His wife's rite of the sash, at the village of Gonda

On the fourteenth day of the third month of 1868, two weeks after the Oguri had moved to the village of Gonda, the “rite of the sash” — the obi-iwai — was held for his wife Michiko. The Oguri Nikki for that day has this.

That is to say: as for Michiko, today being an auspicious day, the sash was put on; the rite was conducted by Masahiko's mother Maki, and a gift of a hundred hiki was sent to her. The date column of the diary reads “fourteenth day, dog, weather good” — the day of the dog in the cycle of twelve. The sash is put on on a day of the dog in the hope of the dog's many and easy births. The diary bears out that the day had been properly chosen by the calendar as well. Michiko was five months pregnant.

“Masahiko's mother Maki”, who took the part of binding on the iwata-obi, the maternity sash, was the mother of Tsukamoto Masahiko, the steward of the Oguri house. Masahiko was a trusted retainer who had gone with the embassy to the United States, and all six of his family had moved to the village of Gonda. The train that left Edo came to near thirty: Oguri's own family of five, the Tsukamoto family of seven, and the retainers Arakawa Yūzō, Ōi Isojūrō, Watanabe Tasaburō, Kutsukake Tōgorō, Tada Kinnosuke and Mukasa Ginsuke, with the menservants, maids and porters. Among that party it was Maki, as the senior woman, who took this part.

There is also an account that the rite was held at a brewer's house at Nagai, but from what the diary says it is thought to have been held at Tōzenji, where they were lodging.

What became of Maki is painful. Less than two months later, around the time Oguri was seized, she killed herself together with her child during the escape from the village of Gonda. Her gravestone has long been carved “Mitsu”, but that is wrong: this one line of the diary showed that the name was “Maki”. A record of a day of celebration came, in the end, to give a person her name back.

The Oguri family reached the village of Gonda on the first day of the third month. Three days later, on the fourth day of the third month, Tōzenji was attacked by several thousand rioters. Oguri, with Matakichi, led more than a hundred men — retainers, infantry, and the hunters and able-bodied men of the village — divided into five parties, and fought them off. Fire was set to Kamijuku and to the ground before the shrine, but the attack was driven back, and the diary records that the other side lost twenty-one dead in the affair. The rite of the sash came only ten days after that commotion.

The diary for the same fourteenth day of the third month has other entries. That his mother Kuniko and his adopted daughter Masako went to worship at the shrine. That Oguri himself went out after midday to look over the building work on Kannonyama. That he sent the retainer Arakawa Yūzō as far as the post town of Kuragano to collect goods that had come round from Edo.

The days before and after run in the same manner. Kannonyama was to be levelled to four hundred tsubo; the village's kurokuwa labourers were set to it, with an estimate of about thirty ryō and five ryō paid in advance. For the work on the Mizuhiki road, three ryō in earnest money. The drawings for the dwelling were handed to the carpenters, with orders to reckon up the timber. Forty packages arrived from Kuragano. Amid these days of building a house, bringing in water and settling down to put a life together stands the single line about the rite of the sash.

Letters brought by courier from Edo about the same time, meanwhile, reported that the government army's advance had thrown Edo into particular confusion, and that word had gone out that, submission being offered, no one was to take any violent step. The third month of 1868 was the brink of whether Edo Castle would be given up without blood. In the middle of a country whose course was undecided, a household was quietly preparing to receive a new life.

It is held to have been Michiko's first pregnancy, more than fifteen years after the marriage. This child is Kuniko, born at Aizu in the sixth month, after Oguri met his end at the riverbed at Mizunuma on the sixth day of the intercalary fourth month. For the short span between the rite of the sash and that day, lines such as these in the diary are the only clue to what life at the village of Gonda was like.

A record of a child born within those fifteen years exists apart from the official genealogies. Koyama Tadashi's Oguri Mankyō Den has it that Kikunosuke, born at Surugadai in Edo on the tenth day of the fourth month of 1857, was the child of Tadamasa and a concubine named Uta. He is the later Oguri Mankyō, fifteenth abbot of Tōzenji. The “Oaya” who appears every month in the accounts that begin in the first month of 1850, and the “Outa” whom Ikeda Kayo counted at Gonda apart from her ladyship and the maids, remain as matters of the same household.

→ The “Oaya” of the account book and the “Outa” of Gonda　／　Oguri Mankyō — the monk said to be the son of a concubine

In following the life of a man who was present at a great turning point of history, we are apt to look only at his public deeds. But an entry recording that he consulted the calendar, chose a day of the dog, and sent a gift of money to a retainer's mother quietly recalls that he was at the same time a husband, and a man who cared about the daily life of his family.

Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7 (the entry for the fourteenth day of the third month, 1868); Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family); Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history)

→ The building of the house at the village of Gonda, and the plan for a school　／　Kuniko, born at Aizu　／　The flight of his wife Michiko　／　The genealogy in Oguri Mankyō Den