On 27 September 1952, seven years after the defeat, a new bust of Oguri Kōzukenosuke was unveiled in Shiomi park at Yokosuka. The San Francisco peace treaty had come into force on 28 April that year: Japan had recovered its sovereignty only five months before.
Ōtsubo Motoji's Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu records the ceremony of that day as follows. It was conducted by the governor of Kanagawa, the mayor of Yokosuka and the president of the chamber of commerce and industry. Among those attending were the French ambassador and the commander of the American base, with other notables from Japan and abroad. Ōtsubo adds this.
On 27 September 1952 a bronze statue was unveiled with representatives of both America and France in attendance under international protocol, for the first time since the peace conference, with the ceremonial of a French naval guard of honour: for Oguri of Kōzuke alone, truly
After the peace, this was the first unveiling held in the form of international protocol with foreign representatives invited — and its subject was a shogunal official long treated as a “rebel” by the Meiji government. Ōtsubo ends that sentence: “what this too may mean.”
Why 27 September?
The date is no accident. The twenty-seventh day of the ninth month of 1865 was the day the ground was broken for the Yokosuka ironworks. It was also on the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month, by the Japanese calendar, that Oguri came back to Yokohama from the embassy to the United States in 1860. For the town of Yokosuka this day is the beginning.
The first bust was unveiled on 27 September 1922 as well.
Verny, or Oguri?
There is a story behind the raising of that bust of the Taishō years. At the fiftieth anniversary festival of the opening of Yokosuka in 1922, scholars who owed the French engineer Verny a debt in engineering began a movement to raise a bust of him in gratitude.
It was the chemist Dr Sakurai Jōji who brought the matter to the head of the arsenal of the day, Vice-Admiral Kuroi Teijirō. Kuroi pointed out the error at once. The arsenal as it stood had not been opened by Verny. It was done by Oguri Kōzukenosuke's decision; Oguri, through the French minister Roches, had merely engaged Verny, who was then at Shanghai. If a statue of Verny was to be raised, the proper order would be to raise a statue of Kōzukenosuke first and his afterwards.
And so Oguri's bust came to be raised first. It was made by the sculptor Asakura Fumio. In Suwayama park at Yokosuka today, Oguri's bust and, a step below it in a position looking out over the naval port, Verny's bronze statue stand side by side.
A gift of money was granted at that time by the empress of the day towards the building fund. Oguri Sadao, the thirteenth head of the house, said this of it later.
Whatever the world may misreport and put about, as a descendant of Kōzukenosuke I have not the least regret left. And a bust of Oguri has been raised for ever, looking out over that naval port into which he poured himself.
From the stone for the summoning of his spirit to international protocol
There is another turning point in the course of his rehabilitation. On 25 November 1934, in the grounds of Fumon'in at Ōmiya, the burial temple of the house of Oguri, the unveiling was held of the stone for the summoning of Oguri Kōzukenosuke's spirit, a granite stone one jō three shaku high on which Prince Tokugawa Iesato had set his brush. The prime minister, the army minister, the navy minister and the education minister each sent a representative, and Prime Minister Okada Keisuke's message had this passage.
What I as a naval officer am especially grateful for is that he built the Yokosuka shipyard, the origin of today's Yokosuka arsenal. In this respect it is no exaggeration to call him the father of the building of our navy
The bust of the Taishō years, the stone of 1934, and the international protocol of 1952. That representatives of America, a former enemy, and of France, closely connected with Japan since the last years of the shogunate, were in attendance carried a weight beyond a local commemorative event.
To Tōzenji at Gonda
This bust from Shiomi park was later presented by the city of Yokosuka to Tōzenji at Gonda and moved there. It now stands in the front garden, facing the bust of his sworn friend Kurimoto Joun. Yokosuka, the town of the shipyard, and Gonda, where he met his end, were joined through one bust.
At Gonda, before that, a stone had been raised on the site of the execution ground in 1932. Ichikawa Motokichi, headman of the village of Kurata, was chairman of the committee, and subscriptions were gathered from men of spirit in the villages of Kurata and Karabuchi; the stone was six shaku high and a little over three shaku wide. The characters on its face are in the hand of Ninagawa Arata, doctor of law, the son of a younger sister of Oguri's wife. The unveiling was on 5 May.
More than eighty years, counted from the silence of the Meiji era. Oguri Kōzukenosuke had become an object of respect across national borders.
Sources: Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history)
→ The silent years of the early Meiji era → The commemoration of the Shōwa years → Léonce Verny