Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (60 page)

The slaughter was indiscriminate. The attack on the barracks, completely without warning, caught the unarmed soldiers in their nightclothes, but this did not induce the Shinp
ū
ren to capture rather than kill. They showed no mercy even toward men who were too badly wounded to defend themselves. More than 300 soldiers of the garrison were killed or wounded in the battle. Unlike the members of the Shinp
ū
ren, the garrison soldiers were conscripts, most of them peasants. It seems to have given the Shinp
ū
ren samurai special pleasure to kill lowly peasants who had dared to usurp their place as military men.

At first it seemed as if the rebels had won a complete victory, but once the army officers were able to overcome their surprise and shock, they rallied the remaining soldiers and, by force of numbers and modern weapons, routed the attackers. The rebels were decimated by gunfire;
Ō
taguro, badly wounded, commanded his followers to cut off his head, and they did. Most of the survivors committed
seppuku
, maintaining Japanese tradition to the end. By dawn, the fires set by the rebels had died down, and sounds of gunfire could no longer be heard. The battle was over, but it had thrown the city into a state of panic, and many people had fled. The emergency was not lifted until November 3.
⁷

The revolt of the Shinp
ū
ren had achieved nothing except the deaths of some 500 men who might otherwise have been of service to their country and perhaps to the world. The two long lines of gravestones at the Sakurayama Shrine in Kumamoto where 123 of the Shinp
ū
ren are buried, each marked with a name and the age at which the man died, whether in action or by his own hand, are likely to inspire reveries on the swiftness of the fall of the cherry blossoms and similar metaphors for the deaths of samurai. Visitors who stand before these tombs today may be so impressed by the dedication displayed on behalf of a doomed cause as to forget that the attack was brutal in the extreme and that the ideals for which the young men (most in their teens or twenties) died were insensate.

All the same, the 180 or so members of the Shinp
ū
ren had demonstrated that it was possible for a small body of men, if their attack was unforeseen and they themselves were ready to risk their lives, to defeat much larger forces or at least to reduce them to a state of terror. This lesson of terrorism was communicated to samurai dissidents throughout Japan, some of whom soon demonstrated that they also were prepared to start a rebellion with a mere handful of men.
⁸

Word of the Shinp
ū
ren uprising reached the court on October 25. Iwakura Tomomi and Kido Takayoshi immediately informed the emperor of what they had heard, but because communications with Kumamoto had been cut, they did not know the details. The next day after telegraphic service with the Kumamoto garrison had been restored, Sanj
ō
Sanetomi and
Ō
kubo Toshimichi gave the emperor a fuller report. Officers were dispatched to Ky
ū
sh
ū
to obtain firsthand information, and Major General
Ō
yama Iwao was appointed to replace the murdered Taneda as commandant of the Kumamoto garrison.

On October 23, the day before the battle in Kumamoto, the Shinp
ū
ren sent a messenger to the former Akizuki domain in Fukuoka prefecture to inform disgruntled samurai of the planned uprising and to ask them to join the revolt. The Akizuki samurai, angered by the government’s refusal to take Shimazu Hisamitsu’s advice and halt the increasing Westernization of the country, had been in secret communication with both the Shinp
ū
ren and dissidents in Hagi. The political thought of the Kanj
ō
tai
⁹
(as the Akizuki samurai styled themselves) was marked by one unusual feature, an advocacy of overseas expansion, and the government’s refusal to attack Korea had infuriated them.

In response to the Shinp
ū
ren’s request, the Akizuki samurai, led by Miyazaki Kurumanosuke, agreed to send troops to Kumamoto. On October 26 the Akizuki samurai, who numbered fewer than 200 men, prepared to leave for the scene of the fighting.
¹⁰
Not all the former Akizuki samurai agreed with this decision. Some urged Miyazaki to disband the troops, but passions had been aroused, and nothing less than military action would satisfy hot-tempered samurai. The Akizuki samurai set off behind a white banner inscribed in big characters
h
ō
koku
.
¹¹
Before long, government troops caught up with the rebels and inflicted heavy losses. On November 1 most of the leaders of the Kanj
ō
tai, weary and despairing of success, committed suicide.

The third of the revolts occurred in Hagi. Maebara Issei, a brilliant student of Yoshida Sh
ō
in at his celebrated school in Hagi, and later at the Ch
ō
sh
ū
school for Western learning, had seen active service with both Ch
ō
sh
ū
and Meiji armies. He had distinguished himself especially in the campaign at Aizu Wakamatsu. After rising to be minister of defense, he resigned in 1870, ostensibly because of illness but actually because he was angered by Kido Takayoshi’s recommendations to the Court Council on the treatment of former daimyos. He was dissatisfied also with the political views of senior members of the government, especially their advocacy of modernization. Maebara began to think of starting a revolt and joining forces with other dissidents, especially the Shinp
ū
ren.
¹²

When Maebara learned that the Shinp
ū
ren had staged an uprising, he summoned a group of intimates on October 26 and declared to them that the time had come to revive the national polity. He proposed a lightning attack on Yamaguchi. The others agreed, and he issued a manifesto appealing to men of like views. On October 28 Maebara’s supporters assembled, ready for combat. They numbered only about 100 men, but they decided to attack that night. The governor of Yamaguchi Prefecture, getting word that trouble was brewing in Hagi, sent an official to inform Maebara that the Kumamoto rebellion had been quelled and ordered him to disband his men at once.

Maebara realized that his revolt was doomed: a surprise attack had offered the only possibility of success, but now that the governor had learned his plans and was expecting support from government troops, there was no point in trying to attack Yamaguchi. Maebara thereupon changed his plans: he would win over the samurai of the provinces along the coast of the Sea of Japan and advance with them to T
ō
ky
ō
where, at the feet of the emperor, they would commit suicides of remonstrance.

With this in mind, Maebara and his men made their way to Susa on the northern coast of Yamaguchi Prefecture, looting as they went. In Susa he mustered additional men and formed them into the Junkoku Army.
¹³
He planned to go by sea from Susa to Hamada in Iwami Province, but strong winds assaulted his flotilla of fishing boats and forced him to return to Hagi. When Maebara discovered that his secret supplies of ammunition in Hagi had been dumped into the sea, he knew he had no chance of success. He decided to go to T
ō
ky
ō
and offer his reasons for having staged a rebellion. He and a handful of his men slipped out of Hagi but were captured on November 5. The rest of the Junkoku Army was crushed by land and sea forces of the government.

Samurai with similar views in other places who had been sympathetic to the rebels abandoned their plans to revolt, realizing it would be futile. On December 3 leaders of the failed rebellions in Kumamoto, Akizuki and Hagi, were tried and executed. The samurai rebellions were over for the time being, but peasant revolts in Ibaraki and Mie made it clear how much dissatisfaction still lingered in the country.

On December 31 Kido Takayoshi, the most outspoken member of the administration, sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Sanj
ō
Sanetomi and Minister of the Right Iwakura Tomomi in which he blamed inept administration of the laws for recent revolts by samurai and peasants. However, he said, the ultimate blame lay elsewhere: ever since the crisis of 1873, most of the troubles plaguing the country had originated in Satsuma. As examples of this pernicious influence, he mentioned Satsuma’s advocacy of the conquest of Korea and of Taiwan. The government was always in the position of having to follow Satsuma’s lead. Kido’s harsh interpretation of the actions of the Satsuma samurai may be explained in terms of his Ch
ō
sh
ū
background, but surely that was not all; he sympathized with peasants who, faced with poverty and hunger because of unsettled conditions, had no other way to express their frustration than by arming themselves with bamboo spears.

Kido proposed a six-point program intended to promote the welfare of the peasant class. One point urged an end to using government money for unnecessary construction, thereby freeing funds to help people in economic distress. Another point declared that the people should not be bound, without first consulting them, by rules and regulations that had been promulgated. Kido concluded by expressing impatience with those who favored delay in opening a parliament on the grounds that the people were not ready for it. They said they favored gradual rather than precipitous change, but they themselves did not hesitate to impose decrees without considering whether or not these decrees were enlightened or appropriate; if that was not precipitous, what was it?
¹⁴

The day after Kido sent his memorandum, the New Year ceremonies for 1877 were performed at the palace in exact conformity to tradition. The emperor was now in his twenty-sixth year. On January 4 he announced that land taxes would be reduced from 3 to 2.5 percent in the hopes of bringing relief to the people. Kido Takayoshi commented in his diary, “I have long requested this action, so I am grateful. My only hope now is that the Imperial purpose will be fully realized, and that it will lead to the well-being of the people.”
¹⁵
This reduction in state revenues would result in a curtailment of some state services, and the emperor urged officials to practice strict economy.

Behind the emperor’s decision, we can detect the presence of
Ō
kubo Toshimichi, who on December 27, 1876, had sent a memorandum to Sanj
ō
Sanetomi in which he declared that it was absolutely essential to relieve the plight of the peasants. Not only had the new government done nothing to help the peasants, but it had not even spared the time to consider their problems. The peasant revolts that had lately broken out in various parts of the country were evidence of their unhappiness. It was the duty of the government, which had always insisted that agriculture was the foundation of the state, to enable the peasants to make a decent living.
¹⁶
Ō
kubo proposed lowering the tax to 2 percent, predicting that the relief afforded to the farmers would bring about general prosperity. The 2.5 percent announced by the emperor was presumably a compromise.

On January 4 the emperor rode horseback. This normally would need no comment, but from this day on, riding became a mania with him. He rode almost every day from two in the afternoon until sundown. He continued his intense riding practice not only in T
ō
ky
ō
but after he went to Ky
ō
to later that month.

The emperor left T
ō
ky
ō
for Ky
ō
to on January 24. The announced reason for the journey was the emperor’s desire to worship at the tomb of Emperor Jimmu at Mount Unebi and of Emperor K
ō
mei at the Senny
ū
-ji in Ky
ō
to on the tenth anniversary of K
ō
mei’s death. He was also planning to visit tombs of other emperors in the region of Ky
ō
to and Nara,
¹⁷
traveling to and from K
ō
be by sea. The emperor, no doubt remembering the rough voyage on his return from Hokkaid
ō
, was unenthusiastic about making two sea voyages and attempted to persuade his advisers to allow him at least to return by land. But they informed him that he would be urgently needed back in T
ō
ky
ō
and begged him to return by sea because it was quicker than land travel.
¹⁸
The emperor eventually yielded, but (as we can tell from the poems composed at this time) he was still apprehensive about the rough seas. The first
tanka
was composed on January 21, the day before the scheduled sailing, although stormy winds in fact caused a postponement:

The second
tanka
seems to have been composed aboard ship: