The Oguri Nikki (Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7) holds the household accounts of the Oguri as well as the diaries. Run an eye down the columns of receipts and payments, going on evenly in the manner of “sundries, to hand” and “to Oaya”, and one item keeps coming up: eel.
Why the accounts survived
The accounts ought never to have survived at all. After Oguri and his retainers were beheaded on the bank of the Karasu River on the sixth day of the intercalary fourth month of 1868, Ōne Ryūtarō, the inspector, ordered Gotō Hachirōemon, a wholesaler of the post town of Shibukawa in Kōzuke, to deal with what was left behind. Out of those effects Hachirōemon quietly carried home the diaries and the accounts, which stood in danger of being lost or burned, and kept them hidden out of regard for the government's army and for those around him, going to his death without telling even his descendants.
They came to light in September 1952, when Honda Natsuhiko, a man of letters, was going through records at the Gotō house and found two volumes of diaries, four of accounts, and Hachirōemon's notes among other things. The first volume of the accounts is a small book of ninety-five sheets, sixteen centimetres by twelve point one, with Ryōnyū Seishutsu Bo — the book for measuring what comes in and restraining what goes out — written on the cover. It covers the first month of 1850 to the fifth month of 1855. The other three volumes are six years, from the first month of 1858, after he succeeded to the house, to the twelfth month of 1863.
Eel on the day of the stipend
A shogunal official was paid in rice. The day of payment was called the kirimai-tori, and the turning of it into money, with the celebration that went with it, the kirimai-biraki. The accounts have entry after entry of eel got in on that day.
“Kirimai-biraki — eel”
“Money for eel — the fifth-month kirimai celebration”
“Kirimai-biraki — money for eel and carp”
“A feast as in other years — money for eel”
“As in other years” catches the eye. This was no luxury hit upon at a whim but something settled as a fixture of the year. To mark the day of the kirimai with a feast was the custom among shogunal officials.
Kawabe Kazuo's “Kaei Rokunen no Kakeibo” (the household accounts for 1853), in Tatsunami, the journal of the memorial society, reads that year's receipts and payments through by converting them into present-day yen. Taking one mon at fifteen yen, one shu comes to 6,000 yen, one bu to 24,000 and one ryō to 96,000. On that measure, on the fourteenth day of the second month of 1853, the day the spring stipend was paid, the eel served to the whole household came to 18,000 yen. In the third month that followed, the customary kirimai-biraki was held again, and 12,000 yen paid out.
In the same third month there is an entry for sushi fetched in at 9,750 yen a tier. On that day there were visitors from the Edo residence of the Hayashida domain at Kanda Myōjinshita, where Aya's family lived, and 108,000 yen went on food, so the sushi was for a present. Kawabe sums it up: eel and sushi appear often in Oguri's accounts as the feast for a celebration or for visitors.
For hospitality, and as a gift
Eel does not in fact appear only on the day the stipend came in. Gather the entries and the purposes are written out distinctly.
“Yamashiro-no-kami having come — money for eel” — because a guest came
“Money for eel and carp when Inagaki was invited” — when someone was asked in
“Money for eel, for guests”, “money for eel, for a feast”
“Money for eel as a present to Muramatsu” — as a gift
“Money for eel sent to Mizuno and Takigawa”, “a box of eel — to Itada Jinbei” — boxed to be taken to someone
“To Niigata — money for eel and carp — presented” — money for eel and carp sent to Niigata
For the Oguri house, then, eel stood less as a dish for the family's own table than as a course at a celebration, a dish for entertaining guests, and a boxed present to be sent. That the accounts set out, line by line, to whom and on what occasion it was given shows how carefully this book was kept.
1853 was the year the black ships appeared off Uraga, on the third day of the sixth month. In the seventh month of that same year Oguri was ordered to serve on the gifts staff and moved from the western keep to duty in the main keep. The accounts, though, carry hardly a beat of the age. The only entry that looks like it comes suddenly at the foot of the sixth month: “paid the balance for the thirty-me gun. Five ryō two bu” — 528,000 yen by Kawabe's conversion. In the month the country shook, the columns of stipend, clothing and eel went on unchanged.
Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Kawabe Kazuo, “Kaei Rokunen no Kakeibo” (the household accounts for 1853), in Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke memorial society
→ The year the accounts went well into surplus on the embassy allowance → Oaya, his wife, and how she lived