugaku-in, they never saw even the palanquin in which he was borne, let alone the man. He was invisible to all but a handful of high-ranking courtiers, a presence behind curtains who excited awe and reverence but who was remote from the world of human beings.
Higashikuze Michitomi was one of the very few at the court for whom the future emperor Kōmei was both a human being and a friend. He recalled Kōmei’s proficiency in his studies: “He was able to read the Four Books and the Five Classics10 without difficulty and learned enough even to lecture on them. He did not study Japanese books very much, but he received instruction in composing tanka from his father and composed them every day. His poems were extremely good. In gagaku [music] he received instruction from Hamuro, the major counselor, and he was a skillful player of the flute.”11
Kōmei was officially named the crown prince in 1840, when he was in his tenth year. Higashikuze recalled that before the ceremony, imperial commands had been issued to seven Shintō shrines and seven Buddhist temples to pray that the ceremony would not be interrupted by wind or rain.12 The actual ceremony took place in the Shishinden (Hall for State Ceremonies). At the conclusion, the emperor presented the prince with the tsubogiri no goken, the sword indicating that the recipient was next in the succession.
Higashikuze did not actually become the prince’s companion until 1842, but he knew from reports how Kōmei looked on that occasion two years earlier: “His hair was arranged in the agemaki style, divided on top to left and right in loops over his ears, in the manner of the hair of the two boys in attendance on Prince Shōtoku in the famous portrait. This was because he had not yet had his gembuku.”13
Probably Higashikuze knew of this ceremony only from other people, but he was present for Kōmei’s gembuku, or initiation into manhood, the second most important rite of the prince’s life, which began on May 11, 1844, with the ceremony of blackening the prince’s teeth. Kōmei disliked this so much that he had to be forced. (It is not hard to imagine the thirteen-year-old boy squirming and perhaps shrieking as the nasty black liquid was rubbed against his teeth.) The next two days were spent rehearsing the ceremony. As Higashikuze explained, “This was something that happened only once in an emperor’s lifetime, and there were so few people who could remember what had happened the previous time that everybody had to consult books during the rehearsals.”14
Before dawn on the day of the ceremony the prince was dressed in his costume for the occasion. All the nobles wore formal robes with trailing skirts and carried broadswords inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The emperor appeared, followed by a woman attendant bearing the crown prince’s crown. Inside the Hall for State Ceremonies, the officers of the Imperial Palace Keeper’s Bureau (tonomoryō) opened the curtains. The crown prince’s tutor led him to the platform, whereupon the chancellor, Takatsukasa Masamichi, came up beside the prince. Kujō, the minister of the right, supported the prince’s train. At this solemn moment all the nobles prostrated themselves. Those of lesser rank did the same outside the building. The minister of the center, Konoe Tadahiro, placed the crown on the prince’s head, and Koga Takemichi, the acting middle counselor, bound his hair. Konoe again came forward, removed the crown, and left. Koga came forward and rearranged the prince’s hair. When this was done, the prince withdrew to the inner quarters and changed his costume.15 The ceremony was over.
Emperor Ninkō, Kōmei’s father, died at dawn on February 23, 1846. Nobody expected him to die: he was in the prime of life (only forty-six years old) and was endowed with an exceptionally strong constitution. He had been suffering from nothing worse than a cold, but one day when he got up to go to the toilet, he discovered that he could not stand. He was supported by court ladies, but they were not able to hold up the heavy man, and he had to crawl to the toilet. On the way he had a fatal attack. His death was not immediately announced; instead, it was stated that he was so severely incapacitated he wished to abdicate. But an emperor could not abdicate without the permission of the shogunate. A fast messenger was therefore sent to Edo by the Kyōto deputy shoshidai,16 but Ninkō had died long before the reply was received.
The emperor’s death was formally announced on March 13. One week later, there was a simple ceremony to mark Kōmei’s succession to the throne, and on the following day Ninkō was placed in his coffin. Then, on March 30, it was announced that the lady-in-waiting (miyasudokoro) Kujō Asako (1834–1897) had been named nyōgo, the highest rank of court lady below the empress, signifying that Kōmei now possessed the equivalent of a wife.17
Most of the events described in the official record of the early years of Kōmei’s reign have little historical importance. There were memorial services for the late emperor Ninkō, purification and other Shintō rites, an eclipse of the moon, a cockfight—all reported with equal thoroughness and a wealth of citations. Perhaps the most important event was the opening of instruction at the Gakushū-in (a school for children of the nobility). The entry for October 19, 1846, by contrast, leaps from the page: “Word of the coming of foreign ships having reached the capital, the emperor sent a message to the shogunate on sea defenses.”18
This was the first expression in centuries of an emperor’s views on foreign policy and could only have been the result of extreme consternation on the part of the fifteen-year-old Kōmei (or his advisers) on learning of the threat of foreign intrusion. The entry for June 9, 1847, is in the same vein: “The counselor Nonomiya Sadanaga was appointed as the imperial envoy to the special festival of the Iwashimizu Shrine. He was asked especially to pray for peace and tranquillity within the four seas, at a time when foreign warships have intruded into Japanese waters.”19
This was the first of many prayers that Kōmei would offer to the gods, asking their assistance in ridding Japan of foreign intruders. Never in his lifetime, however, did Kōmei see any foreigners. Indeed, he probably knew next to nothing about them at the time his prayers were offered at the Iwashimizu Shrine, and he learned little more during the rest of his reign; but he was absolutely sure that the presence of foreigners (or, more specifically, Western foreigners) was an intolerable affront to the Land of the Gods.
The reference to foreign warships in Kōmei’s prayers was probably to the two American warships that entered Edo Bay in the summer of the previous year under the command of Commodore James Biddle, who attempted unsuccessfully to draw up a treaty of commerce with the magistrate of Uraga. A French warship also visited Japan in 1846. Kōmei referred to both in his semmyō (message from the throne) offered to the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine, and he prayed that if the foreigners ever came to Japan again, the god of the shrine would raise a wind that would blow them away and leave the country in peace.20
Kōmei never swerved in his antiforeign sentiments, even though at times, powerless to do otherwise, he reluctantly agreed to allow the foreigners to remain in Japan temporarily until the moment had arrived to drive them all into the sea. His xenophobia was formed early i
n his life and remained with him to the end; surely it was one of the elements that contributed to the fierceness of the expression in his portrait.
On October 31, 1847, the coronation of Kōmei took place in the Hall for State Ceremonies when he was in his seventeenth year. He delivered a semmyō, praying for peace and asking for the assistance of all his subjects. Judging from the surviving accounts, the ceremony was carried out with magnificence, and on the following day persons who were not normally allowed to approach the imperial palace were able to get a glimpse of the splendor of the occasion.21
Kōmei’s life after his coronation differed little from the routine that had been established in previous reigns. There were religious observances, poetry gatherings, and the resignations and promotions of palace officials. When necessary, Kōmei would compose a tanka, usually phrased in unclouded language:
ume yanagi As plums and willows
iromeku haru no Take on the colors of spring
niwa no omo ni Within the garden,
asahi majiete Mingling with the morning sun
uguisu no naku The song thrushes are singing.22