Samurai

by John Man

  The second flash point was Korea. Traditionally owing allegiance to the Chinese emperor, Korea would not recognize another one. Anyway, for Koreans, Japan was farther removed than themselves from China, the true center of the universe, and therefore its people were mere barbarians: the mirror image of the way Japanese thought about Koreans. Traditionally, these radically incompatible views had been kept below the surface, because Korea did not have to deal with an emperor but with the shogun. This distinction provided a sort of diplomatic fig leaf, enabling the relationship to be managed through a local office in Korea run by Japanese from the island of Tsushima. When the shogun went, so did the fig leaf, revealing the new imperial reality. Japan sent three missions to Korea to try to open negotiations, but all were rebuffed. Korea, like China, refused to recognize the new regime in Tokyo—because it was headed by, as it were, a “false” emperor, the only real one being in Beijing. In Tokyo, this was seen as an appalling insult, to which the only proper response was a declaration of war.

  Japan desperately needed some steady hands, but there were none to be had, not even among those in America with the Iwakura mission. The mission was itself in confusion, because some of its members wanted to revise the Unequal Treaties, despite having agreed before their departure not to do so. Okubo made the journey home from Washington to ask if the caretakers in Tokyo would say “yes.” The answer, to the huge embarrassment of all, was “no.” The loss of face blew the delegation apart: several members went off on tours of their own and the last to return home arrived almost two years after they had left.

  Saigo’s main burden was still Hisamitsu, who turned up in Tokyo on April 23, 1873, accompanied by an entourage of 250 with shaved foreheads and wearing swords. Despite their fearsome looks, the only unpleasantness was Hisamitsu’s constant abuse, what Saigo called his “infantile whims.” How very different from the good cheer and politeness of the emperor! Saigo admired him more and more—yet another cause of stress, with his loyalties divided between an emperor he loved and a lord he despised. (Actually, this conflict at least would not last long. Hisamitsu would be in office only two years, until 1875, when he was fired and returned to Kagoshima, where he spent another twelve bad-tempered years until his death.)

  Another conflict of loyalties arose over Amami Oshima. In Kagoshima, the samurai, casting around for new sources of income—since most despised trade, business and farming—had homed in on the idea of tapping into the island’s sugarcane industry. The old domain monopoly was privatized, allowing company profits to be paid to the samurai shareholders. Saigo approved, because it helped the samurai—but wanted the deal kept quiet, in case the ministry of finance became interested in the possibility of taxing the company. But the company made life even harder for the islanders by paying them less rice. They asked Saigo’s former guard on Okinoerabu to intercede for them, which he did, by getting the cane-rice exchange rate improved—thus revealing precisely what Saigo had wanted hushed up. Exploitation of peasants, followed by lack of transparency, followed by revelation of commercial activity: there was no way, it seemed, to avoid betraying someone if you were a politician.

  It was all too much for Saigo’s health. He had heart pains caused by arteriosclerosis. What he needed, said the emperor’s personal doctor, a German army surgeon named Theodor Hoffmann, was exercise and a low-fat diet. He moved in with his brother in a leafy suburb, where he could walk, hunt rabbits with his dogs and recover. He loved it. He wrote of wishing to leave the “muddy waters” of the city and government and find peace in the “pure waters” of retirement.

  Meanwhile, the Korea crisis was blowing up into a storm. The local Korean prefect in Pusan was incensed to discover Japanese businessmen posing as officials from Tsushima, and moreover doing so in western dress. He broke off relations, accusing the Japanese of being lawless. Several members of Japan’s imperial council were appalled at this insult, and some were for sending ships and troops instantly, a move that might just have the added benefit of intimidating Russia, which had imperial ambitions in the Far East.

  Saigo, though, proposed a diplomatic response, if one can call such a provocative suggestion diplomatic. He said he wanted to undertake a mission to Korea personally. To the cabinet he claimed his intentions were peaceful. “It would not be good at all to send in troops. If doing so should lead to war, it would be contrary to our true intentions, and so the proper thing to do at this point is to send in an emissary . . . We must try to realize our original aim, to establish a firm friendship with Korea.”

  But privately his aim was rather different. He wanted to bring out the truth about Korea, even if that meant war. To that end he would risk his life, for quite possibly the Koreans would kill him. He did not know their intentions; was not certain that Korea really wished to be insulting; had no gut feeling that either war or peace was more likely—but was prepared to use himself as the catalyst. He adapted the argument he had used when confronting Choshu: the case was just, it was worth dying for, and if the Koreans killed him this would be the casus belli; the samurai would be angered and forget their grievances, Japan would go to war and win a glorious victory, and he, Saigo, would have made amends as only a samurai could for his many sins—for the death of Gessho, for his own failure to die, for allowing the abolition of samurai privileges. In brief, he was ready for martyrdom. He wrote to the most outspoken advocate of military action, Itagake Taisuke: “If we send an official emissary over there, I imagine the Koreans still would kill him, and I beg you to send me. I cannot be a fine diplomat like Soejima [Taneomi, the foreign minister], but if it is only a matter of dying, that much I think I can manage. Therefore I hope you will send me.”

  Was he seeking war or peace? He was prepared for both. What he wanted was to stage a drama to reveal what the Koreans really intended, and the truth would decide policy. If they talked, it was peace; if they assassinated him, war. At a stroke, literally—or not—the matter would be solved. Enough talk! Action was all, if done with integrity. As for himself, he really didn’t care if he lived or died—“only a matter of dying!” Either way, he would have peace of mind and, as he wrote, “be completely untroubled.”

  It is still hard to know what to make of all this, for national interest—ill-defined at this point—was mixed up with personal agendas and power politics. Saigo seemed willing to say different things to different people, depending on what he thought would sway them. But what comes through powerfully is a trait of many leaders: the identification of the national interest with his own ego. He wanted to establish the state’s integrity by establishing his own. This was his fixed idea. If it led to peace, fine; if not—well, also fine. It mattered not to him what the long-term consequences might be: his own death; internal and international crisis; war, with perhaps the death of thousands of innocent Japanese and Koreans; perhaps the destabilization of the whole region, with Russia and China being drawn in. What price then his integrity? He was bound upon a wheel of fire, acting for the good (as he saw it) and yet willing, without much reflection, to release a great deal of evil, all because he was determined to present himself as virtue personified.

  It was, of course, the short-term good that he emphasized to the council, with a passion that carried the day. In principle, the council backed him, with confirmation pending.

  Nothing (except what was yet to come) better reveals what an extraordinary character Saigo was. How to explain this readiness to risk death, as if he were playing Russian roulette with events as the gun? It was perhaps a way of escaping the intolerable paradoxes into which his beliefs and actions had led him. Though steeped in conservatism, he was also in the forefront of change: feudal in his loyalties, he helped abolish feudalism; a samurai who loved the samurai and their traditions, he signed up to legislation that ended their long supremacy; committed to expelling Western barbarians, he accepted the benefits they brought. These were tensions he could not resolve. What he could do was evade them by dying in two noble causes—truth, and either peace
or war, with the latter offering a chance for the young samurai to live out their traditions by conquering Korea.

  The extent of his passion, his explosive volatility, the strength of his commitment, his determination to see things through to the end, his obsessive integrity, the depth of his learning—all come together in a poem he wrote in Chinese when he thought he would shortly be off to Korea.

  Summer’s brutal heat has passed and autumn’s air is clear and crisp;

  Seeking a cool breeze I journey to the capital of Silla [Korea].

  I must show the constancy of Su Wu through the bleakness of the years.

  May I leave behind a name as great as Yan Zhenqing.

  What I wish to tell my descendants, I will teach without words.

  (trans. Ravina)

  The references point to an intimate knowledge of Chinese history back to the second and third centuries BC. Su Wu was a Chinese commander famous for having led an embassy to the “northern barbarians,” the Xiongnu, who ruled an empire north of the Great Wall (indeed, part of the Great Wall was built to keep them out). He was taken captive and held as a hostage. He tried to commit suicide, was nursed back to health, and was then tortured, starved and forced to become a shepherd. Finally, after nineteen years, he made it home again. In Chinese history and art, he became a symbol of faithful service in the face of overwhelming odds and a favorite subject in drama, poetry and song. Yan Zhenqing (eighth century) was famous as a city governor loyal to the Tang dynasty and as a calligrapher. And finally, Saigo is aiming for an immortal reputation in endurance, loyalty and artistic merit, not through words or administrative ability but—as ever—through action, his definitive sword-cut through reality’s entangling knots.

  In the event, the action he took was not at all what he had planned.

  The issue of Korea set him at odds with two colleagues, the senior general Yamagata Aritomo and his childhood friend Okubo, with whom he had masterminded the restoration. Yamagata, who had seen several European armies at first hand, knew Japan’s conscripts were not ready for a war. Okubo, who returned home from the Iwakura mission in May 1873, had also seen much of the world, including Germany, and had been very impressed with Germany’s chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who had done for Germany what Okubo wanted to do for Japan: he had unified a land of provinces, set an emperor on the throne, avoided war where possible, won a major war (against France), ensured peace internationally by playing off major powers against each other and created a nationwide legal system. All this he had done by pursuing the national interest without passion, pragmatically, compromising when necessary, never allowing old loyalties to get in his way. Indeed, Okubo’s admiration for the Prussian statesman, and his own attitudes and achievements, earned him the later soubriquet of “Japan’s Bismarck.” How, then, would a Bismarck deal with Korea? The Koreans were insulting, certainly; but would war with them work for Japan? No, it wouldn’t pay off, and it would antagonize Russia. Better to swallow insults and live with shame than have a budget deficit or risk all with Saigo’s wild ideas.

  The differences came to a head in December, when the ten-strong council was supposed to confirm Saigo’s appointment as ambassador to Korea. Five were for him, five against, and all were near the breaking point, for this was not just about Korea and Saigo, it was about who was going to run the country, and in what direction they would take it.2

  Next day, Okubo came out with powerful arguments against Saigo’s mission. What if something serious happened at home when the army was abroad? Anyway, the economy would suffer, and there were debts which, if not paid, would affect negotiations to replace the Unequal Treaties. The only beneficiary of war and more debt would be Russia. Okubo said he would resign if overruled. Over the following days, anger exploded yet again on both sides; so much emotion was released that the prime minister collapsed with a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, handing control to Iwakura. Saigo and Okubo were each convinced that they knew how to save the nation, and that the other would ruin it. “The biggest coward in Satsuma” was what Saigo called Okubo, using the worst possible insult a samurai could hurl; “reckless” was how Okubo described Saigo, with a new PM to back him up. On December 12, confirmation of Saigo’s mission to Korea was “postponed” indefinitely—in effect, rescinded.

  In fury, Saigo resigned (though he kept one of his posts, that of general, which would have implications four years later, when he would be leading an insurrection against his own army). This was not the regime he had hoped for. He had wanted power to remain in the hands of patriotic warrior–administrators, and what he had gotten were wishy-washy, self-serving, compromising politicians, bureaucrats and capitalists. What he had wanted was a federation, and what he got was a centralized nation. Three of his supporters followed him into the wilderness. Then the discontent spread to the imperial guard. A week later, forty-six officers, two of them major-generals, had also resigned, followed by another four hundred members of the imperial guard—10 percent of its total strength—and many, perhaps scores, of country samurai (goshi) employed by the city police.

  By this time Saigo was on his way to Kagoshima, leaving Okubo as Japan’s most powerful politician. It was Okubo’s vision that would prevail, restraining Japan until it was ready to start the march to empire, with consequences that would define its development—and the world’s—over the next 70 years.

  14

  THE ACCIDENTAL REBEL

  IF YOU FOLLOW THE ROAD NORTHWARD THEN EASTWARD FROM Kagoshima around Kinko Bay, you pass the thatched hut marking the spot where Saigo “recovered” after his attempted suicide. On one side, steep green hills crowd in upon both road and railway line; on the other lies the bay, its waters crowded with semisubmerged fish baskets, set to catch the yellowtails that sushi eaters love. This was the way Saigo came that winter as 1873 turned to 1874.

  The hills fall back, and for a few kilometers you drift inland over fertile soils laid down by the Amori River. Across the river, the old road runs through the little town of Kajiki, where one branch turns to the left into green hills, paralleled now by the motorway to the airport. Another branch continues along the coast toward the village of Hayato. You are in a world far removed from high-rises and expressways. A little stream runs down from the hills, tumbling between huge, overarching camphor trees. It is this grove that makes the place magical, for camphor trees have for centuries produced timber, culinary leaves, medicines and many sorts of oil. There is a hint of mist and the smell of damp leaves. One giant, even more eminent than the rest, is the subject of myth, spelled out on a notice. Once there were two gods called Isanagi and Isanami, who had a weakly son. The boy had trouble walking, even at the age of three, so the two gods put him in a boat and threw him out of heaven. He landed in the bay out there, and when he came ashore he turned into this camphor tree. The stream runs out to the bay past a single-story thatched house with a veranda running around it. Not far off are the shore, and boats and excellent fishing. Apart from the tarmac, the scene would have been pretty much the same when Saigo came to this house to escape the rigors of government and recover his damaged health.

  Except it was winter. The trees, which are evergreens, protected the house from the frost and occasional snow, but he needed the hot springs back up the road in Kajiki. The springs are still in operation, captured by a steamy concrete hall and served by a seedy little hotel, which recalls his presence with several portraits of him on the outside wall, along with some enigmatic lines of verse:

  Compared with the passion in my heart

  The smoke of Mount Sakurajima is thin.

  He apparently believed that this was the life he should be living, the very model of the Confucian gentleman-scholar communing with nature. It seems to have made him content, perhaps a little self-satisfied, as well he might be with all the noncritical adulation he received. His poems proclaim a love of nature worthy of an English Romantic:

  I moor my skiff in the creek of flowering reeds.

  With a fishing p
ole in hand, I sit on a stepping stone.

  Does anyone know of this high-minded man’s other world?

  With my pole I fish in autumn’s creek

  For the bright moon and the cool breeze.

  (trans. Ravina)

  Here he was more eager to get out in the woods with his dogs than pine for power or (as some suppose) plan a revolution. But he was a hero, and events would drag him back into the limelight.

  Kagoshima’s samurai were as determined as ever to protect or regain their traditional status, ignoring directives from Tokyo. Hisamitsu continued to rail against the evils of the new regime. Kagoshima’s governor, Oyama Tsunayoshi, who had known Saigo from childhood, was Hisamitsu’s man. The city was bursting with samurai eager to turn back the clock, and these were now joined by several hundred imperial guards who had resigned with Saigo. This was a powder keg of resentful men just ready for a spark.

  Something had to be done, and it was widely felt among the restless samurai that Saigo was the man to do it. In fact, for four years he did very little except lend his name to a new system of schools.

  He had always been a supporter of education, and had recently been closely involved in a schools project. Immediately after the Boshin War he had been voted an official annual honorarium of 2,000 koku (for salaries, like all large units of currency, were still quoted in bushels of rice and paid in varying combinations of rice and cash1), which he donated to help found a school dedicated to the soldiers who fell in the war, with the intention of educating more young men in the same mold. When he left Tokyo, the school closed, but at the same time, the Kagoshima government—through Saigo’s friend, Governor oyama Tsunayoshi—set up a system of private schools, to which Saigo contributed his salary. These schools had an agenda made clear by the informal names of the first two, the “infantry” and “artillery” schools, set up on the site of the former stables of Tsurumaru Castle at the bottom of Shiroyama, the forested hill at the heart of Kagoshima. As well as Chinese classics, the curriculum included physical fitness, drilling and maneuvers. The two original schools soon spawned a dozen similar ones in Kagoshima and another one hundred in the rest of Satsuma, quickly building up to some seven thousand students in their teens and early twenties, most of them rustics destined to become district magistrates, policemen or village headmen. The schools served to focus the energies of the young, controlling them, but also preparing them for military action. No wonder the government suspected Satsuma of moving toward violent revolution.