On the first day of the third month of 1868 Oguri's party left Takasaki before the fifth hour of the morning, took their midday meal at Muroda, and entered Tōzenji at the village of Gonda after the seventh hour of the evening. That the village officials came to pay their respects is the record of the day. A quiet life on the land was to begin.
The next day, the second day of the third month, unquiet news came. Oguri Nikki records it thus.
A great number of gamblers of the village of Sannokura have gathered, and are sending round circulars to the villages nearby, putting it about in various ways that the houses of those who do not agree will be burned down.
A great number of the gamblers of Sannokura had gathered and were circulating letters round the neighbouring villages, putting it about that the houses of any who would not join them would be burned. The circulars went to the villages of Sannokura, Mizunuma, Iwahi and Kawaura. Nothing was said to the village of Gonda, and its officials came to Oguri in anxiety. Making arrangements for each of them, he instructed the village officials to talk with the others as quietly as might be.
The third day of the third month brought rain, and snow at night. The diary begins: “Though today is the festival, we held no celebration, being in submission and seclusion.” They did not keep the festival of the third month because he was confined in penitence. That day, the talks between village officials getting nowhere, he was asked to send one of his own men, and sent Ōi Isojūrō. The other side, however, said nothing but unreasonable things. Isojūrō told them flatly: “In that case do as you please; and if it comes to unlawful acts, we shall deal with it accordingly — be sure you understand that.” And he came back. The talks had broken down. As it was past midnight, Oguri gave each man his orders for the defence.
The fourth day of the third month: over a hundred men in five bodies
The next day, the fourth day of the third month, reports came in one after another from before half past the sixth hour of the morning, before seven o'clock, that the men massed at Sannokura were coming on. Oguri first sent away his mother, his wife Michiko, Masako and the other women and children, together with Tsukamoto Masahiko's household, into the hills within the village, with Mukasa Ginnosuke and Satō Tōshichi to attend them and village officials assigned to them.
Then he went out himself. By the diary he took with him, together with Matakichi, more than a hundred men — retainers, infantry, hunters of the village and the able-bodied — and divided them into five bodies. Two were sent round to the hill side, while Oguri and Matakichi went out below with more than twenty infantry, and the remaining two held the direction of the village of Kawaura. Oguri directed both wings himself.
The attackers came from three directions, some two thousand of them. They set fire at last to the upper quarter, while another party fired the ground before the shrine below, and others began shooting from across the river on the Kawaura side. Oguri at once ordered the infantry to break off and advance, and fell upon the body massed in the shrine's grove. He pursued them as they withdrew and cut down three.
With that quarter quiet, he was about to push into the village of Kawaura, but the enemy's fire was heavy and the hill side looked unsafe. Going out from the Chōzaemon house to the hill side he found a great number massed there, but judged that Yūzō's and Tōgorō's bodies could hold them; so he sent Matakichi to the upper quarter again to attack down from the heights and push across the Karasu River into Kawaura. In this phase Ikeda Den and Ōi Isojūrō cut down some five men, and the infantry about ten in various places, and the rioters fled in all directions. The hill side too was held by Yūzō's and Tōgorō's bodies, and with Isojūrō and Den sent up in support it was altogether quiet. Men taken alive were brought in one after another, hauled along by the villagers.
His mother was fetched and returned to Tōzenji in the evening. Masako had fled too far off to come back that night.
The musket of Ginjūrō the infantryman
There is one name Oguri set down particularly from the day's fighting.
In today's fight the infantryman Ginjūrō fought with great spirit and cut down four men in the end; truly a musket hand whose accuracy is to be admired.
Two days later, on the sixth day of the third month, Oguri rewarded the work. He appointed Ginjūrō squad leader, declared him of the standing of a middle page, and gave all the rest two bu in gold apiece. It was an advancement across the lines of rank, and it carried straight over into Gonda the way Oguri had worked in the shogunate's government: give Western-style troops both recognition and standing.
The villages that came to apologize that same night
On the night of the fighting itself, officials of the four villages of Kawaura, Iwahi, Mizunuma and Sannokura came to apologize. They begged earnestly that no more men be sent against them, since all would be in distress, and said that they had been egged on by the gamblers and had come to the day's work with nothing to hold them back. Oguri's answer was that he had no objection if they submitted a written apology undertaking that from now on, without dispute, the six villages of the association would live in harmony as before and settle everything by consultation. One official of each village was detained.
The next day, the fifth, a written apology sealed jointly by the village officials and the commoners of Kawaura, Iwahi and Sannokura was submitted, with a petition asking for the return of those taken alive. Oguri returned the prisoners to their own people and kept only the written apology, leaving it in the village officials' charge. The same day he drew up a report of the affair and sent it by special courier to his household in Edo, and wrote to Kusaka Kazuma and Komai Kai-no-kami as well. On the seventh, village officials from Ogyū and Ōdo came to offer their sympathy.
This fighting was later called the Sannokura war, or the war at the Gonda encampment. Of the motive for the attack several readings have come down: that it was aimed at the money and goods Oguri had brought with him; that it was an extension of the riots over high prices that had been going on since the middle of the second month; and even that someone had incited the gamblers in order to make a pretext for killing Oguri. There is no record to decide which is right.
From two days after the fighting, work on the water channel
What stands out is what Oguri did immediately afterwards. In the afternoon of the sixth day of the third month he went up to Kannonyama to inspect the ground for the house; on the eleventh he gave the villagers the order to open up Kannonyama, settling the arrangement to level four hundred tsubo for about thirty ryō, and handed over five ryō in advance. On the thirteenth he went over the line for bringing water from the Koitatsu valley to Kannonyama, and paid out three ryō as earnest money for the channel work. On the ninth, hearing that gamblers had come down on the town of Nakanojō again, he sent Ōi Isojūrō, Tada Kin'nosuke and Ikeda Den, with two infantrymen, to its relief.
On the twelfth the courier sent to Edo returned. Edo was “in extraordinary confusion” with the imperial army coming east, and an instruction had arrived that, submission being the course, no one was to act in any extreme way.
Seen in the event, this defence was the last fighting directed by a man who had held high office in the shogunate. A month later Oguri was beheaded on the bed of the Karasu River without being examined.
Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history); Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family)
→ The water channel and the house on Kannonyama, and the school he hoped to build