Shōjirō finally came through with some funds in mid-December. Chūemon wrote, “Your letter included an enclosure of thirty ryō, which I duly acknowledge. I have been waiting for it for some time, but since you did not send it, I assumed you were unable to raise the money at your end. I was at my wit’s end and suffering from great mental stress. So now that I see that you were after all able to send it, I am so relieved.”94
The combination of this money, plus the fifty ryō Chūemon had raised by mortgaging his shop, was enough to tide the family through the end of the year. In a remarkable testament to the power of entrepreneurial optimism, Chūemon then proceeded to mortgage everything else that he had—his outbuilding and his new storehouse—for an additional loan of forty ryō. With this money, he sent Naotarō off to Kōshū to negotiate the purchase of charcoal.
Chūemon’s plan was an ambitious one. He wanted Naotarō to use the forty ryō as a down payment on a very large consignment—four hundred bags (about twenty thousand pounds)—of charcoal. Because of the enormous bulk of the charcoal, he planned to ship it by boat, down the Fuji River to Suruga Bay, then by sea around the Izu Peninsula. He had done this successfully with the building supplies for his shop, and he anticipated a repeat of this experience. Chūemon was hoping that the shipment would arrive before the end of the Japanese calendar year (February 10, 1861, in the Gregorian calendar)—in time to sell it during the period of peak demand.
Naotarō set off for Kōshū in the middle of the eleventh month, giving him time to negotiate the purchase and arrange transportation of the shipment in time for it to reach Yokohama by the end of the year. Anxiously, Chūemon awaited news from his son. But no letter came, and as the end of the year approached, there was no sign of the charcoal. A worried Chūemon wrote to his older son Shōjirō: “I am wondering what has happened. Our partner in Kawauchi is very solid, and I don’t think there are any other issues on our end.”95
A week into the Japanese New Year, the goods had still not arrived, nor any word of their whereabouts. “Naotarō was supposed to have concluded a contract for this … Is this all on their side? Did they deceive Naotarō? I can’t really believe that. We had a firm contract, and I had made a deposit. If they were lying to me, then it is a big waste of expenses. Or perhaps it is because the goods have been delayed at sea.”96 Two days later, Chūemon finally got a hint as to the nature of the problem. Naotarō and the seller had miscommunicated over the down payment, and in the meantime the seller had shipped his inventory to another customer. Rather than try to resolve the down payment issue and set up a new shipment, Naotarō had just turned around and gone back home to Higashi-Aburakawa. Chūemon was furious. “No matter what happens it’s necessary to keep talking to them. For Naotarō to just go home and play shows a complete lack of responsibility with regard to money and a lack of feeling. This isn’t just regular money. It is at a high rate of interest, and it is unacceptable for it to cost me even one day—or even half a day—of extra interest … No matter what happens we will make no profit from this.”97
Chūemon gave Shōjirō strict instructions to confiscate the thirty-five ryō that Naotarō still had on his person and asked him to go personally to the seller in Minobu to try to resolve the problem. Shōjirō needed to persuade the seller to “send us large quantities, year-round, regardless of payment … and I will send the money as soon as the shipment arrives. There won’t be any difficulty at all with that, so please make him understand and agree.”98
A few weeks later, Shōjirō reported back to him that he had succeeded in negotiating a shipment of charcoal. Chūemon counted on its arrival to help dig himself out from the slump in his business. “If only the charcoal would arrive, then everything would go smoothly. I have been accepting goods from merchants on a commission basis, but I’ve been unable to sell those goods, so I’m left with no money.”99 Meanwhile, he continued to be overwhelmed by debts and obligations. In April, he was told he would have to contribute ten ryō toward the rebuilding of Edo Castle, which had burned in a disastrous fire in December of the previous year.100
On June 16, Chūemon finally got word that four hundred bags had arrived at the shipping agent’s in Iwamoto village in Suruga. “But not a single bag has arrived in Yokohama. It is a huge loss to me. I am paying 2.2 ryō a month in interest, and I am really struggling to find the money. I am shortly going to refinance the loan at a lower rate, which will help.”101 Meanwhile, Naotarō had slunk back to Yokohama, hoping to make it up with his father. Unable to face Chūemon in person, he went to their neighbor, Gorōemon, and asked him to intercede for him and beg Chūemon to forgive him. Chūemon, though, was unyielding. “Gorōemon came to me with all sorts of apologies, but I refused to listen. I am disinheriting Naotarō.”102 After their recovery, Chūemon’s wife and their son Seitarō had gone back to Kōshū (they would never return to Yokohama other than for brief visits), leaving Chūemon once again on his own.
On June 24, the first two hundred and fifty bags of charcoal finally arrived in Yokohama. At this point, Chūemon was not even clear how many bags his seller had shipped to him. Chūemon had made a down payment for four hundred, but apparently Shōjirō had done a good job persuading the seller that he should “send us large quantities, year-round, regardless of payment,” and Shōjirō indicated there might be as many as fifteen hundred bags on the way. However, one disappointment followed another. Each bag turned out to contain only 4.5 kan (38 lbs.)—1.5 kan less than Chūemon had been expecting. Moreover, in the hot summer months there was little demand for charcoal, and the price had plummeted. “The cost has been much greater than anticipated … If the shipment turns out to be fifteen hundred bags, then I won’t know what to do.”103
By the beginning of August, seven hundred fifty bags had arrived. “I hope that prices will go up in the ninth month, and then perhaps I can redeem my losses.”104 Once again, Chūemon found himself unable to settle his debts by the Bon holiday. “I know people must be getting angry with me,” he wrote to Shōjirō, “but please ask them to be patient a little longer … The thirteenth of this month August 18, 1861] was the deadline for the settlement of all accounts, whether official or private. But as usual I am out of funds.”105
On September 9, 1861, at a low ebb, Chūemon wrote, “I have tried so many things, but none of them seem to work out. I feel that there must be something lacking in my spirit. Right now it’s all I can do just to make a bare living. I’d love to have some regular business that would earn a reliable living, but I have no spare hands here and no one who can work toward the future. If I even had a maid, then I could start earning a little extra.”106
Perhaps it was his recognition of his inability to go it alone that persuaded Chūemon in the end to take Naotarō back. But he had one stipulation: Naotarō must get a wife. Chūemon asked two acquaintances in Edo to act as matchmakers.107 They found a local girl, named Take, whose family came from Hoshikawa village near Yokohama. The ceremony took place without any fanfare, and by the end of 1861, Naotarō and his wife had moved in with Chūemon.108
As the Japanese calendar year drew to a close, Chūemon was once again forced to put off his creditors. “I will not be able to clear up all my debts before year’s end. I am trying to either rent out or sell my shop, but that is not progressing, so I will not be able to settle my accounts this year … I keep trying at various things to make some money, but nothing seems to work out. Perhaps it’s just the times we live in.”109
“EXPEL THE BARBARIAN!”
The times were, indeed, foreboding. In spite of the commercial promise of Yokohama, political clouds were gathering that were to further complicate Chūemon’s life and help frustrate his dreams of prosperity.
The first hint of trouble to come was on August 25, 1859, just a few weeks after the opening of the port, when Chūemon reported to his son about a violent attack in the streets of Yokohama. “Three foreigners were murdered. One, a Russian, was killed instantly, while the other two were Americans, o
f whom one died at the ninth hour, and the other is still living. Most people are saying that the attackers were of the samurai class.”110 The unprovoked attack on a detachment of Russian sailors (all the victims were in fact Russian) marked the beginning of a concerted and escalating campaign of violence against foreigners and their supposed collaborators that terrorized the Yokohama community and ultimately destabilized the shogunate itself.
The antiforeign sentiment was indeed strongest among the samurai class, which saw the humiliation of the shogunate by the foreigners as a national outrage. Agitators could draw on a powerful intellectual tradition of nationalistic and antiforeign thought in Japan. Aizawa Seishisai of the Mito domain wrote in “New Theses” (1825) about the arrogance of the foreign powers but also the danger that Japan faced from them: “Today, the alien barbarians of the West … are dashing about across the seas, trampling other countries underfoot, and daring, with their squinting eyes and limping feet, to override the noble nations. What manner of arrogance is this!” Aizawa warned that the foreigners would try to beguile the Japanese with their technologies: “The weakness of some for novel gadgets and rare medicines, which delight the eye and enthrall the heart, have led many to admire foreign ways. If someday the treacherous foreigner should take advantage of this situation and lure ignorant people to his ways, our people will adopt such practices as eating dogs and sheep and wearing woolen clothing. And no one will be able to stop it.”111
Motoori Norinaga, the eminent eighteenth-century founder of the Kokugaku (National Learning) school, drew attention to the centrality of the emperor in Japan’s political and spiritual traditions:
Our country’s imperial line, which casts its light over this world, represents the descendants of the Heaven-Shining Goddess. And in accordance with that goddess’s mandate … the imperial line is destined to rule the nation for eons until the end of time … That is the very basis of our Way … Foreign countries expound their own Ways, each as if its Way alone were true. But their dynastic lines, basic to their existence, do not continue, they change frequently and are quite corrupt. Thus one can surmise that in everything they say there are falsehoods and that there is no basis for them.112
These twin concepts of reverence for the emperor and resistance to the foreigners crystallized at the turn of the 1860s into the Sonnō Jōi (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian) movement. Although Mito was the early leader, the movement was to spread throughout Japan in the coming years. From the shogunal government’s point of view, the danger of this thesis was that reverence for the emperor might also imply contempt for the shogun, who had arguably usurped power from the imperial line. Paradoxically, the emperor was a relative newcomer to the political scene. For many centuries, the emperor and his courtiers had been relegated to a ceremonial role while political affairs were conducted by the warrior class. Under the Tokugawa regime, the imperial line had been acknowledged but largely ignored while Edo consolidated its position as the nation’s political center. Indeed, the early diplomatic missions to Japan, including that of Commodore Perry, assumed that the shogun was the sole and undisputed ruler of Japan and even styled him as “emperor.” Now the Kyoto-based imperial dynasty was to reappear on the political stage, eventually coming to dominate Japanese political ideology.
The Mito warriors were deeply committed to the doctrine of direct action. Many believed that since the shogunal government was doing nothing to stop the foreigners, the Mito samurai would have to take matters into their own hands. In March 1860, a group of Mito samurai assassinated the shogunal chief minister, Ii Naosuke, in retribution for his vacillating policy toward the foreigners (as well as his persecution of their own daimyo). Many of them called for the destruction of the new foreign colony in Yokohama. Mito was widely blamed for the attack on the Russians, and in the months that followed it became a matter of common belief that samurai from Mito, with or without the blessing of their domain, were preparing a massed attack on Yokohama. It was assumed that in order to protect their daimyo, these men would relinquish their formal association with the Mito domain and become rōnin, or “masterless samurai.” As the decade went on, the word rōnin would cover a wide range of activities, from selfless patriotism to outright banditry.
As a result of these attacks and rumors of attacks, a climate of fear quickly spread in Yokohama. The problems with security prompted British consul Howard Vyse to issue a notification—contradicting the orders of his predecessor—that “all British subjects will, for the future, go about always armed as much as possible for their own personal safety, as regards a revolver or any other deadly weapon they may be able to obtain; and the undersigned gives free permission to and hopes that all British subjects will give free use to the same, on any reasonable provocation, as regards the Japanese, whether official or non-official.”113
Cees de Coningh vividly describes the fear that he and other foreign residents of Yokohama felt at the height of the hostility. When De Coningh went out for a drink with two Dutch merchants, “they each pulled a loaded revolver out from their belt and lay it on the table in front of them.” The merchants explained, “God and our revolvers are the only things in which we can place our trust. We go to bed with the knowledge that we may be chopped up or burned in our own beds.”114
It was widely assumed that the attackers would start their assault by setting fire to the town. So when a fire broke out on the night of January 3, 1860, and quickly spread, the foreigners gathered together “in a desperate defense so that we would not be helplessly cut down one by one,” as De Coningh described.
Not a single warship lay in the roadstead; but with the first outbreak of flames, the captains of the half-dozen merchant ships sent their sloops ashore with as many men as they could spare, so that in a moment we were reinforced by almost six dozen sailors armed with swords and crowbars … We cast our gaze as far as we could by the light of the flames of our burning city, ready for anything, to see the murderers expected to show up any minute out of the darkness for the battle of life and death. In those moments we were completely indifferent to what burned away behind us because if there was an attack we would have to overcome it or die.115
The Japanese government was deeply concerned about the international repercussions of attacks on foreigners, and it took extraordinary measures to protect them. The Kanagawa commissioners had already installed sentry posts at all the bridges leading into Yokohama, as well as installing gates across the main streets that could be closed in an emergency. As the threat of attacks mounted, the commissioners increased the number of checkpoints; requisitioned two ships to guard the entrance to the harbor and stop and question incoming Japanese vessels; closed off minor roads that might have given access to the town; placed new guard posts on the Tōkaidō highway and stopped and questioned travelers there; and organized the Japanese townsmen into patrols, ordering them to beat drums if they saw anything suspicious, upon which all the gates of the town would be closed. Japanese entering the town were inspected, and anyone carrying a sword was required either to check it in at the sentry post or to register it and receive a tag, which he must return on his departure. The domains of Echizen and Matsuyama were charged with supplying the samurai forces to guard the town, but in addition the commissioners asked regional administrators from throughout the Kantō to send contingents of their police forces to patrol the town. The commissioners also recruited a force of three hundred fifty hired men, most of whom were local ruffians and members of outcast groups, placing them in guardhouses at strategic points throughout the town (including several in front of the houses of prominent foreigners). The Kantō police contingents were in turn charged with watching over these guards. The foreigners were anxious that the government should take all possible measures to protect them, but they were also understandably concerned that their “protectors” might end up being the ones who massacred them. The overall air of deep suspicion between shogunal officials and the foreign community tended to exacerbate the tensions.116
/>
Chūemon might justifiably have been concerned for his own safety—merchants who did business with foreigners were also being targeted, and in an attack there was no telling who would be killed and who spared. But he was much more concerned about the confidence of his investors and business partners. He did not want them to think that the business they were investing in might be disrupted or even destroyed by violence. On January 13, 1861, Chūemon wrote, “I realize that in Kōshū this place has a great reputation as a depraved place. The other day there was a rumor that five hundred men of Mito were going to attack Yokohama, and the night guards were ordered to be extremely vigilant. But there is no truth to the story that Mito is dispatching its people to the Kantō area. So please don’t be concerned.”117 And three weeks later, “Regarding Yokohama, I understand that it has a very bad reputation in Kōshū. However, there is nothing out of the ordinary here. Although there are rumors of Mito rōnin attacking us, there are no signs whatever of this happening. Indeed, in the [Japanese] New Year they are going to reclaim the Tadaya Shinden marshes and extend the town. You will have to see what prosperity is about to come to this town.”118
In fact, the biggest threat to Chūemon during the early months of 1862 came not from aggressive samurai but from another, all-too-familiar foe. On May 8 Chūemon wrote to family and friends in his village,
The Merchant's Tale Page 11