On the twenty-third day of the fourth month of 1863 Oguri was relieved of both the commissionership of infantry and the commissionership of finance, revenue side — a bare five months after he had taken the two posts together in the twelfth month of the previous year. The occasion was his outright opposition to the proposed increase of stipend for Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu, guardian of the shogun.
The plan to cut land from four provinces
By Sakamoto Fujiyoshi's Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai, Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu stood well with the imperial court at this time, and the court was asking the shogunate to appoint him to guard the capital region and to increase his stipend for the purpose. The senior councillors decided to cut land a little at a time from the shogunal holdings in the four provinces of Settsu, Kawachi, Izumi and Harima, add it to Yoshinobu's stipend, and so meet the court's demand.
Oguri opposed the decision outright. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi writes that “by one account the senior councillors asked his opinion in the expectation that he would oppose it. Properly speaking, the matter being already decided, there was no need to ask the opinion of one commissioner.” The reading is that the councillors too privately held that increasing Yoshinobu's stipend would make the finances harder still, and would put the holder of the highest office, the guardian of the shogun, yet further under the court's interference.
“I will answer with my life for refusing the imperial will”
Kurimoto Joun, Oguri's sworn friend, set the scene down in Joun Ikō (his posthumous papers). The passage is quoted in Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke.
There was a private instruction that land in the four provinces of Settsu, Kawachi, Izumi and Harima should be cut and added to the fief of the Hitotsubashi house, so that it might guard the capital region. The councillors summoned Oguri and asked his opinion, and Kōzukenosuke set out the advantages and the harms, held to his view and would not give way, asking that he himself answer with his life for refusing the imperial will; and so the thing could not in the end be carried out. He could not stay in a central post, however, and was sent out and appointed acting commissioner of the army. This is the reason why Kōzukenosuke, for all his ability, never rose to councillor of state in his life, and why those below him passed him one after another and came to stand above him.
He set out the advantages and the harms and would not give way, going so far as to say that if someone had to bear the responsibility he would take his own life on the spot and answer for refusing the court's wish. The matter of guarding the capital region was accordingly dropped; but Oguri could not remain in a central post and was “sent out” to be acting commissioner of the army. Kurimoto Joun saw this as a demotion, and concludes that it is why Oguri never rose to junior councillor in his life and was passed one after another by men below him. Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke also records that after this affair “he is said to have stood badly with Yoshinobu thereafter”.
His tenure as acting commissioner of the army did not last long either. Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke says frankly that there is no record of the date of the appointment, that he had left the post by the seventh month of the same year, and that neither how many days he held it nor whether he resigned or was dismissed could be made out. The table of appointments in Abe Dōzan's Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden records that year in three lines: “fourth month, resigned”; “from attendance without office to commissioner of the army”; “ninth month, resigned”.
What had gone before the dismissal
In the months up to that fourth month, Oguri had made enemies on every side. Ōtsubo Motoji's Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu records that on the twenty-ninth day of the third month of 1863 a notice naming Oguri was posted on the notice board at Nihonbashi in Edo. It is put down to his standing in the front rank of military reform, and to conduct such as going up to the castle in Western-style tube sleeves, which drew the resentment of the conservatives. On the thirteenth day of the fourth month came a plan by men under Kiyokawa Hachirō to break into the Oguri residence. Kiyokawa himself was assassinated the same day, and nothing came of it.
Clashes over money came on top of this. Oguri had spoken against the shogun Iemochi's journey up to the capital in the second month of that year. By Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke, the substance of his argument was: “The cost of the shogun's journey — the travel both ways, the stay, the gifts, the allowances, the preparations — will in truth exceed a million ryō. These are times of much business at home and abroad; that expense should be turned to the training of an army and a navy, to the strengthening of the country's defence and to the firm establishment of the shogunate's real power.” The same book records the actual cost of the journey as 573 ōban, 1,076,196 ryō in gold and 113,495 ryō in silver.
What he left behind in those ten months
Oguri took up no small amount of work in that short tenure from the sixth month of 1862 to the fourth month of 1863. It was then that he decided on the adoption of the Western three-arm system of infantry, cavalry and artillery. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi writes that besides this he was “ordered nothing but projects that required money — the reception of the Korean embassy, the management of the martial arts academy — and somehow carried them through”. The handling of the indemnity Britain demanded over the Namamugi incident was another hard case that fell on him in these months.
After his resignation Oguri was away from the centre of the shogunate's government for a year and more, but on the thirteenth day of the eighth month of 1864 he went from acting commissioner of the army back to the commissionership of finance, revenue side, for the third time. From then on he turned to the building of the Yokosuka ironworks and the rebuilding of the finances.
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 (quoting Kurimoto Joun, Joun Ikō); Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957
→ His repeated appointments, and four terms as commissioner of finance → Katsu Kaishū, and the parting of two fates