A hatamoto was an official of the shogunate whose house stood high enough for its head to appear before the shogun, but he held no post by birth. A son who was to become head of the house first went up to the castle and was formally recognized as a shogunal retainer, and only after entering the guard did he take up the shogunate's work. Tadamasa followed this order.
His first attendance at the castle — the year after Hong Kong was taken
On the twenty-third day of the third month of 1843 Tadamasa went up to Edo Castle for the first time. He made his appearance in the Black Audience Hall, presenting a sword with its list, silver and horse money. It was the spring in which he had just turned sixteen.
The year was the one after Britain took Hong Kong as a result of the Opium War. The order to drive off foreign ships without second thought, issued about the time Tadamasa was born, had been rescinded the year before, in 1842. Driving them off was no longer possible in fact.
Under a chief councillor of twenty-five
When Tadamasa came into service, the chief of the senior councillors was Abe Masahiro. From lord of the hundred-thousand-koku domain of Fukuyama he had gone on to master of ceremonies and commissioner of temples and shrines, became a senior councillor in 1843 and chief of the council the next year — a “prime minister” of twenty-five. In 1845 he reorganized the shogunate's offices and created a board of coastal defence, which he directed himself. In the seventh month of that year Tadamasa's father Tadataka was promoted to keeper of the castle in the shogun's absence.
Two years after the board was set up, 1847 was a year of foreign ships arriving and alarms over landings abroad, and of destitution among the farmers and one rising after another at home. In the second month of that year Abe Masahiro ordered the domains of Hikone and Kawagoe to guard the coast of Sagami, and those of Aizu and Oshi to guard the coast of Bōsō. Tadamasa was called into the castle two months later.
Entering the guard — the sixteenth day of the fourth month, 1847
The record reads as follows.
His diligence in the arts having come to our lord's ears, he is called out of the household and appointed to enter one of the two guards. A stipend of three hundred bales of rice is granted him, as is usual. Declared by Toda Yamashiro-no-kami, with the senior councillors in attendance, on the matted corridor of the Chrysanthemum Room; entered in the library guard of the western keep, in the company of Akita Awaji-no-kami …
A great deal of the system of the day is packed into that short text. Let us read it through with Sakamoto Fujiyoshi's notes.
Diligence in the arts — not music or painting. “The arts” was short for learning and the military arts. It means that his application to study and to arms had reached the ears of the senior councillors.
Entering the guard — the enrolment of a hatamoto's son in either the pages' corps or the library guard. In Tadamasa's case it was the latter, the library guard.
A stipend of three hundred bales — kirimai is salary in today's terms. A hatamoto's pay came in two kinds: a holding of land, or an allowance of rice from the granary. The senior men mostly held land. Tadamasa, newly called into service, had the latter, and was granted three hundred bales.
The matted corridor of the Chrysanthemum Room — the enkyō was the matted corridor. Even within the same Chrysanthemum Room, rank decided whether a man sat in the room itself, on the matted corridor, or on the boarded corridor.
The western keep — the hall on the west side of the main keep of Edo Castle. The shogun lived in the main keep, the retired shogun or the shogun's heir in the western keep.
Ōtsubo Motoji writes that entering the guard was the system by which able sons of hatamoto families were picked out and taken into service — the gateway to advancement. Tadamasa was twenty at the time. The appointment was declared by Toda Yamashiro-no-kami, with the senior councillors in attendance.
They knew his arrival by the hoofbeats
Tadamasa rode to the castle. By the last years of Edo it had become usual to go by palanquin or litter, and more and more samurai could not ride. The eighth shogun, Yoshimune, had already complained that there were men among his own attendants who could not sit a horse. Plenty of samurai, once up, could move the animal neither forward nor back. That is why Tadamasa's horsemanship stood out.
On his road to the castle, near the Kandabashi gate, stood the residence of the Ninagawa, and a man named Moriyama Kyūhei, who lived in its retainers' row house, later testified to this.
By the hoofbeats I could tell at once — ah, that is Lord Oguri going up to the castle.
His riding is on record as well. On the eighteenth day of the third month of 1849 he did well at the shogunal deer hunt in Shimōsa, and on the twenty-first day of the fifth month of 1855 he rode fast before the shogun at the mounted review in the Fukiage garden. Ōtsubo Motoji's chronology records that of all the military arts Tadamasa took up with pleasure, horsemanship was the one he was best at. The bow was much the same: at the archery held before the shogun in the garden of the Yamazatomaru at Edo Castle on the twentieth day of the tenth month of 1848, he hit the large target with every arrow and was granted a set of seasonal robes.
The year after he entered the guard, the world moved
In 1848, the year after he entered the guard, the world was turning over. In Europe came the February and March revolutions, and Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. In the United States gold was found in California, only just ceded after the war with Mexico. The gold rush followed, and San Francisco, a small country town, swelled into a great city before people's eyes. Twelve years later Tadamasa landed at that port.
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957
→ His marriage to Michiko → Training in the sword and the military arts → Landing at San Francisco