Samurai

by John Man

  Brigade after brigade of imperial troops flowed back into Kagoshima: two that same day, two more on the next two days, and a fifth by sea on September 8. That made some thirty-five thousand troops available to forge a ring of steel around Shiroyama. But there had been almost such a ring around the rebels before they escaped over Mount Eno, and Yamagata was not taking any more chances. His attitude exemplified a Japanese proverb: once burned by hot soup, one blows on sushi. He had been burned too often over the last few months.

  On Shiroyama the rebels dug in, making trenches—with spades provided by the few locals who lived on the hill—and building palisades of bamboo from the surrounding woods. There were, according to one estimate, a mere 281 of them, together with 80 noncombatant bearers; perhaps 600, if my map is right; no one knows for sure. They were divided among ten defensive positions on the top of the hill, with 26 designated as a bodyguard for Saigo. They had no ammunition for their field guns, and very little for the rifles, which they tried to make good by setting up a furnace to make their own bullets, using the metal from incoming shells and from small Buddhist images made of tin and copper. They had no medicines at all; on a few occasions when wounded limbs had to be amputated, the job was done with an ordinary carpenter’s saw. And they were almost out of food. Two days after occupying the hill, 70 of them tried raiding the government grain store near the private school, but it was too late: imperial troops were already in position and over half of the raiders died, the rest climbing back up empty-handed.

  Today, it’s an easy climb up a winding road to a parking lot, even easier if you take one of the well-preserved old-fashioned buses that make the run to the top. On clear days there’s a great view of the town, the bay and the volcano. The square where the rebels gathered that snowy February is still an open space among the camphor trees, its grass worn away by countless walking feet.

  Back up there in September they could see the five warships riding at anchor in the bay, see the smoke from the guns as they began to bombard the hill and the surrounding area, see the repetition of what had happened when the British ships had done the same thing fourteen years before. Fires broke out among the suburban wooden houses. Shells ruined the two schools at the foot of Shiroyama. Those on the hill were well shielded from rifle fire by trees, though any who were spotted instantly drew a fusillade. But there was no defense from the shelling, which, by the twelfth, was coming not just from the ships but from artillery placed all around the mountain.

  And still the noose tightened. Yamagata issued instructions: Yes, the hill was now surrounded, but there was to be no rush for a final assault. Better to be safe than sorry. If Saigo’s men did attack, and if they threatened to break through, the adjacent unit was to open fire indiscriminately, even if it meant shooting down their own fellow warriors. It was an order that indicated a fear of Saigo’s samurai out of all proportion to the threat. Having a 100 to 1 advantage was not enough. There had to be no scintilla of a possibility of escape. To this end, Yamagata ordered an impassable obstacle course of astonishing complexity, given the minimal opposition. It was described by John Hubbard, the captain who had witnessed much of the fighting around Nobeoka and Mount Eno. He sailed back into Kagoshima on September 21, and saw the barriers the following day. First a double bamboo fence two meters high in a crisscross pattern, forming a row of diamond shapes. This was backed by boards studded with nails; then a ditch one meter deep and almost four meters wide; then squares of bamboo strips, six meters across and raised half a meter from the ground, so that if a man stepped on them, his foot would go through and the splinters would tear at his legs; then another six-meter ditch, this one filled with small branches; and finally a breastwork of earth and earth-filled bags, two meters wide at the base and half a meter at the top, behind which the soldiers sheltered and watched. All in all, it was extraordinary proof of the fear inspired by Saigo, his followers and their suicidal escapades.

  Hubbard described the scene to his wife after going ashore with two other captains:

  We walked for three hours over the ground once occupied by the pretty city of Kagoshima. Before the war there were many thousands of houses; now there are hardly fifty left . . . I walked among the ruins, failing to recognize a single locality I before knew so well. About two-thirds of the grounds formerly occupied by the city is in possession of the Imperialists, and the other third the Rebels hold. This third is at the base of a steep hill, a mile in width, with hills on three sides and the city of Kagoshima in front. It is entirely surrounded by the Imperialists who have constructed such strong breastworks that it seems impossible for the Rebels to escape . . . They will probably hold out until their provisions are ended, and then give up or kill themselves. The Imperialists evidently do not mean to leave their entrenchments and attack them, as that would involve the loss of many lives. They keep watch behind these breastworks, and if a Rebel shows himself he is at once fired on. They keep firing cannon and throwing shells on the hill night and day, but the Rebels have not fired a single shot for the last week. It is thought their ammunition is expended.

  Up on the hill, Saigo’s aides became nervous for his safety. It would not do for him, as a samurai commander, to be taken out by a random shell or bullet. It happens that on the slopes below the summit of Shiroyama are several almost sheer cliffs of exposed lava, which is soft enough to be eroded by rainwater into shallow caves, soft enough also to be cut away further to make shelters. On September 19, after over two weeks of bombardment, a couple of these caves, overlooking an open area but well shielded by trees springing from the cliff above, became Saigo’s headquarters.

  A few minutes’ walk from the top brings you down to the little square, where there is now a gift shop and a gallery cut through the volcanic rock. An oversize statue of Saigo guards the entrance to the gallery, which is lined with watercolors showing the course of the battle. Exit through the shop, with its shelves of Saigo kitsch—statuettes, Saigo-shaped biscuits, mugs, portraits—and you are at the caves themselves. There are ten altogether, the two in which Saigo was based being fenced off like a side chapel in a cathedral. One, only a meter and a half high, is just about big enough for two men to sleep in. The other is higher, almost Saigo’s height, but no deeper. They are not places where you would wish to spend any time, let alone five days.

  On the twenty-second, two of Saigo’s aides approached him to ask if they might see if his life could be saved. Probably not, Saigo told them, unless a peace could be negotiated, but he was happy to let them try. Waving a white flag they ventured downhill, leaving Saigo to issue a statement, which offered no hope of survival, but much of salvation:

  Kono Shorichiro and Yamanoda Ichinosuke have just been sent to the enemy camp to inform them of the complete determination of our force to fight until death and perfectly to fulfil the true relationship of sovereign and subject in this great undertaking of ours. We have no intention to meet death in a court of law. We shall make this mountain our pillow. Now exert yourselves to the utmost. Resolve to act so that no shame shall be reflected on posterity.

  At the imperial lines, the two were promptly arrested and held as deserters. The next day a senior officer took them to see Yamagata, who told them there would be no negotiation. Or it may not have been Yamagata, for as usual sources vary. Perhaps it was the local commander, Kamura, as our fast-talking guide Morio said. Whichever it was, he sent back an uncompromising message: Either surrender by five o’clock this evening, or we begin the final assault first thing tomorrow morning. Only one of the officers returned with the reply. The other, Kono Shorichiro, was kept as a hostage, and survived to play a significant role in the restoration of Saigo’s reputation.

  Whether Yamagata, Saigo’s one-time friend, issued the ultimatum himself or not, he was as trapped by his grim duty as Saigo was by his misplaced idealism. He suffered, so it was said later, the proof being that with the returning messenger he sent Saigo a long and moving letter, pleading with him to surrender and live. “Yamagata Ar
itomo, your old friend,” he begins, “has the honour of writing to you, Saigo Takamori Kun [old friend].” You must now see how absurd your rebellion is. You have surely been blinded to the course of history by your loyalty to your clansmen. Perhaps also you have been in the hands of those who wish to use you for their own ends. It was quite understandable that you should wish to question those in authority in Tokyo. It could all have been done legally. But it became a revolt. This was totally without sense. You fight only for your men, they fight only for you, and both lack a real reason for fighting the imperial forces. Why therefore this continued bloodshed? Why not admit it was not you who made this rebellion and end the hostilities immediately? “I shall be very happy if you will enter a little into my feelings,” he concluded. “I have written this, repressing my tears, though writing cannot express all that is in my mind.”

  If this is true—and almost everything that is said about personal details during the last stand must be subject to doubt—it made no impression on Saigo. All he supposedly said was: “There’s no need to answer this.”

  The decision seemed to fill him and his closest aides with a sort of exaltation, as if they were martyrs on the way to glory. While the desultory shelling continued into the night, he and a dozen colleagues gathered for a party—

  “A party?” I thought I must have misheard Morio’s uncertain English. He didn’t get much practice, and he was so anxious to explain that he was hard to understand.

  “Party, ye-e-es, a good-bye party. Someone had a biwa [a sort of short-necked lute] and he told his retainers play biwa, and do a sword dance, and drink sake, party cups! Party cups!” (I think he meant “toasts.”) “And say good-bye to the world in poetry.”

  If I were a drop of dew, I would take shelter on a leaf-tip,

  But, being a man, I have no place in this whole world.

  At precisely 3:00 A.M. the guns ceased. Under a moon two days from full, silence fell across the trees and the grubby shelters and the caves and those who knew their time had almost come. For an hour the calm lasted, until dawn began to lighten the sky. Captain Hubbard, on his ship out in the bay, had heard the bombardment, the sudden silence, and then, at 4:00 A.M., “the popping of rifles,” marked by flashes on the still-dark flanks of the hill. The imperial troops were going over the top, flushing out the rebels before they had a chance to use their swords. “As the sun rose we saw the hill was covered with Imperial soldiers and could watch them as they made their way into the hollows and valleys and hunted out the Rebels. The firing was all on one side as the Rebels had no more ammunition.”

  Two hours later, it was almost over. Some sources say only forty men remained alive, but there’s some evidence for one hundred, as we shall see. If so, four hundred had died, at least 65 percent, perhaps 80 percent, of Saigo’s men. Outside the cave, listening as the sound of firing died away, Saigo’s group of aides decided they had to move before they were hunted down and shot or captured. What they were planning to do when they met imperial troops, as they were bound to, we have no idea. Probably their intention was to die a noble death, swords in hand, charging guns. It’s not far down the slope from the cave, a few hundred meters of road winding down the valley of a seasonal stream, the Iwasaki. Some sources say they carried their master on a litter, some that he walked, sheltered in so far as this was possible by his four retainers: Beppu Shinsuke (his elected second), Kirino Toshiaki, and two others. About the only thing that is certain is his dress, because it was still on him when his body was found: a light, yellow-striped, unlined kimono with a man’s white sash and dark blue leggings, very suitable for a traditional death. From the slight evidence, the chances are that he was walking, in a group, slowly because of his bulk, and exhaustion and swollen testicles.

  What happened a few minutes into the descent, I guess, was that shots rang out from above, the evidence being that Saigo himself was hit, just outside a fine residence belonging to the Shimazu family, who had owned the whole place up until the 1868 restoration. The wound—as is known from the report made after his death—ran “from the right hip to the left femur,” that is, the thigh bone. This is a strange angle for a wound. His right hip must have been turned to face uphill. Perhaps he was looking back over his right shoulder, half turned, to see where the shots were coming from when the bullet entered from above him, passing through the flesh at the back of the thigh right through without hitting the bone, out the other side, and into his left thigh, striking his left thigh bone. It was a terrible wound, which would have brought him down, leaving him unable to walk, and more crucially unable to complete the act of seppuku that he would have chosen to end his life, for when his corpse was examined later, there was no cut to the belly.

  All he had time for was to say something like, “Shinsuke, right about here ought to be good enough. Please do the honor of beheading me,” or “I think this is as far as I go,” or “This place is as good as any.” All three sound good. Since there would be no seppuku, these words serve in its place to cast Saigo in a heroic mold, which suggests they are mythical. Who heard? Who reported? There are other, less noble, versions—that he was shot on his litter, that Beppu carried him farther down the slope (but why? and how—a man of Saigo’s size?), that he actually did commit seppuku, that he was quite simply shot dead, after which Beppu did the honors on his corpse (again unlikely; it’s hard to behead a corpse on the ground). Did he, as some allege, ask the direction of the imperial palace, so he could face it? Unlikely, I think. He himself would know its direction, had known it from childhood: northeast. There was the sun glinting through trees telling him the direction. Anyway, we are in the territory of myth creation and hagiography, because there is no evidence but the leg wound, which hints at the probable truth—that he could go no farther because he would soon be unconscious from the pain and loss of blood, that he wanted it over as soon as possible, that all he could do was kneel, not ceremoniously because of his wounded legs, but on hands and knees, and present his neck.

  Beppu raised his sword, and with one stroke severed the head from the body.

  Another aide, Kichizaemon, then took the head toward a nearby house and hid it in a ditch to prevent the enemy getting their hands on it. Some accounts say he buried it, but how do you bury a head without a spade, when there are bullets flying and death is close? And anyway, who survived to say what happened? The only certainty is that the head was lost for a while. Quite likely in the horror of the moment, with shots coming from the hill above and nothing more for Beppu and the others to do but die a good death, the head simply rolled downhill into the ditch.

  Today, the road leads down, with many bends, between high wooded banks and neat houses, to a busy junction with a highway emerging from a tunnel right under the hill. Once over the crossroads, ahead is a railway bridge. That was where the imperial army was, said Morio. Yes, yes, yes. Two hundred and fifty meters away. On the left is the memorial, “The Site of Saigo Takamori’s Suicide,” four steps up to a small raised platform with a plinth.

  I stood and wondered about the word “suicide.” It has interesting philosophical implications. Everyone calls his death a suicide, which struck me as stretching a point, if you come at it with a Western viewpoint. We Westerners distinguish between killing yourself, getting help to kill yourself and getting someone else to kill you. But this is Japan. A beheading is the second half of seppuku, the first half of which is certainly suicidal, since no one survives disembowelment. You behead someone as an act of mercy, because it saves him from a death that is both painful and inevitable; it also, of course, confers dignity. So, from the Japanese point of view, a ritual beheading implies suicide. It need not actually be suicide. Indeed, traditionally it was enough for the performer of seppuku to reach for his sword, or even a fan that symbolized a sword, to prompt the beheader to swing his. Saigo intended suicide, so suicide it became.

  There on the hillside, the master was dead and the end was in sight, for on the slope below there were imperial soldiers po
inting their rifles uphill. Beppu and Kirino, standing beside the stream of blood, saw their only choice was to die as they had lived, as samurai. One of them, or somehow both, cried out—“Saigo is dead! All who die with him, rally here!”—raised their swords and ran downhill toward the rifles, falling seconds later in a hail of bullets. (Naturally, a hail of rifle bullets was not quite dramatic enough for some sources, which claim that they fell under a typhoon of bullets from Gatling guns, hand-cranked forerunners of the machine gun. True, the imperial army had a couple. But there is no evidence of their use at this place and time.)

  A few survivors in trees and gullies had time to commit seppuku, and the rest were captured. By eight o’clock it was all over.

  Hubbard was among the first to see the results. “After breakfast”—his wife would surely have liked to know he was looking after himself—

  in company with three others, I went on shore. After landing we heard that the bodies of Saigo and others had been brought in and were lying on a hill close to the breastworks. Hundreds of soldiers and coolies were going up the hill. We joined the crowd and were soon at the top. When we arrived there we found eight bodies laid out in two rows. The first was Saigo. He was a large powerful looking man, his skin almost white. His clothing had been taken off and he lay there naked.1 It was a few seconds before I realized his head was cut off. Next to Saigo lay Kirino, then Murata. Saigo’s was the only headless body, but the others were a fearful sight to look at. Their heads were dreadfully cut up.2

  What of the head? It had to be found, not because it was proof of death—the body was proof enough of that—but because the head was the essential element in the traditional rituals of death on the battlefield. It took a brief search to find it, because it was not close to the body. Since the head of a samurai had so much significance in history, the story of Saigo’s head quite quickly attracted an accumulation of myths, as if it were a Japanese equivalent of a saintly relic in a Christian cathedral. But the conscripts and their officers were products of a new post-samurai era; they had no need of rituals. Hubbard, whose account is not well known in Japan because it is so lacking in reverence, was there. While he and his companions were looking at the bodies, Hubbard wrote to his wife, “Saigo’s head was brought in and placed by his body. It was a remarkable looking head and anyone would have said at once that he must have been the leader.” No rituals, no weeping, no speeches. Just a matter-of-fact matching up of head and torso.