What is left of Oguri in Tokyo is not buildings. Neither the residence at Surugadai nor either of the two establishments at Tsukiji survives. What remains is the lie of the land, the names of the slopes, and the places. They are still worth standing in, because this is where he was born and where the voyage round the world began.
Where the residence stood
Tadamasa was born early in the morning of the twelfth day of the second month of 1827, at the residence at Kanda Surugadai. The Oguri ancestors were Anjō fudai, a house that came with Ieyasu when he moved from Suruga to Edo. The retainers who came from Suruga set up their houses where Mount Fuji could be well seen, and the place-name follows from that.
The place can be followed on the old maps. In the Ogawa-chō sectional map of 1849 it is a samurai residence facing the slope that runs from the bank of the Kanda River up towards the foot of Surugadai, the fifth house counting from the riverside. On the Shōhō map, printed in 1644, a road nearby carries the name “Oguri-zaka”, Oguri slope.
The landmark to walk by now is Kōga-zaka, the slope that runs from in front of NTT Surugadai on Ochanomizu Nakadōri, across the Meidai-mae crossing on Meidai-dōri, to the front of the Hilltop Hotel. Kōga-zaka passed in front of the Oguri residence; going north-west up the slope, crossing the road and leaving one house between, came the residence of the hatamoto Nakagawa Hida-no-kami. Tadamasa's father Tadataka came into the Oguri house as a son-in-law from this Nakagawa family, as its fourth son. The Nakagawa residence stood where the Hilltop Hotel now is.
No stone or notice board marks the site of the residence. Chiyoda ward's place-name board for “Surugadai (west)” stands at 2-3 Kanda Surugadai and records why the hatamoto built their houses on this high ground, but nothing written about the house of Oguri was found in the ward's notices.
→ His birth, his family home, and the line of the house of Oguri ／ His father Tadataka's death, and the succession ／ Meeting Minomura Rizaemon
Chiyoda ward, official: Place-name board: Surugadai (west) ／ Kōga-zaka
The school in the row house of the residence
Asaka Gonsai's school, which Tadamasa attended at nine, was not in some other part of town: it was opened in the row house of this residence. Gonsai was born in the third month of 1791 at Kōriyama in Asaka district, Mutsu province, where his father was priest of the Asaka Kunitsuko shrine. He seems to have been grateful for the help he had from the Oguri in his poor years: after he was taken into the service of the Nihonmatsu domain and became a professor at the Shōheikō, he did not close the school in the residence but kept it on, it is said, until his death in the third month of 1860. It was at this school that Iwasaki Yatarō, who later founded Mitsubishi, studied when he came up to Edo.
→ Asaka Gonsai's private school, and the company of able students
The sound of the horse going up to the castle
He went up to the castle from the residence on horseback, not by palanquin. A story survives that an old man named Moriyama Kyūhei, a former retainer of the Ninagawa, told the young Ninagawa Arata.
Oguri Kōzukenosuke went up to the castle not by palanquin as ordinary men did, but always on horseback. And when Oguri Kōzukenosuke went up, one could tell well enough by the sound of the horse's feet, even shut away inside the house, that “this is Lord Oguri going up to the castle”. For Oguri Kōzukenosuke always made a point of riding a fine horse, and the ring of its hooves was quite unlike that of other horses
Why the sound was different is known. In Japan at that time horses were shod with straw shoes. Oguri obtained iron horseshoes on the voyage to America in 1860 and brought them home, and he is said to have been the first in Japan to shoe a horse with iron. He is said to have used Western harness throughout as well. It is about nine ri from Surugadai to Fumon'in at Ōmiya, and he always came there on horseback too.
→ Fumon'in — the temple of the founder of the house of Oguri ／ Training in swordsmanship, jūjutsu and gunnery, and the Oguri school
The first stone Western house in Japan, called “the stone storehouse”
Having come home from going round the world, Tadamasa built a Western house of stone inside his own grounds. He had admired the buildings of New York and Philadelphia and brought back drawings for fireproof houses. This was the only way to save Edo from its great fires — so he built one to try it. But to call it a “Western house” was to invite anything from those who would expel the foreigners, or from the shogunate's councillors. So in public he called it “the stone storehouse”.
After Tadamasa's death the residence passed to Hijikata Hisamoto, a native of Tosa, and the stone storehouse with it. It later became Hijikata Yoshi's, and Yoshi set up his “Hijikata Yoshi model stage study group” inside it. In 1924 Yoshi put in his own money and founded the Tsukiji Little Theatre with Osanai Kaoru and others. The new theatre of Japan came out of the stone storehouse Oguri had built to test fireproofing.
Tsukiji — the site of the warship training school
6-20 Tsukiji, Chūō ward. In 1857 the shogunate founded a warship instruction school here for hatamoto and lesser retainers, later renamed the warship training school. It burned twice and was moved to the ground of the Hama-rikyū garden.
This place is where the first voyage round the world by Japanese began. The opening of the Oguri Nikki records that day.
At this time, the eighteenth day of the first month of 1860. Having been appointed before this to the embassy to the United States of America, we set out today; from Kudanzaka by way of Kamakura-gashi and Nihonbashi-dōri we reached the training school at Tsukiji, and when all were assembled we finished the midday meal. After that we went aboard a large boat, and so aboard the Powhatan, the ship sent from America to fetch us; she weighed anchor at once, reached the port of Yokohama, dropped anchor and lay there
From Kudanzaka by Kamakura-gashi and Nihonbashi-dōri to the training school at Tsukiji; then, the midday meal eaten, aboard a large boat and so to the Powhatan, sent to fetch them. Seventy-seven men in all put to sea.
→ Sailing from Shinagawa — seventy-seven men put to sea ／ How he came to be chosen for the embassy
Chūō City Tourism Association: The site of the warship training school
The site of the Tsukiji Hotel
Almost the same place as the training school site: the stretch facing Harumi-dōri just beyond 6-20 Tsukiji is the site of the Tsukiji Hotel. It opened in 1868, a two-storey wooden building with a bell tower and a hundred and two rooms.
What connects the building with Oguri is the way it was built. Investment was called for, the undertaking set up, and the profits paid out as dividends — it was built on what we now call the joint-stock company, and it was the first Western hotel in earnest built by Japanese. The thinking tried out in the Hyōgo Shōsha was used here too. The year it opened, 1868, is the year Oguri was cut down.
→ The Hyōgo Shōsha and the Tsukiji Hotel — the beginning of the joint-stock company
Chūō City Tourism Association: The site of the Tsukiji Hotel
If you go
Surugadai can be walked from JR Ochanomizu station: Kōga-zaka, Meidai-dōri, the Hilltop Hotel, the place-name board. Go down the slope to the bank of the Kanda River and you have the view in the direction Tadamasa looked every morning. For Tsukiji the nearest station is Tsukiji on the Hibiya line, and the training school site and the hotel site are in the same block.
→ The petition to settle at the village of Gonda ／ The “grave of the generations of the house of Oguri” at Zōshigaya cemetery ／ Hozenji — the family temple in Edo
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family); material published by Chiyoda ward and the Chūō City Tourism Association.