The end of his adopted heir Matakichi

Oguri Tadamasa's adopted heir, Matakichi Tadamichi, was the second son of the hatamoto Komai Kai-no-kami. As Tadamasa had no heir, he was brought into the house of Oguri just before the embassy sailed for the United States. He was to succeed to the house together with Masako — daughter of Tadamasa's uncle Kusaka Kazuma — who entered as an adopted daughter at the same time and was to be his wife. He was twenty-one when he was executed.

Matakichi was an instructor at the shogunate's martial arts academy, and one of the twenty-one students of the first intake at the French language school Oguri and others opened at Yokohama. Oguri later moved the army training school at Yokohama to Edo as the army establishment, with a drill ground at Etchūjima. There, under the instruction of the French officers Chanoine, Power and others, Matakichi served as chief director of the shogunate's infantry. In the third month of 1867 he went to Osaka as interpreter to the French minister Roches for the conference of the foreign ministers held there.

In the third month of 1868, after they had settled at the village of Gonda, father and son directed the fighting together when the gamblers of the neighbourhood attacked the village. Oguri Nikki has this.

“I myself, together with Matakichi, went out taking with us retainers, infantry and others, the hunters of the village and the able-bodied, more than a hundred men, and divided that number into five bodies …”

More than a hundred men in five bodies; Oguri watched the whole, while Matakichi deployed the infantry in skirmishing order against the enemy's headquarters at the Tsubakina shrine to the south-east and gave the commands. The skirmishing tactics learned at the training school were used in the rice fields of Kōzuke. The fighting was over by noon.

The three domains of Takasaki, Annaka and Yoshii, who had come to the village of Gonda under the Tōsandō general staff's warrant of arrest, judged after inspecting the place that there was no trace of rebellion, and withdrew for the time being. On the second day of the intercalary fourth month, guarded by the troops of those three domains, Matakichi set out for Takasaki to explain himself directly to the general staff. With him went the steward Tsukamoto Masahiko, the stipendiary retainers Kutsukake Tōgorō and Tada Kin'nosuke, and three men of Gonda, Tsukakoshi Shinbei, Rikizō and Kamenojō — seven, master and men.

They reached Takasaki at the seventh hour on the fourth, four in the afternoon. The party was shut up as they were in Sekijōji, the Takasaki domain's temple of prayer near the eastern entrance of the castle gate. Sekijōji, with Ankokuji, was being used as quarters by the general staff. The guard was kept by Fukai Jun'ichirō and Shirai Denzō of Takasaki, Negishi Chūzō of Annaka, and Kobayashi Kaneshirō of Yoshii.

On the fifth the general staff ordered them to give up their swords, and the long and short swords of the four, master and men, were taken. Matakichi passed the night not knowing that his father Tadamasa had been beheaded at the riverbed at Mizunuma on the morning of the sixth.

About half past the ninth hour on the seventh day of the intercalary fourth month, about one in the afternoon, Taniguchi Shūdō, a retainer of Takasaki, came and announced that he was placing them under arrest “by order of the senior officers”. Matakichi asked back:

“Which senior officers would those be?”

When Shūdō corrected himself — “my tongue failed me; I beg pardon. By order of the senior officers of the general staff” — Matakichi is said to have understood that this was execution. Even so he answered “very well”, and was bound without showing a sign of fear.

The three men of Gonda were kept outside the cell, and Matakichi with Tsukamoto Masahiko, Kutsukake Tōgorō and Tada Kin'nosuke, four in all, were ordered into it. They were soon brought out to the court of the Takasaki city commissioner's office, but after being kept waiting a while were taken, with no examination of any kind, to the execution ground within the gaol compound. There waited Hara Yasutarō and Toyonaga Kan'ichirō, the deputy inspectors who had executed the father the day before; the chief officers of the three domains were in attendance, and a crowd of onlookers, it is said, had gathered for the example.

The sentence Toyonaga read out ran as follows.

“Oguri Matakichi. Your rebellion, together with your father Kōzukenosuke, being manifest, you are put to the punishment of heaven. Intercalary fourth month, the year of the dragon.”

“The above, having manifestly aided Kōzukenosuke and plotted rebellion, are put to the punishment of heaven and their heads exposed.”

Matakichi listened in silence, but Tsukamoto Masahiko protested indignantly.

“To pronounce rebellion manifest when we have had no examination of any kind, not one single hearing — is that not without reason?”

To this Matakichi is said to have given the admonition, “no useless words at this hour”. Masahiko was the man who had gone with Tadamasa to America for the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty of 1858 and travelled round the world, versed in French, English and mathematics, the steward Tadamasa trusted most. At Tōzenji in Gonda he left an aged mother, a wife and four children.

The task of beheading the four was given to Horie Zōta, a retainer of Takasaki. Horie refused it.

“I am enrolled among the samurai of this domain. Were I ordered to a fight in earnest, I would obey the order whoever the opponent might be. But to cut down bound men is a thing I cannot do, for the honour of a samurai. That order I cannot obey.”

The imperial army could not override him, and in the end the work was given to Koyō Kiichirō, a foot soldier. The heads of the four were exposed at the display ground near the gaol compound. Matakichi's head, however, was soon taken down and put into a head-tub, steeped in strong shōchū: it was to be sent to the general staff inside Tatebayashi castle, together with his father Tadamasa's head, for identification.

The bodies of the four were received by Ikeda Kuhei, a group head of the village of Gonda, and Taguchi Jūshichizō, headman of the village of Shimo-Saida, and buried at the Kannon hall at Negoya in that village. The exposed heads of the three retainers were also handed over later and buried with their bodies in the graveyard at Shimo-Saida.

The three men who had been outside the cell, Tsukakoshi Shinbei, Rikizō and Kamenojō, were each given a ryō after the execution and released. Coming out into the town of Takasaki they met men of Gonda, and learned there for the first time that Tadamasa had been beheaded on the riverbed at the Sannokura station about half past the fourth hour, around eleven in the morning, the day before. Tsukakoshi Shinbei ran at once to the Oguri residence at Surugadai and reported the whole to Mukasa Yūzaemon, the steward left in charge. The course of events was also reported in the Chūgai Shinbun Gaihen of the fifth month of 1868 (vol. 32, price one mon).

With the loss of Matakichi, trained in French military science and in languages and meant to carry the house of Oguri into the next generation, the family stood almost at the point of extinction. Tadamasa's child Kuniko was only a year old. Later Komai Teishirō, Matakichi's younger brother, was adopted, and the succession of the name was permitted, with a small stipend, as Oguri Teishirō Tadayoshi, the thirteenth head.

Sources: Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family); Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke memorial society; Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987

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