Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852’1912 (66 page)

During the Satsuma Rebellion the sympathies of these men were with Saig
ō
. They were enraged when they learned of the supposed plot to kill him, rejoiced over his early victories, and were disconsolate as it became evident that his cause was lost. Toward the end of April 1877, Shimada and Ch
ō
visited Kuga Yoshinao (1843–1916), a leader of the Ch
ū
koku-sha, and asserted that they could not stand by indifferently now that Saig
ō
had been defeated.
²⁶
They had concluded that the two men most responsible for Saig
ō
’s death, Kido Takayoshi and
Ō
kubo Toshimichi, must be killed. Kuga did not agree with the proposed assassination but said he would think it over and asked the two men to return a few days later. He hoped that the wait would cool their ardor, but their resolve only grew fiercer. But because Kido then died on May 26, the assassination plot would henceforth be focused on one man,
Ō
kubo Toshimichi.

Shimada went about recruiting co-conspirators. At first he was cautious about revealing his intention, but by November he was discussing plans freely with would-be associates. It is astonishing that no one betrayed him to the police. No doubt he counted on samurai class loyalty, but on occasion in order to throw potential betrayers off the track, he also announced that he had abandoned plans to kill
Ō
kubo.
²⁷

On March 25, 1878, Shimada left for T
ō
ky
ō
. The poems he composed on leaving his family reveal that although he was intent on killing
Ō
kubo and undoubtedly sincere when he declared he had no regrets over giving up his life, it was painful to think that he would never again see his wife and children. He composed two poems of parting. The second was “I had known from before that this day would come, but how sad parting makes me now.”
²⁸
Although Shimada’s poems had no literary distinction, they came from the heart. It is hard to imagine an assassin in any other country but Japan composing poetry before he set out on his deadly mission. No doubt for Shimada, who clearly foresaw his death, these were his farewell poems to the world.

The disappearance from Kanazawa of both Shimada and Ch
ō
aroused the suspicions of prefectural authorities that the two men, both known to be extremists, might be plotting something. The central government was also on the lookout for both dissident samurai and members of the movement for freedom and popular rights and had sent innumerable plain-clothes men to every region. As interior minister,
Ō
kubo Toshimichi controlled the network of police dispatched in all parts of the country, but he may have decided not to pay much attention to peaceful Ishikawa Prefecture.

The first task for the leaders after arriving in T
ō
ky
ō
was to draw up a statement giving their reasons for wanting to kill
Ō
kubo. They were following the tradition, going back to the late Tokugawa period, of attaching explanatory notes to the heads or bodies of the victims of assassinations.
²⁹
The assassination statement began as follows:

Shimada Ichir
ō
, a samurai of Ishikawa Prefecture, and his confederates, making profound obeisance and braving death, looking upward offer our words to His Majesty, the emperor, and looking downward to the 30 million and more of his subjects, make this proclamation. A careful examination of the situation prevailing in the realm has convinced us that the administration and laws neither originate with imperial wishes nor do they stem from public discussion by the people. They are determined exclusively by the assumptions and unilateral decisions of a handful of influential officials.

As these words suggest, the conspirators (like many others both earlier and much later) insisted that they were acting in consonance with the emperor’s true wishes, that they would rid him of the corrupt officials surrounding him who prevented him from ruling personally. At the same time, somewhat contradictorily, they also wanted the people’s wishes to be heard in the form of public discussion, which was probably a concession to the freedom and popular rights philosophy of Kuga Yoshinao, who framed this vindication of the assassination.

The statement went on to accuse officials of greed and corruption, lining their purses while the vast majority of the ordinary citizens were suffering from privation. Five offenses were singled out: (1) autocratic control of the government achieved by halting public discussion and suppressing civil rights; (2) the arbitrary issuance of laws and the widespread use of influence to intimidate; (3) the depletion of public funds for unnecessary building and useless decorations; (4) the creation of internal dissension caused by the neglect of patriotic and loyal samurai and by suspicions directed at persons who grieve for the country and seek to protect the sovereign; and (5) the loss of national prestige caused by their mistaken methods of dealing with foreign countries.
³⁰

Although the conspirators’ immediate objective was the assassination of
Ō
kubo, the statement also mentioned others who either must be killed or could not be tolerated. The former category included Iwakura Tomomi and the late Kido Takayoshi; the latter,
Ō
kuma Shigenobu, It
ō
Hirobumi, Kuroda Kiyotaka, and Kawaji Toshiyoshi. Still others, like Sanj
ō
Sanetomi, were corrupt but could be expected to fall like dead leaves from a branch once the trunk of the tree—the arch villains—had been cut down.
³¹
There were hints that Shimada and his fellow assassins expected a second assassination to follow their own.
³²

The first part of the statement concluded with the hope that in accordance with the oath sworn by the emperor at the time of his accession, the evils of the officials would be corrected, and a parliament be speedily established where public discussions would be held, ensuring the prosperity of the imperial household, the permanence of the country, and the tranquillity of the people.
³³
Here, too, reverence for the throne and insistence on the people’s rights went together. But it is doubtful whether the assassins understood the high-flown language of the manifesto drawn up by Kuga Yoshinao to justify their crime.
³⁴
Their minds were set on only one thing—killing
Ō
kubo.

Once the six assassins had assembled in T
ō
ky
ō
, they began to prepare systematically. They determined on which days
Ō
kubo went to the Akasaka Palace, the route he took, the distinguishing features of his horse carriage, and, of course, his facial features. They chose for the crime a narrow street that
Ō
kubo’s carriage customarily took in order to avoid crowds. They discovered that councillors were expected to attend the Daj
ō
kan on six days of the month—the fourth, fourteenth, twenty-fourth, seventh, seventeenth, and twenty-seventh—and decided to carry out the assassination on May 14. A few days before the fourteenth, Shimada, brushing off the objections of his fellow conspirators, sent
Ō
kubo a letter warning him that his life was in danger. Apparently he felt that unless
Ō
kubo was warned, the reason for the assassination would not be known.
³⁵
Probably
Ō
kubo shrugged off the threat; it could not have been the first such letter he had received.

In their last-minute preparations, Shimada and Ch
ō
wrote letters to their wives, telling them of their determination and expressing their hopes for their children’s education.
³⁶
Shimada’s letter was in the form of a long poem including such accusations against
Ō
kubo as “These great villains made false charges to His Majesty, whose name we mention with awe, and devoted every effort to murdering every last worthy minister. They plotted together, deceiving those above and attacking those below. They traded Sakhalin for the Kuriles.”
³⁷

Ō
kubo was not the monster portrayed in the statement or the letters sent home by the conspirators. Early that morning, before setting out in his carriage for the palace, he had a conversation with the governor of Fukushima Prefecture in which he predicted that it would take three periods of ten years each to achieve the work of the Restoration. Japan was about to enter the second period, which
Ō
kubo believed to be of critical importance, when the country would be strengthened internally and the productivity of the people enhanced. He considered that whatever his faults might be, he was the best person to guide Japan during this period. The third period would be in the hands of the next generation.
³⁸
One step in his plan for increasing production was opening new lands, and that morning he discussed plans for building a canal in Fukushima Prefecture.

Normally
Ō
kubo would have had a pistol in the carriage to protect himself from sudden attack, but that night he was to attend a reception given by the Chinese minister, and directing that the carriage be cleaned for the occasion, he had left the pistol with a subordinate. This may have cost him his life.

The assassination was carried out with the smoothness born of intensive preparations. Two men maimed the front legs of the two horses, and the other four killed one of the coachmen before dragging
Ō
kubo out of the carriage and killing him with singular brutality. The coup de grâce was delivered to
Ō
kubo’s throat with such savagery that the point of the sword penetrated the earth below. After arranging their weapons neatly on the ground beside the corpse, the six men went to the nearby palace to turn themselves in. They presented the police with a copy of their statement. When asked if they had other accomplices, they replied, “Yes, every one of the 30 million Japanese, except for the officials, are our accomplices.”
³⁹

Word reached the palace soon afterward. Motoda Nagazane had just begun to deliver a lecture on the
Analects
to the emperor in his study. A court official rushed up to inform Motoda of the calamity. Motoda at once reported this to the emperor, who sent a chamberlain to
Ō
kubo’s house to find out precisely what had happened. The chamberlain returned presently with word that
Ō
kubo was dead. The emperor, severely shaken by the news, sent the chief chamberlain, Tokudaiji Sanetsune, to convey his grief. The empress dowager and the empress sent other envoys.

On the following day the emperor posthumously promoted
Ō
kubo to minister of the right and contributed 5,000 yen for the funeral expenses. Later that day he issued a formal announcement of grief over the loss of a faithful minister on whom he had depended. He appointed It
ō
Hirobumi to succeed
Ō
kubo as interior minister, ensuring continuity in this important post.

The assassination of
Ō
kubo Toshimichi was deplored even in foreign newspapers.
⁴⁰
His funeral, the first state funeral in Japan, was on an elaborate scale. Flags were at half-mast, and warships gave twenty-one-gun salutes. The religious ceremonies were entirely Shint
ō
; the general disapproval of Buddhism at the time no doubt accounted for this break with tradition.

The appointment of It
ō
meant that
Ō
kubo’s policies would not be repudiated, but the assassins’ statement seems to have been taken to heart. Even before the assassination, early on the morning of May 14, three
jiho
(Sasaki Takayuki, Takasaki Masakaze, and Yoshii Tomozane), who had decided that a new office should be created to assist the emperor, called on It
ō
Hirobumi intending to recommend
Ō
kubo as the man best qualified for the post. It
ō
concurred, but immediately afterward they learned to their horror of the assassination.

On examining the statement left by the assassins, they could not help but agree, however, that at present the laws neither originated with the emperor nor resulted from the deliberations of the people. They decided that the most urgent need was for the emperor to administer state affairs personally, and they decided to inform the emperor of their conclusion.

On May 16 the
jiho
were granted an audience at which each man expressed his views. Sasaki said that although in principle the emperor governed, in fact he delegated his authority to his ministers. This gave rise to the impression that a handful of powerful officials actually ran the country, which in turn stirred resentment among the people, as one could tell from the recent assassination. Unless positive steps were taken, the great enterprise of the Restoration would end in so much foam. It was essential that the emperor’s wishes be put into practice if Japan’s prestige was to be extended abroad. The emperor thus must be kept fully informed of developments both at home and abroad.

Takasaki Masakaze came forward to relate that
Ō
kubo had always been profoundly concerned over the cultivation of imperial virtue. On the day before he was assassinated,
Ō
kubo had visited Takasaki’s house and expressed his anxiety. Takasaki seemed overcome even as he spoke, and he sobbed and wept as he voiced his opinion that it was essential for the emperor to assume personal rule. At this, tears could also be seen in the emperor’s eyes. Yoneda Torao also expressed the hope that the emperor would devote himself to state affairs with the same energy he daily devoted to riding horseback. The emperor, changing his expression, said that he gladly accepted their loyal counsels and that he would henceforth pay attention to these matters. He asked the men to join in the task of assisting him. Takasaki, weeping tears of emotion, withdrew.
⁴¹