Fumon'in on Mount Taisei, a Sōtō Zen temple at Taisei-chō, Ōmiya ward, Saitama. It stood within the Oguri fief, and the grave of the founder of the line, Matakichi Tadamasa, is here. From the Shōwa era the commemoration of Oguri, led by the navy, gathered in these grounds, and the stone lanterns, the stone for the summoning of his spirit, and the anchor and the mine before it each have a dated history.
The founder Tadamasa's grave, and the stone lanterns of 1853
The Oguri were hatamoto of 2,550 koku in direct service, counting Tadamasa as the founder of the line, with Kōzukenosuke the twelfth. Tadamasa became a page to Ieyasu at thirteen, took the field at sixteen at the battle of Anegawa in 1570, and was always in the van, for which Ieyasu gave him the name Matakichi. From then on it was the name used by the head of the house.
Tadamasa died in the ninth month of 1616 and, by his will, was buried at Fumon'in in the village of Taisei in Bushū, part of his fief, and the temple was fixed as the family's temple for the generations to come. The temple's founding patron was not the Oguri but Kaneko Suruga-no-kami; it was Tadamasa who restored the temple after it fell into ruin during the wars. Through his good offices it was granted ten koku of land under vermilion seal.
Tadamasa's grave remains on higher ground, walled round with stone. Not one character of the name Oguri is on the stone. There is only the year 1616 on the right, the eighteenth day of the ninth month on the left, and the donor's respects below. The temple long held it to be the grave of the founding patron, Kaneko Suruga-no-kami, and for that reason it escaped destruction after the Restoration. The twenty-odd family graves that stood in a row below the stone wall were thrown down when the propaganda of the traitor reached the place.
Before the grave stands a pair of stone lanterns, cut “offered by Oguri Tadamasa” and dated the eighteenth day of the ninth month of 1853. Kōzukenosuke offered them at twenty-six, and the characters are said to be in his own hand. The eighteenth day of the ninth month is the anniversary of the founder's death, and the old people report that Kōzukenosuke never failed to ride to the grave on that day and to get down and worship before it.
After the Restoration, the name Tadamasa being something to be avoided, the characters on these lanterns were ground away and the lanterns thrown out. They were found later and set up again, and ground away though it is, the name “Tadamasa” can still be read — so Nakazato Kaizan noted when he came here on 26 April 1936.
The stone for the summoning of his spirit, and the anchor and the mine before it
The “stone for the summoning of Oguri Kōzukenosuke's spirit”, which rises in the grounds, was raised by the abbot Abe Dōzan with the help of the parishioners and the lay representatives. The unveiling was on 25 November 1934. The eight characters on the face were written by Tokugawa Iesato, through the good offices of Admiral Kuroi Teijirō. On the back is cut a text in Oguri's honour, composed by the scholar of international law Ninagawa Arata. On that day the prime minister and the ministers of the navy, of education and of foreign affairs each sent a representative, and Prime Minister Okada's address ended: “in this sense it would not be going too far to call Oguri Kōzukenosuke the father of our navy.”
Before the stone were set an anchor and a floating mine, formally granted by the navy ministry. On 21 October 1935 Abe Dōzan, without consulting anyone, submitted an “application for the free grant of discarded armaments” to the ministry. The navy minister ruled that Oguri Kōzukenosuke was a servant of merit and a benefactor of the navy, and instructed the commander-in-chief of the Yokosuka naval station to grant one anchor and one mine for the foot of the stone. They had been used on the warship Sakaki, and a gun presented by the Yokosuka naval arsenal was placed at the temple gate as well.
On 30 June 1935, Prime Minister Okada Keisuke and Tokonami Takejirō, minister of communications, came to pay their respects, shown the way by Governor Saitō. They arrived at half past ten in the morning; after visiting the grave a memorial service was held in the main hall, and afterwards the prime minister gave an address entitled “A benefactor of our navy”. The laurels on either side of the stone were planted by these two men.
→ The commemoration movement of the 1930s — the stone for the summoning of his spirit, and the bust ／ The day a prime minister came to pay his respects ／ Tokutomi Sohō and Okada Keisuke ／ Ninagawa Arata, and the inscription “benevolence and duty together”
Why it has been called the “head mound”
For a time in the Shōwa era a marker post stood between Yono and Ōmiya reading “Oguri Kōzukenosuke's head mound, Fumon'in”. Ninagawa Arata's text on the back of the stone says that “by what the temple's tradition hands down, Kōzukenosuke's head was buried here”, and what is held to be the head mound was raised beside the founder Tadamasa's grave. The one said to have carried the head was Ginsuke, the adopted son of Mukasa Yūzaemon, the steward left in charge of the Edo residence; before the war almost everyone believed that Oguri's head was at Ōmiya.
There are strong objections to this account. The head was sent to Tatebayashi for formal inspection, and a separate tradition tells how it was taken back from there to Gonda. It has also been pointed out that Ginsuke was sixteen at the time and was at Takasaki with Matakichi. A view has been put forward that the head mound itself was built in the Shōwa era. This site does not settle on either, but sets both lines of the account side by side.
The main house's family temple was Hozenji at Ushigome Tōridera-chō; Fumon'in was the temple that the branch house of Oguri Niemon kept as its own, guarding the founder Tadamasa's grave. The tie with the main house held until the end of the shogunate even so, and the Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries) shows condolence money, year-end gifts and enquiries after a fire at Fumon'in again and again.
→ Mukasa Ginsuke — the young man said to have guarded his lord's head ／ Tatebayashi: the night the heads were taken back ／ Honda Sanzaemon ／ Hozenji — the family temple in Edo
1868: two visits
The nineteenth day of the first month of 1868. The Oguri Nikki has: “sent Yūzaemon off this morning with fifty ryō of temple money for Fumon'in in the village of Taisei; the times being as they are, the spear and armour granted to us are left in the keeping of the same temple for the time being.” He sent his steward off with fifty ryō for the temple, and with that left the spear and armour granted to him in the temple's keeping for a while. “The times being as they are” means: at a time when there was no telling what would become of Edo. The generations of Oguri armour and the Nobukuni spear that were later kept at Fumon'in are part of what was left then.
On the twenty-eighth day of the second month he gave up the residence at Surugadai. The entry for that day records that before five in the morning he sent his mother, Michiko and Masako off ahead, that he and Matakichi then set out, and that they lodged at the post of Okegawa a little after seven in the evening. One line about the journey is added to that day's entry.
Item: on the way, worshipped at Fumon'in in the village of Taisei
Going north along the Nakasendō, with the cannon and the chests wrapped in oiled paper and loaded on carts, he stopped at the temple where the founder of his line lies. It was also his parting from the priest Daiyū, under whom he had studied Zen since his youth. The ancestral memorial tablets were put into the priest's keeping then. The priest afterwards lost his life as the propaganda of the traitor reached the temple.
→ The petition to settle at the village of Gonda ／ Kanda Surugadai, and Tsukiji ／ Tōzenji
If you go
The grounds run to three chō, and the cemetery is still in use. Other families' graves adjoin, so please take care how you walk the paths and where you point a camera. Whether and when you may visit depends on the temple.
Sources: Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; Ōtsubo Motoji, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa), Oguri Kō Kenshōkai, 1957; Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family), and Tatsunami, the journal of the memorial society.
City of Saitama, official: Cultural properties: the site of the Taisei residence