Bloody Sunrise

by Christopher Nicole

  So how could someone who had never known such perfection outside Japan not also be happy, whatever the memories and ambitions tugging at his heartstrings? How could a husband not delight in the most tranquil, willing and beautiful of wives? How could a father not delight in the babies she bore him? The first, a girl born almost exactly nine months after the wedding, they named Aki. Eighteen months later Sumiko gave birth to a son, who Nicholas named Takamori, after his great friend. And if he was an exile, forever it seemed, he at least had a companion to share his loneliness.

  Tom was not a happy man, but that was for purely personal reasons. The girl, Ise Suiko, on whom he had set his heart, had been presented in marriage by her father to another samurai. ‘That is quite outrageous,’ he declared. ‘I’ve a mind . . .’

  ‘To do what?’ Nicholas inquired. ‘You know the rule. Forget her, Tom, and find someone else.’

  Tom snorted; there could be no doubt that he was envious of Nicholas’s domestic bliss. But they had sufficient to do, training the Satsuma army, to occupy even the mind of an unfulfilled lover. Nicholas had now created an efficient regiment of riflemen, and Saigo had obtained some cannon to replace those lost in the fight against the British. These were still smooth-bore muzzle-loaders of no great calibre, but Nicholas had them fitted with wheels and felt he had created a useful field artillery. He also endeavoured to equip his officers with revolvers, but the samurai regarded these, even more than the rifles to which they were now becoming accustomed, as dishonourable.

  From his point of view, Nicholas considered he was making most progress in the direction dearest to his heart: interesting Lord Shimadzu in the creation of a navy. The Shōgun himself had so far abandoned the age-old strategy of the Tokugawas as to be seeking modern ships, and when Nicholas heard that there was a paddle-frigate lying in Shanghai, ordered by the Chinese government but for which they were unable to pay, he obtained Shimadzu’s permission to visit the mainland port and examine the ship for himself. He was accompanied by Togo Heihachiro, eager as ever to be involved in anything nautical. Tom and of course Sumiko and her children remained in Kagoshima, and Nicholas understood that they were hostages for his safe return, as if there was any possibility of his fleeing to a service which regarded him as a renegade traitor. In fact he had to make his visit as secretly as possible, as there were always British men-of-war in the Yangste estuary, and travelled in a Japanese junk, wearing the kimono at all times.

  The ship was the Chiangtzu. She was two hundred and fifty feet in length and displaced thirteen hundred tons. Armed with a seven-inch gun, as well as four four-point-five-inch and two thirty-pounders, and capable of only nine knots, she was not a particularly powerful ship in European terms, and would never be able to match any Royal Navy vessel. But she would be a formidable force in the civil conflict which everyone in Japan knew was coming, and everyone was afraid to provoke. Nicholas returned to Kagoshima determined to persuade the Shimadzu to buy the vessel. As he stepped from the junk, in the early winter of 1866, he was greeted by Saigo himself. ‘Thanks be to the gods that you have returned, Barrett san. Our day is here. The news has just reached us from Edo that Tokugawa Iemochi is dead. The Shōgunate is vacant!’

  *

  So there was the answer to the question that had been puzzling Nicholas for the past five years: the event for which Saigo and Shimadzu had been waiting. ‘A most fortuitous occurrence,’ Nicholas remarked, as they walked up to the castle together. ‘Surely Tokugawa Iemochi was not an old man. And was he not a healthy one.’

  Saigo gave him a sidelong glance. ‘No human can understand the workings of Fate, Barrett san.’

  Which left Nicholas in no doubt that the unfortunate Shōgun had been murdered, whether by a Satsuma agent was not relevant – like all Japanese, Saigo did not regard political assassination as in the least dishonourable. ‘But will not another Tokugawa be made Shōgun in Iemochi’s place?’ he asked.

  ‘This is what the Tokugawa will hope,’ Saigo agreed. ‘But Iemochi has no son, not even a close cousin, to whom the family may turn. The only Tokugawa prince of an age to succeed is the Lord of Mito, Yoshinobu, and he is but a boy, of a weak and pleasure-loving mind. He is called Keiko. Were a sufficiently resolute opposition mounted to his succession, it might be possible to achieve much.’ He did not elaborate on what he had in mind, and in fact Nicholas decided that the Satsuma as a whole were afraid to take the decisive step which might plunge the empire into civil conflict, as expounded at a council of war to which he was invited.

  ‘For although there can be no doubt that most samurai know that it is the Tokugawa who have inflicted this dishonourable burden of foreign interference upon us,’ Lord Shimadzu said, ‘yet is the Shōgunate sanctified by two hundred and sixty years of power, and by the apparent support of the Mikado. To alter this state of affairs will be a momentous step. We of the Satsuma, like all daimyo, are entitled to attend the election of a new Shōgun, accompanied on our march by a reasonable escort. However, if we march north with all our power, then we will be declaring our intentions to our opponents, who will unite against us before we even reach sight of Edo.’ He looked from face to face.

  ‘May I speak, my lord?’ Nicholas asked. Shimadzu inclined his head. ‘I would like to ask, my lord, if it is your intention to destroy the Tokugawa, knowing that they hold your youngest son as hostage in Edo?’ This was a common Tokugawa practice, to keep the provincial nobility loyal.

  ‘My son knows his duty,’ Shimadzu said.

  To die, Nicholas thought, without a tremor crossing his father’s face. But having received such an answer, could he now do less that give this stern old man the triumph he sought? Besides, it would be his own triumph as well; if this was to be his land, his people, he was determined to rise to the top.

  ‘Then, my lord, I would ask you this: if your march north can only be attended by your personal bodyguard, how many men would this be?’

  ‘I could take five thousand men without arousing suspicion.’

  ‘And the Tokugawa maintain an army of at least fifteen thousand men permanently mobilised in the vicinity of Edo,’ Saigo observed, gloomily.

  ‘Five thousand men may defeat twenty, if properly armed and led, Saigo san,’ Nicholas said. ‘And will we not also be supported by the new Lord of Cho-Shu, Yoshimune? May I recommend, Lord Shimadzu, that in your bodyguard you include myself and my rifle regiment. If we march with our weapons concealed, no one will know we are armed with anything more than swords and bows. And may I further recommend that you prepare the rest of your army to follow, with the artillery, on an appointed day. Then, when we have gained an initial victory, we will be able to bring an overwhelming force to bear upon our enemies, before they can do the same.’

  Shimadzu looked at Saigo. ‘It is a bold strategy,’ the general remarked. ‘Remember that if we fail, Barrett san, all our heads will roll. Yours included.’

  *

  ‘War,’ Sumiko said sadly. Takamori was still at her breast, and three-year-old Aki played at her feet. ‘I will pray for you, my lord.’

  ‘Who can tell the workings of Fate? We may return without firing a shot.’ Nicholas shook hands with Tom. ‘I leave the second regiment in your care.’ For they had been training another group of riflemen, although these were far from ready. ‘You’ll march with Tadatune and Togo.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Tom promised. He appeared less dismayed than Nicholas had feared at not being involved in the first movement. Certainly he seemed confident enough. All the Satsuma bristled with confidence as they marched north; fast riders had already been sent to Shimonoseki to summon the men of Cho-Shu. Nicholas’s plan, once adopted, had been drawn up by Saigo. One week after the advance party had left, the remainder of the army was to concentrate on the fortress of Kumamoto, north of Kagoshima. There General Hayashi, Saigo’s deputy, would take command and lead them north to the Strait of Shimonoseki, to pass over to Honshu. Once on the main island they would be joined by the Cho-Shu, and the c
ombined forces of some sixty thousand men would move on Edo. By then the manoeuvre would certainly have been discovered by the Tokugawa agents, and riders would be galloping for Edo. But by then, too, the advance guards should be within a single march of the capital, and hopefully would have gained that vital initial success.

  The journey to the north took much longer than Nicholas had anticipated; he was not yet used to the size of this land, or the slowness with which even a small Japanese samurai army marched, with its lengthy stops for meals and the necessity of finding luxurious quarters for the two daimyo each night. After crossing the Strait they followed the sea to begin with, taking the coastal road to the east along the southernmost edge of Honshu from Shimonoseki to Hiroshima, thence to Fukuyama and Okayama, before, after a fortnight, they beheld the flags flying from the great citadel of Osaka.

  Osaka had once been the chief city of Japan, in the days of the great Toyotomi Hideyoshi, before the Tokugawa had come to power. It lay at the head of the Inland Sea, and yet close to a passage to the ocean, and in addition was only some twenty miles south of the imperial capital of Kyoto itself. Thus it was the very nerve centre of the empire, as its castle was the greatest in the land, rectangle within rectangle of high stone walls separated by deep moats, surrounding a huge keep. Here the last of the Toyotomi, Hideyoshi’s famous warrior wife Yodogimi and her son, had fought the final battle of that other civil war against the Tokugawa and lost, two and a half centuries before. Now the garrison flew the golden fan of the Tokugawa themselves, and gazed down at the marching southerners. ‘They cannot interfere with us,’ Saigo told Nicholas. ‘We are entitled to attend the election.’

  ‘What would happen if we were to turn aside now, march on Kyoto, and seize the Mikado?’ Nicholas asked. ‘We could be there tomorrow morning, if we hurried.’

  ‘Kyoto is also ringed with Tokugawa troops. And they would speak in the Mikado’s name when they commanded us to lay down our arms, and our leaders to commit seppuku.’

  ‘And you would feel obliged to obey, even knowing it was your enemies speaking, rather than your king?’

  ‘You speak of a king, Barrett san. But we are talking of the Son of Heaven. Any order given in his name must be obeyed. That is why it is necessary to bring down the Tokugawa first. Only the Shōgun, having been elected by the daimyo, may act in the Mikado’s name without his written consent. Thus if we can force the election of a Shōgun of our own, the Tokugawa will be just ordinary men, like ourselves. Then we may march on Kyoto.’

  Nicholas felt like asking how a being who exercised such total theoretical power over the lives of his subjects as the Mikado, had not in more than five hundred years ever attempted to exercise that power physically. This more than anything else was an example of that tradition which held the Japanese in such a vicelike grip, and which the Tokugawa Shōgunate was actually attempting to change, not realising that it must perish with all the other aspects of the past if Japan was truly to move into the Nineteenth Century.

  *

  As they marched north-east towards Nagoya, they realised that it was not yet summer in the northern islands. The nights were cold, and there was the occasional sharp frost; more than one of the samurai was frozen to death on sentry duty. But from Nagoya they again followed the coast, swinging south-east for a while, to Hamamatsu, before once more turning east, for Shizuoka. Now huge mountains, the Hakone Range, loomed on their left hand, and rising above even these was the perpetually snow-capped peak of Fuji, twenty thousand feet and more in height, Japan’s eternal monument. At Kamakura, where they arrived soon after, Nicholas watched in wonder as the samurai knelt before the huge Daihatsu Buddha, greatest of Japanese man-made monuments. Here was history leaping at him from around every corner. And from Kamakura they could look across the water, at land to the east.

  ‘We are in a bay,’ Saigo explained. ‘Edo Wan. That village in the distance is Yokohama. Beyond are the walls of Edo.’ They had been a month on the road, since leaving Kagoshima.

  *

  Saigo had described Edo as the greatest city in the world, and Nicholas had not paid much attention, accustomed as he was to the Japanese habit of regarding everything in their island empire as the best. Yet as they marched along the shore, looking at the houses and the pagodas which seemed to fill the entire landscape beyond, he wondered if the general might not in this instance have been stating the simple truth; he would have guessed Edo to be even larger than London. And like London, it appeared to be entirely open; but no hostile army had approached London for two hundred years. ‘It is not really undefended,’ Saigo said. ‘The Tokugawa built a wall round their city, many years ago. But the houses have overflowed the wall. And then there is an inner wall, which surrounds the citadel of the Tokugawas itself. We can claim no victory until we have entered there.’

  Nicholas considered; to allow his men to get sucked into that maze of narrow streets would be to negate all the advantages of mobility and firepower he had so carefully created. He was also concerned about the possible reactions of the various warships he could see anchored in the bay; several of them were British. No matter what happened, this had to be a short, sharp conflict, with victory a fait accompli before any outside forces could become involved. And then he realised that here tradition was working in his favour, for issuing from the houses was a large body of armed men; the morning sun glinted from their armour, and behind them rumbled a battery of field artillery. The Tokugawa were following the age-old practice of their people, and attempting to choose an equal field.

  Saigo was confounded. ‘What can this be?’ he demanded. ‘They cannot know we have not come in peace.’ He urged his horse to where Lords Shimadzu and Yoshimune rode together. Nicholas followed more slowly, watching the army debouching into the open space before the first of the houses. He estimated its strength at about twenty thousand men, or odds of two to one. But it was the artillery which mattered.

  A herald rode out in front of the Tokugawa for some two hundred yards, and there waited for the Cho-Shu and Satsuma forces to come to a halt. Saigo-no-Takamori himself went forward, while the armies waited, perhaps half a mile apart. Saigo spoke with the herald for several minutes, then rode back to the waiting daimyos. ‘How dare they bar my advance?’ Shimadzu demanded. ‘Am I not to attend the election?’

  Saigo’s face was a picture of dismay. ‘The mourning period has been ignored, my lord. The Tokugawa decided that affairs in Japan were at too critical a stage to leave the country without a head for several months. Therefore an election was held four weeks ago, and Keiko was chosen.’

  ‘We have been outwitted,’ Yoshimune grumbled.

  ‘Why were we not informed of this election?’ Shimadzu asked.

  ‘They say that we were. They do not know what has happened to the messengers.’

  ‘We know that is a lie,’ Shimadzu said angrily. ‘Well, tell those fellows to stand aside. We shall pay our respects to this new Shōgun of ours.’

  ‘My lord, the Shōgun has ordered that we are to be barred from the city. Each daimyo wishing to pay his respects is to enter the city alone and unarmed, under Tokugawa escort. He guarantees safe conduct.’

  ‘We have been outwitted,’ Yoshimune said again. ‘The Tokugawa have been too clever for us. It was ever so. Now we can only go home again, and dismiss our people.’

  Nicholas could not believe his ears. He urged his horse closer. ‘The alternative is to act now, my lords.’

  ‘You would have us challenge twice our number, and armed with cannon?’ Shimadzu demanded.

  ‘That is what we came here to do, my lord. I do not think we should fear the guns.’ He was confident, because the Tokugawas clearly did not understand the proper use of artillery, and the six cannon, instead of remaining massed as a battery, had been dispersed, one to every hundred yards, thus dramatically decreasing their effectiveness.

  ‘You think we can defeat them?’ Saigo asked.

  ‘I have no doubt of it, providing we adopt the cor
rect tactics.’

  ‘Will we not be rebels?’ Yoshimune asked.

  ‘Not yet, my lord,’ Saigo argued. ‘The command to withdraw was issued in the name of the Shōgun, not the Mikado. If we claim to dispute the election . . .’

  ‘My lords,’ Nicholas cried, ‘we came here to accomplish a purpose. Let us worry about the legalities after we have won. If we lose, then are our lives forfeit in any event.’

  The Japanese looked astonished at his outburst. But Saigo smiled. ‘Tell us how we should arrange our forces.’

  ‘On a front broad enough to match theirs. And then advance as rapidly as you can.’

  Shimadzu looked thunderstruck. ‘That will involve each man of ours opposing two of theirs. And the cannon.’

  ‘It will be one of ours to three of theirs, my lord. I will hold my riflemen together, on the right wing. And when you are spread so thin, those cannon will be even less destructive. Trust me, my lords.’

  Saigo gave him a long stare, and then trotted off to make his dispositions. The Satsuma and Cho-Shu forces were slowly brought into line, amidst a tremendous clashing of cymbals and blowing of conch shells and bugles, which was reciprocated from the ranks of the Shōgun’s army as they realised the southern samurai meant to challenge them. A messenger galloped back to the city. ‘Seeking reinforcements,’ Nicholas muttered. ‘Haste, Saigo Takamori. Haste.’ His twelve hundred men were in column behind him; at his command they kept their rifles slung on their shoulders and revealed only their bows. The enemy had observed this concentration while the rest of the southern army was so widely dispersed, and now detached a body of archers, some two thousand strong, to repel the anticipated charge. Which made his task the easier, Nicholas reflected.

  At last Saigo was ready, and took his place before his troops, dismounting – the Japanese had little concept of the use of cavalry – and drawing his long sword. The signal was given, and with a mighty shout of ‘Banzai!’ the Satsuma and Cho-Shu men loosed off their arrows, filling the air with the whistling of their shafts, and then immediately started their armoured advance behind their missiles. Instantly the Tokugawa replied with their own arrow storm, and the cannon belched flame, but as Nicholas had expected, very little damage was done to either side, and the southerners found it easy to avoid the occasional bouncing iron balls. But now the spears were levelled and the swords were out, as the two lines approached each other for that hand-to-hand combat which was so dear to the samurai’s heart, and which the Tokugawa, with their immense superiority in numbers, anticipated with the utmost confidence. Nicholas waited until he estimated the two sides would close in about one minute. ‘Now,’ he shouted. ‘On the double.’