Visiting Yokosuka — what the work left

Yokosuka is where Oguri's work remains as a thing you can see. There are three of them: the two busts standing side by side in the park, the steam hammer of 1865 in the memorial museum, and the dock at the head of the bay, still working. How the plan was made and how it was built is set out in the chapter on the Yokosuka ironworks. What follows is what can be seen on the ground.

1-1 Shioiri-chō, Yokosuka. A long narrow park facing the harbour, one minute on foot from JR Yokosuka station and five minutes from Keikyū Shioiri station. It used to be called Rinkai Park. In it stand the busts of the French engineer Verny and of Oguri Kōzukenosuke Tadamasa, then commissioner of finance, side by side.

The first busts were unveiled on 27 September 1922 on Mount Suwa in Yokosuka. They were the work of the sculptor Asakura Fumio, and the unveiling was carried out by the Japanese navy. The Empress of the day gave two hundred yen from her own purse towards the fund. The date, 27 September, follows the ground-breaking ceremony for the ironworks site held on the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month of 1865.

What stands in the park now is not that first pair. The first busts were given up in the wartime collection of metal, and a cement figure was put up in their place in the children's park in front of the city hall. In 1952, for the first post-war port festival, both busts were cast again and set up in Rinkai Park. Of the unveiling on 27 September that year, Ōtsubo Motoji recorded that, the peace conference being over, representatives of the United States and France attended under international protocol, and that Oguri Kōzukenosuke is the only man whose statue has been unveiled with the ceremonial of a French naval guard of honour. They were moved to where they now stand when the park was laid out again in the 2000 financial year.

The model for Asakura Fumio's first bust was given in 1953 to the village of Kurabuchi, with which Oguri was connected. That is the figure standing in the grounds of Tōzenji at Gonda. A statue raised at Yokosuka went to Gunma, and there it stands before Oguri's grave.

→ The statue was at first to be Verny's alone　／　The first international ceremony after the war: the unveiling of the bust after the peace treaty　／　Tōzenji

City of Yokosuka, official: Verny Park

In the same park, at 1-1 Higashi-Ibisu-chō. It sets out how the Yokosuka ironworks came about, with materials and film, and at its centre are two steam hammers, of three tons and half a ton. They were made in England in 1865, came to the Yokosuka ironworks the following year by way of the Netherlands, and were long used in making hulls and machine parts. As the oldest steam hammers surviving in Japan they are designated important cultural properties by the state. A one-tenth-scale model reproducing them as they were when last at work is also on show.

To say that they were “long used” is not enough. On 15 November 1996 a party from the Oguri Kōzukenosuke Memorial Society, after attending the ceremony in Rinkai Park, went into the United States naval base at Yokosuka. Their object was to see the three-ton hammer still in the base's repair shop. When they arrived they were told that a job had just come in and the hammer would be working. Steel heated red was set under the hammer, and its own three tons dropped to forge it. What was being made were rivets to repair the boilers of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Independence. A machine of 1865 was making parts for a nuclear aircraft carrier. The shop was to finish its work at the end of that year, and the record of the time says the city was considering preserving the hammer.

City of Yokosuka, official: The Verny Memorial Museum　／　Account by the Yokosuka City Museum

The thing most worth seeing at Yokosuka is neither the park nor the museum: it is at the head of the bay. It is the dry dock cut in the 1860s.

The course of the work survives, with dates, in the record of Captain Ishihara Kaizō of the navy. On the twelfth day of the third month of 1865 the commissioners fixed on 74,360 tsubo, running over Mikaho, Hakusen and Uchiura in the village of Yokosuka, as the site of the ironworks. The ground-breaking ceremony was on the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month. The cutting of the first dock began in the third month of 1867.

Oguri was cut down on the sixth day of the intercalary fourth month of 1868, with the work half done. The works were handed over to the imperial court in the fourth month of that year. The city of Yokosuka gives 1871 as the completion of No. 1 dock, and writes of it as “a hard worker that, nearly a hundred and forty years on, is still in service inside the United States naval base at Yokosuka”.

On 21 November 1871 the Meiji emperor came to this shipyard aboard the Ryūjō. The head of the new government visited in person the works the shogunate had built. It was the third year after the disaster.

It is inside the base, so it cannot ordinarily be seen. The memorial society's records tell of entering No. 1 dock on a visit arranged for the Verny and Oguri Festival. If you mean to go, the surest way is to follow the city's announcements of its events.

→ “I had not even heard the word dock” — Kurimoto's surprise　／　The Meiji emperor's visit, and his rescript　／　The launch of the Seiki, the first warship built in Japan

City of Yokosuka, official: The pride of Yokosuka! The Yokosuka ironworks (shipyard)

The city of Yokosuka holds a ceremony each autumn for Oguri and Verny as “benefactors of the city”. Tatsunami, the memorial society's journal, records a ceremony on 15 November and one in October; the date changes from year to year. In some years a representative of the French ambassador and the commander of the American base have attended. On 15 November 1995 the ceremony for the hundred and thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Yokosuka ironworks was held in Rinkai Park at Shioiri-chō.

Trace the ceremony back and it leads to Saitama. From 1934, when the stone for the summoning of his spirit was raised at Fumon'in in Ōmiya, the head of the Yokosuka arsenal went every year to that Oguri Festival, and it went on until the end of the war. After the war it was taken up by the people of Yokosuka.

→ Fumon'in — the temple of the founder of the house of Oguri　／　The rehabilitation of 1915, fifty years since the opening of Yokosuka　／　Commemoration in later years

Verny Park and the museum are right in front of JR Yokosuka station, and the busts and the hammers can be seen in half a day. The dock is inside the base, and is open only at the time of an event. The museum's opening hours, charges and closing days change, so please check the city of Yokosuka's official pages before you go.

Sources: the city of Yokosuka's official site (Verny Park, the Verny Memorial Museum, the Yokosuka ironworks); the Yokosuka City Museum; 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, including Ishihara Kaizō's record; Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke Memorial Society

→ The list of the places　／　Verny　／　Links