The last day of the twelfth month of 1867. The Oguri Nikki for that day sets out the year-end gifts the Oguri house handed to its retainers, written out rank by rank of those who received them.
Item: year-end gifts to all the retainers, sent as follows
300 hiki each Yūzaemon, Masahiko
one roll of Hachijō cloth Kōzō, Kendayū
separately, 500 mon to Masahiko (for his pains in handling the household's affairs and the building work)
200 hiki each to the kyūnin
100 hiki each to those in attendance and the middle pages
100 hiki each to the women
The two written by name
The sums go in four steps. The highest, three hundred hiki, went to two men only, named outright: Yūzaemon and Masahiko.
Yūzaemon is Mukasa Yūzaemon, chief steward of the Oguri house, who had served from his father Tadataka's time and kept the Edo residence in his master's absence. Masahiko is Tsukamoto Masahiko (Tsutomu), a page whom Oguri had marked and taken over as his wife's attendant samurai when she came from the Tatebe house into the Oguri, and who later went with the embassy to the United States; good at foreign languages, he worked at his master's side to the end. The two were the pivot of the household and the master's right arm.
Kōzō and Kendayū were given not money but a roll of Hachijō cloth. The gifts were not all in cash: goods were handed over too, according to the recipient.
What is worth noting is the “separately, 500 mon” to Masahiko. A reason is attached: “for his pains in handling the household's affairs and the building work”. On top of the fixed sum for his rank sits an addition for that year's work. Standing in two tiers, a fixed sum and an increment, this is more than a mere confirmation of precedence.
Two hundred hiki to the kyūnin, a hundred to those in attendance and the middle pages, and the same hundred to the maids. In another year the Oguri Nikki has the wording “the customary year-end for the retainers”, which suggests that this apportionment was a fixture of every year.
He received on the day he paid out
The diary for the same last day of the twelfth month has another entry about money.
Item: as for myself, it was declared by written order that thirty pieces of white silver be granted me as an allowance for duty at the gold mint
Oguri himself was told by written order that thirty pieces of white silver had been granted him as his allowance for duty at the gold mint. On the day he handed out the year's end to his retainers, the master too was receiving his year-end allowance from the shogunate. Giver and receiver stand side by side on the same day's page.
The diary for the day records besides that he went up to the castle at the usual hour and left after half past the seventh hour; that he went over to the post of Matakichi, his adopted heir Tadamichi; that he saw visitors — Matsudaira Gonjūrō, Tsuzuki Suruga-no-kami, Toda Gosui, Andō Kason and Koga Chikugo-no-kami; and that Oguri Han'emon repaid two ryō. It closes like this.
Item: today's celebration was held as in other years
The year's end that was “as in other years”
It is worth fixing what kind of year's end this “as in other years” was written at. On the twentieth day of the tenth month of 1867 the news of the return of power to the emperor reached Edo, and at the council in the castle Tadamasa, in bitter indignation, urged going up to Kyoto at once to remonstrate; he was not heeded. On the ninth day of the twelfth month came the great proclamation restoring imperial rule. On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month the burning of the Satsuma domain's Edo residence, which Tadamasa had long pressed for, was carried out. The year-end gifts were handed out five days later.
The next year's diary breaks off after a hundred and twenty days, from the first day of the first month of 1868 to the second day of the intercalary fourth month. In that intercalary fourth month Oguri was beheaded at Gonda, and Matakichi Tadamichi and Tsukamoto Masahiko at Takasaki. One of the two men who received three hundred hiki would die four months later at the side of the heir of the house he served.
The 1867 portion of the Oguri Nikki was written on without a single day missing, three hundred and fifty-four days from the first of the first month to the last of the twelfth. On the last of those days there remains a record of who was given how much, with the names and the reasons set beside them.
Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975; Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957
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