On the twenty-second day of the fourth month of 1868 the general staff of the Tōsandō issued a circular to the three domains of Takasaki, Annaka and Yoshii ordering the arrest of Oguri. This article follows what had happened before that order was issued, and how the three domains acted on it.
Rioters calling it “the punishment of Oguri”, and the rumour of war funds
It began only three days after his arrival at Gonda. On the third and fourth days of the third month a body that had risen in Chichibu in Musashi, plundered its way through Fujioka and Tomioka and joined the Yashū band at Muroda came down on Sannokura, calling it “the punishment of Oguri”. Their object was plain: the rumour that Oguri had carried a great sum of war funds to Gonda in miso casks.
On the origin of that rumour, Kiya Takayasu set out one account in Miyama Bunko. At the end of the first month of 1868, Katsu Kaishū is said to have told Kinashi Seiichirō, Saigō's right hand, and Itagaki Taisuke that Oguri had pressed the shogun at the recent great council to draw the bow against the court but that they themselves had stopped it; that Oguri, in anger, had made off with about ten million ryō of public money and withdrawn to Gonda in Kōzuke; that to kill him would fill out the imperial army's war chest and enrich the new government's funds; but that he had new weapons and a considerable body of private troops, of which they should take note.
This attack was driven off by Matakichi, a dozen or so infantry trained in the French manner, and the hunters and able-bodied men of the village — about a hundred in all. Being driven back, however, became the next spark.
Those who laid information
By Oguri Kōzukenosuke Matsuro Jiseki (the record of Oguri Kōzukenosuke's last days), besides the complaint from the rioters who had been beaten off, there was a further move: “within a day or two, information was laid with the general staff of the Tōsandō by the headmen of certain villages with comparatively little to do with the matter”. Its substance was that Oguri Kōzukenosuke had force enough to break an army of seven thousand, and that he harboured designs of rebellion against the court.
The commander of the Tōsandō general staff was Iwakura Tomosada, a son of Iwakura Tomomi, with Itagaki Taisuke and Ijichi Masaharu as staff officers. The staff took up the information, proclaimed on all sides that Oguri harboured designs of rebellion, and issued the circular dated the twenty-second day of the fourth month. It was addressed to three men: Matsudaira Ukyōnosuke, lord of Takasaki; Itakura Kazue-no-kami, lord of Annaka; and Matsudaira Tetsumaru, lord of Yoshii. It was issued by the secretariat of the Tōsandō general staff. The order was written on the premise — wholly without foundation in fact — that he had raised a strongly fortified encampment at the village of Gonda and was building a battery besides.
What was actually going forward on Kannonyama was building work: of three new dwellings, the roof beam of one had been raised and the second was about to be begun. The work that had started on the sixth day of the third month came to the raising of the beam on its fifty-second day, the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, and Oguri went up to the site that afternoon. It was the last time he climbed Kannonyama.
The three domains that sent troops against their will
The lords of the three domains could not resist the staff's strict order. On the twenty-ninth day of the fourth month all three turned out bodies of men for the arrest. It was an expedition exactly as Kurabuchi Mura-shi describes it: “the strict order being hard to resist, against their own will”.
The news reached Gonda at once. Oguri Nikki for that day records that, on hearing a report that men of Takasaki, Annaka and Yoshii were coming out for talks, he first sent Kutsukake Tōgorō as his messenger towards Takasaki. When the message was put to the party, which had come as far as Kamiyama, the answer was that in any case they wished to come as far as Gonda and hold the talks there.
The troops of the three domains that reached Sannokura that day numbered about eight hundred. They spent the night there.
The first day of the intercalary fourth month: the talks at Tōzenji
The next day, the first day of the intercalary fourth month, the representatives of the three domains went to the village of Gonda. Oguri Nikki sets down their names: from Takasaki, Miyazaki Hachisaburō, Sugaya Jihei and Ōno Hyakunosuke; from Annaka, retainers of Itakura Kazue-no-kami, Hoshino Buzaburō, Fukunaga Jūbei and Hoshino Keishirō; from Yoshii, retainers of Matsudaira Tetsumaru, Yamada Kakuemon and Kurosawa Shōgo. The troops were kept outside the gate of Tōzenji, and only the representatives entered the temple as envoys.
To the soldiers of the three domains, Oguri was a man who had been a pillar of the shogunate's councils and a superior to whom they owed favours. The examination is said to have been conducted courteously and with every mark of respect.
Oguri's answer to them survives in detail in the diary. In substance: Kannonyama had long been his own woodland, and building a house on cultivated ground meant that so much would be deducted from the assessed yield for tax. What he had built was a dwelling to keep off the rain and dew, not work on a scale to make a stronghold; he would have them shown round at once and see it with their own eyes. And would a man harbouring a conspiracy open new fields around his house to make a living in later years? Let them inspect it fully and then report to the general staff, each domain for itself, that he had no second thoughts.
The representatives answered that this was “entirely reasonable”. They understood the circumstances well, and their domains had never had any suspicion; but they wanted one thing to serve as a ground for their report. The solution Oguri offered was that, since the matter of a battery stood in the circular, he would hand over the cannon he had to the domains as they stood, and they might make that their ground. All agreed, and one cannon and twenty-one muskets were handed over.
Afterwards, guided by Arakawa Yūzō, the representatives inspected in detail the building site on Kannonyama, said to be “a strongly fortified encampment”. There was no encampment and no battery, and not one trace of the rebellion the order spoke of. They understood Oguri's real intent, promised to report it to the imperial army, and withdrew.
Since no one knew how the talks would turn out, his mother, Michiko and Masako withdrew in the afternoon of that day to Uenokubo. Seeing that the matter was settled, they returned to the temple in the evening.
On withdrawing, the representatives of the three domains asked that his adopted son Matakichi accompany them to Takasaki. Oguri allowed it, and the next day, the second, Matakichi set out for Takasaki with Tsukamoto Masahiko, Arakawa Yūzō and Watanabe Tasaburō, and two men of the village of Gonda. He was to present himself with the Takasaki retainers at the general staff on the fourth and explain — that much is written in the diary, as a retainer's report.
The three domains who came to the place were satisfied and concluded that there was no foundation to it. Even so, matters moved the worst way. What followed is taken up in another article.
Sources: Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history), quoting the Tōsandō general staff's circular, Hayakawa Keison's Oguri Kōzukenosuke Matsuro Jiseki and Kiya Takayasu's Miyama Bunko; Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957
→ The sixth day of the intercalary fourth month: the end at the riverbed at Mizunuma
→ The fight with the rioters at Sannokura
→ The water channel and the house on Kannonyama, and the school he hoped to build