THE name at the head of this page is probably unknown to the English
reader, and yet I think it should become a household word like that of
Garibaldi or John Brown. Some day soon, we may expect to hear more fully
the details of Yoshida’s history, and the degree of his influence in the
transformation of Japan; even now there must be Englishmen acquainted
with the subject, and perhaps the appearance of this sketch may elicit
something more complete and exact. I wish to say that I am not, rightly
speaking, the author of the present paper: I tell the story on the
authority of an intelligent Japanese gentleman, Mr. Taiso Masaki, who
told it me with an emotion that does honour to his heart; and though I
have taken some pains, and sent my notes to him to be corrected, this can
be no more than an imperfect outline.
Yoshida-Torajiro was son to the hereditary military instructor of the
house of Choshu. The name you are to pronounce with an equality of
accent on the different syllables, almost as in French, the vowels as in
Italian, but the consonants in the English manner—except the _j_, which
has the French sound, or, as it has been cleverly proposed to write it,
the sound of _zh_. Yoshida was very learned in Chinese letters, or, as
we might say, in the classics, and in his father’s subject; fortification
was among his favourite studies, and he was a poet from his boyhood. He
was born to a lively and intelligent patriotism; the condition of Japan
was his great concern; and while he projected a better future, he lost no
opportunity of improving his knowledge of her present state. With this
end he was continually travelling in his youth, going on foot and
sometimes with three days’ provision on his back, in the brave,
self-helpful manner of all heroes. He kept a full diary while he was
thus upon his journeys, but it is feared that these notes have been
destroyed. If their value were in any respect such as we have reason to
expect from the man’s character, this would be a loss not easy to
exaggerate. It is still wonderful to the Japanese how far he contrived
to push these explorations; a cultured gentleman of that land and period
would leave a complimentary poem wherever he had been hospitably
entertained; and a friend of Mr. Masaki, who was likewise a great
wanderer, has found such traces of Yoshida’s passage in very remote
regions of Japan.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is
thought necessary; but Yoshida considered otherwise, and he studied the
miseries of his fellow-countrymen with as much attention and research as
though he had been going to write a book instead of merely to propose a
remedy. To a man of his intensity and singleness, there is no question
but that this survey was melancholy in the extreme. His dissatisfaction
is proved by the eagerness with which he threw himself into the cause of
reform; and what would have discouraged another braced Yoshida for his
task. As he professed the theory of arms, it was firstly the defences of
Japan that occupied his mind. The external feebleness of that country
was then illustrated by the manners of overriding barbarians, and the
visits of big barbarian war ships: she was a country beleaguered. Thus
the patriotism of Yoshida took a form which may be said to have defeated
itself: he had it upon him to keep out these all-powerful foreigners,
whom it is now one of his chief merits to have helped to introduce; but a
man who follows his own virtuous heart will be always found in the end to
have been fighting for the best. One thing leads naturally to another in
an awakened mind, and that with an upward progress from effect to cause.
The power and knowledge of these foreigners were things inseparable; by
envying them their military strength, Yoshida came to envy them their
culture; from the desire to equal them in the first, sprang his desire to
share with them in the second; and thus he is found treating in the same
book of a new scheme to strengthen the defences of Kioto and of the
establishment, in the same city, of a university of foreign teachers. He
hoped, perhaps, to get the good of other lands without their evil; to
enable Japan to profit by the knowledge of the barbarians, and still keep
her inviolate with her own arts and virtues. But whatever was the
precise nature of his hope, the means by which it was to be accomplished
were both difficult and obvious. Some one with eyes and understanding
must break through the official cordon, escape into the new world, and
study this other civilisation on the spot. And who could be better
suited for the business? It was not without danger, but he was without
fear. It needed preparation and insight; and what had he done since he
was a child but prepare himself with the best culture of Japan, and
acquire in his excursions the power and habit of observing?
He was but twenty-two, and already all this was clear in his mind, when
news reached Choshu that Commodore Perry was lying near to Yeddo. Here,
then, was the patriot’s opportunity. Among the Samurai of Choshu, and in
particular among the councillors of the Daimio, his general culture, his
views, which the enlightened were eager to accept, and, above all, the
prophetic charm, the radiant persuasion of the man, had gained him many
and sincere disciples. He had thus a strong influence at the provincial
Court; and so he obtained leave to quit the district, and, by way of a
pretext, a privilege to follow his profession in Yeddo. Thither he
hurried, and arrived in time to be too late: Perry had weighed anchor,
and his sails had vanished from the waters of Japan. But Yoshida, having
put his hand to the plough, was not the man to go back; he had entered
upon this business, and, please God, he would carry it through; and so he
gave up his professional career and remained in Yeddo to be at hand
against the next opportunity. By this behaviour he put himself into an
attitude towards his superior, the Daimio of Choshu, which I cannot
thoroughly explain. Certainly, he became a _Ronyin_, a broken man, a
feudal outlaw; certainly he was liable to be arrested if he set foot upon
his native province; yet I am cautioned that “he did not really break his
allegiance,” but only so far separated himself as that the prince could
no longer be held accountable for his late vassal’s conduct. There is
some nicety of feudal custom here that escapes my comprehension.
In Yeddo, with this nondescript political status, and cut off from any
means of livelihood, he was joyfully supported by those who sympathised
with his design. One was Sákuma-Shozan, hereditary retainer of one of
the Shogun’s councillors, and from him he got more than money or than
money’s worth. A steady, respectable man, with an eye to the world’s
opinion, Sákuma was one of those who, if they cannot do great deeds in
their own person, have yet an ardour of admiration for those who can,
that recommends them to the gratitude of history. They aid and abet
greatness more, perhaps, than we imagine. One thinks of them in
connection with Nicodemus, who visited our Lord by night. And Sákuma was
in a position to help Yoshida more practically than by simple
countenance; for he could read Dutch, and was eager to communicate what
he knew.
While the young Ronyin thus lay studying in Yeddo, news came of a Russian
ship at Nangasaki. No time was to be lost. Sákuma contributed “a long
copy of encouraging verses;” and off set Yoshida on foot for Nangasaki.
His way lay through his own province of Choshu; but, as the highroad to
the south lay apart from the capital, he was able to avoid arrest. He
supported himself, like a _trouvère_, by his proficiency in verse. He
carried his works along with him, to serve as an introduction. When he
reached a town he would inquire for the house of any one celebrated for
swordsmanship, or poetry, or some of the other acknowledged forms of
culture; and there, on giving a taste of his skill, he would be received
and entertained, and leave behind him, when he went away, a compliment in
verse. Thus he travelled through the Middle Ages on his voyage of
discovery into the nineteenth century. When he reached Nangasaki he was
once more too late. The Russians were gone. But he made a profit on his
journey in spite of fate, and stayed awhile to pick up scraps of
knowledge from the Dutch interpreters—a low class of men, but one that
had opportunities; and then, still full of purpose, returned to Yeddo on
foot, as he had come.
It was not only his youth and courage that supported him under these
successive disappointments, but the continual affluence of new disciples.
The man had the tenacity of a Bruce or a Columbus, with a pliability that
was all his own. He did not fight for what the world would call success;
but for “the wages of going on.” Check him off in a dozen directions, he
would find another outlet and break forth. He missed one vessel after
another, and the main work still halted; but so long as he had a single
Japanese to enlighten and prepare for the better future, he could still
feel that he was working for Japan. Now, he had scarce returned from
Nangasaki, when he was sought out by a new inquirer, the most promising
of all. This was a common soldier, of the Hemming class, a dyer by
birth, who had heard vaguely {179} of Yoshida’s movements, and had become
filled with wonder as to their design. This was a far different inquirer
from Sákuma-Shozan, or the councillors of the Daimio of Choshu. This was
no two-sworded gentleman, but the common stuff of the country, born in
low traditions and unimproved by books; and yet that influence, that
radiant persuasion that never failed Yoshida in any circumstance of his
short life, enchanted, enthralled, and converted the common soldier, as
it had done already with the elegant and learned. The man instantly
burned up into a true enthusiasm; his mind had been only waiting for a
teacher; he grasped in a moment the profit of these new ideas; he, too,
would go to foreign, outlandish parts, and bring back the knowledge that
was to strengthen and renew Japan; and in the meantime, that he might be
the better prepared, Yoshida set himself to teach, and he to learn, the
Chinese literature. It is an episode most honourable to Yoshida, and yet
more honourable still to the soldier, and to the capacity and virtue of
the common people of Japan.
And now, at length, Commodore Perry returned to Simoda. Friends crowded
round Yoshida with help, counsels, and encouragement. One presented him
with a great sword, three feet long and very heavy, which, in the
exultation of the hour, he swore to carry throughout all his wanderings,
and to bring back—a far-travelled weapon—to Japan. A long letter was
prepared in Chinese for the American officers; it was revised and
corrected by Sákuma, and signed by Yoshida, under the name of
Urinaki-Manji, and by the soldier under that of Ichigi-Koda. Yoshida had
supplied himself with a profusion of materials for writing; his dress was
literally stuffed with paper which was to come back again enriched with
his observations, and make a great and happy kingdom of Japan. Thus
equipped, this pair of emigrants set forward on foot from Yeddo, and
reached Simoda about nightfall. At no period within history can travel
have presented to any European creature the same face of awe and terror
as to these courageous Japanese. The descent of Ulysses into hell is a
parallel more near the case than the boldest expedition in the Polar
circles. For their act was unprecedented; it was criminal; and it was to
take them beyond the pale of humanity into a land of devils. It is not
to be wondered at if they were thrilled by the thought of their unusual
situation; and perhaps the soldier gave utterance to the sentiment of
both when he sang, “in Chinese singing” (so that we see he had already
profited by his lessons), these two appropriate verses:
“We do not know where we are to sleep to-night,
In a thousand miles of desert where we can see no human smoke.”
In a little temple, hard by the sea-shore, they lay down to repose; sleep
overtook them as they lay; and when they awoke, “the east was already
white” for their last morning in Japan. They seized a fisherman’s boat
and rowed out—Perry lying far to sea because of the two tides. Their
very manner of boarding was significant of determination; for they had no
sooner caught hold upon the ship than they kicked away their boat to make
return impossible. And now you would have thought that all was over.
But the Commodore was already in treaty with the Shogun’s Government; it
was one of the stipulations that no Japanese was to be aided in escaping
from Japan; and Yoshida and his followers were handed over as prisoners
to the authorities at Simoda. That night he who had been to explore the
secrets of the barbarian slept, if he might sleep at all, in a cell too
short for lying down at full length, and too low for standing upright.
There are some disappointments too great for commentary.
Sákuma, implicated by his handwriting, was sent into his own province in
confinement, from which he was soon released. Yoshida and the soldier
suffered a long and miserable period of captivity, and the latter,
indeed, died, while yet in prison, of a skin disease. But such a spirit
as that of Yoshida-Torajiro is not easily made or kept a captive; and
that which cannot be broken by misfortune you shall seek in vain to
confine in a bastille. He was indefatigably active, writing reports to
Government and treatises for dissemination. These latter were
contraband; and yet he found no difficulty in their distribution, for he
always had the jailor on his side. It was in vain that they kept
changing him from one prison to another; Government by that plan only
hastened the spread of new ideas; for Yoshida had only to arrive to make
a convert. Thus, though he himself has laid by the heels, he confirmed
and extended his party in the State.
At last, after many lesser transferences, he was given over from the
prisons of the Shogun to those of his own superior, the Daimio of Choshu.
I conceive it possible that he may then have served out his time for the
attempt to leave Japan, and was now resigned to the provincial Government
on a lesser count, as a Ronyin or feudal rebel. But, however that may
be, the change was of great importance to Yoshida; for by the influence
of his admirers in the Daimio’s council, he was allowed the privilege,
underhand, of dwelling in his own house. And there, as well to keep up
communication with his fellow-reformers as to pursue his work of
education, he received boys to teach. It must not be supposed that he
was free; he was too marked a man for that; he was probably assigned to
some small circle, and lived, as we should say, under police
surveillance; but to him, who had done so much from under lock and key,
this would seem a large and profitable liberty.
It was at this period that Mr. Masaki was brought into personal contact
with Yoshida; and hence, through the eyes of a boy of thirteen, we get
one good look at the character and habits of the hero. He was ugly and
laughably disfigured with the smallpox; and while nature had been so
niggardly with him from the first, his personal habits were even
sluttish. His clothes were wretched; when he ate or washed he wiped his
hands upon his sleeves; and as his hair was not tied more than once in
the two months, it was often disgusting to behold. With such a picture,
it is easy to believe that he never married. A good teacher, gentle in
act, although violent and abusive in speech, his lessons were apt to go
over the heads of his scholars and to leave them gaping, or more often
laughing. Such was his passion for study that he even grudged himself
natural repose; and when he grew drowsy over his books he would, if it
was summer, put mosquitoes up his sleeve; and, if it was winter, take off
his shoes and run barefoot on the snow. His handwriting was
exceptionally villainous; poet though he was, he had no taste for what
was elegant; and in a country where to write beautifully was not the mark
of a scrivener but an admired accomplishment for gentlemen, he suffered
his letters to be jolted out of him by the press of matter and the heat
of his convictions. He would not tolerate even the appearance of a
bribe; for bribery lay at the root of much that was evil in Japan, as
well as in countries nearer home; and once when a merchant brought him
his son to educate, and added, as was customary, {185} a little private
sweetener, Yoshida dashed the money in the giver’s face, and launched
into such an outbreak of indignation as made the matter public in the
school. He was still, when Masaki knew him, much weakened by his
hardships in prison; and the presentation sword, three feet long, was too
heavy for him to wear without distress; yet he would always gird it on
when he went to dig in his garden. That is a touch which qualifies the
man. A weaker nature would have shrunk from the sight of what only
commemorated a failure. But he was of Thoreau’s mind, that if you can
“make your failure tragical by courage, it will not differ from success.”
He could look back without confusion to his enthusiastic promise. If
events had been contrary, and he found himself unable to carry out that
purpose—well, there was but the more reason to be brave and constant in
another; if he could not carry the sword into barbarian lands, it should
at least be witness to a life spent entirely for Japan.
This is the sight we have of him as he appeared to schoolboys, but not
related in the schoolboy spirit. A man so careless of the graces must be
out of court with boys and women. And, indeed, as we have all been more
or less to school, it will astonish no one that Yoshida was regarded by
his scholars as a laughing-stock. The schoolboy has a keen sense of
humour. Heroes he learns to understand and to admire in books; but he is
not forward to recognise the heroic under the traits of any contemporary
man, and least of all in a brawling, dirty, and eccentric teacher. But
as the years went by, and the scholars of Yoshida continued in vain to
look around them for the abstractly perfect, and began more and more to
understand the drift of his instructions, they learned to look back upon
their comic school-master as upon the noblest of mankind.
The last act of this brief and full existence was already near at hand.
Some of his work was done; for already there had been Dutch teachers
admitted into Nangasaki, and the country at large was keen for the new
learning. But though the renaissance had begun, it was impeded and
dangerously threatened by the power of the Shogun. His minister—the same
who was afterwards assassinated in the snow in the very midst of his
bodyguard—not only held back pupils from going to the Dutchmen, but by
spies and detectives, by imprisonment and death, kept thinning out of
Japan the most intelligent and active spirits. It is the old story of a
power upon its last legs—learning to the bastille, and courage to the
block; when there are none left but sheep and donkeys, the State will
have been saved. But a man must not think to cope with a Revolution; nor
a minister, however fortified with guards, to hold in check a country
that had given birth to such men as Yoshida and his soldier-follower.
The violence of the ministerial Tarquin only served to direct attention
to the illegality of his master’s rule; and people began to turn their
allegiance from Yeddo and the Shogun to the long-forgotten Mikado in his
seclusion at Kioto. At this juncture, whether in consequence or not, the
relations between these two rulers became strained; and the Shogun’s
minister set forth for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful
sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It
was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of
political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To
Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself
still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but
with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun’s minister. A party of his
followers were to waylay the tyrant at a village on the Yeddo and Kioto
road, present him with a petition, and put him to the sword. But Yoshida
and his friends were closely observed; and the too great expedition of
two of the conspirators, a boy of eighteen and his brother, wakened the
suspicion of the authorities, and led to a full discovery of the plot and
the arrest of all who were concerned.
In Yeddo, to which he was taken, Yoshida was thrown again into a strict
confinement. But he was not left destitute of sympathy in this last hour
of trial. In the next cell lay one Kusákabé, a reformer from the
southern highlands of Satzuma. They were in prison for different plots
indeed, but for the same intention; they shared the same beliefs and the
same aspirations for Japan; many and long were the conversations they
held through the prison wall, and dear was the sympathy that soon united
them. It fell first to the lot of Kusákabé to pass before the judges;
and when sentence had been pronounced he was led towards the place of
death below Yoshida’s window. To turn the head would have been to
implicate his fellow-prisoner; but he threw him a look from his eye, and
bade him farewell in a loud voice, with these two Chinese verses:—
“It is better to be a crystal and be broken,
Than to remain perfect like a tile upon the housetop.”
So Kusákabé, from the highlands of Satzuma, passed out of the theatre of
this world. His death was like an antique worthy’s.
A little after, and Yoshida too must appear before the Court. His last
scene was of a piece with his career, and fitly crowned it. He seized on
the opportunity of a public audience, confessed and gloried in his
design, and, reading his auditors a lesson in the history of their
country, told at length the illegality of the Shogun’s power and the
crimes by which its exercise was sullied. So, having said his say for
once, he was led forth and executed, thirty-one years old.
A military engineer, a bold traveller (at least in wish), a poet, a
patriot, a schoolmaster, a friend to learning, a martyr to reform,—there
are not many men, dying at seventy, who have served their country in such
various characters. He was not only wise and provident in thought, but
surely one of the fieriest of heroes in execution. It is hard to say
which is most remarkable—his capacity for command, which subdued his very
jailors; his hot, unflagging zeal; or his stubborn superiority to defeat.
He failed in each particular enterprise that he attempted; and yet we
have only to look at his country to see how complete has been his general
success. His friends and pupils made the majority of leaders in that
final Revolution, now some twelve years old; and many of them are, or
were until the other day, high placed among the rulers of Japan. And
when we see all round us these brisk intelligent students, with their
strange foreign air, we should never forget how Yoshida marched afoot
from Choshu to Yeddo, and from Yeddo to Nangasaki, and from Nangasaki
back again to Yeddo; how he boarded the American ship, his dress stuffed
with writing material; nor how he languished in prison, and finally gave
his death, as he had formerly given all his life and strength and
leisure, to gain for his native land that very benefit which she now
enjoys so largely. It is better to be Yoshida and perish, than to be
only Sákuma and yet save the hide. Kusákabé, of Satzuma, has said the
word: it is better to be a crystal and be broken.
I must add a word; for I hope the reader will not fail to perceive that
this is as much the story of a heroic people as that of a heroic man. It
is not enough to remember Yoshida; we must not forget the common soldier,
nor Kusákabé, nor the boy of eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness
betrayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the same days
with these great-hearted gentlemen. Only a few miles from us, to speak
by the proportion of the universe, while I was droning over my lessons,
Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of the
mosquito; and while you were grudging a penny income tax, Kusákabé was
stepping to death with a noble sentence on his lips.