On the fifteenth day of the first month of 1868, relieved of the commissionership of finance and the acting commissionership of the army and placed on ordinary attendance without office, Oguri Tadamasa settled what he would do within a short time. First, on the nineteenth day of the first month, he sent his steward Mukasa Yūzaemon to Fumon'in at the village of Ōnari, now Fukaya in Saitama prefecture, the burial temple of the house for generations, to deliver the relics of Matakichi Tadamasa, the fourth head, and fifty ryō in gold. The spear and the arms handed down in the family were deposited there as well.
The twenty-eighth day of the first month: the petition to settle
Then came the twenty-eighth day of the first month. Oguri Nikki has this for the day.
This morning, with the good offices of an intermediary, submitted to Hiraoka Tanba-no-kami the petition to settle at the village of Gonda in Kōzuke, part of my holding.
What the petition asked was that, surrendering his holding, he be allowed to settle at the village of Gonda in Gunma district, Kōzuke, and raise a peasant militia as one way of serving. It was not simply a request to retire; it contained an offer to keep troops in the locality.
The answer came the next day, the twenty-ninth. From the same diary.
In answer to the petition submitted yesterday, it was declared in writing that I am permitted to settle as requested and to raise a peasant militia, and that although I had offered to surrender part of the holding granted me, there is no need to do so.
He was permitted to settle as he had asked, the raising of a peasant militia was allowed, and he was told that the surrender of the holding he had himself offered was unnecessary. Ōtsubo Motoji's short chronology likewise records the shogunate's instruction as “no need to surrender the holding; settle as you please”. It was exceptional treatment at a time when many shogunal officials were losing their holdings.
Why Gonda?
The Oguri holdings were scattered over Kōzuke, Shimotsuke, Kazusa and Shimōsa. The village of Gonda was assessed at 375 koku, whereas the village of Takahashi in Ashikaga district, Shimotsuke, was assessed at 1,354 koku and was far better placed for travel. Why not the larger and more convenient village but Gonda, remote in the mountains? The question has been asked from early on.
Volume three of Gunma Kenshi (the history of Gunma prefecture), of 1927, prints Oguri's own answer as quoted by Hayakawa Keiju: words he is said to have spoken to Shibusawa Seiichirō, head of the Shōgitai, who called on him the night before he left Edo.
Had the former shogun accepted our argument for fighting, there were many courses that might have been taken; but unhappily our argument was not accepted by him, and even if the domains of the north-east were gathered together and we fought, it would be a war without a name and there would be no prospect of victory. Only this: once the disturbance is put down, the strong domains may contend among themselves for power, grind against one another, fall into a state of rival warlords, and so bring the country to want of unity. Should a foreign power take its chance in that gap, it would be a grave matter indeed; and if ever it came to that, I would at once take up the former shogun's cause, send out a call across the land, and seek to remove the difficulty and work a restoration at once. If the land comes happily to sing the praises of peace, I shall end as one stubborn countryman in the mountains, nothing more. It is to be away from all this bustle that I have chosen the remote village of Gonda, and for no other consideration whatever.
Since the argument for fighting had not been accepted, gathering the north-eastern domains and fighting would have no just cause and no prospect of success. What was to be feared was that after the disturbance subsided the strong domains would contend for power, fall into rival warlordism, and leave a gap for a foreign power. He would hold himself apart so as to be able to move if that came. If all went quietly and the country became peaceful, he would end as one stubborn countryman in the mountains. That is the substance of it.
Another, practical reason has also been pointed out. At Gonda there were men of standing such as the village headman Satō Tōshichi and Honda Sanzaemon. Tōshichi above all had been one of those who accompanied the embassy to the United States in 1860, and was the man Oguri trusted most; Gunma Kenshi takes it that he had been urging Oguri to settle there for some time.
Minomura Rizaemon's chest of a thousand ryō
Even after permission was granted, Oguri stayed about a month in Edo. During that time Minomura Rizaemon — who had risen from among the Oguri household's casual hands and would later be the support of Mitsui — called at the Oguri house four times, on the fourth, the fourteenth, the twentieth and the twenty-fourth days of the second month.
By Ninagawa Arata's Ishin Seikan (a true view of the Restoration), Minomura offered Oguri, who was about to leave Edo, a chest of a thousand ryō and urged him to “cross for a time to America”. Oguri declined it, and is said to have answered as follows.
I am grateful for your kindness, but I have my reasons, and shall withdraw for a while to Kōzuke. If in later years the women and children of my house should fall into hardship, I ask your good offices for them then.
The twenty-eighth day of the second month: leaving Edo
The twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh days of the second month went in the coming and going of farewells. The diary shows that Kamio Tetsunojō and Akizuki Teijirō of the Aizu domain came to take their leave.
They set out on the twenty-eighth day of the second month. By the diary he sent his mother, Michiko and Masako ahead before the fifth hour of the morning, before eight o'clock, and then Oguri himself and Matakichi followed. On the way they called at Fumon'in at Ōnari. That day they reached Okegawa after half past the seventh hour of the evening, past five o'clock. On the twenty-ninth they left Okegawa at seven in the morning, took their midday meal at Fukiage, and stayed at Fukaya after three in the afternoon. On the last day of the month they set out at seven, took their meal at Shinmachi, and stayed at Takasaki before four. On the first day of the third month they left Takasaki before eight in the morning, made ready before noon at Muroda, and reached Tōzenji at the village of Gonda after the seventh hour of the evening, past four o'clock. The diary adds at the end: “the village officials came out to pay their respects.”
The party came to about thirty people, family and retainers together, with ten boxes of household goods. They carried arms as well. Ōtsubo Motoji's short chronology gives two cannon, twenty muskets and some ammunition, while Ninagawa Arata corrects it: “the arms they took were one cannon — two is an error — twenty muskets, and ammunition only”. Either way, these arms, and the building work that later began on Kannonyama, became the material for the suspicion that he was raising a fortified encampment.
The Oguri household, it is said, had savings of three thousand ryō from earlier years, kept in a strongbox bought abroad and set beside the hearth. They took this with them when they settled, and 1,060 ryō of it is recorded as having gone into the building of the house on Kannonyama.
Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history), quoting Gunma Kenshi vol. 3 and Ninagawa Arata, Ishin Seikan; Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957
→ The water channel and the house on Kannonyama, and the school he hoped to build