One unexpected article of trade joined Japan and Europe in the last years of the shogunate: silkworm egg cards. These were sheets of paper on which silkworm moths had been made to lay their eggs, the stock from which the worms that give raw silk are raised.
In Europe at the time a silkworm disease called pébrine was spreading, and silk-rearing in France and elsewhere had been badly hit. Japanese egg cards, carrying healthy stock, were something France wanted badly.
It began with the reform of the army
The exchange was not a barter hit upon at a whim. Its starting point was the rebuilding of the army.
The shogunate had decided in 1862 to adopt the system of three arms — cavalry, artillery and infantry — but four years later almost nothing had moved. About the third month of 1865, Oguri went with Asano Mimasaka-no-kami Ujisuke to Kurimoto Joun's official residence at Yokohama and opened with this.
Four years have gone by since, and nothing has moved at all. As for the cavalry, they merely practise horsemanship. As for the artillery and the infantry, they keep their noses in the translated Sanpei Takuchīki and do something of the sort by guesswork. This can hardly be called “three arms” (from Kurimoto Joun's Hōan Jisshu)
After talking it over, the three decided to approach the French minister Roches about engaging instructors for the army. In 1866, as commissioner of the army, Oguri set Kurimoto to draft the reform of the military system. What Kurimoto urged was the principle of three arms — infantry, cavalry and artillery — with the weight placed on the cavalry. How much cavalry counted in actual fighting was something he had heard from the French missionary Mermet de Cachon.
Japanese native horses would not serve for that principle. They stood low, and though they did for packing and for riding, they did not suit the Western handling of cavalry. Oguri saw that the stock had to be improved, and carried it through.
Egg cards given, Arabian horses got
What Oguri fixed on was the fact that France was short of egg cards. Inukai Tsuyoshi, a pupil of Kurimoto's, summed up his teacher's work in this way in “Joun Sensei Ryakuden”, a short life of him.
He called in French engineers and so brought a great works to completion, which is the present navy shipyard; he engaged several officers of the French army to teach the arts of the three arms, infantry, cavalry and artillery, and so reformed the system of our army; he set up a French school at Yokohama and trained officers there; and knowing what the French government lacked, he sent egg cards of the choicest selection and had them send in return several Arabian horses, stallions and mares, thus opening the way to the improvement of our country's horses, and so forth
Choice egg cards given, and in return several horses, stallions and mares sent — the intention can be read plainly enough: to have both sires and dams, breed from them, and improve the horses at home. The shipyard at Yokosuka, the army training, the French language school at Yokohama, and the improvement of the horse stock: in Inukai's sentence the four stand in a row as one continuous undertaking.
There is also an account that Oguri bought his Arabian horses and brought them home at the time of the embassy to the United States in 1860, but Abe Dōzan's Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden holds this not to be the case and takes them for imports that came with the reform of the military system in 1866. Abe has it that Oguri loved horses not for the pleasure of keeping them but because he held that “the heart of a strong army lies in the reform of its horses”, and goes so far as to write that “Kōzukenosuke is the founder of horse racing in our country, and is to be looked up to as the true pioneer of the improvement of the horse stock”.
The road down to Gonda, and the horse afterwards
The Arabian horse went with Oguri on his last journey too. In 1868 the party that gave up the Edo house and set out for the village of Gonda in Jōshū came to near thirty: five of Oguri's own family, seven of the family of his steward Tsukamoto Masahiko, and the retainers Arakawa, Ōi, Watanabe, Kutsukake, Tada and Mukasa with the menservants, maids and porters. Along that road, lodging at Fukaya and at Takasaki, Oguri is said to have ridden the Arabian.
After Oguri was beheaded on the bed of the Karasu River, the household goods were confiscated, and merchants were called from Takasaki to put the better pieces up at auction. The Arabian horse was taken by Hara Yasutarō, the inspecting officer who had directed the execution. There is an account that he tried riding it, was thrown, and hurt his leg so that it never healed for the rest of his life.
Abe Dōzan went to see Hara in his old age, in the Shōwa years. Asked why his leg was lame, Hara gave this answer.
This right leg of mine — when I was young, in Gunma, there was a splendid horse, and I took it into my head to try the thing and got on. Well, the beast reared about terribly and I came off. My right leg has been bad ever since
When Abe asked whether it had not been Oguri's Arabian horse, at Gonda, Hara gave no answer; he said neither yes nor no, and only sat sunk in recollection, by this account.
The first shoots of raw silk as a Japanese export and the improvement of the horse stock as a part of Western-style armament hung together on a single diplomatic thread. It is a quiet story, but it tells how many layers there were to the dealings between Japan and France in those years.
Sources: Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941 (quoting Inukai Tsuyoshi, “Joun Sensei Ryakuden”); Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family)
→ Reforming the army on Western lines as commissioner of infantry → Hara Yasutarō