On 6 May 1955, the day of the memorial in the eighty-eighth year counted from Oguri Kōzukenosuke's death, a biwa song was performed before his grave at Gonda in Jōshū. Its title was “Oguri Jōshū Kō”, Lord Oguri of Jōshū. The words were by Ōtsubo Motoji, and the full text is given at the end of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu that he later compiled (Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957). A note at the foot reads: “this song was set for the Satsuma biwa and performed before the grave of Oguri Tadamasa at Gonda in Jōshū on 6 May 1955, at the memorial in the eighty-eighth year after his death”.
Ōtsubo Motoji was a student of Oguri who lived at Urawa, and of whom the memorial society's records say that he “came to the village often from the war years into the years after it, bringing many facts about Gonda to light, and contributed greatly to the commemoration”. The chronology that holds the words was itself a mimeographed booklet printed at Makino Tōshadō, with “reproduction not permitted” and “not for sale” on the colophon.
How the song begins
The opening is Edo Castle in 1868.
Boshin of Keiō, the spring still young; the pine boughs of Chiyoda's castle do not change their colour, yet all changes — what is to be done with the end of our age? Here in great Edo was built a dream of blossom three hundred years long; it wakes, and is nothing — is it the fate of this fleeting human world that the midnight wind blows upon?
The colour of the pine boughs does not change, yet the world does. From that opening, the dream of three hundred years waking, Oguri enters.
High in name now among the shogunate's councillors, Oguri Kōzukenosuke was a man of rare brilliance and decision, a notable man of a loyalty without second. Chosen by his lord not long before, he discharged the great charge of making amity with America, far off across the waves, and from the morning of his return —
The crossing as envoy to the United States is set at the head of his deeds. The song goes straight on to the eight years after his return.
Home government, the forces, the economy — he bore every duty on his own body, and for more than eight years spent himself to the last of his strength, all for nothing: in the cold of spring at Toba and Fushimi the guns suddenly sounded; the three-leaf hollyhock withered at the tip, and the chrysanthemum sent out its scent again.
He bore the duties of more than eight years on himself and spent his whole strength, and for nothing: the guns of Toba and Fushimi sounded. In a couplet of the hollyhock withering and the chrysanthemum giving its scent, the change of government is folded into a single line.
“The strategy of Sun and Wu”, and submission
The height of the song is the scene of whether to fight or to withdraw.
Though all the soldiery of the realm were raised and came against us, what of it? I have the strategy of Sun and Wu — with the tactics hidden in his breast it would be easy enough to break the enemy; but alas, the policy of submission was already settled at last.
Holding in his breast the confidence that he had the strategy of Sunzi and Wuzi, and that breaking the enemy would be easy, he found the policy of submission already decided. The song goes on that his whole sincerity was not accepted by his lord, and that he poured tears of resentment on the stone walls of the castle he knew so well and on the moonlight over the keep. It then moves to the leaving of Edo: “no longer to that pass — cleanly he gave up the capital and went down to the village of Gonda in Jōmō”.
After this scene of the journey down, a couplet of Chinese verse is set in, cutting across the flow of the Japanese: “The spring geese are like me, and I like the geese / turning my back on the blossom within the walls of Luoyang, I go home.” It is a couplet that sets Oguri, leaving Edo, over the geese that turn their backs on the capital's blossom and fly north.
The close is the riverbed at Mizunuma, on the bank of the Karasu River, in the intercalary fourth month of 1868.
Soon the western army pressed near; its lawless blade could not be escaped, and with his heir Tadamichi and all his retainers together, grieving for the future of his country, he fell — a pitiless thing. Eighty-eight years of seasons have passed here; far down the waters of the Karasu River, into the ages to come, his work will be handed on and long remain, will be handed on and long remain.
It ends by repeating the last line. The line “eighty-eight years of seasons have passed here” shows plainly enough that the song was made for the memorial in the eighty-eighth year. In a list of works relating to Oguri that the memorial society later drew up, “a biwa song, Karasugawa Rakka” — fallen blossom on the Karasu River — is given under broadcasting, film and poetry, dated May 1955.
Gonda in the year the song was made
1955 falls in the period when the commemoration at Gonda moved forward all at once. Two years before, on 14 August 1953, the Oguri Kōzukenosuke sites were designated historic sites of the prefecture by the Gunma Prefectural Board of Education. In September of the same year the city of Yokosuka decided to recast its bust anew, and it was settled that the original model of the former bust, raised in 1922 and the work of Asakura Fumio, should be presented to the village of Kurata, a place connected with him. The village formed a “committee for the erection of a bust of Lord Oguri of Jōshū” and went forward with the preparations, appointing thirty members to it.
The unveiling was held at Tōzenji at ten in the morning on 6 May 1954. The unveiling of the bust, a memorial service and a ceremony reporting the prefectural designation followed one upon another, and the man who drew the veil was Oguri Tadahito, a great-grandson of Lord Oguri of Jōshū. The biwa song was played before the grave on the same anniversary the following year.
The biwa within the commemorative observances
The song did not end with that one memorial. On 13 May 1956, for the eighty-ninth anniversary, the order of the observance held at Tōzenji has as its seventh item “a performance of Lord Oguri's ‘Biwa’, newly presented (recording), composed by Ōtsubo Motoji”. The same day's programme held a memorial service for Lord Oguri of Jōshū, a memorial service for the peasant militia, an offering for those who died in the disaster, the unveiling of a bust of Kurimoto Joun, the unveiling of the stone “benevolence and duty together”, the stone for the peasant militia, lectures by Ōtsubo on “Kurimoto Joun” and on “the escape of Lord Oguri's wife and the part played by the peasant militia”, and a showing of slides. The memorial society's record says of the day that it “was very well attended”.
Just before this ceremony, on 28 April, a petition went from Tsukakoshi Denzaburō, president of the memorial society, to Oikawa Tadao, headman of Kurabuchi village, asking that the commemoration be moved from the temple's parishioners to the village as its own undertaking. The petition was granted, and after the ceremony of 13 May the memorial society was reorganized as a body run by the village. On 15 May 1957 the first “Oguri festival” after the reorganizing was held at Tōzenji. After the memorial service for the ninetieth year, the report on the reorganizing, and lectures by Takahashi Kyōichi (head of the Yokosuka city history office) and by Ōtsubo, near the end of the order of the day stands “item: entertainment, biwa”. The date of publication on the colophon of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu, which holds the words of the song, was this 15 May.
The song survived further. Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke (Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai), published in 1975, has the sentence “now, some fifteen years ago, the writer composed a biwa song in praise of Oguri”, and after it the same words are given again, in the same form down to the note at the end.
Where a stone, a bust or a published biography is commemoration that leaves a form behind, a recited piece such as a biwa song is commemoration that reaches the ears of those present. Sung before the grave at a memorial service, heard again the next year as a recording, and placed in the order of the day as entertainment the year after that — these words tell that there were people who meant in this way to go on telling Oguri's life.
Sources: Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957; Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975; Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke memorial society; Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family)
→ The commemoration movement of the 1930s — the stone for the summoning of his spirit, and the bust → The stone “benevolence and duty together” → Kurimoto Joun