Mizunuma, Kurabuchi-machi, Takasaki. A riverbed of the Karasu River, downstream from Tōzenji along the river towards Sannokura. It is a historic site designated by the city of Takasaki, “the place where Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa died”, designated on 1 April 1982. There is nothing there but one stone; yet because of what is cut on it, this was for a long time a place that said the thing that was not to be said.
The riverbed as it was
It is hard to picture from the riverbed as it is now, but in 1868 the riverbed at Mizunuma had a sandbank in the middle, with the Karasu River dividing and flowing on both sides of it. The Tarō bridge crossed the channel on the Sannokura side, the Jirō bridge the channel on the Mizunuma side. Before the Tarō bridge was a small bank with a few willows growing on it, and around there the riverbed was a wide stretch of waste ground.
A pit was dug in the middle of the waste ground beside the road, matting was laid beside it, and Oguri and his retainers, their hands still bound behind them, were made to sit upright on it. The hour was yotsu-han, eleven in the morning. People from the neighbourhood who had seen the notice board announcing the execution had been gathering round the riverbed since early morning. The place where the heads were exposed is some thirty metres from the execution ground.
The pit stayed as it had been dug until the flood of 1910. Shimodaira Yobunji, the youngest son of Shimodaira Jiemon, headman of the village of Mizunuma across the river, and later head of Karasubuchi village, left an account of what he saw. His wife Hiro, born in 1871, gave an account of her own in 1957, at eighty-five.
The first to put into words what had been done here were three servants of the Oguri house who were at Takasaki. Kept waiting outside the prison, the three were released the next day, went out into the town, happened to meet a man from Gonda, and asked after their master. This was the answer they got.
Lord Kōzukenosuke was beheaded with three of his retainers about yotsu-han on the morning of the sixth, yesterday, at the riverbed at Mizunuma in the post of Sannokura, without any examination or questioning at all; and his effects, and even the things the retainers had with them, were all packed up and taken away somewhere
One of the three ran straight to the residence at Surugadai in Edo, and on the twelfth day of the intercalary fourth month Oguri Niemon, of the branch house, submitted notice to the authorities.
Of this riverbed there is a tradition, kept in the Saito neighbourhood of Kamimuroda, that a rider came at the gallop with a pardon stopping the execution, and came too late. Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history) holds this hard to believe: if a pardon had been issued, Matakichi and his retainers, cut down at Takasaki on the seventh, the next day, would have been spared.
→ The sixth day of the intercalary fourth month: the end at the riverbed at Mizunuma ／ The retainers who fell on the Karasu River
The man who cut the grass
Until the stone was raised, the man who kept this execution ground — cutting the grass all the year round, planting flowers, sweeping it — was Seki Shūjirō of Mizunuma. He was of the Seki family, which had produced Enshitsu Zonsatsu, the founding priest of Tōzenji, and he had built his house and lived about a hundred metres from the execution ground, some thirty metres from the place where the heads were exposed.
About 1927 or 1928, Shūjirō called on Ichikawa Motokichi, head of Kurata village, at the village office, and put this to him.
I have kept the execution ground all this while. Could you not have some stone put up there, to mark it?
The village head answered, “I have been thinking myself that something must be done. I am glad you came”, and promised to call on willing men in both Kurata and Karasubuchi villages. A committee for the stone was formed in 1931, and the unveiling took place on 5 May 1932. After the stone was up, Shūjirō went on tending the place, planting pines, wistaria and azaleas round it.
→ Ninagawa Arata and the two stones — how they came to be raised
Standing before the stone
What is cut on it is eighteen characters, composed and written by the scholar of international law Ninagawa Arata.
A great man, Oguri Kōzukenosuke
cut down in this place without crime
Abe Dōzan, then abbot of Fumon'in at Ōmiya, left a record of coming here by bus from Takasaki at the New Year of 1941. Looking left before Sannokura he saw a small slope, with a wooden marker on which “the place where Oguri Kōzukenosuke was beheaded” could just be read. Two or three houses further on, a new stone embankment had been built at the riverbed, and with its back to that stood a stone of five or six shaku, with children climbing on it at play. A soldier riding with him said that the stone had been washed away in a flood two or three years before, and that during the work on the new embankment the year before the labourers had dug it out undamaged and set it up in its old place.
Abe himself had been given a sheet by Ninagawa on which was written “A great man, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, cut down by the government troops without crime”. That sheet, with “by the government troops” in it, never became a stone.
The place where it first stood in 1932 is recorded as “Mizunuma Nakakawara”. Where the stone stands now is where the washed-away stone was reset, near the execution ground, in May 1937.
If you go
The site is at Mizunuma, Kurabuchi-machi, Takasaki. The city of Takasaki's tourism site and its cultural property information give the location and photographs. The stone stands on the riverbed, so please do not go near it when the river is high.
City of Takasaki, cultural property information: “the place where Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa died” ／ City of Takasaki tourism site: “Historic sites connected with Oguri Kōzukenosuke”
Sources: Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history); Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family), and Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke Memorial Society; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; the city of Takasaki's cultural property and tourism pages. Information about the site changes. Please check the official pages before you visit.
→ The list of the places ／ Tōzenji — the temple where Oguri Kōzukenosuke lies ／ The site of the house on Kannonyama, and the Odaka water channel ／ Matakichi, cut down at Takasaki the next day