Bakumatsu Pilgrimage in the Western Seto Inland Sea (2nd draft)

“I'd rather go to Suwoh-Ohshima,” said my younger daughter. “What on the earth is it?” asked my wife. “A tiny island occupied by Tokugawa Shogunate Navy at the beginning of the Second Punitive Expedition to Choh-shuh,” said I. “What are there?” asked her mother. “I just want to immerse myself in the air there,” replied the girl.
Thus our pilgrimage to Suwoh, the eastern half of today's Yamaguchi Prefecture, started.
Suwoh-Ohshima is just a strait away from Honshu Island, and is hooked with a bridge today. Yet, the island is not along Shinkansen Line, and you must take a local train and a bus for hours to get there even from its nearest Shinkansen station, Iwakuni. The most convenient way to visit the island may be hiring a rental car.
The most reasonable way to get around there is by long-distance bus. A night bus runs to Shimonoseki, the largest city in Yamaguchi, and stops at Iwakuni on its way. A day bus runs either to Hiroshima or Kokura, but both of them arrive there in the afternoon and leaves there early in the morning. If I were much younger, I would plan a four-day trip with two stays on the bus and one stay in a hotel. That sounds like a suicide to today's me.
An idea hit me. A day bus runs to Matsuyama very often, as often as to Kochi, where we visited last spring. We might take a ferry to Suwoh-Ohshima from Mitsuhama, a port town near Matsuyama. The sea used to be a road rather than a boundary.
The itinerary has, however, a risk. August 18/19 is just after Bon holidays. Beach hotels and inns must be still busy, being occupied with sea bathers. It may be at the start of a typhoon season as well. That might be worked out by staying in Matsuyama, although our stay in Suwoh-Ohshima will be a short one.
Preparing for the trip, I watch a TV program on Beijing Olympics. The announcer shouts: “Toki o koete, yume o tsunagu” (To pass the dream over the history), as a captain of the Japanese male gymnastics team lands to gain their silver medal after the gold in Athens.
The port of Matsuyama has 3 districts. Its oldest district is called Mitsu-hama Port. The history of Mitsu-hama Port goes back to Muromachi Period, when Kohno Clan castled to the opposite bank (Minato-yama Joh, namely Port-Mountain Castle), and made it to the base of their Navy.
Kohno Clan used to be the biggest clan in Iyo, the Northwestern part of Shikoku Island, and prosperous for about 400 years till it was subverted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1585.
It is in this Mitsu-hama Port that Natsume Sohseki got off when he came for his post to Matsuyama in 1895, and thus the port became one of the stages of the popular novel Bocchan, one of two youth-market-oriented well-known novels by Sohseki. Of course at that time, there was not a satisfactory wharf, and was only a summer-house-like waiting room as an equipment of the port. People used to take a shallop to land from a ship which dropped anchor off the shore.
Today, a car ferry sails to Yanai Port in Yamaguchi Prefecture from Mitsu-hama Port.
In the Autumn of 1853, Murata Zohroku, later known as Ohmura Masujiroh, a founder of modern Japanese Army, sailed from Yanai to Matsuyama on his way from Choh-shuh to Uwajima for his post. That is the one of two reasons why my daughter wanted to visit Suwoh-ohshima.
Ohmura had wanted to sail directly from Yanai to Matsuyama, but having found no service available, and having made up his mind to go island-by-island, he took a boat from Tohsaki to Suoh-ohshima. According to Shiba Ryotaro's Kahin, he arrived at Komatsu Port on the island, and stayed there for one night. My daughter had wanted to breathe the air Murata (or Ohmura) breathed.
Out of Mitsuhama Port, there stands Iyo-ko-Fuji (“A Mt. Fuji in Iyo”: named after Mt. Fuji near Tokyo, to show their admiration to the mountain or that to the central culture). We leave Mitsuhama Port westward, past Iyo-ko-Fuji, Tsuji-jima, which has one of the oldest western-style modern lighthouse, Koichi-jima, Yoko-jima, and Futagami-jima. Now we are in the easternmost teritorial waters of medieval Suwoh Country. We sail through the strait between Nasake-jima, the easternmost tiny inhabited island of Suwoh just having Moro-jima, an uninhabited island, a channel east, and Suwoh-Ohshima, and land at Ihoda, the easternmost port of the island. Here sleeps one of the last medieval pirates, Shima Yoshitoshi (?-1602). In Edo Period, people's world was Han (a feudal domain) they belonged to. Yoshitoshi and his men seem as if they were turning their back on the world, later known as Choh-shuh Han.
Yoshitoshi worked and fought for Murakami Takeyoshi (1533-1604), who led Noshima Branch of Murakami Clan, one of the biggest navy or pirate clans in medieval Japan, and enjoyed the control of the Western Seto Inland Sea in his days. Three branches of the clan, castling in three tiny islands (Noshima, Kurushima, and In'noshima) in the inland sea between Honshu Island and Shikoku Island, sometimes worked and fought for Kohno Clan in Shikoku, sometimes for Mohri Clan in Honshu, and other times for themselves; sometimes together, and sometimes separately, fighting each other.
As early as in 838, the central government of Japan at the time issued an order for their local governments around the Seto Inland Sea to chase and arrest pirates. A century later, Fujiwara Sumitomo (?-941) was Iyo no Joh, a third-ranked local official, to chase and arrest pirates, but did not come back to the capital in 934 even after his term there ended. From here, we have two stories. One story says that, in Hiburi-jima Island in 936, more than 2500 pirates surrendered to him. Another story says that, in the same island in the same year, Sumitomo gathered more than 1000 boats to start his rebellion. Anyway, he attacked the local capitals of Iyo and Sanuki in 939, but was defeated by Ono Yoshifuru (884-968), who had been appointed as general to chase and arrest Sumitomo.
After 7 and a half centuries after the first order, Pirate Prohibition was issued once again by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. This time, it worked. Navy clans' powers including Murakami's were forced to decline. Isn't it interesting that the difference between navies and pirates had been so unclear? Ever since Sumitomo's time?
At last, Noshima Branch of Murakami Clan was secluded into Suwoh-Ohsima after Seki-ga-hara War, as they fought with Mohri Clan against Tokugawa Clan. Mohri Clan was reduced into the westernmost two countries in Honshu Island, Nagato and Suwoh. Isn't it interesting again that Mohri was reduced into almost ¼, while Murakami was “reduced” into an island which is 51 times larger than Noshima? Mohri's two countries were later called Choh-shuh with Nagato's first character, naga or choh. Ihoda is at the easternmost tip of the easternmost island of Choh-shuh. Murakami Takeyoshi's grave is also just a mile west from the port. Takeyoshi and Yoshitoshi themselves, and their successors or descendants as well were not turning their back to the West, but were turning their face to the East. The war between Choh-shuh and Tokugawa Shogunate started in this island 261 years after Takeyoshi's death, or 263 after Yoshitoshi's. Were their dreams passed over the history?
The second reason why my daughter wanted to visit the island is that it is an old battlefield of the war between Choh-shuh and Bakufu, Tokugawa Shogunate, in the year 1865. The war has 3 kinds of names. If you are pro-Shogunate, you call it Choh-shuh Seibatsu, Punitive Expedition to Choh-shuh. If you stand neutral, you may call it Choh-Baku Sensoh, the War between Choh-shuh and Bakufu. If you lived in Cho-shu at that time, you definitely called it Shi-kyo Sensoh, Four Fronts War.
Kashin writes; “Shogunate had formulated the strategy; 'first of all, to attack Ohshima with its fleet, to land the Army soldiers and occupy the whole island, and to make Kuga Port a temporary naval port' to have command of the Western Seto Inland Sea.”
From Ihoda Port, we are driving further westward. After more than half an hour drive, we are standing at the beach of Kuga, facing Mae-jima off the shore.
“In Ohshima's coast of Kuga, the Shogunate fleet of warships, each with 1000 tons or more, is heavily anchored. Those days, night attack was considered to be impossible in naval battles. Takasugi Shinsaku, a well known revolutionist and military tactician at Bakumatsu, the end of Edo Period, dared do it. His military ship alone opened fire against Shogunate fleet, which had turned off their steam, and ran away into the dark with its lamplights off. Having only light cannons, the physical damage he gave was not so big, but the psychological fear was so huge that the fleet escaped from the sea around Choh-shu to the east in panic, with their beached blue forces left. After a while, they were unseated from the island.”
My daughter is breathing the air people of Kuga and soldiers of Bakufu breathed. After her long breath for about a half hour, we are examining stone statues in a bush near the beach. They were built in 1891, the 24th year of Meiji, 26 years later to memorize the war. Coincidentally, the Sino=Japanese War, the first full-scale external war as modern Japan, broke out 3 years after the erection. It seems as if the monuments had been the preparation of patriotism for the coming wars; the Russo=Japanese War, World War I, and so on, rather than recollections of the past heroic loyalism.
We are driving eastward to go back to Matsuyama. Past Ihoda, we drive a little bit southward across a small mountain pass and its tunnel. Now we are in Johsei-Ji Temple, which commands the view of a fishing village, Yuh.
“The first attack was on a morning, June 7. A battleship of Tokugawa Shogunate came, sailed around Ohshima, bombarded the fishing villages Agenoshoh, Tononyuh, and Yuh to burn out, and left somewhere. The next day, the Shogunate Army and Navy raided Ohshima in force. They bombarded several places, and landed soldiers afterward.”
One web-page argues there is a hole made by a bomb on its stone wall, but we can hardly tell which hole was made at the time.
We have left Ihoda Port at dusk, and are sailing back to Matsuyama in a total darkness now. There sometimes pass some boats with tiny lights. They appear from the darkness almost suddenly, at least it seems to me. I wonder how Takasugi Shinsaku dare to make up his mind to attack the Shogunate fleet, and how lucky he was to arrive at the sea without being wrecked on the way in the darkness.
We have another reason why we have chosen Matsuyama route. Matsuyama has Saka-no-ue-no-Kumo Museum.
The novel Saka no ue no Kumo starts as:
“A really small country is trying to get civilized.
“One of the islands of the country is Shikoku Island, and Shikoku is divided into Sanuki, Awa, Tosa, and Iyo. The capital of Iyo is Matsuyama.”
Matsuyama is a birth place of Akiyama Yoshifuru (1859-1930), Akiyama Saneyuki (1868-1918), and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Saka no ue no Kumo continues:
“We may say the main character of this story is small Japan at this time. We, however, should follow three people.”
After staying at a hotel in front of JR Matsuyama Station, we are following the three people.
First, Masaoka Shiki. We leave the hotel, and drive a little bit southward in the city of Matsuyama following the direction of a car navigation system. We are definitely around Shiki Doh House, his birth place, but can find no sign showing its entrance. We keep driving in despair, this time eastward, toward Dohgo Hot Spring area. Kohno Clan's main castle used to be in this area, and was called Yu-duki Joh, (namely Hot-spring Built Castle). The castle is now Dohgo Park.
Shiki Memorial Museum is built in the north area of Dohgo Park. The museum has collections of his original handwritten manuscripts, copies of his publications at the time, and related materials such as his bag and so on. We are impressed with the quantity and quality of their collections, and also overpowered by how productive Shiki was. Shiki started editing "Shuji-gaku Zairyoh" (Rhetoric Materials) as early as in 1889, or as the latest in1891. He made 65 notebooks of 3 categories: seasonal words, things and affairs, and forms. He also made another notebook on tones. Furthermore, with those materials, he edited a tree diagram of the relationship among haiku poets, and a chronological table of haiku. It is also surprising that so many collections have not been scattered and lost. We must pay respect to his survived family and followers as well as to the good job of the museum.
He was actually struggling to reform haiku, tanka, and novels in Japan. He researched and classified almost all haiku published during Edo Period, and organized three types of literary salons for haiku, tanka, and Japanese novels. Each of the salons produced distinguished talents of the field. Natsume Sohseki was only an example of many. Shiki also was working as a newspaper reporter, and even tried to report the Sino=Japanese War.
Saka no ue no Kumo's author, Shiba Ryohtaroh, tried to describe how Japan modernized itself by writing a story of struggling young people at the time.
Akiyama Brothers struggled to defeat Russia in battlefields. At the war time, the elder brother, Yoshifuru, was a cavalry brigade commander, and the younger, Saneyuki, was a Navy staff officer.
The birth house of the brothers shows how poor they used to be, and Saka-no-ue-no-Kumo Museum tells how many people have been moved by the story, but the both lack the exhibits which show how hard they had struggled. Without the contents, they are just a showcase of a success story or a sightseeing attraction.
Shiba writes about his interest in the stage of Japanese history:
“The 30 years or more after the Meiji Restoration till Russo-Japanese War is very distinctive in the history of Japanese culture and mentality, in its long history.
“There used to be no age as optimistic as this.”
He thought people at the time were, however poor they were, optimistically struggling to progress:
“Optimists walk forward, as often the case in such an era, just looking ahead. As a cloud in a blue heaven shines over a hill they are climbing, they keep climbing the hill fixing their eyes just on the cloud.”
Have we ever caught the cloud?