In the Tsushima incident Oguri faced the Russian captain Birilev three times, on the tenth, the fourteenth and the eighteenth days of the fifth month of 1861, each time aboard the Posadnik. The exchanges are set down in question-and-answer form in several of the biographies. The other party was a warship that sat there by force, and there was no force on the Japanese side to move. What Oguri said, and what he did not say, under those conditions is the heart of the record of this affair.
The first meeting, the tenth day of the fifth month — “the lord has nothing to do with it”
Birilev began by asking for an interview with the lord of the domain. He had lain off the island since the first month of the year and been looked after, he said, and wished to give his thanks in person. Oguri answered as follows.
“Now that we have come out here, we take everything upon ourselves. The lord has nothing whatever to do with foreign affairs.” When Birilev repeated that he only wished to thank the lord in person for the repair of his ship, Oguri pressed him: “Is that truly all? Have you no other business?” Birilev answered that he had none at all, and Oguri said flatly that it was enough for him to give his thanks there, to the man who was present by the shogun's order. In Chikamatsu Shūkō's account, which Abe Dōzan quotes, Oguri's words in this scene are plainer still.
Although this province is governed by its lord, any negotiation touching foreign affairs must be conducted with the shogunate at Edo and with no one else. I am here as the representative of the shogunate, sent for that purpose.
Chikamatsu Shūkō, “Oguri Kōzukenosuke” (printed in Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden)
The second meeting, the fourteenth day of the fifth month — the argument over the treaty
Four days later the negotiation got to the substance. Oguri began by demanding that passage through Ōfunakoshi, the narrow point joining the eastern and western coasts, be prohibited, and that the Russian ship leave.
Birilev countered that they had crossed Ōfunakoshi only for surveying, and that the treaty had been concluded over matters of trade, so that warships were an exception. Oguri's reply was the sharpest point of these talks: this was a treaty made by the two governments covering relations between the countries as a whole, and the reading that warships alone need not observe it did not stand. In Chikamatsu's account he pressed on — “if it is a breach in matters of trade, then in the case of a warship it is all the more an unquiet act, is it not?” — and the captain was at a loss for an excuse.
Driven into a corner, Birilev took refuge in saying that the survey was by order of Commodore Likhachov, that Oguri should negotiate with the commodore, and that the commodore was “probably at Shanghai; where exactly, I do not clearly know”. Oguri came straight back: then the repair of the ship was a pretext, and he in fact lay there under orders to survey? Birilev could answer only that the order from the commodore had happened to come while the repairs were going on.
The third meeting, the eighteenth day of the fifth month — “shoot me, then”
The trouble had arisen before Oguri got there. A responsible official of the Tsushima domain had already promised the Russians an interview with the lord, Sō Yoshiyori. A hundred days had passed since. Birilev held fast to that promise. Oguri judged that, a promise once given being a promise, there was no help for it, and undertook on his own responsibility to arrange the interview for the twenty-fifth day of the fifth month. He also reckoned that, with his own party present, there could be no bargain struck between the Russians and the lord alone.
The senior councillors in Edo, however, would not consent to the interview. At the third set of talks on the eighteenth day of the fifth month Oguri was forced into a position where he had to withdraw his promise. Birilev gave notice that though it thundered, though the wind and rain were heavy, at two in the afternoon on the twenty-fifth he would certainly go to call on the lord, and that he would offer no violence. Oguri answered that to insist on an interview at all was itself a violence; Birilev would not give way, saying that Oguri had promised an interview within a fortnight and that the fault was not theirs. It was then that the words came.
If, having undertaken this, circumstances arise through the shogunate's order in which it cannot be done, then shoot me and be done with it
Ninagawa Arata's account, noted by him as “from the documents of the time” (printed in Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai)
In Sakamoto Fujiyoshi's rendering into modern Japanese it runs: “I undertook it on my own judgement, but the permission from Edo has not been given. That the interview is not allowed although I consented to it is truly my own personal responsibility. Shoot me, if you will.” Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki write that Oguri went on: “If you press only Russia's interest and disregard what we say, I shall not retire tamely, though I lose my life for it.” Ninagawa Arata recorded the outcome: “Oguri's resolve was firm, and even the violent, hard-handed Russians, meeting this manly readiness to die, were struck with respect for him and suddenly softened their words.”
Not bluster, in Sakamoto's reading
Sakamoto Fujiyoshi does not take these words for surface bluster. Birilev was anxious to create a fait accompli. If Britain leased Tsushima first, he would certainly be punished on his return home and lose his career as an officer. There was every chance he would reckon it to his advantage to shoot Oguri if need be, win the lord over and occupy Tsushima in effect — those were the circumstances in which the words were said. Birilev did in fact give up forcing the interview.
The writer Yoshida Genjirō, who joined a heavy artillery unit on Tsushima at the end of the Meiji era, looked into the affair himself and wrote the novel Shima no Aki (autumn on the island). He judged the scene thus: “These are words of fine nerve, worthy of a Japanese. A man who stands in the front line of diplomacy, if he has courage of this order, will not be taken lightly by the other side.”
Spirit, and restraint
Spirit was not all Oguri showed in these talks. The words he left with the house of Sō on his departure point the other way: however the other side might act, their own attitude must be moderate throughout, and on no account were they to resort to force — so Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki have it. He would offer his own single life, but hostilities between two countries were the one thing to be avoided. Oguri's conduct at Tsushima was built along these two lines.
These exchanges, it should be said, rest on the record Ninagawa Arata set down with the note “from the documents of the time”, which Chikamatsu Shūkō, Sakamoto Fujiyoshi and Ōtsubo Sadakata have each handed on in their own style. The wording differs from source to source.
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941 (including its quotation of Chikamatsu Shūkō, “Oguri Kōzukenosuke”); Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975
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