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NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 14 Lost in History: Aizu and short answer is that they were from Wakamatsu, the castle town of Aizu domain, and were sub- the Meiji Restoration jects of Aizu’s daimyo, Matsudaira Katamori-–a John E. Van Sant prominent opponent of the Satsuma and Cho- University of Alabama-Birmingham shu-led movement that ultimately overthrew the shogun and the bakufu government. The Wa- On a hillside overlooking Gold Trail Ele- kamatsu colonists were on the losing side of the mentary School in an area of Coloma, California, Meiji Restoration; and like many people who end known as Gold Hill, there is a solitary grave of a up on the losing side of political upheaval, they young woman who died nearly 130 years ago. left their country as refugees in search of a new One side of the headstone reads, “In Memory of life. OKEI, Died 1871. Aged 19 years. (A Japanese This paper does not directly explore the issue Girl).” The other side is written in Japanese: of how these early Japanese immigrants struggled [nihon kokoku meiji shinen, gappi bossu, OKEI to survive in a strange land.3 It explores the no haka, gyonen jukyusai] issue of why they fled Japan for a strange land. Okei was a member of what is known as the Moreover, this paper challenges Japan’s national Wakamatsu Colony; a group of more than twenty narrative, a narrative that asserts a relatively Japanese who arrived in northern California in peaceful transfer of power from the Tokugawa the summer of 1869. Lasting for two years, the bakufu to the samurai leaders from Satsuma and Wakamatsu colonists built a tea and silk farm Choshu who claimed their tōbaku (anti-bakufu) which was initially successful but ultimately movement in the name of the Emperor. failed due to a lack of water and a lack of money. Most of the colonists then left the area, and the fates of only three are known in any detail. Matsudaira Katamori, Aizu and Civil War Okei was one of three Japanese who remained in Coloma.1 Tragically, she died – perhaps from When United States Navy Commodore Mat- malaria – soon after the breakup of the colony. thew Perry and his fleet of “black ships” ap- As the Wakamatsu Colony existed two dec- peared in Uraga Bay near Edo in 1853, Japan was ades before Japanese immigration to the United thrown into a state of confusion about how to States was even a trickle, why did this group of deal with the threat from the West. Two and a Japanese leave their familiar home in Aizu and 2 embark on a perilous journey overseas? The ing Office, 1872, p. 8, pp. 15-16, and pp. 90-91, there were 55 Japanese in the United States. 1Sakurai Matsunosuke worked as a farmhand and Thirty-three were in California; of these 22 were in lived the remainder of his life in Coloma, where he El Dorado County, all at Gold Hill in Coloma. died and was buried in 1901. It was Sakurai who The 1870 federal census is the first that lists Japa- had the headstone made for Okei’s grave. Ma- nese residents in the United States. The unpub- sumizu Kuninosuke lived in Coloma for more than lished manuscript schedules of the 1870 Census, ten years before moving to Sacramento, and then on State of California, El Dorado County contain the to Colusa where he died in 1915. While in Co- names of 22 Japanese at Coloma Township. loma, Masumizu married Carrie Wilson, a woman 3For a fuller account of these Japanese colonists in of Indian and African-American descent, and they California, see John E. Van Sant, Pacific Pioneers: had at least three children who survived infancy. Japanese Journeys to America and Hawaii, Masumizu’s descendants are the only known de- 1850-1880, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois scendants of the Japanese who left Aizu and came Press, 2000, chapter 6; Henry Taketa, “1969-The to California as part of the Wakamatsu Colony. See Centennial Year,” Pacific Historian, Vol. 13, No. 1; Note 4 for sources on the Wakamatsu Colony. Ki Kimura, “The Japanese Mayflower,” Japan 2According to Ninth Census of the United States, Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 3; and Ichiyo Yamamoto, The Statistics of the Population of the United States Wakamatsu koroni no ato wo tazunete, [1870], Volume 1, Washington: Government Print- Aizu-Wakamatsu: Northern Japan Publishers, 1985. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 15 half centuries after the West had been kicked out bines, Hidetada’s wife insisted that their son of Japan (with the exception of the handful of Iemitsu succeed Hidetada as shogun. Neverthe- Dutch allowed on Deshima Island in Nagasaki less, Hoshina and all Aizu daimyo who suc- Bay), they were back. Unlike two and a half ceeded him were close advisors to the Tokugawa centuries earlier, the Western powers–even a shogunate. middling power such as the United States–were In 1862, with Kyoto fast becoming the now far more powerful than Japan, both eco- headquarters for the anti-bakufu movement, the nomically and militarily. The Tokugawa sho- shogun appointed twenty-six year-old Matsudaira guns had no practical alternative except to sign Katamori of Aizu as shugoshoku (“defender”) of lopsided agreements on trade, extraterritoriality, the imperial capital. In this hazardous position, and other matters. The baku-han system, upon Matsudaira carefully navigated between the dis- which the legitimacy and hegemony of the To- parate anti-bakufu forces who demanded Japan’s kugawa bakufu depended, had been unraveling return to the national seclusion policy and the for many years. And then Perry’s arrival and expulsion of all foreigners, and the bakufu which the subsequent “unequal treaties” ripped wide contended that increased, regulated contact and open a Pandora’s Box of long-simmering griev- trade with the West was regrettable but inevita- ances among daimyo, their samurai vassals, and ble.6 In a message to the bakufu in late 1862, the Tokugawa bakufu. A few tozama domains Matsudaira criticized the shogun’s government with large numbers of samurai and the for treating foreigners “with consideration,” all-but-forgotten imperial house grabbed this leading to “a truly grievous state of affairs.”7 golden opportunity of Western-induced commo- Yet, he also disparaged the idea of returning to tion to challenge the legitimacy of Tokugawa the policy of national seclusion because Japan bakufu rule. would then “have no means of understanding Matsudaira Katamori (1835-1893) did not fit foreign conditions and adopting their ways where into the two major categories of daimyo: fudai they are good.”8 By this Matsudaira meant that (hereditary vassal of the Tokugawa shogunate) Westerners “built great ships and guns” which he and tozama (outside lord).4 He was one of a believed would help strengthen Japan’s own small number of kamon daimyo, a division of military forces.9 Such views may appear con- shimpan daimyo, who were related to the ruling tradictory, but they demonstrate Matsudaira’s Tokugawa family. 5 Hoshina Masayuki belief in Sakuma Shozan’s “Eastern ethics, West- (1611-1672), considered the founder of Aizu do- main, was a son of Tokugawa Hidetada, the sec- ond Tokugawa shogun. Because Hoshina’s 6Dating from the early 17th century, the national biological mother was one of Hidetada’s concu- seclusion policy (sakoku) was originally designed to limit trade and contact with the West. The national seclusion policy did not include Japan’s East Asian 4A useful, though somewhat romanticized biogra- neighbors, nor was it universally enforced. See phy of Matsudaira Katamori is Ryoichi Hoshi, Ma- Naohiro Asao, Sakoku, Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1975; tsudaira Katamori to sono jidai, Aizu-Wakamatsu: Ronald Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Rekishi Shubunsha, Northern Japan Publishers, Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa 1984. For another account of Aizu, Matsudaira Bakufu, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991, Katamori, and the Boshin War see Teruko Craig, 2nd edition; and Brett Walker, “Reappraising the “Introduction” in Goro Shiba, Remembering Aizu: Sakoku Paradigm: The Ezo Trade and the Extension The Testament of Shiba Goro, Honolulu: University of Tokugawa Political Space Into Hokkaido,” Jour- of Hawaii Press, 1999. nal of Asian History Vol. 30, No. 2 (1996). 5Another way to delineate the difference is that 7Matsudaira Katamori to bakufu, November 8, 1862, sanke daimyo (from the Tokugawa domains of Mito, in W.G. Beasley, ed. and trans., Select Documents Owari, and Kii) were the senior shimpan while the On Japanese Foreign Policy, 1853-1868, London: kamon were the junior shimpan. This difference Oxford University Press, 1955, pp. 225-26. among shimpan daimyo, however, was not always 8Ibid., p. 226. clear. 9Ibid. NOVEMBER 2000 EARLY MODERN JAPAN 16 ern science” philosophy that many samurai dismissed Matsudaira and his Aizu samurai from adopted during the turbulent bakumatsu era. guarding the palace in Kyoto.12 They were re- Furthermore, as Harold Bolitho writes of Matsu- placed by Satsuma and Choshu samurai, who had daira during this period, he “managed to tread a gained control of the imperial court and the fif- very distinct path which, while leaving him on teen year-old Emperor. In late January 1868, the reasonably good terms with both bakufu and forces of Aizu and Kuwana (the domain of Ma- Court also helped him avoid anything like a total tsudaira’s brother, Sadaaki), along with bakufu commitment to either of them.”10 Evidence of samurai from other Tokugawa domains, were this can be found in the November 1862 message defeated in fierce battles with Satsuma, Choshu to the bakufu cited above, in which Matsudaira and other newly-designated “imperial forces” at identified himself as an advocate of kōbu gattai Toba and Fushimi outside Kyoto.

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