Reforming the army on Western lines as commissioner of infantry

On the first day of the twelfth month of 1862 Oguri Tadamasa was relieved as city commissioner of Edo and ordered to be commissioner of infantry. The office had only just been created, and Oguri was the first to hold it. From that day to the end of the year new posts were created one after another: commissioner of the army, president of the army, president of the navy, chief of infantry, chief of cavalry, chief of the gun companies. It was the first set of appointments in the shogunate's recasting of its military system.

The ground had been laid in the fifth month of the same year, when Oguri was ordered to the inquiry into military organization. The purpose of the order was stated thus.

Since the system of seclusion has been changed, the military system is also to be changed; all are therefore to unite their strength and exert themselves the more, so that the martial authority held since our divine ancestor may be spread at home and abroad.

This board of inquiry was divided into an upper and a lower section, and the names of Kimura Settsu-no-kami and Katsu Rintarō stand among its members. It was the shogunate's councillors stating squarely the policy that, the country having been opened, the military system would change too.

What Oguri settled on as commissioner of infantry was the adoption of a Western three-arm system, resting on the three arms of infantry, cavalry and artillery. Not only the weapons and the methods of training but the organization of the army itself was to be recast on Western lines. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi writes that this “became the foundation of the army organization of Meiji Japan”.

At this stage, though, there was little substance to it. The manual was a single volume, the translated Sanpei Takuchīki (on the tactics of the three arms). Those who could conduct the training were no more than a handful of men who had been drilled by Dutch officers at Nagasaki. Three years later Oguri complained of it to Kurimoto Joun.

It was in 1862 that the shogunate decided to adopt a modern three-arm system of cavalry, artillery and infantry for the army. 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 dissatisfaction led to his request to the French minister Roches for army instructors. A contract engaging the French officer Chanoine and others was concluded on the thirtieth day of the ninth month of 1866, and on the nineteenth day of the eleventh month an army training school was opened at the Ōta barracks in Yokohama, where the training of officers in the three arms began. In the sixth month of 1867 the school was moved to the army establishment in Edo, with Etchūjima and Komabano set aside as drill grounds. On the stake Oguri had driven in 1862, a building went up over four years.

Five days after becoming commissioner of infantry, on the fifth day of the twelfth month, Oguri was made to hold the commissionership of finance, revenue side, as well. Modernizing the army needed money, and there was no one else who could find it.

Six months before that, however, he had taken the commissionership of finance and been relieved of it within two months and twenty days. The reason is handed down as this remark at a gathering.

At a time when the country has much on its hands and the finances are in difficulty, it is useless to pay high stipends to spineless samurai; such payments ought to be cut. And though a thing be old precedent and ancient form, useless officers and useless offices ought to be abolished.

Treating finance and military government as one thing led in the end to the system of levy money, under which hatamoto were made to provide both men and funds in proportion to the assessed yield of their holdings. It was put into effect in the ninth month of 1867 for holdings from two hundred koku up to ten thousand, for a term of ten years. Fukuchi Gen'ichirō wrote this in Bakumatsu Seijika (statesmen of the last years of the shogunate).

Seeing that the musket companies of the shogunate's men were feeble and unfit for use, Oguri laid a levy on the hatamoto, requiring men in proportion to the assessed yield of their holdings and the cost of them besides; with this he organized several battalions of infantry, and so laid the foundation of a system of conscription.

He took the army's horses in hand as well, sending silkworm-egg cards to France and importing Arabian horses in return to improve the stock. It was a measure to make the cavalry of the three arms possible.

In his time as commissioner of infantry Oguri was reprimanded for going up to the castle in tube sleeves, a half-Western dress. A lampoon that went round Edo at the time snapped at him: “Look at the shape of that fellow Oguri — going up to the castle in a tube-sleeved undershirt; a hellish government, worse than a foreign one.” In the spring of 1863 a notice signed “men resolved to die” was posted on the notice board at Nihonbashi, naming Oguri and other officials and declaring that those who carried on the line of Ii and Andō would be put to death. On the thirteenth day of the fourth month Kiyokawa Hachirō's band of rōnin laid a plan to attack the Oguri residence at Surugadai by night and take Oguri hostage. Kiyokawa was assassinated that same evening, and nothing came of it.

Through these months Oguri also carried costly duties such as the reception of the Korean embassy and the management of the martial arts academy, and he handled the aftermath of the Namamugi incident. The indemnity Britain demanded of the shogunate was a hundred thousand pounds; the twenty-five thousand pounds the Satsuma domain paid was in the end money borrowed from the shogunate.

His tenure as commissioner of infantry lasted less than five months, until he was relieved of it along with the commissionership of finance on the twenty-third day of the fourth month of 1863. On the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month he became acting commissioner of the army. About this time Oguri had opposed outright the increase of stipend for Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu — the plan of cutting shogunal lands in Settsu, Kawachi and Izumi to provide it — and that is handed down as the trigger of his dismissal: one scene in a dizzying series of transfers.

Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; 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; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941. Kurimoto Joun's words are from Hōan Jisshu (ten works of Hōan), and Fukuchi Gen'ichirō's from Bakumatsu Seijika (statesmen of the last years of the shogunate).

→ The aftermath of the Namamugi incident, and its diplomatic handling　／　The partnership with France　／　Resignation, and his return