■ Source: “Chinggis on the Japanese Mind,” Mongolian Studies: Journal of the Mongolia Society XXXI (The Mongolia Society, 2009), 259–69.

Chinggis on the Japanese Mind

A specialist on neither Mongolian nor Inner Asian history, my discussion of Chinggis Khan centers on the uses to which his perceived heroic stature was put in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century . I came across the stories that will unfold in this essay twice in the process of other, tangential research. Most recently, I completed the translation of a novel about the life of Chinggis Khan by the great historical novelist Inoue Yasushi 井上靖 (1907–91), entitled Aoki ōkami 蒼き狼 (The Blue Wolf), which appeared in 2008 from Columbia University Press. It was made into a blockbuster movie released in 2007 (http://www.aoki-ookami.com/) and shot on location in Mongolia. The earlier occasion was the translation of a work by Masuda Wataru 増田渉 (1903–77), Seigaku tōzen to Chūgoku jijō, “zassho” sakki 西学東漸と中国事 情、「雑書」札記 (The eastern movement of western learning and con- ditions in China, notes on “various books”), which appeared in English as Japan and China: Mutual Representations in the Modern Era in 2000.1 Rough contemporaries, Inoue and Masuda came of age in the vibrant Taishō era and would have encountered the second incarnation of the Chinggis tale in Japan firsthand. The name of Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 is extremely well known, indeed a household name, in Japan, although likely to be recognized only by specialists elsewhere. He was born in 1159 during the tumultuous times at the end of the (794–1185). That same year Yoshitsune’s father and two of his older brothers were killed amid the civil wars of the time, while he and his mother found protection in a temple near . He later joined the fighting, allegedly became a great hero, performed extraordinary feats, was famed for his ability to cut leaves with his sword as they floated to the ground from trees and various other exemplary talents, and has had his tale sung in countless fictional and semi-fictional renditions ever since. He was ultimately betrayed and compelled to commit ritual suicide in 1189—at the tender age of 29 or 30. He later became the heroic central figure of the celebrated historical novel, Heike monogatari 平家物語 (Tale of the Heike). However, for those Japanese unable to accept his death—something he seems prepared to have acknowledged himself, if his seppuku 切腹 or ritual

1 Original: (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1979); translation: (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004285309_009 102 Chinggis on the Japanese Mind self-disembowelment is any indication—legends soon grew up around his stunning escape from the jaws of death. The massive Edo-period collection, Dai Nihon shi 大日本史, for example, claims that Yoshitsune may indeed have died in 1189, but goes on to note that it was generally believed that he escaped to Ezo 蝦夷, the toponym associated with what is now Hokkaidō, there to be deified by locals: “The story has been passed down that Yoshitsune did not die at Koromogawa no tate, but escaped to Ezo” 世伝義經不死於衣河館、遁至 蝦夷. “However, perhaps Yoshitsune’s death was faked and he escaped. To this day, Ezo locals revere Yoshitsune. They have enshrined and deified him” (然則 義經偽死而遁去乎、至今夷人祟奉義經、祀而神之).2 In fact, according to some late Edo texts, Yoshitsune’s devoted retainer, 弁慶 (immortal- ized in a statue of him standing with sword raised at the Gojō Bridge in Kyoto), helped him flee to the north. Yet this was not the end of speculations about Yoshitsune as evidenced in the work of Suematsu Kenchō 末松謙澄 (1855–1920), who was born into a low-ranking family in Fukuoka in 1855. Like many men of such back- grounds, he became a journalist, but in his case with extraordinary connec- tions in the political world, notably to Itō Hirobumi 伊藤博文, one of the most important political figures of the entire Meiji era. Suematsu eventually married one of Itō’s daughters. He somehow made his way to London, England in 1878 and two years later to Cambridge to study law. Given the bizarre views he published there, I was suspicious that he may have fabricated this part of his life story. I thus wrote the registrar at St. Johns College, Cambridge University, and learned that their records indicate that he did indeed complete his degree there. In 1879, the year after he arrived in England, Suematsu published (possi- bly, self-published) a volume in clearly non-native, though nonetheless highly impressive, English entitled: The Identity of the Great Conqueror Genghis

2 On Yoshitsune and the Dai Nihon shi, see Honda Mitsugi 本多貢, Naze Yoshitsune ga Jingisu kan ni naru no ka なぜ義経がジンギスカンになるのか (Why did Yoshitsune become Chinggis Khan?) (Sapporo: Hokkaidō kyōikusha, 1986), pp. 51–54. Arai Hakuseki 新井 白石 (1657–1725) suggests a similar story in his Takushi yoron 読史余論 (Lessons from history):「義經手ヲ束ネテ死ニ就べキ人ニアラズ、不審ノ事ナリ」(Yoshitsune was not the sort of man who would meet death passively. This is a highly suspicious story.)「今モ暇夷ノ地ニ義經家跡アリ。マタ夷人飲食ニ必マツルモノ、イハ ユル『オキクルミ』ト云フハ即義經ノ事ニテ、義經後ニハ奥へ行シナド云伝 へシ卜モ云フ」(Today there remain traces of Yoshitsune’s home in Ezo [=Hokkaidō]. Furthermore, there is something called “okikurumi” [there], which the locals claim, if one imbibes it, will cause one to be deified, and this refers to Yoshitsune, for Yoshitsune is said to have escaped to the interior).