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Samurai to Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan
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SAMURAI TO SOLDIER
Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESSITHACA AND LONDON
D. Colin Jaundrill
For my wife Adeline and my daughter Grace, whose love and patience made the completion of this book possible.
“So, then, the revolver triumphs over the sword; and this will probably make even the most childish axiomatician comprehend that force is no mere act of the will, but requires very real preliminary conditions before it can come into operation….”
—Friedrich Engels
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Rise of “Western” Musketry, 1841–1860
1. Rising Tensions and Renewed Reform, 1860–1866
2. The Drives to Build a Federal Army, 1866–1872
3. Instituting Universal Military Service, 1873–1876
5.
4. Dress Rehearsal: The Satsuma Rebellion, 1877
6.
Organizational Reform and the Creation of the Serviceman, 1878–1894
Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Map
Tokugawa and Meiji Japan: major domains (to 1871) and cities 1.
Figures
An inspection of Takashima Shirday’s musketry and gunnery training (1841) 1. Photograph of a Nirayama-gasa 2.
3. probably Ansei, 1854–1860)
Sugoroku board illustrating the steps and orders for musket and bayonet drill (late Tokugawa,
4.
Western-style [drill] twelve steps for loading (1868)
5. Mishima Fifty-Three Stations of the Fan
Utagawa Hiroshige II, , from the series (1865)
6. Military Drill of a Battalion
Utagawa Yoshifuji, (1867)
7.
Sugoroku board illustrating drill for line and skirmishing (1866)
8. The Great Military Review
Utagawa Yoshitora, (1870)
A first-time conscription class (1874) 9. (1873)
10. Understanding Conscription Exemptions
Adachi Gink, (1877) 11. News from Kagoshima: The Battle of Kumamoto Castle
Photograph of the topography around Tabaruzaka (1877) 12. (1889)
13. The Barracks and Brigade Headquarters at Sakura
Shunsai Toshimasa, 14. True Illustration of the Grand Maneuvers at Nagoya in Owari, Attended by (1890) the Emperor
Table
Conscription and exemption statistics from 1873 to 1886 1.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of numerous institutions, colleagues, and friends. An Institute of International Education (IIE) Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship funded fifteen months of research in Tokyo from 2005 to 2006, which provided the source materials for the project. From 2007 to 2008, a Junior Fellowship in Japan Studies provided by the Weather-head East Asian Institute at Columbia University allowed me the time to draft the first version of the manuscript. As I began revising the manuscript for publication, a Committee to Aid Faculty Research (CAFR) grant from Providence College supported an additional six weeks of research in Japan during the summer of 2012. Finally, the School of Arts and Sciences at Providence College generously agreed to help finance the procurement of image permissions for the book.
I am indebted to Carol Gluck, who supervised my research from the crystallization of my topic through the final stages of the writing process. Her guidance was invaluable to both the conceptualization and the crafting of this book. I am also grateful to Nojima Yko of the University of Tokyo, who graciously took the time to direct me toward the scholarship and archival sources that form the basis of this book. In addition, I extend my gratitude to the scholars who provided feedback throughout the writing process. Greg Pflugfelder reviewed several chapter drafts and was kind enough to give line-by-line feedback on my entire first draft. David Howell provided extremely valuable comments on early versions of chapters as well as the first full version of the manuscript. Edward Drea gave generously of his expertise on the history of the Imperial Japanese Army. Finally, Volker Berghahn impressed upon me the importance of making my work accessible to scholars outside the Japan field. Thanks are also due to the professors who guided my academic career from my undergraduate years to the final stages of my graduate training: Henry D. Smith II, David Lurie, Kim Brandt, Jordan Sand, Howard Spendelow, and Louisa Rubinfien.
Institutions and individuals in Japan aided my work at every stage. Professors Yoshida Yutaka of Hitotsubashi University and Tobe Ryichi of the National Defense Academy graciously took the time to introduce me to sources and archives during a 2004 research trip. Professor Hya Tru of the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo aided my efforts to locate and interpret late Tokugawa military texts. The following archives and libraries provided a great deal of assistance: the National Archives of Japan, the National Diet Library, the Military Archives at the National Institute for Defense Studies, the Yasukuni Kaik Bunko, the Historiographical Institute, the Meiji Periodicals Collection at the University of Tokyo, and the National Museum of Japanese History. I also thank the staff and students of the Department of Japanese History at the University of Tokyo for their patience, assistance, and friendship, especially Suzuki Tamon, Nakano Hiroki, Ikeda Yta, and the other members of Professor Nojima’s graduate seminar.
In the United States, I owe a great deal of thanks to those who helped improve the final version of the manuscript and facilitate its publication. I thank Phil Brown for his blessing on my inclusion of material that draws on the same sources as an article I published in 2012 in Early Modern Japan: An My fellow participants in the 2014 West Point Summer Seminar in Military Interdisciplinary Journal.
History helped me view my work in more comparative terms. Ross Yelsey at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute made the early stages of the publishing process smoother than I might have hoped. I also thank Roger Haydon, my editor at Cornell University Press, for his patience in dealing with this first-time author. Finally, I thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped make this book better.
The following friends and colleagues offered feedback as well as material and emotional support during the writing process: Adam Clulow, Alyssa Park, Elizabeth LaCouture, Jason Petrulis, Chelsea Foxwell, Mathew Thompson, Li Chen, Matthew Augustine, Federico Marcon, Eric Han, Jisoo Kim, Jimin Kim, Steve Wills, Reto Hoffman, Chad Diehl, Tim Yang, Abhishek Kaicker, Stacey Van Vleet, Christopher Craig, and Christopher Kobayashi. I thank my colleagues in the Department of History at Providence College, who have been a constant source of encouragement for the last few years. In particular, Ted Andrews, Jen Illuzzi, Jeff Johnson, and Margaret Manchester provided feedback and support as I prepared the manuscript for publication. The interlibrary loan staff at Phillips Memorial Library also saved my bacon on numerous occasions.
In conclusion, I thank my parents, David and Catherine Jaundrill, for their tireless support of my academic pursuits. I also am grateful for the emotional support of my sister, Kristin Jaundrill, as well as all the family members who offered their encouragement during a difficult process. Finally, I would be lost without my beloved wife, Adeline Wong, and my daughter, Grace Jaundrill. Ade-line’s unceasing support and boundless patience made the completion of this book possible. Grace’s regular requests for assistance with puzzles gave me much-needed respites from writing and served as a constant reminder of what matters most.
MAP 1 Tokugawa and Meiji Japan: major domains (to 1871) and cities
Introduction
On December 5, 1872, the Meiji government’s Grand Council of State issued the Conscription Pronouncement (Chhei Kokuyu), which declared the state’s intention to institute a blueprint for military service unparalleled in Japanese history—or so the governing body suggested. In grandiloquent language, the Council castigated the dissipation of contemporary warriors and announced its intention to replace them with a conscript army drawn from the entire populace: “warriors are not the warriors they once were, and the people are not the people they once were; all are equally the people of the imperial state.”1 This framing of the government’s new policy implied that elimination by fiat of the boundary between warrior and commoner was both unprecedented and irrevocable. In actuality, it was merely the midpoint in a much more complex and drawn-out process of military reform.
Few people experienced the complexity of the transformation of military service as thoroughly as tori Keisuke. In another era in Japanese history, tori might have followed the family tradition of practicing Chinese medicine as his father and grandfather had. Few would have expected a young man born into a socially marginal household in a remote mountain village (just north of the western castle town of Ak) to command men in a major civil war or serve as a diplomat to a foreign power. That tori was able to achieve both these feats was partly a matter of his skillful navigation of a tumultuous era; time and again, he seemed to back the right intellectual trends at precisely the most advantageous moments. But it was also a matter of luck. Because tori came of age at a time when military service—and consequently, the society in which it was grounded—was in the midst of transformation, he was able to abandon medicine in favor of a more ambitious path.
tori was born in 1833, at a moment when Japan—and the warriors who served as its military and administrative elite—stood on the brink of revolutionary change. Since the early seventeenth century, the warrior government of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868) had exercised effective control over foreign and domestic affairs within the archipelago. However, a rising tide of domestic discontent combined with the arrival of European and then American imperial powers in East Asia the 1840s and 1850s began to call into question Tokugawa leadership, thus upsetting the complex arrangements that characterized the shogunate’s handling of foreign and military affairs. It was a complicated time, but also a moment of opportunity for those—like tori—who were positioned to take advantage of it.
At the age of twelve, tori went to study at the Shizutani School, established by the daimyo of Okayama for the education of commoners. For the next four years, he studied Chinese classics alongside the sons of well-to-do rural families before returning to his home village for more practical training for a career in medicine. In the first of what would become a series of fortuitous encounters, the physician tasked with training tori introduced him to translations of European books on science, medicine, and botany. Before 2 long, tori abandoned his training to attend the Osaka school of Ogata Kan, who specialized in training students to read Dutch-language texts.
A few years after tori began his studies in Osaka, an American military and diplomatic mission under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan to press its demands for a commerce treaty.
The ever-perceptive tori realized that expertise in Western languages would soon be in high demand, so he resolved to travel to the shogunal seat of Edo for additional training. There was one problem: he had promised his father that he would return to Sainenmura to take over the family practice. Forced to choose between family and career, tori decided on the latter. He wrote a letter to his father asking for money for books and everyday expenses, which he used instead to pay his way to Edo, where he enrolled in the small Dutch medicine school of Tsuboi Cheki.
Demand for translations of Dutch texts—the most easily accessible source of Western knowledge in Japan—rose in the wake of Perry’s arrival. tori’s work, particularly his successes in translating military manuals, soon brought him to the attention of Egawa Hidetoshi, a prominent Tokugawa official and one of the leading practitioners of “Western-style” musketry and gunnery, which had gained in popularity. tori accepted an invitation to work at Egawa’s school as an instructor, where he continued his translation work alongside conducting lessons in Western military science. During this time, he added English to his linguistic toolkit after taking lessons with “John” Nakahama Manjir, the former castaway who had become Japan’s leading (and initially only) English speaker. tori’s students included men like Saig Takamori and yama Iwao, who went on to achieve great military distinction in the 1868 Meiji Restoration and its aftermath.3
tori’s subsequent rise through the ever-shifting military hierarchy of the shogunate’s latter days was nothing short of meteoric. In 1857, his home domain of Amagasaki raised him to the status of a vassal warrior and granted him a stipend. tori proved to be in such high demand as a Western musketry expert that the daimyo of Tokushima—a domain roughly six times wealthier than tiny Amagasaki—hired him away just two years later. Then, when the shogunate undertook a major military reform in the 4 mid-1860s, it elevated tori to the status of a Tokugawa retainer and gave him the military rank of captain of infantry. tori had begun as a physician and a scholar, then had become a warrior in name, and now became a soldier. He was also a quick study. In 1867, two promotions brought him to the rank of colonel. In 1868, in the shogunate’s last months, he received a general’s star.5
His loyalty to the old regime persisted even after the surrender of Edo to imperial loyalist forces in the spring of 1868. Before Tokugawa officials handed over the shogun’s castle, tori led some two thousand soldiers—many of them commoner conscripts—into the northern Kant to continue resistance against the new government. After fighting a series of guerrilla actions culminating in an unsuccessful battle at 6 Utsunomiya, he and his men fought alongside the last Tokugawa holdouts at Aizu, then in Hokkaido. tori surrendered to Meiji authorities in the summer of 1869. The years immediately following the Meiji Restoration were not kind to tori. Like many opponents of the new regime, he was jailed for the crime of having fought against the Kyoto court. But his utility as a translator of Western military texts trumped his alleged crimes. After three years in prison, Meiji authorities granted him a pardon and employed him immediately afterward. For the remainder of his career, tori served in a wide range of official posts in the Army Ministry, in the Ministry of Industry, and in the Foreign Ministry, even serving as Japan’s ambassador to the Qing dynasty.
Although tori’s rise to prominence might not be representative of the experience of the men caught up in the military reforms of the mid-nineteenth century, his career nonetheless illustrates that seismic shifts in social boundaries, institutional parameters, and military service obligations were under way well before the Meiji emperor proceeded to the new capital of Tokyo. Like tori’s career, the redefinition of military service—from a marker of social status to a national obligation—was deeply rooted in the final decades of the Tokugawa era. Tokugawa-period reforms and the new policies of the Meiji era were a continuous process, albeit one that was both complex and contested in its unfolding.
For most of the Tokugawa period, military service was both an occupational category and a social status. In part, this reflected the nature of the authority that the shogunate exercised over the two-hundred-odd domains that controlled most of Japan’s territory. In exchange for a relatively high degree of autonomy, daimyo were expected to discharge a variety of military obligations ( ) that included the gun’yaku maintenance of armed forces, the protection of the coastline, and attendance on the shogun at appointed times. Fulfilling these various objectives required the support of a wide array of groups throughout Japanese society, which became differentiated by their function. As the dividing lines between peasants, artisans, merchants, outcastes, and others became institutionalized, the status system of the Tokugawa era began to take shape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, warriors enjoyed a privileged position within this order 7 compared with other status groups. They enjoyed a near monopoly over administrative and military positions at both the central and regional levels. With some exceptions, only warriors were permitted the right—and were indeed —to carry weapons in public. required
But as endemic warfare gave way to a “Pax Tokugawa,” the social dimensions of warrior status began to subsume its martial component. Although the shogunate and domains retained an outwardly military character, they now performed largely administrative and constabulary roles. Fighting wars was no longer the primary role of militaries. As a result, military service assumed a broader set of meanings than it had in the past. Many warriors performed administrative roles with little connection to fighting. Even warriors assigned to putatively military roles spent most of their time performing constabulary functions. In this environment in which the potential for violent encounters was limited, simply being a warrior became more important than being able to fight like one. This was certainly true for tori Keisuke, whose 1857 promotion to warrior status was a validation of his translation ability rather than his martial prowess. By that time, the redefinition of military service had already begun.
Just thirty years later, the world of the Tokugawa warrior had ceased to exist. Military service was no longer embedded in a complex nexus of vassalage ties and social status; it was simply an obligation for all able-bodied male subjects of the newly created Meiji nation-state. The old categories of that divided society—warrior, commoner, outcaste—lingered into the early years of the Meiji era, but were soon effaced by the new realities of class and national subjecthood. And perhaps most important, the arms-bearers of the late nineteenth century were not administrators or constables, but the combat-capable tip of the spear for an aspiring imperial power. It was an order that had little place for the warriors of the 8 earlier era, except as objects of lofty rhetoric designed to give conscript soldiers a sense of patriotic purpose.
The nineteenth-century redefinition of military service did not begin or end with the Meiji government’s establishment of conscription in 1873, although the implementation of this policy represented a major break with the past. Rather, the replacement of the warrior by the conscript soldier was a complex, contested process that unfolded over the course of nearly forty years. It involved the simultaneous creation of a new kind of military service and the disassembly of its predecessor. This process began in the late Tokugawa period with a series of disparate reform efforts, as the shogunate and domains struggled to find ways to adopt new military technology needed to resist the encroachment of imperial powers. The men behind the reforms of the 1850s to 1860s soon realized that technological adaptation required organizational change as well, which made it necessary to either revitalize Japan’s warriors or replace them. This dilemma persisted after the Restoration of 1868, as the new Meiji government attempted in vain to forge regional experiments into a viable national army. Even after the
institution of conscription in 1873, remnants of the old order—disgruntled former warriors both within and outside the military—continued to oppose change. By the 1880s, the Meiji government had eliminated any viable challenges to the future of the conscript army. And in a stroke of crowning irony, the leaders of the Meiji military reappropriated the values of Tokugawa warriors as they molded a new martial ideal: the patriotic serviceman ( ).gunjin
This transformation was contested at nearly every turn. Because late-Tokugawa military reforms involved the unmaking of centuries-old institutions and practices, they often met with the vehement opposition of those most invested in the existing order, such as high-ranking warriors and instructors of traditional martial arts. Throughout the 1860s, domains resisted efforts by the shogunate and then the Meiji government to create a national military along federal lines. In the early 1870s, both former warriors and commoners resisted the imposition of conscription, albeit for precisely opposed reasons: the former resented their exclusion from a potential avenue of employment, whereas the latter resented their inclusion in an occupation that had been none of their business to that point. And finally, the oligarchic politics of the Meiji state inspired a movement for constitutional government that reached even into the ranks of the new army. Although the majority of these efforts to contest reform failed, they nonetheless helped to shape—often in an unwittingly negative way—the modern Japanese soldier.
Rather than focus narrowly on the Meiji state’s conscription policy, I construe military service broadly in order to encompass the sheer variety of approaches to reform that characterized the fifty years between 1840 and 1894. This approach has three benefits. First, it corrects the impression that the Meiji state was the sole agent behind the disestablishment of the warrior status group and its replacement by common soldiers. Although the 1873 implementation of conscription was in many respects the decisive step in the process, it also represented the culmination of years of similar efforts conducted by the shogunate and domains. A second benefit—which is also a consequence of the first—of viewing the reform of military service as a process rather than a policy outcome is a heightened perspective on the ways modern armies are created. Perhaps as a result of the attention given to the so-called Military Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the nineteenth-century rise of truly national armies has often been viewed as a continuation of earlier trends rather than a revolution in its own right. A close look at the case of mid-nineteenth-century Japan throws into sharp relief just how radical a departure from precedent mass conscript armies were. With few exceptions, most studies that stress the novelty of modern military organizations have seen them as extensions of the modern nation-state rather than as actors in its creation. 9
Third, this approach makes it possible to situate nineteenth-century developments in a longer narrative of the diminishing autonomy of arms-bearers. As Eiko Ikegami argued in The Taming of the Samurai, warriors’ rise to military and political prominence in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries also marked the zenith of their autonomy. As political control became more consolidated, especially from the sixteenth century into the seventeenth, rulers tried to strike a delicate balance between maintaining warriors’ ability to mete out violence while at the same time imposing controls on their autonomous use of it. That process was largely complete by the mid-Tokugawa period, but the power of the shogunate 10 and the various domains over their arms-bearers was still limited geographically, socially, and spiritually. The structures of Tokugawa vassalage differed from modern conceptions of the military chain of command; the shogun might be the ruler of Japan, but he had no direct control over the vassals of the daimyo who owed him their loyalty. Moreover, because the shogunate and domains were status-conscious polities premised on warriors’ exclusive claims to administrative and military roles, they could not ignore the social boundaries of military service without prompting questions about their own legitimacy. Finally, Tokugawa authorities exercised only limited control over the inner lives of their
vassals. Although many warriors shared similar educational backgrounds, they were free to interpret central concepts like “loyalty” and “honor” in idiosyncratic ways. In contrast, the Meiji state sought to transcend these limits and exercise near-total control over its soldiers, thus further advancing a restriction of arms-bearers’ autonomy that had begun centuries earlier.
Viewing Japan’s nineteenth-century military transformation as a trans-Restoration process provides insight into the creation of the modern Japanese state. Historians of Japan have long since abandoned the notion that Japan’s modern history began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Over the past half century, scholars have revised the old picture of the Meiji government as the innovative architect of Japan’s transition to modernity. But although the late-Tokugawa contributions to the rise of capitalism, 11 industrialization, and the penal system in Japan, to name a few economic and social institutions, have gained much-deserved recognition, the military—and particularly conscription—retains an identification as one of the new regime’s signature achievements. Recasting military service as a process that 12 unfolded across the Meiji Restoration rather than as a result of it complicates a long-oversimplified picture. It also helps reveal the co-constitutive character of the relationship between the modern nation-state and the military. As scholars such as Charles Tilly have argued, there is a reciprocal relationship between the ability of a state to wield coercive power and its extractive capacity—and consequently, its stability. Having witnessed how the Tokugawa shogunate’s loss of control over 13 coercive power had hastened its demise, the architects of the Meiji state were anxious not to repeat the same mistake.
This trans-Restoration approach is particularly revelatory in regard to four themes. The first concerns the situation of warriors during the final two decades of their existence as a legally recognized status group. By the 1840s, the economic circumstances of many warriors had deteriorated, as decreasing stipends and mounting debt left them with little financial wherewithal to undergird their social capital. Late-Tokugawa military reforms aimed at restructuring the retainer band and incorporating commoners threatened to undermine even this precarious position. Warriors often resisted measures they saw as threats to their status, forcing the shogunate and domains to balance the contradictory objectives of pursuing military reforms and placating their warriors. Even after the Restoration, warriors continued to serve as obstacles to the reform of military service. In its early years, the Meiji government had little choice but to depend on warrior volunteers ( ) as its primary source of manpower, despite their shei tendency to view military discipline as a slight to their status. Although replacing was one of the shei main aims of the 1873 Conscription Ordinance, former warriors continued to constitute the majority of officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men until the late 1870s.
A second theme involves the role of foreign models in Japan’s military transformation. In many of the earliest accounts of this history, would-be reformers attempted to embark on programs of military Westernization, but with little success—until the arrival of European advisors set the reforms on course. Yet this perspective provides little insight into the processes through which Western military models were assimilated and implemented. In the late-Tokugawa period, for example, instructors of Western-style musketry regularly altered the content of their instruction to accommodate the political exigencies of their patrons. Even the early Meiji government—that famed “borrower” of Western institutions—articulated its construction of a modern military as both an adaptation of the foreign and a return to an idealized past. Painting the transformation that culminated in the Imperial Japanese Army as the simple adoption of a Western model obscures the complex processes through which new kinds of military knowledge were appropriated, produced, and practiced.
The trial-and-error character of the transformation forms a third crucial aspect of the story. The path from the militaries of the Tokugawa period to the national conscript army was anything but a straight
line. Some efforts stalled because of institutional inertia, economic constraints, or outright resistance. That domains such as Chsh became military powerhouses whereas others like Fukui and Mito did not had more to do with finances and internecine conflict (respectively) than a lack of vision. By the same token, the shogunate’s ultimate failure to suppress its internal enemies was due to the erosion of its political foundations rather than inattention to military reform. In other cases, early progress prompted reactionary backlash, as it did in Satsuma, when the domain briefly reinstated the sixteenth-century tactical systems of its founders. Even success could be a bumpy road: the Meiji government’s first two attempts to carry out nationwide conscriptions—based on Tokugawa precedents—brought only meager returns.
Fourth, a trans-Restoration viewpoint provides a firmer foundation for transnational and comparative studies of military matters in nineteenth-century East Asia. Many comparisons of Japanese and Chinese reforms have operated from a teleological perspective, working backward from the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War in order to explain the triumph of the Meiji army and navy. Although such a perspective is invaluable to understanding the war itself, it has also fostered the impression that Meiji Japan succeeded because it was more interested in military reform than its Chinese neighbor. However, this narrative is premised on two false assumptions. First, as scholars such as Benjamin Elman and S. C. M. Paine have shown, for much of the late nineteenth century the military technology employed by Qing-dynasty China matched—if not exceeded—that of Meiji Japan. In fact, after the outbreak of the war, many foreign observers were confident that the numbers and technology presaged a Qing victory. Domestic political squabbling and organizational impediments, rather than a lack of interest in science and technology, hampered the Qing war effort. Second, the Japan-versus-China structure of the 14 comparison fails to take into account that the “Japan” that began reforming the country’s military in response to imperialism—the Tokugawa shogunate—did not survive the process. In other words, the failure of military reform is just as much a part of Japan’s story as it is of China’s. The comparison of Tokugawa Japan to Qing China—two traditional polities trying to resist imperial encroachment, balance reform and stability, and struggling with the tension between central and regional power—is fertile ground for study.
The Military in History
Efforts to explain the post-Restoration transformation of the military are as old as the Meiji army itself. Before the Imperial Army’s brutality in the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945) soiled its reputation, historical appraisals of Japan’s conscript military were generally positive. However, in the postwar investigation of the roots of Japanese aggression, the military became a metonym for the problems endemic to the prewar state and society. More recent scholarship has focused on specific aspects of the military—and its relationship to modern Japanese society—in ways that undermine this dichotomy.
In the era before the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Army and the conscription system that fed it were regarded as a cornerstone of Japan’s status as a Great Power. As such, historians drew a sharp distinction between Bakumatsuera reforms and the successful policies of the Meiji government. This perspective, which dominated pre–World War II histories of the army, was evident as early as the History ( ), published in 1905 by the eponymous of the Development of the Army Ministry Rikugunsh enkakushi ministry, which argued: “It has been thirty-eight years from the Meiji Restoration to the present day. When one looks at the progress and development of various systems during this period of time, one
cannot until now find any comparison with the past. In particular, this progress has been most remarkable concerning the military. Now it has reached the point where it competes with a number of powerful nations ( ) and has nothing of which to be ashamed.”
sekai no ys no kykoku to kk shite 15
This interpretation even colored criticisms of military service. In 1916, the economist and soon-to-be parliamentarian Ogawa Gtar partnered with Takata Yasuma in completing a study (later published in English in 1921) that stressed the negative externalities of the conscription system. Despite Ogawa’s misgivings about the practical consequences of contemporary military recruitment, he praised the Restoration as “a twin sister of the progressive movement” and conscription as a “necessity.” In both of 16 these accounts, the Restoration stands as a rupture between the past and present. This same approach characterized the works of positivist Japanese historians like Matsushita Yoshio as well as the majority of English-language scholarship through the end of the twentieth century.17
But scholars more critical of the place of the military in Japanese society, particularly Marxist historians of the Kza-ha school, recognized the importance of pre-1868 developments. In part, this reflected the Kza-ha interpretation of the Meiji Restoration as an incomplete revolution in which relics of a “feudal” Tokugawa society survived into the modern era and reinforced the most authoritarian tendencies of the modern state. For these scholars, the military was in many ways the most characteristic example of these legacies. This understanding pervaded the work of E. H. Norman, one of the earliest Anglophone historians to adopt the Kza-ha view of the military. His (1943) Soldier and Peasant in Japan was one of the first works to view late-Tokugawa developments as integral to the shape of the Meiji army. But Norman’s work, appearing as it did in the midst of the Second World War, also 18 foreshadowed another trend: the marriage of the Kza-ha interpretation of the military with a teleological emphasis on the 1930s and 1940s as the logical endpoint of Japan’s modernization. The classic example of this approach was Inoue Kiyoshi’s , which saw Bakumatsu developments and Nihon no gunkokushugi their persistence into Meiji as integral to Japanese militarism.19
Since the 1970s, scholarship on nineteenth-century military matters has moved in a variety of directions, belying the utility of the dichotomized labels of Marxist and positivist. Scholars influenced by the Kza-ha historiography began to explore the relationship between the military and society, particularly the question of how individual citizens resisted institutions like conscription through draft dodging and other forms of protest. In the process, these scholars’ work has moved away from the ambiguities of the Tokugawa-Meiji transition in search of more firmly modern ground. Other historians have pursued 20 more specialized avenues of research into the military and its relationship to modern Japanese society.21 More recently, the field has expanded to emphasize the social and cultural aspects of the modern Japanese military, but in a way that is less beholden to the teleology of militarism. However, despite the insights 22 it has provided, much of this recent work focuses on the institutions of an already centralized nation-state. Although it is a reasonable approach for historians of the twentieth century, studies of the nineteenth century written from this perspective efface the complexities of the process that produced the Meiji army, which itself underwent revolutionary changes from the 1870s to the 1890s.
The transformation of military service began as an almost accidental result of late-Tokugawa reforms designed to adapt new technologies to existing military organizations. Accordingly, this book begins three decades before the fall of the shogunate. Chapter 1 explores how the practitioners of a putatively “Western” school of musketry and gunnery ( ) known as Takashima-ry advocated the adoption of hjutsu new technology and organizational reform in order to resist the imperial encroachment that seemed inevitable in the wake of Qing China’s defeat in the First Opium War (1839–1842). The next two chapters argue that rising international and domestic tensions in the 1860s gave military matters a new sense of urgency, driving the shogunate and several domains to pursue more radical avenues of military
reform. Whereas the earliest generation of Takashima-ry-inspired reforms had aimed primarily at grafting new technology onto existing organizations, these new initiatives prioritized the procurement of fighting men over the preservation of warrior status. Chapter 2 examines how the shogunate and some domains stretched the internal and external boundaries of warrior status as they restructured their retainer bands and even enlisted commoners. Then, as political tension gave way to civil war from 1866 to 1869, the shogunate and then the early Meiji government conducted abortive attempts to weld the disparate reforms of the era into a national force structured along federal lines. The similarity between these efforts—and their ultimate failures—forms the subject of chapter 3.
Victory in the civil war left the leaders of the early Meiji government in a difficult position. Although their hastily assembled coalition military had toppled the Tokugawa shogunate, the fledgling state remained dependent on the manpower contributions of large domains, which often had their own—rather than the nation’s—interests at heart. In 1871, as soon as it was able, the Meiji government abolished the domains—and warrior status. Over the next two years, the state’s leaders began laying the foundation for a national conscript army. Chapter 4 examines the drafting, contents, and implementation of the 1873 Conscription Ordinance, which, at least notionally, made military service obligatory for all Japanese males. Despite numerous difficulties in implementation, the law represented a near-fatal blow against the legacies of Tokugawa-period military service and a decisive step toward a new model.
With the foundations of a modern army laid, military leaders turned their attention to the task of developing the institutional supports necessary to turn conscripts into good soldiers. These efforts were interrupted in 1877, when a major uprising erupted in the Kysh region of Satsuma. Although the insurrection failed, it gave the new national army a severe test. Chapter 5 argues that the conflict not only served as a dress rehearsal for national mobilization but also provided the army leadership with a body of experiential knowledge that shaped the institutional reforms of the subsequent decade. From 1878 to 1894, these reforms vastly altered the army’s organizational culture as well as its place in civic society. Chapter 6 explores this process.
The half century between 1841 and 1894 brought revolutionary changes to military service in Japan, as a complex and fragmented network of regional militaries made up of hereditary warriors was replaced by a national conscript army. This transformation facilitated and was facilitated by the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the creation of the Meiji state. This process was not a linear one, but a complex, contested series of experiments and reforms that was not without its occasional detours and about-faces. It began with a musket.
THE RISE OF “WESTERN” MUSKETRY, 1841–1860
In the final three decades of the Tokugawa period (1603 – 1868), the world of Japan’s warriors began to change rapidly and irreparably. For over two hundred years, hereditary warriors ( )—knownbushi popularly, if imprecisely, as samurai—had served as the military arm of the shogunate and the nearly three hundred domains over which it maintained administrative and military hegemony. But beginning in the early nineteenth century, Tokugawa military institutions faced new pressure in the form of encroachment by Western powers. Military readiness became a critical issue for the first time in generations. In their efforts to cope with this new set of challenges, both national and regional authorities turned to those who claimed to possess authoritative knowledge of how the West fought. The Takashima school of musketry and gunnery ( ) was one such group. Before long, what began as Takashima-ry hjutsu an attempt to adapt the weapons technologies then in use by Western powers soon changed the ways men were trained to fight, their relationships to the institutions that employed them, and the meaning of military service.
Takashima-ry musketry emerged in the late 1830s as the creation of Takashima Shhan, a shogunal official assigned to the port city of Nagasaki. Shhan marketed his school to the shogunate and domains by claiming authoritative knowledge of what he termed “Western” techniques. And unlike his contemporaries in the world of Tokugawa martial arts, Shhan claimed that only his style of musketry and gunnery had any military applicability. As Takashima-ry’s network of patrons grew, its instructors found themselves playing a central—and often contentious—role in the attempts to restructure the Tokugawa military order.
Instead of evaluating whether military reform efforts were effective or not, it is more productive to examine how new military technologies were adopted, how social and cultural contexts mediated their introduction, and what the effects were of their implementation. The role of technology in war was a central topic of analysis for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Until recently, military 1 historians were concerned with how particular technologies—for example, rifles or railroads—affected the outcome of battles and wars. But as the military historian Jeremy Black has argued: “There is the question of how weaponry impacted on organization, an issue that brings together technological capability and the factors that affect institutional culture, not least social context and political goals.”2 Technology here is not limited to new weapons, but also includes the tactical and organizational systems created to employ these devices on the battlefield.
The process of technological change—in this case, the adoption of Takashimary musketry—was more than a straightforward, top-down borrowing of Western military models. In a clear demonstration of the
reciprocal relationship between governing authority and military power, the sociopolitical order of the Tokugawa period played a determining role in the transmission of new military knowledge, as well as the pace and path of military reform efforts. More often than not, the prospect of upsetting notions of warrior status led would-be reformers to exercise caution. Takashima-ry circulated through the same patronage network as other martial arts schools, first on a local level, then on a domainal level, and finally on a national level. Although Western drill manuals provided much of the basis for Takashima-ry, instruction was constantly modified to suit the needs of instructors and patrons. Those who patronized the new school also had to deal with its social and cultural consequences. Takashima-ry had the potential to change everything that defined the warrior’s world: clothing and language, rank, and the place of traditional martial arts. The shogunate and domains thus had to find ways to mitigate the school’s ties to the West, redefine the role of traditional martial arts, and still train warriors in the new techniques. The complexity of the situation ensured that this first step toward the redefinition of military service—although a necessary precondition—was a tentative one.
The World of the Tokugawa Warrior
For much of the Tokugawa period, warriors exercised exclusive control over military and administrative concerns on both the central and regional levels. Socially, the warrior status group enjoyed a relatively privileged position vis-à-vis the various categories of commoners and “base people” ( ). As a senmin general rule, only warriors carried weapons—a long sword and short sword for full-fledged warriors, and a short sword for warrior menials ( )—in public, though exceptions to this policy did exist. buke hknin Over the course of nearly two centuries, the social dimensions of warrior status subsumed its military aspects. Warrior identity became largely separated from experience or prowess in combat.
The changed role of Japanese warriors was a product of the formation of the Tokugawa state. Over the 3 first half of the seventeenth century, the shogunate sought to preserve its hegemony by claiming and enforcing exclusive rights to the legitimate use of force. Its relationship to the over two hundred regional lords (daimyo) who acknowledged Tokugawa supremacy was articulated in terms of military obligations. It also severely restricted the military prerogatives of daimyo, prohibiting them from conducting military campaigns or substantially augmenting their forces without shogunal sanction. As decades of war gave 4 way to a Pax Tokugawa, the shogunate and domains retained an outwardly military character despite a transition to administrative and constabulary roles. Fighting wars was no longer the primary role of militaries.
This development had two major consequences. First, military service assumed a broader set of meanings than it had in the past. Although all warriors were arms bearers who occupied some niche in the military edifice of shogunal or domain government, many of their occupational roles had little connection to fighting. Even warriors assigned to the explicitly military roles spent most of their time performing constabulary functions like guard and escort duty. A second consequence of the new role of militaries was a shift in the emphasis of martial arts instruction. As the likelihood that warriors would engage in combat diminished, technical mastery replaced practical fighting ability as a measure of achievement. In an environment in which the potential for violent encounters was limited, simply being a warrior became more important than being able to fight like one.
The armies fielded by military hegemons like Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) represented a major departure from the small, cavalry-dominated forces of Japan’s early medieval era. For one, armies became much larger. Hideyoshi 5 mustered over 150,000 men for his 1592 invasion of Korea. Moreover, commanders made far more 6 extensive use of infantry, particularly men armed with projectile weapons like bows and matchlock muskets. In many cases, these foot soldiers ( ) were not recruited as part of feudal military ashigaru obligations. Rather, they operated as units under the direct control of the daimyo, to whom they owed their loyalty. Some scholars have argued that these developments resemble the so-called Military 7 Revolution that took place in early modern Europe, which was also characterized by a shift to large infantry forces under centralized control. Other scholars have argued against this perspective, observing 8 that mounted warriors and their retinues were still considered the dominant combat arm on the battlefield. In either case, it seems safe to say that no medieval commander had as much operational control over 9 his forces as did the leaders of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
The shogunate and domains put this authority to use after large-scale conflict came to an end. Instead of transitioning to purely peacetime duties, military apparatuses (headed by the shogun and daimyo) retained authority over both civilian administration and defense. In an era presided over by military government, the ability to marshal the country’s resources for defense served as both a criterion of political legitimacy and an organizing principle for society.
The shogunate’s claim to supreme political authority rested on its ability to protect the country and preserve the peace at home. Its approach to controlling the two-hundred-odd domains that comprised two-thirds of Japan’s landmass reflected these claims. Daimyo held their lands on the basis of their ability to provide military aid the shogunate. Their military obligations ( ) included clearly gun’yaku defense-related tasks like maintaining armed forces, protecting the coastline, and performing guard duty, but even more ceremonial policies like alternate attendance ( ) were viewed as—and executed sankin ktai as—military tasks. In other words, military obligation formed the basis of the so-called 10 bakuhan (shogunate and domain) system.
Both the shogunate and daimyo needed to mobilize a variety of groups in order to fulfill these objectives. As the dividing lines between peasants, artisans, merchants, outcastes, and others became institutionalized, the status system of the Tokugawa era began to take shape. Warriors—at least 11 notionally—occupied a privileged place within this system. Only they were permitted the right to use a surname legally and carry two swords ( ), as well as hold government office. But this myji tait 12 ascendance came at a cost.
After the end of large-scale warfare and the consolidation of Tokugawa power in the early seventeenth century, the social and administrative responsibilities of warriors eclipsed the need for their martial abilities. One of the consequences of this new reality was a contraction in the size of the warrior status group. As the need for massive armies faded, many erstwhile warriors found themselves on the wrong side the line that divided arms bearers from the population at large. Some masterless warriors ( ) and rnin unemployed warrior menials became known as “crooked people” ( ) for acting out violently kabuki mono in reaction to their marginalization from the warrior world. Even those who retained warrior status did 13 so under conditions vastly different from those of their ancestors. Despite the feudal tinge that continued to color relationships between lords and their vassals, most warriors lived in particular sections of castle towns and received their income in the form of disbursements from their lord. This was true for both stipended warriors ( ) and fief holders ( ), some of whom had to secure official kirimai tori chigy tori
permission to visit lands that putatively belonged to them. Although the distinction between landed 14 vassals and their lower-ranking counterparts had little bearing on their material well-being, it served as a key criterion of high social status.
It is fair to say that status differences—both horizontal and vertical—among warriors were at least as important as the dividing line between warriors and the rest of society. Warriors’ status consisted of three elements: rank, income, and position. Rank was largely hereditary and connected to both income and employment opportunities. According to Negishi Shigeo, the top and bottom ranks of the warrior status 15 group were generally consistent for the shogunate and most domains. The highest-ranking warriors were those whose families could claim status as field commanders ( and ) or senior kar bangashira administrators ( ). Next in line were the mounted warriors attached to the lord’s retinue. Although bugy similar ranks existed in every domain, these men went by a variety of names; fief holder ( ), horse kynin guard ( ), and common warrior ( ) were among the more customary umamawari heishi/hirazamurai designations for this group. In addition to their right to surname, sword, and stipends, most of these men enjoyed the right to a direct audience with their lord ( ). Pages ( ), who also omemie kosh/naka kosh functioned as bodyguards in some cases and sometimes had the right of audience, occupied a narrow middle ground in between the higher ranks and the foot soldiers ( and ), who did not enjoy kachi ashigaru the same privilege. Below these men were the various categories of warrior menials who usually performed domestic functions for the lord’s household.16
Rank also influenced the positions warriors were eligible to hold. Retainer bands ( ) generally kashindan consisted of three main parts: the military apparatus ( ), the retainers assigned to manage the lord’s bankata household ( ), and the officials responsible for the day-to-day administration of the lord’s sobakata holdings ( ). Despite the popular perception of Tokugawa-period warriors serving as bureaucrats, yakukata the number of vassals assigned to military roles remained high. In the case of the shogunate, more than half of the retainer band served in the . Explicitly military appointments also came with increased bankata prestige. The majority of high-ranking warriors served in the , whereas administrative bankata posts—with the exception of the most senior positions—were dominated by lower-ranking warriors.17 This arrangement had two consequences. First, as administrative matters assumed greater importance than military readiness, low-ranking warriors gained increased influence. Second, because Tokugawa militaries consisted largely of high-ranking warriors, the military reform efforts of the nineteenth century would have the unenviable task of reorganizing the warriors most invested in the Tokugawa system. As the peace of the Tokugawa period continued, warriors grew increasingly estranged from the martial aspects of their status. From the time of the early eighteenth-century Kyh Reform onward, the shogunate repeatedly exhorted warriors to keep up their military training. However, the martial arts had also 18 assumed a new place in the era of peace.
The Martial Arts: From Training to Spectacle
Mastery of the martial arts held a different meaning for Tokugawa-era warriors than it had for their forbears. In the century and a half between the effective collapse of the Muromachi shogunate in the mid-fifteenth century and the consolidation of military rule under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, large-scale warfare was relatively common, if not quite as everyday a phenomenon as the label “Warring States era” suggests. The scale of military campaigns reached a peak between the 1590s and the 1610s when major engagements in Japan and on the Korean peninsula often involved tens of thousands of
men. Training such large bodies of warriors to fight effectively—or at least more effectively than their opponents—became a strategic priority for military leaders, who began patronizing instructors of the military arts. With the end of large-scale conflict in the mid-seventeenth century, however, disciplines like swordfighting and musketry assumed a new set of social and cultural meanings.
Scholars of martial arts generally divide the two-hundred-odd years of Tokugawa rule into several distinct phases in the development of the martial arts. Although the timetables differ between disciplines, most scholars seem to agree on a first phase characterized by practical instruction lasting from the unification era to around 1650. During this time, the ruling position of the Tokugawa house remained somewhat insecure. The shogunate conducted major military campaigns at the siege of Osaka Castle (1614–1615) and during the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638) to eliminate challenges to its authority. With combat still a real possibility for their forces, the shogunate and daimyo often recruited men with reputations as skilled martial artists to teach their warriors fighting techniques. Two of the best-known examples come from the discipline of swordfighting; the famed swordsmen Yagy Munenori and Miyamoto Musashi both served as instructors and military advisers for the Tokugawa house in the early decades of its rule. The same was true of musketry and gunnery, for which the shogunate retained the 19 services of Inadome Sukenao (Ichimu), one of the most renowned marksmen of his day. Instruction 20 emphasized battlefield effectiveness over mastery in any artistic sense.
The second phase, lasting from approximately 1650 to the Kansei era (1789–1801), was characterized by a shift in emphasis from combat effectiveness to individual achievement in martial arts, which G. Cameron Hurst has labeled a transition “from self-protection to self-perfection.” This pattern even held 21 true for a discipline like musketry, which was rarely practiced on an individual level in combat. This 22 change of focus reflected the relative peace and stability of the Tokugawa era, but it is important to remember that this phenomenon was the result of a set of policies designed to curb the ability of warriors to exercise force without official—that is, shogunal—sanction. These restrictions applied to all levels of the warrior status group. The shogunate forbade daimyo from using their militaries or even repairing fortifications without official permission. On an individual level, warriors were forbidden from 23 participating in the various kinds of duels that earlier generations of martial artists had used to establish their reputations and hone their skills.24
As hopes for achieving distinction in combat faded further into the past, martial arts instructors began to stress the mastery of fixed forms ( ) as a requirement for progression through a series of ranks. kata Once they achieved the higher levels, students could even secure permission to open their own schools dedicated to teaching a particular style. Different styles of martial arts proliferated in what was rapidly 25 becoming a crowded market. By some estimates there were over seven hundred swordfighting styles and nearly four hundred musketry styles by the early nineteenth century. The number of required for 26 kata mastery increased as well; in extreme cases, students might need to learn dozens of . The kata combination of systematized instruction and the fiscal pressures faced by instructors—who had to secure either patronage or dues-paying students to stay afloat—created a commercialized environment for martial arts in which students were often treated as customers. By the mid-nineteenth century, many schools extended instruction to commoners as well.27
The development of martial arts in Tokugawa Japan mirrored the changing roles of Japanese warriors. In the tumultuous first decades of the shogunate, practical instruction sufficed to train warriors for service on the battlefield. When large-scale conflict came to an end, the label “warrior” became as much a marker of social status as an accurate description of an occupation. Consequently, martial arts styles moved away from practical instruction, becoming instead ritually regulated spaces for peacetime warriors to demonstrate individual prowess. Viewed in this light, it would be inaccurate to say that Japanese 28
martial arts became useless or ineffective; rather, their role as brokers of cultural capital superseded their role as centers of military instruction.
The Creation of a New Musketry Style
The rise of a new, putatively Western style of musketry and gunnery heralded major changes for Tokugawa-era martial arts and military service. This had little to do with technology. Firearms themselves were nothing new. Contrary to popular belief, Tokugawa Japan never “gave up the gun.”29 Firearms first arrived in Japan in the mid-sixteenth century from a number of sources, including Korea, the Ryky Kingdom, European traders, and Japanese pirates. Although it took decades for muskets to 30 appear in quantities sufficient to affect the course of the battles of the Warring States era, once introduced, they played a key role in the revolutionary changes in combat that occurred in the late sixteenth century. Even during the peace of the Tokugawa era, both shogunal and domain armies 31 retained their musket units and gunnery instructors enjoyed the patronage of domainal lords throughout the country. Despite the recognition of firearms’ effectiveness, musketry instruction remained firmly embedded in the framework of Tokugawa martial arts. Takashima-ry and its adherents, however, aspired to redefine the state of both the martial arts and military service.
The Founding of Takashima-ry
Takashima-ry emerged in the late 1830s as a syncretic style of Japanese musketry that increasingly incorporated elements of Western military science. In this chapter, I use the term “Western military science” to refer to four particular characteristics of military institutions: the organizational scheme employed (albeit in various forms) by most nineteenth-century Western armies (platoons, battalions, regiments, etc.), the practice of close-order drill, the reliance on operational doctrine from the Napoleonic era (which remained in use until midcentury), and the distinctions these militaries made among combat arms (infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers). Any differences between these models were far 32 outweighed by the similarities. Although most early Takashima-ry instruction relied solely on Dutch texts, contemporary sources often used the words “Dutch” and “Western” interchangeably because the Netherlands were Tokugawa Japan’s primary point of contact with Europe.
Despite Takashima-ry’s claimed ties to the West, it operated much like other Tokugawa martial arts styles. It aimed at securing the patronage of regional lords and the shogunate, and it was propagated as the intellectual property of a network of private schools. The style originated with the efforts of Takashima Shhan, a musketry instructor in the city of Nagasaki. As Shhan’s proprietary style spread through the country over the next few decades, the methods and models of its instructors diverged. By the time the shogunate and domains enacted military reforms in the 1850s, they were drawing on a diverse body of knowledge developed to serve disparate needs; as a result, these efforts produced a variety of possible solutions to late-Tokugawa military problems.
Takashima Shhan was born in 1798, the son of one of the Nagasaki city elders ( ). In machi-doshiyori 33 addition to his administrative duties, Shhan’s father Shirbei taught Ogino-ry musketry at a local school. Ogino-ry had been created in the seventeenth century as a synthesis of several other schools’ techniques and enjoyed widespread patronage in the Tokugawa period. Shirbei also had the dubious distinction of
serving as a city elder during the incident of 1808 when an English frigate successfully raided Phaeton the Dutch trading post at Dejima. This embarrassment to the shogunate drove several of the city’s warrior officials, including the Nagasaki magistrate ( ), to take their lives. Shirbei, however, smartly chose to bugy eschew suicide in favor of pursuing the study of Western firearms. When Shhan came of age, he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a city elder and an Ogino-ry musketry instructor. During the 1820s, he took up his father’s interest in Western military science. In an effort to garner hands-on experience, Shhan repeatedly attempted to secure instruction from the Dutch stationed at Dejima, but his efforts were frustrated by the fact that the Dutch were traders, not soldiers.
When the opportunity arose in 1823, Shhan studied musketry techniques under Johan Wilhelm de Sturler, a Dutch veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and head ( ) of the Dutch factory. At the same kapitan 34 time, Shhan was able to use his position in local government to purchase dozens of European military manuals, hundreds of small arms, and a handful of cannon. Although Shhan is often characterized as a 35 scholar of Dutch studies ( ), he did not speak or read Dutch. As a result, he typically had rangaku translations made by Dutch-speaking subordinates in the Nagasaki municipal government.36
Although Takashima-ry later became synonymous with Western military practice, it originated as a syncretic style of musketry much like its parent style of Ogino-ry. Shhan began incorporating Dutch close-order drill into his lessons in the early 1830s, but this training remained just one element of a much broader approach to musketry and gunnery. In an 1837 oath, a prospective student from Higo domain promised to keep the secrets of “Ogino-ry, New Ogino-ry, Takashima-ry, [and] Western drill.” He also swore, under threat of punishment from “all great and small gods throughout Japan,” not to reveal the secrets of Takashima-ry or found an independent school based on its techniques. As this pledge 37 illustrates, Western military science was thus just one aspect of Shhan’s style in its early years. Dutch drill did not dominate instruction until after 1839, the year Shhan proclaimed Takashima-ry as an independent school. After that time, references to Ogino-ry disappeared from students’ pledges. Takashima-ry began to gather patrons rapidly. By 1840, Shhan’s school claimed approximately two hundred students. Most were shogunal functionaries employed by the Nagasaki municipal government, including many of Shhan’s direct subordinates. Others represented prominent Kysh domains, including Saga, Higo, and Satsuma. Although little documentation exists about Shhan’s teaching in the first 38 decade of the school’s existence, the ( Secret Manual of the Takashima School Takashima-ry hjutsu hisho )—one of the school’s early instructional texts—provides a glimpse into the curriculum. According to Kumazawa (Hya) Tru, the manual was a Japanese translation of an 1807 Dutch gunnery manual. It 39 contained detailed instructions on the use and maintenance of a variety of artillery, including mortars and howitzers. Only a third of the text addressed the care of small arms—in this case, flintlock muskets rather than the traditional matchlocks then in use throughout Japan. None of it addressed infantry drill, suggesting that any instruction in the topic was oral. The manual’s emphasis on the precise execution of 40 cleaning, loading, and firing procedures was not a Western inheritance. In fact, musketry manuals as old as the seventeenth century were equally prescriptive, although they tended to stress individual technique. As a result, in Takashima-ry’s earliest incarnation, the use of Western hardware—and not a radically different understanding of musketry—differentiated Shhan’s techniques from those of his competitors.
Rise to National Prominence
Despite the popularity of Shhan’s school among prominent Kysh lords, his geographical and bureaucratic
isolation meant that Takashima-ry remained a largely regional phenomenon. But when reports of Qing China’s defeat in the opening battles of the First Opium War reached Nagasaki in 1840, Shhan used the shocking news as the basis for an attempt to secure shogunal patronage and expand his school’s reach beyond western Japan. That same year, he wrote a memorial to the senior councilors ( ) of the rj shogunate, in which he presented three arguments. First, Shhan argued for the elevation of musketry above all other martial disciplines as “the first line of national defense” ( ). gokoku dai’ichi no bubi Second, he positioned Takashima-ry as the sole arbiter of Western military science, while also criticizing the Japanese ( ) musketry styles: “I wanted to repay my obligation to my country. I therefore set my wary heart on training in Ogino-ry and other [ ] houses’ styles. But I was not satisfied. I thus came to hjutsu think that in order to defend ourselves against the barbarians, it was important to understand their ways…. It is regrettable that the methods used by contemporary musketry houses are either uselessly ornate or archaic, having been abandoned in the West hundreds of years ago. In their efforts to compete with one another, many [schools] have become esoteric, and compete mischievously in outward display.”
Worse yet, such behavior attracted the ridicule of foreign observers. Should the Dutch reveal the state 41 of Japanese arms to other European nations, Japan might become the next victim of imperialist ambition. To prevent such an outcome, Shhan requested additional funds and the assignment of more men to his office in Nagasaki.
Shhan’s memorial caused a stir in Edo, in part because it represented an opportunity for reform-minded shogunal officials. The senior councilor Mizuno Tadakuni, then the leading voice within Tokugawa administrative circles, was in the process of enacting a series of policies—known later as the Tenp reforms—that aimed to centralize and strengthen Tokugawa rule. Mizuno chose to embrace 42 Takashima-ry as a means to place the shogunate at the forefront of military reform, thus claiming the political high ground on the pressing issue of national security. He immediately summoned Shhan and his small arsenal to Edo, where Shhan remained for most of the next year. In April 1841, Mizuno rewarded Shhan’s effective management of the Nagasaki trading post with a one-generation promotion to midlevel rank and a commensurate raise in pay. Although the announcement of his promotion made no mention 43 of Takashimary, there is little doubt that Shhan’s endeavors in musketry and gunnery earned him the honor.
Not all shogunal officials agreed with Shhan’s proposal. Inspector ( ) Torii Yz wrote a scathing metsuke critique of the memorial. Torii dismissed Shhan as a “provincial functionary” ( ) of low status jiyakunin and “limited judgment,” warning of the dangers of Westernization: “These Dutch-studies people are most deeply afflicted with a love of curiosities. It will not stop with musketry, but will carry over into marching and tactics, and even into our everyday customs and education.” Torii recommended denying 44 Shhan’s request for direct support, but also suggested ordering him to demonstrate his craft before official observers, particularly the shogunate-endorsed musketry and gunnery schools, the Inoue and Tatsuke.
This demonstration, which took place at Tokumarugahara on the northern outskirts of Edo, represented a turning point for Takashima-ry. What had been a strictly regional synthesis of Japanese musketry and Dutch drill was about to become a countrywide phenomenon. The demonstration took place in June 1841, in an open field just north of the shogunal capital. As the shogunate’s senior councilors and other officials watched, Shhan and his students displayed their skill in handling Dutch-made field guns, howitzers, and mortars, all of which boasted much greater range than the artillery then in use. The centerpiece of the day was an infantry demonstration featuring Shhan and 112 of his students, who wore navy tunics with tubular sleeves ( ) and pointed black hats ( )—a combination some thought tsutsu-sode tonkyo-b scandalously similar to foreign uniforms. Many of the students were recent additions to Shhan’s 45 retinue. During his brief stay in Edo, he had attracted approximately 40 students from among the ranks of
Tokugawa vassals, and around 20 from eastern domains. The Tokugawa collateral domain of Mito alone supplied 8 warriors, the largest contingent from any single domain.46
The admission of students from eastern domains was just the beginning. Two months after the demonstration, Mizuno expanded Takashima-ry’s reach by sponsoring the establishment of eastern centers for the school. He ordered Shhan to impart the entirety of the school’s teachings to Shimosone Nobuatsu and Egawa Hidetatsu, two high-ranking shogunal vassals. Shimosone hailed from the 47 shogunate’s administrative elite. His father had served as both the Nagasaki magistrate and Edo city magistrate. Egawa, on the other hand, had a more provincial portfolio; he served as the shogunate’s rural intendant ( ) for Izu, just to the southwest of Edo. Mizuno’s selection of two prominent Tokugawa daikan vassals made for a powerful endorsement of Shhan’s upstart musketry style.
FIGURE 1 Takashima Shhan’s students perform before the shogunate’s senior councilors in 1841. An ( Inspection of Takashima Shirday’s Musketry and Gunnery Training Takashima Shirday hjutsu keiko waza ), 1841. kenbun no zu
Image courtesy of Itabashi-ku kydo shirykan.
Soon afterward, Mizuno authorized the unrestricted instruction of Takashima-ry to Tokugawa retainers and the various domains. Since Shhan had taught domainal warriors since his school’s founding in the early 1830s, the new policy did not represent a momentous change in the school’s fortunes. But it did allow Shhan and his disciples (particularly Egawa and Shimosone) to seek new students and patrons.48
Traditional Musketry Strikes Back
Shogunal patronage of Takashima-ry posed a direct threat to the entrenched Japanese musketry styles, which took immediate steps to check the gains of their competition. The effort began with a critical
review of the Tokumarugahara demonstration by Inoue Saday, one of the shogunate’s commissioners of firearms ( ). Together with the Tatsuke, the other musketry house appointed as commissioners of tepp-kata firearms, the Inoue oversaw almost every aspect of the shogunal arsenal related to gunpowder weapons. They were also well compensated for their services: both had combined incomes close to 1,000 ,koku which placed them close to the top of the Tokugawa retainer band. The Inoue and the Tatsuke had a great deal to lose should shogunal patronage shift.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Inoue’s notes recounted artillery fire that was wildly off the mark—more so than Shhan’s records indicated. In one instance, Inoue recorded a miss of 20 (40 meters) where Shhan ken reported 2 (4 meters). He reserved his most vehement criticisms for the infantry demonstration, ken 49 which he likened to children’s games ( ). He also ridiculed the use of Dutch-language dji tawamure commands, and what he called “bizarre clothing.” Inoue stopped short of directly requesting a ban on 50 Takashima-ry, but he asked the shogunate to prohibit Shhan from using Dutch-language commands and to suppress the usage of the name “Takashima-ry”—an attempt to force Shhan back into the existing network of musketry styles, presumably Ogino-ry. Finally, Inoue argued that the shogunate’s officially sponsored schools (his own and the Tatsuke) were better prepared than Shhan to meet the foreign threat. 51
The Inoue and Tatsuke found an ally in Torii Yz, then an Edo city magistrate ( ). Torii had machi bugy acquired a reputation as a nemesis of Dutch-studies scholars during the 1839 purge of “barbarian scholars” ( ), in which several well-known Dutch-studies scholars were punished for bansha no goku criticizing Tokugawa foreign policy. Torii’s demeanor had earned him the sobriquet “the monster” ( ),ykai a portmanteau of his given name (Yz) and one of his titles, Governor of Kai ( ). Torii had also Kai no kami written the first criticisms of Takashima-ry on behalf of the shogunate’s inspectors. Although the exact reasons for Torii’s antipathy toward Shhan remain unclear, he began recruiting Shhan’s disgruntled former employees in early 1842, even hiring one as a retainer. Torii used his influence with the 52 shogunate to install one of his confederates, Izawa Masayoshi, as Nagasaki magistrate in April 1842. After a preliminary investigation, Izawa ordered Shhan arrested six months later. The indictment charged Shhan with malfeasance, bribery, and conduct unbecoming his station. A second indictment, issued two months later, contained more serious charges: treason, espionage, smuggling, and the possession of heretical (that is, Christian) texts. Shhan’s retainers and students protested, alleging that the charges 53 stemmed from “jealousy of Western-style [musketry]” ( ), a phrase that reflected the seiy-ry no shitto growing synonymy between Takashima-ry and Western military techniques. Their efforts proved 54 fruitless. Despite the downfall of Torii Yz’s cabal the next year, Shhan was held in Edo for three years pending disposition of his case. In 1846, he was sentenced to second-degree exile ( ) indefinitely, chtsuih but was in fact placed under house arrest—a punishment that lasted until 1853.55
Establishing a National Presence
With Shhan incarcerated, Egawa Hidetatsu and Shimosone Nobuatsu became the preeminent representatives of Takashima-ry. The shogunate had ordered both men to train with Shhan after the 56 Tokumarugahara demonstration in 1841. The following year, the shogunal order permitting Takashima-ry instruction effectively gave Shhan’s students the right to found branch schools of their own. Although 57 both men used the Takashima-ry name to attract students, Egawa’s and Shimosone’s schools operated independently. Each instructor sought his own patrons and modified the Takashima-ry curriculum to suit
his needs. However, both men were careful to keep their iterations of Takashima-ry firmly grounded within the framework of Tokugawa-era martial arts training. Despite these limitations, these men’s actions had the collective effect of transforming Takashima-ry from a Nagasaki-based school patronized exclusively by western domains into a Kant-based group of schools that claimed students throughout Japan.
Shimosone Nobuatsu established his school in the center of Edo, using this location to draw high-profile students from all over the country. The Tokugawa policy of alternate attendance ( ) sankin ktai required each domainal lord to maintain a residence and retinue in Edo, which meant that warriors serving in Edo had easy access to Shimosone and his students. Shimosone attracted hundreds of students, and his patrons included the lords of Tokugawa collateral houses ( ) and vassal domains ( shinpan daimy ), as well as direct shogunal retainers. He also taught students from prominent nonvassal ( fudai daimy ) domains, including the lords of Kaga, Uwajima, and Morioka. Like Shhan and Egawa, tozama 58 Shimosone conducted lessons in the use of both muskets and artillery. A lack of space as well as legal restrictions on the use of firearms within Edo forced Shimosone to hold maneuvers in outlying regions like mori and Tokumarugahara. The central location of Shimosone’s school allowed him to take on 59 several students at once. Fifty-three students participated in a demonstration in 1845—more than double the number of students in residence annually at Egawa’s Nirayama School during the same period.60
Although famous for his role as a musketry instructor, Egawa Hidetatsu served the shogunate primarily as the Nirayama intendant, the chief administrator for shogunal lands in Izu and other areas to the southwest of Edo. He began teaching his own Takashima-ry lessons in 1842, almost immediately after 61 securing permission from the shogunate. After a brief stint teaching students at his manor in Edo, 62 Egawa moved his lessons to his more spacious estate in nearby Izu. The Nirayama School (Nirayama juku), as it became known, represented a major change in the direction of Takashima-ry. Together with Shimosone’s school, it created an eastern base for Takashima-ry, from which it would begin to circulate throughout the country. Egawa also attempted to make Takashima-ry palatable to potential patrons by minimizing the ostentatiously foreign aspects of Shhan’s lessons, and he changed the school’s orientation by adding his own elements to instruction.
Egawa accumulated pupils rapidly. The first student to enroll at the Nirayama School was Sakuma Shzan, the Dutch-studies scholar later famous for coining the slogan “Japanese spirit, Western knowledge” ( ). Although later hagiographies by Egawa’s descendants claim that he had almost wakon ysai ten thousand students, the number of students in residence at any one time at the Nirayama School in the 1840s was probably closer to ten. Egawa’s high-level connections in the shogunate played a role in securing patrons, thus the majority of his students were retainers of vassal domainal lords. Aizu, Hikone, Matsushiro, and Kawagoe were among the prominent vassal domains to send students to Egawa’s school.
Since many of the same lords served the shogunate in high-level offices, Egawa was able to create a 63 broader network of patrons within Tokugawa administrative circles. His connections paid off in 1843 when the shogunate appointed him commissioner of firearms ( ), thus granting Takashima-ry a tepp-kata status equal to that of the Inoue and Tatsuke houses.64
This endorsement of Takashima-ry turned endemic competition among musketry houses into a two-sided internecine war, with Egawa on one side and the practitioners of Japanese styles of musketry on the other. The Inoue and Tatsuke had been critical of the new school since Shhan’s demonstration in 1841, but Egawa’s appointment to equal rank impelled them to take action. When Egawa petitioned the shogunate to release the cannon it had purchased from Shhan in 1841, the Inoue and Tatsuke tied the
petition up in red tape. They similarly delayed another request to purchase small arms from the Dutch at Nagasaki. The pressure they brought to bear was eventually responsible for Egawa’s dismissal as a commissioner of firearms in December 1844.65
FIGURE 2 The Nirayama-gasa was designed by Egawa Hidetatsu as an alternative to traditional battle helmets ( ), which tended to obstruct muskets with fixed bayonets. jingasa
Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Japanese History.
Shhan’s arrest and the subsequent bureaucratic pressure made Egawa cautious in his efforts to expand his school’s reach. One way he sought to placate Shhan’s former critics was by nativizing the objectionably foreign aspects of Shhan’s Takashima-ry. The hats went first. Observers at the Tokumarugahara demonstrations had complained about the conical hats ( ) worn by Shhan’s tonkyo-b students. Furthermore, the pronouncement endorsing Takashima-ry had only done so on the condition that “strange headgear” ( ) be eliminated. Egawa devised the Nirayama-gasa, a low hat iy no kaburimono 66 with a narrow brim, which his students wore during training. This style of headgear later became popular because its narrow brim did not interfere with close-order drill, unlike the round-brimmed , which jingasa could be knocked off by a soldier standing at attention with a musket. Second, Egawa translated the Dutch commands used by Shhan into Japanese. In order to represent both the meaning and cadence of Dutch-language drill commands, Egawa combined Japanese imperative verbs with Dutch syntax. Thus, rather than rendering the command “shoulder arms” in standard imperative syntax ( ), he tsutsu wo ninae reversed the position of subject and verb ( ). Egawa forwarded the list of terms to ninae tsutsu 67 Shimosone and other Takashima-ry instructors, who began using the commands in their lessons. Some instructors persisted in using Dutch commands, but by the mid-1850s Egawa’s translations had become the standard vocabulary for most Takashima-ry instructors.68
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Continuing in the way that followed this crooked stream, I occasionally beheld the high top of Mount Klabat before me. Several large butterflies flitted to and fro, their rich, velvety blue and green colors seeming almost too bright to be real. At the eighth paal we came to the native village Sawangan, and the chief showed me the burial-place of his people previous to the arrival of Europeans. Most of the monuments consist of three separate stones placed one on another. The lowest is square or oblong, and partly buried in the earth. Its upper surface has been squared off that the second might rest on it more firmly This is a rectangular-parallelopipedon, one or two feet wide and two-thirds as thick, and from two to three feet high. It is placed on end on the first stone. In its upper end a deep hole has been made, and in this the body of the deceased is placed. It was covered by the third stone of a triangular form when viewed at the end, and made to represent that part of a house above the eaves. It projects a little beyond the perpendicular stone beneath it. On the sides of the roof rude figures of men, women, and children were carved, all with the knees drawn up against the chin and clasped by the arms, the hands being locked together in front below the knees. In many of these the faces of the figures were flat, and holes and lines were cut representing the eyes, nose, and mouth; in others rude busts were placed on the eaves. This burial-place contains the finest monuments of olden times now existing in the Minahassa. Others can be seen at Tomohon, and especially at Kakas, but they are not as highly ornamented as these. At Kakas they are mostly composed of but two stones, one long one set upright in the ground, and another placed over this as a cover to the hole containing the body. At each of these places they are entirely neglected, and many of the images here have already fallen or been broken off. Noticing that a very good one was loose and ready to fall, I remarked to the chief that, if I did not take it, it would certainly soon be lost, and, before he had time to give his assent, I had it under my arm. The missionary at Langowan informed me that originally these graves were beset with such obscene ornaments that one of the Residents felt it his duty to order that they should all be broken off. This fact, and the rude form of the images, led me to think that they ought to be classed with the remarkable temple found near Dorey,
on the north coast of New Guinea, and with the nude statues used by the Battas to ornament the graves of their deceased friends.
THE BAMBOO.
When the Portuguese first arrived in the Moluccas, this region was tributary to the prince of Ternate. All the natives were heathen then,
and many of them yet retain the superstitious belief of their ancestors. Mohammedanism had not gained a foothold among them, nor has it since, and the only Mohammedans now in the land are the immigrants at Menado, who have come from other parts of the archipelago, and a few natives banished from Java. Even as late as 1833, but little more than thirty years ago, Pietermaat, who was then Resident, in his official report, says of these people: “They are wholly ignorant of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They reckon by means of notches in a piece of bamboo, or by knots made in a cord.” Formerly they were guilty of practising the bloody custom of cutting off human heads at every great celebration, and the missionary at Langowan showed me a rude drawing of one of their principal feasts, made for him by one of the natives themselves. In front of a house where the chief was supposed to reside, was a short, circular paling of bamboos placed upright, the upper ends of all were sharpened, and on each was stuck a human head. Between thirty and forty of these heads were represented as having been taken off for this single festive occasion, and the missionary regarded the drawing as no exaggeration, from what he knew of their bloody rites.
The remarkable quantities of coffee, cocoa-nuts, and other articles yearly exported from the Minahassa show that a wonderful change has come over this land, even since 1833; and the question at once arises, What is it that has transferred these people from barbarism to civilization? The answer and the only answer is, Christianity and education. The Bible, in the hands of the missionaries, has been the chief cause that has induced these people to lay aside their bloody rites. As soon as a few natives had been taught to read and write, they were employed as teachers, and schools were established from place to place, and from these centres a spirit of industry and selfrespect has diffused itself among the people and supplanted in a great measure their previous predisposition to idleness and selfneglect. In 1840, seven years after Pietermaat gave the description of these people mentioned above, the number of Christians compared to that of heathen was as one to sixteen, now it is about as two to five; and exactly as this ratio continues to increase, in the same degree will the prosperity of this land become greater.
The rocks seen on this journey through the Minahassa, as noted above, are trachytic lavas, volcanic sand and ashes, pumice-stone, and conglomerates composed of these materials and clay formed by their decomposition. They all appear to be of a late formation, and, as Dr. Bleeker remarks, the Minahassa seems to be only a recent prolongation of the older sedimentary rocks in the residency of Gorontalo. In this small part of the peninsula, there are no less than eleven volcanoes. North of Menado is a chain of volcanic islands, which form a prolongation of this peninsula. On the island Siao there is an active volcano. North of it is the large island of Sangir According to Valentyn, the highest mountain on the island underwent an eruption in December, 1711. A great quantity of ashes and lava was ejected, and the air was so heated for some distance around, that many of the natives lost their lives. North of the Sangir islands are the Talaut group. These are the most northern islands under the Dutch, and the boundary of their possessions in this part of the archipelago.
The steamer Menado, on which I had previously taken passage from Batavia all the way to Amboina, now arrived at Kema. She had brought my collection from Amboina, Buru, and Ternate, and I was ready to return to Java, for some months had passed since I accomplished the object of my journey to the Spice Islands, and during that time I had travelled many hundred miles and had reached several regions which I had not dared to expect to see, even when I left Batavia. A whale-ship from New Bedford was also in the road, and when I visited her and heard every one, even the cabin-boy, speaking English, it seemed almost as strange as it did to hear nothing but Malay and Dutch when I first arrived in Java. Many whales are usually found east of the Sangir Islands, and north of Gilolo and New Guinea.
January 10th.—At noon steamed out of the bay of Kema and down the eastern coast of Celebes for Macassar. When the sun was setting, we were just off Tanjong Flasco, which forms the northern limit of the bay of Gorontalo or Tomini. As the sun sank behind the end of this high promontory, its jagged outline received a broad margin of gold. Bands of strati stretched across the sky from north to
south and successively changed from gold to a bright crimson, and then to a deep, dark red as the sunlight faded. All this bright coloring of the sky was repeated in the sea, and the air between them assumed a rich, scintillating appearance, as if filled with millions of minute crystals of gold.
The controleur, on board, who travelled with me from Langowan, has been farther into the interior, south of Gorontalo, than any foreigner previously. He found the whole country divided up among many petty tribes, who are waging a continual warfare with each other; and the immediate object of his dangerous journey was to conciliate two powerful tribes near the borders of the territory which the Dutch claim as being under their command. He found that all these people are excessively addicted to the use of opium, which is brought from Singapore to the western coast, near Palos, by Mandharese and Macassars.
The dress of the people consists of a sarong, made from the inner layers of the bark of a tree. They have large parangs, and value them in proportion to the number and minuteness of the damascene lines on their blades. Twenty guilders is a common price for them. The controleur gave me a very fine one, which was remarkably well tempered. The most valuable export from this bay is gold, which is found in great quantities, at least over the whole northern peninsula, from the Minahassa south to the isthmus of Palos. The amount exported is not known, for, though the Dutch Government has a contract with the princes to deliver all the gold obtained in their territory to it at a certain rate, they are offered a much higher price by the Bugis, and consequently sell it to them. No extensive survey has yet been made in this territory, by the mining engineers employed by the government, and the extent and richness of these mines are therefore wholly matters of the most uncertain speculation. The fact, however, that gold was carried from this region before the arrival of Europeans, more than three hundred and forty years ago, and that the amount now exported appears to be larger than it was then, indicates that the supply must be very great. The government has not yet granted to private individuals the privilege of importing machinery and laborers, and proving whether or not mining can be
carried on profitably on a large scale. A fragment of rock from this region was shown me at Kema by a gentleman, who said he knew where there were large quantities of it; and that specimen certainly was very rich in the precious metal. Gold is also found in the southwestern peninsula of Celebes, south of Macassar. The geological age of these auriferous rocks is not known, but I was assured that, back of Gorontalo, an outcropping of granite had been seen. Buffaloes and horses are plenty and cheap at Gorontalo, and many are sent by sea to the Minahassa. The horses are very fine, and from the earliest times the Bugis have been accustomed to buy and kill them to eat, having learned that such flesh is a most delectable food, centuries before this was ascertained by the enlightened Parisians.
January 11th.—Last night and to-day the sea has been smooth, almost as smooth as glass, while we know that on the opposite or western side of Celebes there has been one continuous storm. This is why we have come down the eastern side of the island. Here the seasons on the east and west coasts alternate, as we have already noticed in Ceram and Buru, though those islands extend east and west, while Celebes extends north and south. To-day we passed through the Bangai group, lying between the Sula Islands and Celebes. From the appearance of the water, and from such soundings as are given, there appears to be only a depth of some thirty fathoms in the straits. These islands, therefore, not only have formed a part of the adjacent peninsula of Celebes, but do at the present day
A remarkable similarity has been noticed between the fauna of Bachian, near the southern end of Gilolo, and that of Celebes, and in the Bangai and the Sula Islands we probably behold the remnants of an old peninsula that once completely joined those two lands. When we compare Celebes and Gilolo, we notice that the Bangai and Sula groups, stretching off to the east and southeast from one of the eastern peninsulas of Celebes, are analogous in position to Gebi, Waigiu, and Battanta, and the adjacent islands which are but the remnants of a peninsula that in former times connected Gilolo to the old continent of New Guinea and Australia.
Now, at sunset, we were approaching the Buton Passage, which separates the large island of Buton from Wangi-wangi, “The Sweetscented Island.” This is a great highway for ships bound from Singapore to China in the west monsoon, and several are now here, drifting over the calm sea.
Buton is a hilly island, but no mountains appear. Its geological formation is said to consist of “recent limestone, containing madrepores and shells.” Here, again, we find indications of the wide upheaval that appears to be occurring in the whole archipelago, but especially in its eastern part. It is quite famous for the valuable cotton it produces, which, in the fineness and length of its fibres, is said to excel that raised in any other part of the archipelago, and is therefore highly valued by the Bugis and Macassars.
January 13th.—This morning we passed a large American man-ofwar coming down grandly from the west, under steam and a full press of canvas. It is a most agreeable and unexpected pleasure to see such a representation of our powerful navy in these remote seas.[51]
The next day we passed through Salayar Strait, which separates the southern end of the peninsula of Celebes from the Salayar Islands, and may be regarded as the boundary between the alternating wet and dry seasons on the opposite sides of Celebes.
January 15th.—Arrived back at Macassar. There is nothing but one continuous series of heavy, pouring showers, with sharp lightning and heavy thunder.
January 16th.—Sailed for Surabaya in Java. This morning there is only such a wind as sailors would call a fresh, but not a heavy gale. In all the wide area between Java and the line of islands east to Timur on the south, and the tenth degree of north latitude, none of those frightful gales known in the Bay of Bengal as cyclones, and in the China Sea as “typhoons,” have ever been experienced. The chief sources of solicitude to the navigator of the Java and the Banda Seas are the strong currents and many reefs of coral.
Our large steamer is little else than a great floating menagerie. We have, as usual, many native soldiers on board, and each has with him two or three pet parrots or cockatoos. Several of our passengers have dozens of large cages, containing crested pigeons from New Guinea, and representatives of nearly every species of parrot in that part of the archipelago. We have also more than a dozen different kinds of odd-looking monkeys, two or three of which are continually getting loose and upsetting the parrot-cages, and, before the sluggish Malays can approach them with a “rope’s end” unawares, they spring up the shrouds, and escape the punishment which they know their mischief deserves. These birds and monkeys are mostly purchased in the Spice Islands; and if all now on board this ship could be safely transported to New York or London, they would far excel the collection on exhibition in the Zoological Gardens of the latter city.
Besides the Chinese, Arabs, Malays, and other passengers forward, there is a Buginese woman, a raving maniac. She is securely shackled by an iron band around the ankle to a ring-bolt in the deck. One moment she is swaying to and fro, and moaning as if in the greatest mental agony and despair, and, the next moment, stamping and screeching in a perfect rage, her long hair streaming in the wind, her eyes bloodshot, and flashing fire like a tigress which has been robbed of her young. It would be difficult to fancy a more frightful picture. They are taking her to the mad-house near Samarang, where all such unfortunates are kindly cared for by the government. Her nation, the Bugis or Buginese, are famous for “running a muck.” Amuk, which was written by the early navigators “a muck,” is a common term in all parts of the archipelago for any reckless, bloody onset, whether made by one or more. It is, however, generally used by foreigners for those insane attacks which the Malays sometimes make on any one, generally to satisfy a feeling of revenge. When they have decided to commit a murder of this kind, they usually take opium, and, when partially under its influence, rush out into the street with a large knife and try to butcher the first person they may chance to meet. Many years ago such émeutes were of frequent occurrence, and even at the present time most of the natives who stand guard in the city of Batavia are each armed with a
long staff, on the end of which is a Y-shaped fork, provided on the inner side with barbs pointing backward. This is thrust against the neck of the murderer, and he is thus secured without danger to the policeman.
CHAPTER XII. SUMATRA.
On the third day from Macassar we arrived safely at Surabaya, and thence proceeded westward to Samarang, and, on the first of February, 1866, I was again in Batavia, having been absent in the eastern part of the archipelago eight months. Through the courtesy of Messrs. Dümmler & Co., of that city, who obligingly offered to receive and store my collections and forward them to America, I was left entirely free to commence a new journey.
The generous offer of the governor-general to give me an order for post-horses free over all parts of Java was duly considered; but as many naturalists and travellers have described it already, I determined to proceed to Sumatra, and, if possible, travel in the interior of that unexplored island, and, accordingly, on the 12th of February, I took passage for Padang on the Menado, the same steamer in which I had already travelled so many hundred miles.
Transcriber’s Note: Map is clickable for a larger version.
ISLAND of SUMATRA
To Illustrate Professor Bickmore’s Travels.
Edwᵈ Weller
From Batavia we soon steamed away to the Strait of Sunda, and once more it was my privilege to behold the lofty peaks in the southern end of Sumatra. From that point as far north as Cape Indrapura the coast is generally bordered with a narrow band of low land, from which rises a high and almost continuous chain of mountains extending parallel with the southwest, or, as the Dutch always call it, the “west” coast, all the way north to Achin.
The next morning, after passing the lofty peak of Indrapura, found us steaming in under the hills and high mountains that stand by the sea at Padang and rise tier above tier until they reach the crest of the Barizan chain, producing one of the grandest effects to be enjoyed on the shores of any island in the whole archipelago. Padang, unfortunately, has no harbor, and the place where ships are obliged to anchor is an open, exposed roadstead. There is a sheltered harbor farther to the south, but it would cost a large sum to build a good road from Padang to it by cutting down the hills and bridging the ravines. The distance from the anchorage to the city is some three miles, and all the products exported must be taken out to the ships on barges.
The city of Padang is situated on a small plain, whence its name; padang in Malay, meaning an open field or plain. Its population numbers about twelve thousand, and is composed of emigrants from Nias, Java, some Chinese and Arabs, and their mestizo descendants, besides the natives and Dutch. The streets are well shaded and neat. Near the centre of the city is a large, beautiful lawn, on one side of which is the residence of the governor. On the opposite side is the Club-House, a large and well-proportioned building. On the south side is a small stream where the natives haul up their boats, and here the barges take in their cargoes. This part of the city is chiefly filled with the store-houses and offices of the merchants. In front of the governor’s residence is a large common. Two of its sides are occupied by private residences and the church, the roof of which has fallen in, and indeed the whole structure is in a most dilapidated condition compared to the rich Club-House on the other side of the green. Having landed and taken up my quarters at a
hotel, I called on Governor Van den Bosche, who received me politely, and said that the inspector of posts, Mr. Theben Terville, whose duty it is not only to care for transporting the mails, but also to supervise and lay out the post-roads, had just arrived from Java, and must make an overland journey to Siboga, in order to examine a route that had been proposed for a post-road to that place.
He had promised the inspector, who was an old gentleman, the use of his “American,” a light four-wheeled carriage made in Boston. There was room for two in it, and he would propose to the inspector to take me with him, and further provide me with letters to the chief officials along the way; but as it would be two or three days before Mr. Terville, who was then in the interior, would be ready to start, he proposed that I should leave the hotel and make my home with him as long as I might remain in Padang. “Besides,” he added, “I have eight good carriage-horses in the stable, and I have so much writing to do that they are spoiling for want of exercise; now, if you will come, you can ride whenever you please.” So again I found myself in the full tide of fortune. It is scarcely necessary to add that I did not fail to avail myself of such a generous offer. In the evenings, when it became cool, the governor was accustomed to ride through the city, and occasionally out a short distance into the country. Our roads were usually shaded with tall trees, frequently with palms, and to fly along beneath them in a nice carriage, drawn by a span of fleet ponies, was a royal pleasure, and one never to be forgotten. One pleasant day we drove out a few miles to a large garden where the governor formerly resided. The palace had been taken down, but a fine garden and a richly-furnished bathing-house yet remain. The road out from Padang to this place led through a series of low ricelands, and just then the young blades were six or eight inches high, and waved charmingly in the morning breeze. The road, for a long distance, was perfectly straight and bordered by large shade-trees. It was one of the finest avenues I ever saw. Here I was reminded of the region from which I had so lately come, the Spice Islands, by a small clove-tree, well filled with fruit. Much attention was formerly given here to the culture of the clove, but for some years raising coffee has proved the most profitable mode of employing native labor. There were also some fine animals in various parts of the
garden, among which was a pair of the spotted deer, Axis maculata Thus several days glided by, and the time for me to go up into the interior and meet the inspector came almost before I was aware of it.
February 21st, 1866.—At 8 . . we started from Padang for Fort de Kock, sixty miles from this city. A heavy shower during the night has purified the air, and we have a clear, cool, and in its fullest sense a lovely morning. This “American” is generally drawn by two horses, but the governor has had thills put on so that one may be used, for he says, between Fort de Kock, where the present post-road ends, and Siboga, a distance of about one hundred and ninety miles, by the crooked route that we must travel, that we shall find it difficult to get one horse for a part of the way. Behind the carriage a small seat is fastened where my footman sits or stands. His duty is to help change the horses at the various stations, which are about five miles apart. When the horses are harnessed his next duty is to get them started, which is by far the most difficult, for most of those we have used to-day have been trained for the saddle, and we have not dared to put on any breeching for fear of losing our fender, these brutes are so ready to use their heels, though fortunately we have not needed any hold-back but once or twice, and then, by having the footman act as hold-back himself with a long line, I have urged on the horse, and in every case we have come down to the bottom of the hill safely. With only a weak coolie tugging behind, of course I have not been able to make these wild horses resist the temptation to go down the hill at a trot, and, after running and holding back until he was out of breath, the coolie has always let go, generally when I was half-way down; nothing of course then remained to be done but to keep the horse galloping so fast that the carriage cannot run on to him, and by the time we have come to the bottom of the hill we have been moving at a break-neck rate, which has been the more solicitous for me, as I had never been on the road, and did not know what unexpected rocks or holes there would be found round the next sharp turn.
From Padang the road led to the northwest, over the low lands between the sea and the foot of the Barizan, or coast chain of mountains. In this low region we have crossed two large streams,
which come down from these elevations on the right, and are now quite swollen from the recent rains. A long and large rattan is stretched across from one bank to the other, and a path made to slip over it is fastened to one end of a rude raft. This rattan prevents us from being swept down the boiling stream, while the natives push over the raft with long poles. I began to realize what an advantage it was to ride in the carriage of the Tuan Biza, or “Great Man,” as the Malays all call the governor. As soon as those on the opposite side of the stream saw the carriage they recognized it, and at once came over by holding on to the rattan with one hand and swimming with the other. In their struggles to hasten and kindly assist, several times the heads of a number of them were beneath the water when they came to the middle of the stream, where the current was strongest and the rattan very slack; but there was very little danger of their being drowned, for they are as amphibious as alligators. I had not been riding long over these low lands before I experienced a new and unexpected pleasure in beholding by the roadside numbers of beautiful tree-ferns, which, unlike their humbler representatives in our temperate regions, grow up into trees fifteen to eighteen feet high. They are interesting, not only on account of their graceful forms and limited distribution, but because they are the living representatives of a large family of trees that flourished during the coal period.
APPROACH TO THE “CLEFT,” NEAR PADANG
As we proceeded, our road approached the base of the Barizan chain until we were quite near them, and then curved again around some spur that projected toward the sea-shore. Late in the afternoon we came to the opening of a broad, triangular valley, and beheld on our right, and near the head of the valley, the towering peak of Singalang, whose summit is nine thousand eight hundred and eighty feet above the sea. Large numbers of natives were seen here travelling in company, returning homeward from the market at Kayu Tanam, the next village. Their holiday dress here as elsewhere is a bright red. Beyond Kayu Tanam the road ran along the side of a deep ravine, having in fact been cut in the soft rock, a narrow wall of it being left on the outer side to prevent carriages from sliding off into the deep chasm. Suddenly, as we whirled round the sharp corners while dashing through this place, we came into a deep cañon extending to the right and left, called by the Dutch the Kloof, or “Cleft,” a very proper name, for it is a great cleft in the Barizan chain. Up this cleft has been built a road by which all the rich products of the Padangsche Bovenlanden, or “Padang plateau,” are brought down to the coast. Opposite to us was a torrent pouring over the
perpendicular side of the cleft, which I judge to be about seventy-five feet in height. Where it curved over the side of the precipice it was confined, but, as soon as it began to fall, it spread out and came down, not in one continuous, unvarying sheet of water, but in a series of wavelets, until the whole resembled a huge comet trying, as it were, to escape from earth up to its proper place in the pure sky above it. On either side of this pulsating fall is a sheet of green vegetation, which has gained a foothold in every crevice and on every projecting ledge in the precipice. Behind the falling water there is a wall of black, volcanic rock, and at its foot is a mass of angular débris which has broken off from the cliff above. Now we turned sharply round to the north, and began ascending to the plateau. The cleft has not been formed in a straight but in a zigzag line, so that, in looking up or down, its sides seem to meet a short distance before you and prevent any farther advance in either direction; but, as you proceed, the road suddenly opens to the right or left, and thus the effect is never wearying. It resembles some of the dark cañons in our own country between the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, except that while their dark sides are of naked rock, the sides of this ravine are covered with a dense growth of vines, shrubs, and large trees, according to the steepness of the acclivities. Here were many trees and shrubs with very brilliantly-colored leaves. The whole scenery is so grand that no description, or even photograph, could convey an accurate idea of its magnificence. For four miles we rode up and up this chasm, and at last came on to the edge of the plateau at the village of Padang Panjang. We were then more than two thousand four hundred feet above the plain, having ascended about two thousand feet in four miles. Here the inspector left word for me to wait a couple of days for him, as he was still away to the south. Heavy showers continued the next day, so that I had little opportunity of travelling far; besides, it was very cool after coming up from the low, hot land by the shore. There is almost always a current of air either up or down this cleft, and the warm air of the coast region is brought into contact with the cool air of the plateau, and condensation and precipitation seems to occur here more abundantly than at any other place in the vicinity, the number of rainy days numbering two hundred and five. This is no doubt due to the
local causes already explained. The average temperature here is 49.28° Fahrenheit. In the cleft, at one or two places, are a few houses made by the people who have moved down from the plateau. They are placed on posts two or three feet above the ground. Their walls are low, only three or four feet high, and made of a rude kind of panel-work, and painted red. Large open places are left for windows, which allow any one passing to look in. There are no partitions and no chairs nor benches, and the natives squat down on the rough floor. It requires no careful scrutiny of these hovels to see that they are vastly more filthy than the bamboo huts of the Malays who live on the low land.
In all the villages I have passed to-day, both on the low land and here on the plateau, there is a pasar, or market, and, where they have been erected by the natives, they are the most remarkable buildings I have seen in the archipelago. They are perched upon posts like the houses. The ridge-pole, instead of being horizontal, curves up so high at each end, that the roof comes to have the form of a crescent with the horns pointing upward. Sometimes a shorter roof is placed in the middle of the longer, and then the two look like a small crescent within a large one. Long before Europeans came to this land these people were accustomed to meet to barter their products, and this was their only kind of internal commerce. The next morning I rode part way down the cleft to near the place where the post-horses are changed, and found a marble that was soft, but so crystalline as to contain no fossils. I understand, however, that Mr. Van Dijk, one of the government mining engineers, discovered some pieces of this limestone which had not been crystallized, and that he considered the species of corals seen in them to be entirely of the recent period. Limestone again appears in the cleft of Paningahan, a short distance to the south. The rocks with which it is interstratified are chloritic schists, that is, layers of clay changed into hard schists by the action of heat and pressure.
February 23d.—The inspector arrived this morning, and we set out together for Fort de Kock, about twelve miles distant. From Padang Panjang the road continues to rise to the crest of a ridge or col, which crossed our road in an easterly and westerly direction, and
connects Mount Singalang with Mount Mérapi. This acclivity is very nicely terraced, and the water is retained in the little plats by dikes. When any excess is poured into the uppermost in the series, it runs over into those beneath it, and thus a constant supply of water is kept over all. On looking upward we saw only the vertical sides of the little terraces covered with turf, and, in looking down, only the ricefields. Near the crest of the col we could look down the flanks of the Mérapi to Lake Sinkara away to the south. The earth here is a tenacious red clay formed by the decomposition of the underlying volcanic rocks and volcanic ashes and sand. These are arranged in layers which have an inclination nearly parallel to the surface. The layers of ashes and sand may have been partly formed in their present position by successive eruptions in the summits of the neighboring peaks, but those of clay show that the col has been elevated somewhat since they were formed. The height of this col is three thousand seven hundred feet, and this is the highest place crossed by the road from Padang to Siboga. We now began slowly to descend, passing wide, beautifully-cultivated sawas on either hand to Fort de Kock. Here on a pretty terrace is located the house of the Resident, who has command of the adjoining elevated lands, so famous in the history of this island as the kingdom of Menangkabau, whence the Malays originally migrated, whom we have found on the shores of all the islands we have visited, and who are very distinct from the aborigines of these islands, as we have particularly noticed at Buru.
WOMAN OF THE PADANG PLATEAU
The dress of the men here is not very different from that of the Malays of Java, but the costume of the women is remarkable. On the head is worn a long scarf, wound round like a turban, one end being allowed to hang down, sometimes over the forehead, and sometimes on one side, or on the back of the head. The upper part of the body is clothed in a baju of the common pattern, and passing over one shoulder, across the breast, and under the opposite arm is a long, bright-colored scarf. The ends of this, as well as that worn on the head, are ornamented with imitations of leaves and fruit, very tastefully wrought with gold thread. At the waist is fastened the sarong, which is not sewn up at the ends as in other parts of the archipelago. It is therefore nothing but a piece of calico, about a yard long, wound round the body, and the two ends gathered on the right
hip, where they are twisted together, and tucked under, so as to form a rude knot. As the sarong is thus open on the right side, it is thrown apart higher than the knee at every step, like the statues representing the goddess Diana in hunting-costume. Their most remarkable custom, however, is distending the lobe of the ear, as seen in the accompanying cut from a photograph of one of the women at the kampong here at Fort de Kock. When young, an incision is made in the lobe, and a stiff leaf is rolled up, and thrust into it, in such a way that the tendency of the leaf to unroll will stretch the incision. When one leaf has lost its elasticity it is exchanged for another, and, in this way, the opening increases until it is an inch in diameter. This must be a very painful process, judging from the degree to which the ears of the young girls are inflamed and swollen. A saucer-shaped ornament, with a groove in its rim, is then put into the ear, exactly as a stud is put into a gentleman’s shirt-bosom. It is generally made of gold, and the central part consists of a very fine open work, so that it is very light, yet the opening in the ear continues to increase until it is frequently an inch and a half in diameter, and almost large enough for the wearer to pass one of her hands through. The front part of the loop is then only attached to the head by a round bundle of muscles, smaller than a pipe-stem, and the individual is obliged to lay aside her ornaments or have the lower part of her ears changed into long, dangling strings. While these ornaments (for it is not proper to call such a saucer-shaped article a ring) can be worn in the ear, the appearance of the native women, as seen in the cut, is like that of the other Malay women; but as soon as these ornaments are taken out, and the lobes of their ears are seen to be nothing but long loops, their appearance then becomes very repulsive. The men are never guilty of this loathsome practice. A similar habit of distending the lobe of the ear prevails in Borneo, among the Dyak women. It is also seen in all the Chinese and Japanese images of Buddha, The native women of India are accustomed to wear several small rings, not only all round in the edge of the ear, but in the nostrils. A large number of rings are shown in the ear of the cut of a Dyak or head-hunter of Borneo. Even in the most civilized lands this same barbaric idea—that a lady is
