by John Man
With the troops came another figure who was to have a crucial impact on coming events—Prince Arisugawa’s campaign commander, Yamagata Aritomo. As soon as Saigo knew this, he would have realized what he was up against: the whole imperial army, which—by one of the many ironies of his uprising—he had helped create. He and Yamagata went back a long way; they were old enemies, old friends, and now enemies again. Yamagata came from Choshu, Satsuma’s long-standing rival and sometime ally. Like Saigo, he was a middle-ranking samurai by birth; like Saigo, he had worked his way up, becoming Choshu’s representative in Kyoto. It was he whom Saigo had approached when he and Okubo were pressing to reform the shogunate in 1867; for him that Saigo had engineered a meeting with Satsuma’s lord Hisamitsu to lay the foundations of the Satsuma-Choshu alliance. Yamagata was one of those who had been to Europe, seen what the West had to offer, admired Prussian militarism, also studied the French, English and Russian military systems, and pushed through the law requiring universal conscription (in conjunction with Saigo’s younger brother—another irony). He was among those who in 1871 came to Saigo in Kagoshima to persuade him to rejoin the government in Tokyo. He was one of the geniuses of the restoration, and would remain a force in national affairs, as field marshal, chief of the general staff, prime minister (twice) and president of the privy council, until his death in 1922. He was also a very good garden designer. Right now, this brilliant autocrat was intent on destroying his old sparring partner, and like him—both being samurai—would never give up. Saigo versus Yamagata was going to be a long slug fest that would end only when one of them was dead.
The newly landed imperial troops set off to march the one hundred kilometers south, which would take them three or four days. They had to be stopped; and, since there was only one main road south, the place to block them was from a hilltop eighteen kilometers to the north of Kumamoto: Tabaruzaka, a natural fortress from where cannons could bombard the road below and troops launch assaults. If this could be held, and the imperial force driven back, then Saigo had a chance of starving Kumamoto into surrender; if not, all hope would vanish.
Tabaruzaka—the Slope of Tabaru—is today proud of its place in the history of Saigo’s rebellion. A farmhouse with carefully preserved shell scars stands among trees beside a memorial to the fallen and a museum, with a commanding view of the surrounding hills, fields and woods. The curator, Mr. Nagaiyama, a fit ex-soldier type in a sleeveless jacket and peaked cap, explained.
Imagine up on the hilltop the six thousand rebels—growing steadily up to ten thousand as supporters streamed in—with their six cannon, not really much use because they had a range of only about two kilometers and fired only balls, not explosive shells. Winter was over, but the spring rains had started. Saigo’s troops were in cotton and wool, with rope sandals that broke apart in mud, and swords and old-fashioned flintlock muskets that would not fire if wet. Over there—Mr. Nagaiyama pointed over the valley—was the pass from the north, beyond it a plateau. That’s where the advancing imperial force set up their own cannon, and look, over there, that camphor tree, you see how it spreads out? It has no central branches. That’s because a shell landed right on it, and blew its heart out. What could the troops up here do in defense? Only remove the sole obvious target, the farmhouse. So they burned it, leaving only the shell-scarred walls. What could they do in reply, with just small cannons and cannonballs? Nothing. It’s more than two kilometers across that valley. The imperial guns were out of range.
But while the Satsuma men were up here, they would be a danger. They had to be removed. So the major battle was along the steep, narrow, tree-lined road, some of it more of a ditch with high banks of earth, leading to the top of the hill. It is said that the road was dug out when Kumamoto was built so that defenders could line its banks to ambush enemies. True or not, this is exactly what the rebels did, taking cover behind the trees, hunkering down in dugouts. The road today follows the same course as it did then, winding upward for 1.5 kilometers in a series of high-banked bends overhung with bamboo and a variety of other trees. Even on a hot summer’s day, like the one on which I walked it, the road is a haunted place, with splashes of sunlight making the shadowy depths as grim as a grave.
And that, for seventeen days, is what it became. The imperial force was equal to the rebels in numbers: ten thousand of them, in uniforms and leather boots, with breech-loading rifles and good supplies of food and ammunition. They approached along tracks which are still there, running alongside paddy fields, over a little arched bridge that spans a stream, then on up into the killing field, which on that first day of the assault, March 4, was made dismal by continuous rain. Survivors said later they feared the rain more than the imperial troops.
The hill divides into three separate sections, each some four hundred to five hundred meters long, each one marked now by a heavy metal plaque: First Slope, Second Slope, Third Slope. Each had to be taken and then secured by an advance that averaged eighty-eight meters a day, every meter being marked (on average) by nine corpses. Not that this was a continuous fight. There were advances and retreats, days of no action except sniping and artillery fire, followed by intense, close-quarter action, often involving sword fights. Day by day the imperial troops closed in around the hill. Then, early on March 20, as a night of yet more rain turned to a damp and foggy dawn, cannons and rifles announced an assault that, after another four hours of fighting, drove the rebels off the summit.
In very few actions in modern warfare have so many been killed in such a time in such a small area. So thickly did the bullets fly that a few collided and fused in midair, which seems impossible until you see the odd-shaped lumps in the museum. Someone has calculated that the two sides exchanged three hundred thousand bullets every day, leaving the soft banks and forest floor so riddled with lead that today’s schoolchildren like to collect them. Was that possible? I wondered. Yes, it is, assuming that most of the shots were from imperial guns. Several thousand men were fighting for those eighty-eight daily meters, packed almost shoulder to shoulder, and each was firing scores, perhaps hundreds of times a day.
Climbing Tabaruzaka is like a pilgrimage: past the shieldlike plaques that mark each of the three stages, past a memorial to an imperial officer who fell here, around the final bend with its view over cherry trees to the tree-covered plateau at the top, and finally to the memorial that records the appalling death toll—a roll call of fourteen thousand names carved in black stone (though the list includes the names of those who died in nearby actions as well). “And,” said Mr. Nagaiyama, “5,307 of these names are those of soldiers from Satsuma.” Which leaves some 9,000 dead on the imperial side, many of whom are buried along with their Satsuma enemies in six cemeteries scattered around the area. In death, the enemies lie side by side.
If these numbers are accurate,1 they rank with the worst in the history of warfare for single battles. As the English-language weekly the Tokio Times put it rather melodramatically: “The fighting was more severe than any recorded in former times, and the blood of the killed and wounded flowed in torrents sufficient to float rice mortars, and the dead bodies were heaped mountain-high.” It is hard to compare like with like, for battles vary in size and time scale. But let’s try, by reducing the figures to deaths per day as a proportion of total combatants. At Gettysburg, one of the most destructive of American Civil War battles, 5,500 died in action over three days, and a further 4,000 of their wounds, out of a total of 150,000 soldiers. That’s a death toll of 2 percent of combatants per day. Or take the Somme (300,000 dead, 1.5 million combatants, 4.5 months, from July 1 to mid-November 1916): despite its notorious horrors and the catastrophic casualty rate on the first day, its total death toll works out at a surprisingly low 0.15 percent per day. On Tabaruzaka, some 40 percent of those who took part died, over seventeen days. That’s a daily death toll of 2.3 percent. If measured on a scale of intensity, Tabaruzaka was among the deadliest battles in history.
Back in Kumamoto, on March 12, the castle
’s defenders had no idea of the crucial nature of the battle then halfway through its bloody course. With the food supply dwindling to desperate levels, the police chief took fourteen or fifteen of his men to raid rebel positions to the west of the city. When they were some 30 metres from the Satsuma lines the rebels opened fire, which brought hundreds of defenders rushing out to support the police. The ensuing battle lasted two days, ending when the imperial troops overran the Satsuma emplacements, with the loss of eighty dead on the imperial side and at least seventy-three rebels: those were the bodies left scattered over the battlesite, but there may have been more. As Takehiko reflected, “I don’t know how many corpses they carried off to the rear. Later we buried those corpses in a common grave and put up a grave-marker reading ‘Grave of 73 Rebels.’” After that the rebels kept their distance, and the only contacts were yells, either insults—“Crazy fool! What made you into a rebel?”—or queries about friends and relatives—“Is so-and-so over there with you?”
As it became ever clearer that the castle was not going to fall, someone on the rebel side picked up on the idea of flooding the surrounding area by damming the two streams on either side of the castle. Saigo agreed. But it was an act that cut both ways. It trapped the defenders inside the castle, condemning them in the long run to surrender or die of hunger; meals were reduced to two a day, and became nothing but tofu and wheat gluten. It also prevented the rebels from mounting any more attacks, making it clear that they had abandoned hope of taking the castle by force.
Never mind. Spirits were still high, because the whole countryside was in a ferment for Saigo. In scores of villages, peasants feared new taxes to pay for education, land surveys and conscription. Saigo made no appeal to them, but his vague plan to “question” the emperor allowed them to ascribe to him any motive that suited them. At one village, for instance, a rebel returning from the siege of Kumamoto told his neighbors that if Saigo came no one would have to pay taxes. A few days later, the threat of violence forced local officials to flee. Samurai groups from all over Kyushu marched across the country to join their hero, hoping that the new regime in Tokyo might fall. Someone in some newspaper office devised a slogan, “A New Government, Rich in Virtue,” and soon newspapers everywhere had attached the slogan to Saigo, even claiming that it was on his battle flags. Though never coordinated into a revolutionary force, these outbursts of unrest and expressions of discontent were enough to make Tokyo very nervous.
The spirit of Saigo and his troops comes through clearly in a letter sent by the rebel force to a member of the imperial government, Kawamura Sumiyoshi, vice-minister for the navy, who had asked them to surrender, saying: “It can never be justifiable for a subject to take up arms against his ruler.” On the contrary, came the reply, you are wrong, we are right; you are illegal, we are legal; we are sane and you are crazy. It is a letter that shows exactly why the rebels felt so self-righteous, and why they could never, ever surrender:
Saigo Takamori, when residing in Kagoshima, held the rank of general-in-chief of the army. He is thus a high officer of the throne. But Okubo, Kawaji, and others, in direct violation of the laws of the nation, attempted or caused to be attempted his assassination. This is the entire cause of the present civil war. Yet the government takes no notice of those who thus violated its laws . . . Under such circumstances, it is useless to look for any tranquillity in the empire. These were the causes that induced Saigo Takamori to set out from Kagoshima to obtain redress from the government, but . . . he was opposed by the Imperial troops, his rank and titles were taken from him. This was not done by the consent of the Emperor, but by those who wished to conceal their own crimes and deceive the Mikado. We are therefore much angered, and have determined to destroy these corrupt officials, and to disperse the infernal clouds which surround the Emperor and the Imperial throne . . . You say you will petition the government to extend its clemency toward us if we will surrender. This is ridiculous. We are fighting for justice, and in a just cause we care not what our fate may prove. Your Excellency further says that we may recover our honour. This we cannot understand. Surely the cause of justice is honourable. How then have we lost our honour? So greatly do we differ from the views expressed by your Excellency that we think your Excellency must be out of your mind, or speaking under the influence of nightmare . . . You had better come to Kumamoto and ask our pardon.2
In the castle, with no attacks expected or planned, boredom would have set in had not some conscripts decided to put on a show. There were, after all, nearly four thousand of them, and it didn’t take long to discover a few who were willing to act. Someone managed to get hold of a shamisen, the long-necked guitarlike instrument with three strings. Someone else was voted in as master of ceremonies and fitted out in an old-time costume made of paper. Every evening, they put on a show. The MC’s appearance would bring a storm of applause and cheerful teasing—“Master of ceremonies! Do a good job! Let’s hear it!”—which he would cut through with a cry: “Hear ye! Hear ye!” Then “Ladies and gentlemen!” he would begin, to more laughter, given the lack of ladies: “I have the pleasure to announce—” and there would follow the name of some ballad or well-known drama, and with a roll of drums the evening’s entertainment would begin. (Outside, beyond the walls and the floodwaters, rebel forces heard, and wondered, and became depressed. The sound of a shamisen, and singing, and laughter—it could only mean that somehow the imperial forces had managed to smuggle geishas into the castle.)
When the siege started, the officers had calculated that provisions would last for nineteen days. Those nineteen days, and more, had now gone, and inside the castle they were surviving on millet, boiled or turned into gruel—and the occasional horse. Takehiko again:
This is a vulgar story, but the gruel was a greenish-blue which looked just like nightingale droppings and was thus rather amusing. And for the sick, we butchered the flesh of horses killed by enemy rifle and artillery fire, made soup from the bones and made them drink it . . . Whenever a horse was felled by enemy fire, someone would holler, “Hey! Today we got a trophy! Divide it up and bring me some!” From each unit, men came to the scene, a staff officer witnessed the proceedings, and there was a great commotion as the horse was butchered.
Now it was April. Tabaruzaka was taken, and imperial forces on their way to relieve the castle. Another two brigades had landed forty kilometers to the south, and were moving north, taking town after town: Miyanohara, Ogawa, Matsubashi, Uto, Kawashiri—all minor centers of samurai resistance. Of all this, the defenders knew nothing. Despite “chewing dirt and eating pebbles,” no one considered surrender; all accepted the need to fight to the death if necessary. Every day that passed disproved the samurai belief that only samurai knew how to fight. Sometimes the sound of gunfire could be heard at a distance—surely, the conscripts told each other, a sign that rescue was near.
Impending starvation inspired a high-risk strategy, possibly suicidal—“to break through the encirclement, to sink or swim, to live or die.” There seemed no choice. The men who took the risk might die; but if they stayed, they might die anyway—of starvation—and the meager rations they consumed wouldn’t be available to keep others alive.
The breakout squad was to make its bid just before dawn on April 8. The night before there was an emotional meeting with the chosen men, who were given some precious rice, a few greens from the castle’s vegetable plot and some horse meat, three horses being killed and butchered for the occasion. Then, at 4:00 A.M., an advance party of police slipped out through the main castle gate, followed by the main force, a few dozen in strength. The idea was to ford the flooded Shira River, seize a bridge, head southeast for three kilometers and make a base in a temple (the Suizen, now a park, with a fine carp pond and popular teahouse), where they were to light a beacon fire to signal success.
As they approached the bridge, they saw it was guarded by rebels huddled around a campfire and decided on a bold approach, assuming that the rebels would think they were some
of their own. So a few called out from the darkness, asking if all was quiet. Sure is, came the reply, nothing happening around here. Back down the line went the whispered message: Now is the time! The enemy is unprepared! So the attack that followed, just as dawn was breaking, worked perfectly: not a shot fired, several rebels killed, the bridge taken, the temple occupied.
In the castle, officers and conscripts watched in suspense as night turned to a misty dawn, wondering if the whole venture had ended in death and failure. “To our minds, one day seemed like a thousand autumns. While we were concentrating—staring—in the direction of that area, a single column of smoke arose through a gap that opened in the morning mist. Seeing this, the castle was in an uproar. ‘They’ve done it! The army is safe!’ Our men went mad with joy.”
Not far beyond, 10 kilometers to the south, the party from the castle linked up with their rescuers. And relief came, from a village which had been a base for local rebel troops—746 bags of rice, 100 small arms and 3,000 rounds of ammunition, carried by horses and men back into the city through rebel forces, which briefly resealed the gap. By now, imperial troops were approaching from the south, finally breaking through at dusk on April 14, when the commander of the first imperial troop “came up to the dismount bridge, and cried loudly, ‘We’ve come! We’re here! We’ve driven all those fellows out!’ . . . Now the Will of Heaven unfolded in our favor and once again we could see the light of day”—after 54 days under siege and the death of 186 defenders—which, compared with Tabaruzaka, is hardly a death toll at all.