A fascinating, stately novel about idealists who get chewed up and spit out by the very social changes they seek. Before the Dawn takes place in the decades following Japan's 1853 "Black Ships" event, when the USA's Commodore Perry arrived, unannounced and uninvited, to force Japan to open itself to world trade.
Perry's arrival, one of history's more blatant examples of gunboat diplomacy, sent shock waves throughout the island nation, resulting in a complex political and social revolution, civil war, and, eventually, a radically changed Japanese state.
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The main character, Hanzo, is the son of a village leader on the highway between Edo and Kyoto. He is sensitive, idealistic, and he dreams of a restoration of traditional Japanese values, both intellectual and political. But the changes that accompanied the ensuing Meiji Restoration ultimately destroy Hanzo, along with many others. Not everybody makes it through.
There are parallels here with other revolutions in history. See the French Revolution, eating up entire swaths of leadership of the various splinter groups, as they marched each other in waves to the guillotine; see the Russian revolution, literally killing off a generation of perceived wrongthinkers for the sake of the movement. The Meiji Restoration, although somewhat less overtly violent, generated far more social and cultural chaos in a civilization much more accustomed to order. Revolutions have their own velocity, their own weight, their own will, and they seem to wash everything away, including those who lead them.
And as these changes happen, there's a spiritual and ethical decay in Japanese society, as it is exposed to more shocks than it can handle with the forced arrival of foreign ideas and culture. It gets the reader to think about the often severe tradeoffs that happen when a society embraces too much multiculturalism all at once, or when you embrace the priorities of other cultures at the expense of your own. Our elites say, "shut up, this is good for you," but deep in their hearts the people know it isn't true.
Most of the characters in this novel are regular people: minor officials in small roadside villages doing their best to grapple with confusion and conflicting information from authorities. Most of whatever's going on they only figure out long after the events are already over. And so Before the Dawn is really a book about individuals, like you and me, trying to navigate civilizational change far beyond our circle of control. It's not much different from the average American right now trying to sort out what's going on as a bureaucratic civil war occurs deep inside our government, while our media bleats about all the wrong things to worry about. Somehow we have to figure out a way to navigate it, live through it, and make it through to the other side. But once again: not everybody makes it through.
This is unlike any other novel I've ever experienced. It's beautiful, arresting and very much worth reading.
[Readers, as always, what follows are my notes, quotes and reactions to the text. They are meant to organize my thinking and help me remember. As usual, it is too long: don't bother to read them unless you really, really have nothing better to do.]
Notes:
Chapters 1-3
1) The first few chapters set the stage for the story, we meet the generation of characters ahead of the main characters, we learn about their ancestors, we learn about the arrival of the "Black Ships" (the arrival of Commodore Perry).
2) Background on Kimbei's ancestors; his great-grandfather started them on a path by opening the town's first hotel for travelers, his grandfather took himthem to actual wealth through a sake brewery and a rice trading business and, Kimbei was the successor.
3) Kichizaemon's family has much longer history, his ancestor founded the settlement town they live in. He has more of an attachment to the (subsistence and mostly landless) farmers who serve the village. Kichizaemon is sort of the town's highway manager, he handles issues with the road, helps provide quarters and transport for those coming through the town, greets and hosts important visitors, etc.
4) Kichizaemon, his second wife Oman, and son Hanzo, who is arranged to be married to a daughter of a family in a nearby province.
5) A writ arrives from the Shogunate levying a tax for coastal defense in response to the Black Ships, which have sent a shock wave across all of Japan.
6) Son Hanzo and his new wife Otama; Hanzo leaves with his wife's brother to travel to Edo (Tokyo); he wants to become a "posthumous disciple" of Hirata Atsutane. This was a major journey in those days, 200 miles on foot, with internal customs crossings and mountain pass crossings, etc. Their minds are blown by the big city, like kids from Upstate New York going on their first trip to NYC. "In a place like this, we're just savages from the mountains."
7) It's interesting to learn how Perry actually executed this gunboat diplomacy: it was boorish, bullying, a naked display of force. You can see the kind of mentality, that overconfidence, that led to the North's violent invasion of the South in the American Civil War. Probably at this time the USA was riding high and overconfident after the results of the 1846-48 Mexican-American War.
8) "If only the Black ships had not come with people who would demand the opening of the country, by force if necessary. If only they had brought emissaries of peace and friendship instead, then those who lived here might not have looked upon the visitors with such revulsion. We might even have had a history that included a warm welcome for them."
9) Interesting comments here at the end of Chapter 3 where the narrator talks about how the Dutch representatives (at this point they were basically the only foreigners allowed into Japan, and their movements and activities were strictly controlled) were much more obsequious, they tolerated condescending (and at times unbelievably condescending) treatment from Japanese officials, and this is what gave Japanese their ideas about foreigners. Thus it was a huge shock to have the Americans arrive with a much more aggressive posture, no tolerance for condescension and they saw themselves as equals if not superior to the backwards Japanese, which shocked the Japanese.
Chapter 4
10) On Kansai, the physician/teacher of the village; on his trip to Edo to try to make money with a group of silk traders. Also on the brewing ideological split in Japan between those wanting to bring back antiquity and those wanting to embrace foreigners, openness and modernity. On ronin (masterless samurai) attacking foreigners and foreign sympathizers in rebellion against the changes happening in Japan. [Note that these various forms of chaos--both external and internal--cause more control and totalitarianism from the various governments throughout the Japan.
11) On Iwase Higo no Kami, a famous censor who was a major administrator under the Shogun after Commodore Perry's arrival. He guided policy and interactions with the foreigners, but ultimately with the change in Shogun around this time Iwase was pushed out of public life; this was the prelude to the Great Purge of Ansei, which I guess was a response to the debate over the succession of the next Shogun; then II Naosuke was assassinated in a reaction against too much multiculturalism in Japan; this was sort of a groundswell of pushback against his decision to open Japan to foreigners.
12) Kansai and his group sell the shipment of silk the following year for 2400 gold pieces; on the security problems and risks of physically transporting the gold back home.
13) There's an expansion of the money supply as a result of trade like this; inflation happens; also there was currency debasement and Gresham's law came into play. Xenophobia followed. And also note Hanzo's disappointment in his teacher Kansai for baldy pursuing money.
14) A rise in quarrels over grassland, rising prices, etc. "Stop fighting each other! This is not the time for that sort of thing!"
Chapter 6
15) On the requisition system of horses and men, a form of corvee labor used for transport of shogunate officials or emperor officials who come through the regions's highway. The peasants were far less cooperative and were far poorer in the post-Black Ships days; the highway deteriorated. [Note also the layers of officials between them and the actual people forced to labor, thus the highest officials could "delegate" the use of force to lower-level officials, while the extreme elite traveled lavishly on free peasant labor. Kind of nested control systems that insulate the elites from effects of the problems they create. Obvious parallels to today!]
16) A growing ideological divide between Hanzo and his friend Juheiji, who begins to like Western things. Hanzo celebrates the "old learning" and the traditionalism of his various intellectual mentors.
17) Also changes in the government's policy towards foreigners. "The times began to change rapidly and with a frightful decisiveness." The Shogunate starts to rehabilitate some of the leaders who advocated for openness and modernization years before, even the ones who died, and the modernization process begins to gather momentum. Also, "Are you a supporter of the emperor?" used here and there as a form of political purity test. Also, Hanson discovers that his study group of traditionalists is evolving into an extended political action and direct action group.
Chapter 7
18) 1863, the year when anti-foreign sentiment reached its peak. Also "Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians," a slogan used by Hanzo and many others who thought like him, morphs into a movement to overthrow the Shogunate as well.
19) On the Namamugi incident, where an Englishman was killed by samurai for not showing appropriate respect; note that the back and forth between the British government and the Japanese government: the Japanese government was sort of a two headed bureaucracy and the two heads didn't communicate very well with each other! Thus any communications with outside governments became hopelessly garbled, producting misunderstandings all around.
20) Kansai returns to town, unhappy with his retirement from society, he comes back to his disciples.
21) Hanzo makes a pilgrimage to a shrine to pray for his father Kichizaemon's health; there's an excerpt here from the writings of his philosophical idol Atsutane, discussing how to deal with barbarians: this excerpt is interesting because it sounds a lot like in the descriptions of the Dutch people and what the Japanese called "Dutch learning": [These barbarians] "are by nature an impertinent people... unaware of the will of the mysterious gods." The dynamic described in this passage (pages 194-195) is a lot like Enlightenment thinking in comparison to Antiquity in the West. The analogy here is that the Japanese have the wisdom of antiquity but they lack the technology and curiosity (and overconfidence) of modernity in order to have an Enlightenment period of their own. It's an interesting cultural opposition described here: the excerpt here of Atsutane's work more or less argues that, yes, some of these new things are good, but some may be terrible for the people here and we have to be careful about our openness to these novel things.
22) "All things are as the gods would have them."
Chapter 8
23) Hanzo's father is uneasy about how his son performs his duties but remains silent; "The way I see it, the work of a human being is limited to his own generation. We say that we would like to pass on the parent's experience to the child, but no child has ever accepted that experience."
24) The "uneasy anticipation of an incident" is sort of the underlying vibe of this chapter; it feels like something's about to happen, some sort of political incident or assassination or something. It adds an underlying tension to all the characters' lives.
25) "The righteous samurai of the realm" signatories of a letter claiming treason from the Shogun.
26) Debates among the various forces and political elements of the shogunate on whether to "expel the barbarians" or not; also on a debate on whether it was the right thing or not to pay the indemnity to the English for the murder of Richardson in the Namamugi incident.
27) There is much more traffic along the highway, this is straining the community to its utmost; also reports of the samurai and court nobles extracting gratuities from townspeople and farmers along the highways as they travel through--a form of "reverse forced tipping" you could say--which enriches the nobility and the samurai class at the expense of poorer peasants forced to pay. "When you come down to it, there's absolutely nothing we can do about unreasonable samurai. Right away their hands are on their swords and they start pushing you around."
28) Also there was an uprising of some 1,000 people in Yamato to directly oppose the shogunate "The revolt of the palace peasants"; it required half a month to suppress it. Note also disciples of Hirata Atsutane (the intellectual leader to whom Hanzo committed to be a disciple) were joining the anti-Shogun movement; also there was significantly stricter supervision of the people in the various towns along the highway, knowing all the names of people, their occupations, the guns they owned, even including details about the weight of the shot thrown by each gun. etc. [More controls put in place by the regime in order to maintain control.]
29) Hanzo and his wife give up their second son Masaki to her brother Juheiji and his wife Osato, as they haven't been able to have children.
Chapter 9
30) Hanzo goes to Edo for the second time, a decade later, summoned by the transport commission along with all other leaders of post stations along the Kiso Road. The reader starts to see early examples of security breakdowns in different parts of the highway.
31) It's interesting to think about the ramifications of the "alternate attendance" policy, where the shogunate requires landed nobles to spend every other year in Edo as a tool to weaken their finances, manpower and their potential military power relative to the shogunate. With the additional breakdown in security and breakdown of transport functions on the Kiso Road, this policy had the effect of weakening the nobility even further relative to the shogunate. Very interesting control mechanism.
32) Note also the collateral damage of the temporary halt in alternate attendance, it caused a huge depression in Edo, so there's another dynamic here of imposing economic harm on the countryside along the road, or in the city where the nobles would otherwise reside half the time. [Also it's interesting to see how fragile a major city can be to whether wealthy elites live there or don't.]
33) On the Choshu rebellion: this region attempted to attack foreign merchant ships as well as attacking the shogunate directly; the rebellion was totally suppressed, and this persuaded many people that the idea of "ejecting the foreigners" was a dead end, that it wasn't going to happen, that it wasn't realistic. [I guess once the camel gets its nose into the tent... the camel goes into the tent.]
34) Takichi, the friendly inn owner in Edo, doesn't worry himself at all about all of the conflict and chaos; he "ignored all the fighting and enjoyed himself with haikai." Note his backstory: he lost his fortune basically: he was the owner of a large sake and rice wholesaler but lost everything; he and his wife started all over again in Edo as humble inn owners.
35) Hanzo is stuck in Edo waiting for bureaucrats to make decisions about new rules on the highway, he's nearly out of money; he's been stuck there for some four months.
36) "Edo was no longer the Edo of the Ansei era. Still less was it the Edo of Bunka or Bunsei. While there were still the same handicrafts and paper, fabrics, ivory, jade, or precious metals as he had seen ten years earlier, there was not a single great master of whom this Genji era could boast." [Comments here on growing obscenity, decadence and superficiality; everything seemed to be growing flimsier and cheaper here in this era.] The author also starts to see life in the big city as decadent, unharmonious, too short-term in thinking, etc. [Sounds like Directory-era France, Weimar-era Germany, or the modern West.]
37) On the Mito Ronin, who started another rebellion around the same time as the Choshu rebellion; this han/region split into two factions over its commitment to the Emperor and the Shogun.
Chapter 10
38) On the events at the Wada Pass with the Mito Ronin, 1864: the Mito Ronin overwhelmed the defenders and made it through the pass; a story here about how representatives from one of the villages, disciples of Atsutane, negotiates passage with the Ronin to come through; also a story here about one of the farmers, Kozo, being more or less captured and impressed by the Ronin to help carry material as well as even to fight. The disciples/sympathizers tell them that they'll find friendlier towns if they take the road through to Makoma through Hanzo's village. The Ronin decide to change the route and arrive to Magome; apparently they passed through the town, although the readers isn't told the details yet, as the book flash forwards to 17 days later.
Chapter 11
39) Various stories of the courtesy and honor of the Mito Ronin as they pass through these villages; these stories began to surface and spread among the people along the pass. The leaders of the village of Iida, brothers who were also Atsutane disciples, were forced to commit suicide after not impeding the Ronin, this produced even more disciples and Mito Ronin supporters.
40) Still more tremendous inflation, a doubling of prices in four years, making travel for the daimyo far more expensive.
41) "Any hero would invariably promise to honor the will of the people when he first took power, but there had never been a case where the will of the people had actually been honored once the grasp on power had been firmly established." [True the world over.]
42) We finally learn what happened to the Mito Ronin, as well as what happened to the farmer, Kozo, who they had forced to help carry things as a porter. He shows up at Hanzo's door and Hanzo (as well as the reader) learns everything. This story here communicates a lot about Japanese honor: the opposing army which had basically surrounded the Mito Ronin (and was much larger), actually sent them food and supplies. The Ronin eventually surrendered. Most of them were beheaded, along with their wives and children.
43) Word spreads about the tragedy of the Mito Ronin, too many people along the highways knew all about it; Hanzo was able to figure out from what Kozo the farmer told him that were two factions in the Ronin force. He also uses this struggle here to infer certain things that are happening behind the scenes with the shogunate and the various Han and samurai. [Just like today, you have to assume the news is inaccurate in some major way, but yet you can still infer from it and other sources what really is going on.]
44) Also the cruelties that the shogunate visited on the Mito Ronin were disgusting and appalled the people. The shogunate then decides on a second, and probably unnecessary, punitive campaign against the Choshu region. "...the proclamation of a second punitive expedition could only lead to shock and confusion among the people of the nation... It was necessary to refrain from undertaking such grave ventures so lightly; it was necessary to fear the creation of disorder in the nation." [The shogunate's reach was exceeding its grasp, it was overreaching in its effort to assert control over everything.]
45) The shogunate had created this huge army, although it didn't actually have the intention of putting it into battle; it was an intimidation tactic and it looked like the Choshu Han was going to give in, but then an even larger crisis and foreign relations happened, one even worse than the Namamugi incident.
46) Negotiations to open the ports to western powers again reached bit of a climax; but then the Imperial Court stripped their key negotiators of their titles and sent them home without warning, shocking everyone. This was a sort of usurpation of the shogun's powers: shortly after the fortunes of the house of Tokugawa declined rapidly and the Shogun resigned. There were debates in the government but eventually a consensus emerged that yes, the country needed to open itself to foreigners.
47) Finally one of the most important negotiators in this controversy, Yamaguchi, ends up at the inn at Margome. Hanzo meets him. "The words of this man who held the offices of censor and commissioner of foreign affairs made a deep impression on Hanzo. He had no way of knowing about the shogun's intention of resigning or that the person who had advocated such a course was standing before him. Still less did he dream that this person was hurrying to Edo to place himself under house arrest. He was only impressed that now, at the end of the Tokugawa era, such splendid personalities were still to be found among the shogunal officials, doing whatever they could to arrest the decline of shogunal power." [It's interesting how our main character looks up to his "elite" here, deeply respects him (even though he doesn't even know him at all), and ironically this elite is working towards something that self-evidently will not happen, ever.]
Chapter 12
48) Hanzo and Otami lose their fourth child after 60 days, a girl. Also Kichizaemon, Hanzo's father, is becoming old and may not have much longer to live; also food riots break out in Edo as well as other cities.
49) People begin to talk about how Hanzo was hiding people who the shogunate was trying to find; Hanzo goes to Nagoya to find out what's really going on. It turns out the shogun's army is practically fake, they never really fought much at all. People were less willing to die for the shogunate but instead they were trying to work towards the ends of their own Han.
50) Then a ferocious storm, damage to the rice crop, potential food shortages.
51) The Shogun, Iemochi, dies at 21, but his death was hidden from the people until weeks later. [It's a good example here of the phoniness that happens in a bureaucratic government trying to preserve stability for itself at all costs, see how states think nothing of posing multiple Joe Bidens, or Saddam Hussein's various body doubles, etc.] Hanzo starts to see why the vibe was so strange when he went on his trip to Nagoya: at the time the Shogun was already seriously ill. Also hostilities end in the Choshu region immediately.
52) The reader learns that the finances of the Magome post station village are in state of total shambles.
53) 1867 death of emperor Komei at 36; ascension of emperor Meiji, his son, at age 14.
54) Sidebar here on Shogun Yoshinobu and his reforms: simplifying and eliminating ostentation; daimyo can no longer have huge retinues; no more extractive official travel through the villages on the road; women can now travel. Yoshinobu as a misunderstood leader: giving up his powers and returning the power of the Shogun to the emperor to help unify Japan.
55) The suffering of the villages starts to lift, but it is only a calm before the storm. Hanzo realizes also that there's a grassroots movement to restore antiquity, coming from below, not from above. "All things are as the gods would have them."
Book Two
Chapter 1
56) "Just what kind of people were coming to Japan on these Black Ships? At this point we had best go back and have a look at them." [A great novel teaches useful history while telling you a great story.]
57) On Dutchman Englebert Kaempfer, who wrote extensively about Japan, traveling widely throughout the country in the 1690s. On how the Dutch were treated as curiosities and as buffoons in audience with the Shogun. Commodore Perry was a completely different kind of man, not to be made a fool of, rather "acting on the basis of absolute equality" and "the personification of the self-assertive American."
58) Nobody, Dutch or American, could really tell where sovereignty actually was in Japan. [Note the cheat code here: make your society as opaque to outsiders as you possibly can!!!]
59) Extensive quote from Townsend Harris, the first American consul, in audience with the Shogun during the opening of Japan. He skillfully plays on British conflicts with China and other issues in the region to play to America's side of things. "Although many other countries are sending envoys to request the conclusion of treating relationships, none of them will tell you the kinds of things that the United states, greatest of nations in the world, has just told you even though you might ask them." "Unlike Commodore Perry... here was a man we [the Japanese] could trust."
Chapter 2
60) 1867: The opening of the port of Hyogo; pushback from anti-foreigner ronin; on the difficult state of foreign relations at this time; British soldiers were stationed on Japan itselt after one of their citizens was killed by a ronin retainer; the beginning of personal conduct of foreign affairs by the Emperor as the Shogun Yoshinobu had given his powers back to the emperor. Note that the French had committed their political and trade resources to the shogunate; England was in a better position with its relationship with the Emperor's retinue.
61) On the irony that Higashikuse Michitomi, one of the key figures to try to get the Emperor to take command of an expedition against the foreigners, ended up being the leader of ceremonies welcoming the coming of foreigners four years later. He was the only court noble who had ever seen a foreigner, and thus was chosen.
62) Discussion of the foreigners' meeting with the emperor in Kyoto; this was a significant breaking of precedent; also a French-hosted dinner where the Japanese had to eat with forks, they were also weirded out by French cheese, and then during the dinner some sort of event happened in the harbor involving French sailors and Japanese soldiers that created an international incident, right during a major dinner/conference between Japanese and foreigners. At this point also Japan more or less announces that all relations with foreign nations will be conducted directly by the imperial court, basically Japan promised to honor the treaties it had signed with all foreign powers. "Move out into the world!"
63) Interesting scene here on how situation with the killed French sailors was resolved: the men responsible were required to perform seppuku and there was a ceremony where they were each called out, "they say that they were magnificent--each recited a death verse." The French couldn't take watching it, and by the eleventh person they begged for mercy for these men, they couldn't bear to watch any longer.
64) After settling the situation the envoys all go to Kyoto, previously a forbidden city, to have an audience with the emperor; this would be an event without precedent for some 2,500 years.
65) On an imminent attack on Edo, internal disorder, and even civil war; also the idea that because various daimyo had bought weapons and warships from foreign countries, they were heavily indebted to them, and so this internal disorder was indirectly causing the foreign powers to become creditors of Japan.
66) Also on the embarrassment and horror many Japanese leaders at the Emperor's decision to change his position and open Japan to foreigners; the people saw these foreigners as intruders, they were outraged they all hadn't been expelled ("yesterday's 'red savages' were today's guests of state."); people were calling for the execution of government officials who permitted the opening of Japan; also Kyoto was crowded with people wanting to gawk at them. "Some tied their sleeves up and ground their teeth in helpless rage as they rushed here and there through crowds afire with curiosity." [If you want to make it through a period of uncertainty, don't act like this. At times like this, emotional continence is a superpower, and emotion incontinence will destroy you.]
67) In the face of civil war in Edo, the Hirata disciples work a plan to move all the manuscripts of the Hirata school out of the city, it was successfully completed.
68) There was an attack on the British delegation, as it went in to see the Emperor; also on the Emperor's audience with the French and Dutch groups: he omitted the ceremony of obeisance and met with a foreigners on face-to-face terms, a major change in protocol from any time before.
Chapter 3
69) Expeditions against the Shogun loyalists; now we're back to Hanzo and the arrival of one of the Shogun loyalist armies, the Tosando army; apparently they were led by young princelings who didn't know the territory and so the Hirata disciples had an opportunity to serve as guides for the approaching army; "Hanzo's heart leaped when he learned of it." Also a long discussion of the lack of consensus and uncertainty across the various han (regions, princedoms) where they wanted to be devoted to the nation (which was the Emperor himself) but they had various allegiances or relationships with the Shogun too, thus it wasn't clear to what extent the imperial army would be welcomed as it passed through the various nan on its way to finish off the remains of the Shogun's partisan armies.
70) Controversies about the vanguard of the army, there were messages circulating that they were imposters and Hanzo was called to Fukushima to the district offices to figure out how to deal with this false army; Hanzo receives a formal reprimand but no serious punishment thanks to his many years of service.
71) "'Just whose side are you on, anyway?'
'Well--I'm both an imperialist and a supporter of the shogunate.' [In other words he's on both sides, nobody knows whose side to be on or if there is even a side they can pick]
The agonies of the time lay behind the words of these men hidden away in a corner of this crowded hearth room."
72) Hanzo finds that his friend Kozo is also called in front of the authorities in Fukushima, they're trying to work out what actually happened with this vanguard of false troops, and how they even were let through Fukushima in the first place by those officials who now wanted to reprimand us? More confusion about who is allied with the shogunate, more and more of these people and towns switch over to the Emperor's side.
Chapter 4
73) Hanzo expected the villagers and farmers of his community to be enthusiastic about the emperor and the coming supremacy of the imperial government after all their sufferings under the shogunate, but he was "stunned by the villagers' indifference," they were still laboring under a system that was very difficult no matter what. [Your peasant class knows it's going to suck no matter who rules; it's logical that they would be indifferent. If you're a petty official or a member of the petty bourgeoisie, it can really matter who's in power.]
74) The imperial armies attack on Edo was canceled as Shogun Yoshinobu left the castle in Edo. "By giving up everything that he had to give up, Yoshinobu had spared the people of Edo." Edo is cleared of shogunate supporting families, they head back west to their home regions.
Chapter 5
75) Hanzo goes on a trip to Nagoya, Ise and Kyoto; he also visits the grave of his teacher Kansai as he "had died a lonely death in wretched circumstances."
76) Rumors of scattered peasant uprisings, even in his own region; Hanzo was frustrated that no farmer was willing to state concerns to the commander of the Tosando army, that they voiced their frustrations by uprisings instead.
77) Hanzo talks to some of the tenant farmers on his land to see what the situation is in the village. "I thought you people would be happy to see this new age coming." "Were you actually expecting someone to tell you how things really are?" "Do I really know that little about the farmers?" Hanzo thought. [Again, it's interesting here just think about the peasant class, they always know they're going to get screwed, they always do get screwed, and their resistant to change because the way they're getting screwed at least they know it and recognize it, they're understandably more fearful of some new way that they'll get screwed in the future that they haven't experienced yet.]
78) A murder of an official in the region; more uncertainty that the East-West division of the country would ever be unified. There's sort of a general atmosphere of crisis in everyone's vibe at this time.
Chapter 6
79) 1868: the first year of Meiji. Edo has changed names now, to Tokyo. Hanzo's father is very ill. Hanzo is now 39.
80) Inosuke, who is Kimbei's son, and his feelings about his father compromising and even abasing himself with those of high rank in order to guarantee a certain amount of status as a merchant for his descendants; the son becoming even more cautious than his father in this era of great change; on his fear of being drawn into all the confusion. "He loved the ascetic ideal that led the great merchants of the cities to live hidden away on obscure side streets. He loved the tact and delicacy of taste that such a life expressed." ["Ascetic ideal as avoidance technique" might be one way to describe this.]
81) Various stories of people who were involved in the fighting or had to be hidden as refugees for being on the "wrong" side, including a story about a guy who hid in his attic for five years (!) during the conflict between the shogunate and the ronin from Mito. Also on changes to the post road system; requiring extra porters from every house, even people who weren't used to doing this; note also that Hanzo himself served as a porter, acting like it was "the most natural thing in the world." Eventually their role as village elders and most of their ceremonial duties would go away, they were to just run the post offices.
82) Hanzo's master Kanetane comes through Magome, he is tutoring the Emperor and playing a role in the imperial government now.
83) Hanzo's father Kichizaemon dies, aged 71, filled with sadness about the changes to the post road system. On his memorial service and his burial. "Everything that the cautious Tokugawa age had created was being buried as Hanzo watched."
Chapter 7
84) Now it is 1873. Kimbei has also died; the new government switches to the Western calendar, all four social classes were declared to be equal; various customs are eliminated, like requiring subordinates to kneel when speaking to people of high rank, commoners are permitted to take surnames and ride horses. "Everyone had become proud and haughty... Everything from the feudal order was crumbling to dust." [The old order collapses and many people see a sort of inelegance to it, they can't stand the changes.]
85) The town headman was now called "manager" and no longer was responsible for managing traffic on the highway; it would now be done by a commercial land transport company.
86) Note also that some of the han encouraged a mass movement of colonists to Hokkaido; also the samurai had lost all their exclusive privileges. Also anyone dependent on some kind of patronage "shared the fate of their masters."
87) Plans take shape for the marriage of Hanzo and Otami's daughter Okume; it became complicated because the betrothal originally was to a family of equal status, but now Hanzo's family doesn't have its prior status anymore, thus the other family was relieved of the marriage promise. Another betrothal was arranged (by Oman, Hanzo's stepmother) with her family, the Inaba family. However Okume is unhappy about the arrangement for some reason, she won't say why. Otami goes to visit her family in the nearby town to ask for advice about this but wasn't actually "able to bring herself to initiate any serious consultation on the matter." "Just make her some clothes that she will really like and see what happens. That's the way. When we were girls we all went off and got married and we got more pleasure out of filling our hope chests than anything else." [In other words, just continuing to apply the old model to a situation when the world has changed. As we'll see this doesn't work out well at all.]
88) More discussion on the radical changes happening during the Meiji era: major buildings being pulled down; changes of officials governing the different regions, etc.
Chapter 8
89) On the forest problem: the people living the seashore could make salt or fish as much as they wanted to, but anyone who lived in the forest was never permitted to cut trees; this turns into a structural problem with Japanese society. Also the forest pass regions couldn't draw wealth from travelers over the Kiso Road as before. The mountain villagers and communities needed the prohibition of cutting trees to be lifted; Hanzo himself a drafted a petition about this but it was treated by the regional leader as completely out of order, the leadership went even further and said that all the forest was government property and none of it could be taken, even the lesser trees (which was permitted previously). Hanzo tries his best: he had to wait a full year because of a change in bureaucracy; he does a bunch of deep research into long-term tradition and precedent, finding many indisputable examples of this region living off of wood and forestry, even paying their taxes in timber, etc. He's trying to do his best for the people of his village.
90) Okume strangely asks her father to go with him to present his forestry petition. Okume strikes the reader as like a millennial here, very tender and easily injured psychologically, but she has her own mind and doesn't really clue her parents into how she is thinking.
91) Hanzo makes the journey to petition the government and in a tea house on the way a Westerner sits down next to him, this is the first time he'd ever seen or heard of a Westerner traveling on the Kiso Road. He communicates with the man, an Englishman from Hong Kong, using an interpreter; the man was going to teach at an English school to open later that year.
92) Hanzo is summoned to Fukushima to meet with authorities; he is summarily removed of all of his duties as manager of the station in Magome, he would be kept in charge of the schools but it was obvious his attempt to petition the government ended in complete defeat. "He bowed and withdrew." Basically the regional government had found out that he was going over their heads, as the person who had drafted the petition, he was relieved of duties. Hanzo is basically crushed by this, it took him a couple of days "to bring his feelings under some control."
Chapter 9
93) "The status of the Aoyama family was dwindling away." Hanzo had been punished for his efforts to deal with a forest problem. His daughter Okume's wedding is about to happen right now, and things are going wrong, it's sort of a metaphor for everything kind of coming undone despite all of Hanzo's enthusiasm and hope for this new era. The daughter wasn't willing to go through with the match despite pressure from her family. Hanzo's wife Otami, after seeing her brother's family work to improve their self-sufficiency, she starts considering things that they can do to make money, like silkworm culture or fruit harvesting, etc. "Otami, determined to raise her four children in security, especially the two youngest ones, had set to work in her natural good spirits, her cheeks as lush as a ripe apple." [Hanzo may not make it, but Otami, she's going to make it.]
94) Otami finds her Hanzo in the storehouse, going through old Chinese and Japanese books that Hanzo had collected, he was considering selling these possessions like many other old houses were forced to do. "Otami, catching this unexpected glimpse of her husband looking so vulnerable, was suddenly choked with emotion."
95) Oman: "...when my husband was still in good health, he always used to say that he wished Hanzo had just a little more talent with money." [Again, kind of a Boomer/Millennial divide here where the older generation had a wonderful tailwind of stability and having "things the way they were" while the younger generation is stuck in a period of immense and difficult change, and yet the older generation can't see why the younger generation isn't doing as well. And so they solipsistically conclude it must be that they're lazy, they don't have any talent money, etc.]
96) More details on protesting and petitioning the new forest policy which harmed Magome so severely; those who protested the policy have their offices/livelihoods restricted or taken away; when some still went ahead and petitioned further they were whipped and threatened with further punishment; this terrified everyone into accepting the situation. [Just sacrifice a few key people; it'll be a sufficient control mechanism to keep an unjust policy in place.]
97) Note the poem below by the poet Tu Fu: Hanzo's old friend read it aloud to him:
The wealthy do not starve;
The scholars are often in error.
The hero tries to listen quietly;
The contemptible display their learning.
Long ago when I was young,
I was honored as a precocious man.
Reading, I covered a myriad volumes;Writing, I was as though possessed by a god.
I was equal to the hero Yang in the old texts;
I was close to Tsu-chien in versifyng.
Li and Yu wanted to meet me;
Wan and Han begged me to live nearby.
I put myself above all others,
To place my lord above Yao and Shun,
To restore customs to virtue,
But that hope was, alas, forlorn--
"When he had read that far, Masaka could not go on. Has he read the line 'But that hope was, alas, forlorn' over and over to Hanzo, tears began to flow down his cheeks." [This was quite a moving scene: essentially all of the disciples of the Hirata School are seeing their dreams come to fruition, but with very mixed feelings on some of the grievous injustices that come with it; also it's all happening much faster than they ever expected, too fast; also some of them are being reduced in status, etc.] Note also the different disciples and friends chose different ways to live out their principles; also interesting to read as they all talk out their different visions of the restoration of antiquity: what it would mean, what it should look like, etc. Also note the irony that the Hirata Atsultane movement had reached its zenith and was in decline at this point.
98) Discussion here on how women pretty much experienced house arrest during prior centuries; unable to travel, mostly kept indoors in their homes; and how during the restoration women were being educated, even sent for education in America.
99) On Okume not smiling at all in the days leading up to her wedding; "Don't worry about me, mother. I am my father's daughter." "If it's going to happen let it happen." These were the kinds of things she said; later her parents found her in the storehouse after she had tried to kill herself.
Chapter 10
100) "There was no way that the tragedy that had befallen the Aoyama family could remain unknown in the tiny village of Magome." Hanzo ages suddenly, the family is unable to understand what happened; the daughter Okume barely survived after slashing her own throat with a short sword. Hanzo writes a letter to the bridegroom's family and asks to dissolve the betrothal. "I must once again say that everyone in the family from my aged mother on down shares in the deep sense of shame and regret that I have expressed in the body of this letter."
101) Also Oman, Hanzo's stepmother, can't understand her granddaughter and son not executing their assigned roles. [Generational lack of understanding.]
102) Hanzo was also conflicted between bringing learning to children in his village and being more or less being the village sage, or going beyond the mountains to show his commitment to "National Learning" and the Hirata School to "make antiquity manifest in the present world."
103) On some of the religious changes that happened after the Meiji restoration: Buddhism was downgraded in favor of Shintoism; many of the Buddhist temples lost members and funding; comments here on Buddhism's original transmission to Japan in 552 during the emperor Kimmei's reign; Hanzo goes to the local temple and advises the priest there that the burial rights and established practices will be changed.
104) Oman, the stepmother, stops insisting on Okume's marriage and "Okume was like one restored to life."
105) 1874: Hanzo makes a journey to Tokyo and Matsumoto to learn about the new education plans of the Meiji government; he goes despite the warnings of a fortune teller. This was also a period of some of the greatest disturbances in the central government since the civil war at the beginning of the Meiji; a major aspect of the conflict was what to do with Korea ["the Korean question") as this book euphemistically phrases it]: whether Korea should be controlled/annexed or not. [It's ironic that Japan was debating whether to imitate the other colonial powers or not, just as the USA decided to embrace colonial-style gunboat diplomacy on Japan years ago. Shit rolls downhill... it always rolls downhill.] Also debates on whether the country should be unified under a martial discipline, with universal conscription; also some members of the government thought the execution of a foreign war would establish Japan's independence "once and for all"; also during this time several uprisings occurred across the country.
106) Hanzo finds Tokyo massively changed, even the hotel that he stayed at has been sold and is now a restaurant; clothing and fashions have changed, even the lights have changed: people are now using western oil lamps that are far brighter. The city had lost a lot of population, but a new boom was starting; Hanzo even finds a job in the Ministry of Education, something he wasn't expecting; he was initially looking for post in some old Shinto shrine where he might establish a new life.
Chapter 11
107) Hanzo deeply offended by a joke one of his colleagues at the education ministry made about Motoori Norinaga, about his hitting on his servant woman. He has a bit of a crisis about this, both about the irreverence of his colleagues but also the weakness of his idol.
108) Hanzo disappointed in how things are turning out with his movement; he's disappointed in his colleague to treat their work just as a job rather than seeing it as a movement to educate the people [it sucks to be an idealist; don't be an idealist]; he sees the developing of a bureaucracy; [in short he's a total romantic and he's doomed in this world of the real. In fact in a few pages we are going to see precisely why it's a disaster for him to be a romantic idealist.] He makes up his mind to resign his position at the ministry. He dreams a disturbing dream about his father and his biological mother.
109) Unexpectedly he gets an assignment to lead a shrine in a remote place in the country and is grateful for it. However for some reason he hesitates without knowing the cause of his hesitation.
110) Recap here at the contact that Japan with Chinese and Dutch influence during the late 1600s and into the 1700s when it was otherwise closed to foreigners.
111) Discussion of a complex metaphor here, talking about how when the ports were opened all over the country, gold coins vanished from circulation, pouring out of the country to be replaced by inferior silver coinage; this is thought of as a metaphor for the cultural exchange taking place between east and west that it would somehow replace Japan's "fine old gold" with "debased Western coinage." [Also: monetary history is history! History is not history without the underlying monetary context: the debasement/inflation that resulted from this coinage debasement also debased and destabilized the culture too.]
112) Hanzo lines up to see an "imperial progress" through the city; in all sincerity he tosses a fan with a poem that he had written on it, it lands inide the first carriage of the Emperor's carriage train; he was promptly seized by the police. [This poor guy: he's sincere and a good dude, but he's unlucky, he can't seem to get anything right, he's too earnest and sincere for this world; his mother-in-law was correct: he didn't have a talent for money, his head is in the clouds, etc.]
Chapter 12
113) Hanzo goes missing for several days, ultimately the friends he is staying with in Tokyo learn that he was put in jail; eventually the story comes out about what happened.
114) Hanzo doesn't get a decision from the court for weeks and weeks. [It's interesting to see how slowly everything happens in terms of decisions made by the court, or decisions made by administrators, it takes weeks, even months, to get a simple decision handed down, and people just have to stay in Tokyo or wherever they happen to be until the decision comes to them. This happens repeatedly throughout the book in different situations. It's sort of a culture that demands patience and forebearance.]
115) Satirical image here of a westernized Japanese person with a western style haircut, a French cape, and an English vest, basically clothing assembled from a flea market; also with a watch chain prominently displayed but no watch. "Everything about him expressed a desperate effort to appear cosmopolitan... He was ready to speak his mind about anything concerning the West. After all, these were times when such an outwardly splendid, inwardly pitiful civilized man could take his seat in a beef restaurant, a pot of beef stew and a bottle of cold sake before him, and bask in his own glory." [Clueless people affecting cosmopolitan behavior and parroting the latest groupthink.] Hanzo was outraged by some of the cultural changes here, like hearing popular songs including English words, Japanese girls rushing off to language lessons with a belief that you have to learn English to get by, etc.
116) "What was to become of this nation which had not yet completely broken out of the shell of the middle ages, but was now enamored of all things Western? The attitude was the same as that with which it had once uncritically admired China; the underlying pattern was the same. It was crucial that while the West was being accepted on the one hand, it also had to be resisted on the other." [This is the real risk of excessive multi-culturalism: you lose yourself and your own society.]
117) Hanzo has his court decision reduced significantly, to just a fine, because of the patriotic fervor of his act.
118) Hanzo leaves Tokyo and returns to Magome; the three days that he spent at home were the most difficult of his entire life, particularly as he gets lectured by his stepmother, who among other things tells him he should retire from the family and put his 17-year-old son Sota as head of the household.
119) The family manservant Sakichi asks Hanzo to give him a family name; musings here on how generations of his family lived and died in silence with no written documents or history of them and certainly no record of a family lineage. [See here related comments about this issue with slave families in the USA's south]
120) Hanzo's daughter Okume receives an unexpected marriage proposal and decides to accept it; Hanzo leaves to live alone at a shrine in Hida.
Chapter 13
121) It's now four years later, 1879: an Englishman, a railroad engineer for the construction of railroad lines in Japan, stops off in Magome; on the revolution in transportation that was going to come to this valley; basically it was going to disintermediate all of the old-style transport traditions that Japan had on the Kiso Road and others; it would all be left in the past, even the transport companies that replaced the post stations would go away. "With the elimination of the post stations and all the hereditary offices associated with them, what was happening to these people? Some were in a state of nervous exhaustion. Some were completely demoralized. Some fell ill. Some died suddenly. There was no peace of mind anywhere. Was this to be the final payment for their long service to the highway?" [Yes, sadly, your "final payment" is you get fucked. And you can't fall ill or "die of suddenly" at times like this if you want to make it through. You have to find a way to make it through.]
122) Beautiful passage here where Inosuke, Hanzo's oldest friend, muses aloud about Hanzo's nature while reading through some of his poetry and thinking about his life; Hanzo was too sensitive and took his responsibility with too much reverence to really do the job; Also Hanzo was so serious that he couldn't even really offer sermons to the parishioners in his shrine weeping [the parishioners were like "what's with this guy?" and of course his sermons and his messages fell flat]; Inosuke is ill; he resolves to live to see his friend again. Hanzo resigns from the shrine after four years and comes back home; Inosuke has already died at 45. Even Hanzo's prefecture had changed names while he was gone.
123) Hanzo returns: his wife Otami "had aged a bit but was still as cheerful as ever. When Hanzo learned that she had prepared noodles with her own hands in anticipation of his return, he became choked with emotion." Lots of townspeople came over to visit, all of them calling him "master" or "teacher." The household had become nearly self-sufficient under Otami, they only bought salt, sugar and indigo dye, making everything else themselves.
124) Comments here on the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion; its leader Kirino Toshiaki; this conflict was about regional strife based on a desire to restore the samurai class; also against superficial Europeanism.
125) Very interesting comments here on Buddhism and its influence on Japan; how it came to Japan under the Nara Court in the 8th century, probably with direct influence from India itself; but then over the centuries superstitions and esoterica sort of evolved on it as time went on; the Meiji Restoration in a lot of ways is about separating Buddhism from Shintoism; but as the government forced the unification of the country, they realized that they had to separate church and state, following the Western model; thus much of the Shinto priesthood were asked to submit their resignations because most of them wouldn't follow along with his policy.
126) Also Hanzo's experience at his shrine were very difficult; he was shattered by his time there.
127) Celebrating/mourning the 100th day after Inosuke's death. A new petition for access and use of the forests, but "its prospects did not seem bright."
128) The Emperor makes a progress westward and will lunch in Magome; this was a huge deal on many levels; "Just the report that the old requirement that people prostrate themselves on the ground had been rescinded and a simple deep bow was now sufficient even for the passing of the emperor was a source of great excitement." Hanzo is mostly left out of the action during the visit, in part because the villagers fear he'll do something crazy like before when he threw his fan into the royal carriage.
129) 1881: Hanzo sends his two youngest sons, Morio, 12, and Waisuke, 9, to Tokyo to be educated; selling some family forest land and croplands to fund it; he has his daughter Okume and her husband take responsibility for them there as they moved to Tokyo. Hanzo has mixed feelings about this, he turns back to the old texts from Atsutane, quoting Norinaga: "Those who would follow after me in learning must never cling to my views in the face of sound ideas that appear after I am gone. Point out where I am wrong and encourage correct thought... It is contrary to my wishes that I should be mindlessly revered without regard for the Way." [Beautiful.]
Chapter 14
130) 1886: Hanzo's household is begins "crumbling" physically and obviously; it can no longer be concealed. Hanzo's old disciple Katsushige visits him, Hanzo is rumored to be drinking heavily. Hanzo has feelings of uncontained fury, he behaves oddly, wildly; he is despairing, "overcome with the realization of how little in his life had borne fruit." [On some level this happens to every man when he hits middle age. It's not an easy time.]
131) Backing up to 1883 now: Okume and her husband return for a visit; it comes out that her husband visits geishas all the time and spurns Okume sexually; Okume even arranges the adoption of a baby he fathered with a geisha/mistress, her husband even pawns his own wife's clothing when he's short of money (!). Yet she still loves him and believes in him.
132) Now 1884: Hanzo's son Sota, now head of the family, wants to put the house in order, plans to settle the family's growing debts by selling most the the land, the house, and most of the household possessions to pay it off. "From that moment the ancient Aoyama family began a precipitous decline." [Gradually then suddenly: you can see how increasing debt, inflation and changes in regime can take many families from landed to bankrupt.]
133) Sota presents Hanzo with a contract; Hanzo can't understand how so much debt had been run up when the family wasn't even buying anything and making everything for itself; Hanzo goes ballistic and actually strikes Sota repeatedly with a fan; note that this contract even specifies Hanzo "will drink no more than two ounces of sake at any one time."
134) On Hanzo's son Masaki, his second son, who also got involved in the forest land use issue; on realizing at a young age that you have to cultivate people at the right level before being able to do anything on this topic. Also the reader learns that the prefect leader basically just put the forest under government control for his own honor, not caring or have any idea about centuries of tradition.
135) 1884 Hanzo decides to go to Tokyo to see his children he sent there to be educated; his son Waisuke is now 12; Hanzo senses that Waisuke is uncomfortable in his company; also on other changes in Tokyo in the nine years since Hanzo had been there last; he sees a koto master who lost his former livelihood sitting out on the street playing his instrument "heedless of shame or gossip"; swordsmanship had gone out of fashion and so the great sword makers had turned to making mattocks and sickles for farmers; Hanzo is dispirited by what he saw in Tokyo and thought he would never come back. [Reminds me of New York City, the city I once loved, after it started asking people for their vaccination papers in order to enter a bar or restaurant.]
136) Also on the paradox of the Europeans, even though the Japanese started to believe that all of their old traditions had no value as they reached out to modernity; but the foreigners were teaching them that indeed Japan's traditions were things of the greatest value.
137) Hanzo returns home and continues teaching children in the village; also children from villages several miles away come to learn with him. He quits drinking. He writes: "A thousand cares fill my breast and I cannot master my sighs... These hundred griefs are surely the gift of the lord of heaven." Hanzo is 55. Towards the end of the story he descends into a form of mild insanity, hearing voices, behaving strangely, he attempts to burn down the village temple.
Epilogue
138) "That Hanzo, the patriarch of the village, should have tried to set fire to the village temple had aroused the most intense horror and revulsion among the residents... The consensus was that the master had at last become insane." The village decides to confine him in a cell made out of a shed in town.
139) Okume visits him, terrified for him--and for herself on some level.
140) Hanzo takes again to writing poetry, using the pen name Kansai, although it wasn't supposed to be the name of his former master (but yet it was!). He writes with Okume, his calligraphy perfect:
"Unable to overcome his grief for the nation, sunk into bitter tears of rage, he has now become deranged. How can one not grieve for him? How fierce are the eyes of those without knowledge."
--Kansai
141) Hanzo's students are shocked at his fate [it seems that everyone seems to become disappointed in their sensei eventually: just like Hanzo was with Kansai]. Only Keizo, his old friend, was able to understand his thinking: "The entire National Learning movement...everything that they had said and done, had ended in one colossal failure. How could a purist like Hanzo fail to go mad?"
142) Hanzo descends still further into madness, then falls ill and dies. The family had no money to have a proper burial for him, as there was no space for additional graves in the family plot, but his disciples got together and paid to bury him in the temple field adjoining the family graveyard. Former tenant farmers and their families tell stories about Hanzo, one of the villagers tells how as a young boy Hanzo tempted him into his school with the gift of a tangerine, he began going to the master's house and ultimately learned to read and write. [You have to help the starfish that you can help, and even if it's only one starfish, that is enough.]
143) Disciple Katsushige lingers by the grave site as the grave diggers deepen the grave. "Katsushige watched in pain; it was as though the mattocks were striking him in the pit of the stomach. Each blow was followed relentlessly by another."
Glossary:
Cadastral: (of a map or survey) showing the extent, value, and ownership of land, especially for taxation
Ohaguro; black teeth staining
Mono no aware: awareness of the impermanence of things
Samisen: a traditional Japanese three-stringed lute with a square body, played with a large plectrum.
Han: areas controlled by daimyo yet under the "acquiescence" of the Shogun
Finally, interesting comments here under "coinage" in the glossary: once Japan was open to international exchange, foreign speculators bought up gold from Japan, paying in inferior silver coinage; it "was one of the first consequences of the opening of Japan to foreign trade." [Just as described in Lyn Alden's Broken Money, a more advanced society can easily siphon off economic value from a less advanced society via the less advanced society's currency]; Also note that, per the author, after the Meiji Restoration, once the yen was rolled out as the new currency, the exchange rate began as three to the dollar [!] until the inflation after World War II. Now it's 150 to the dollar.
To Read:
Shimazaki Toson: The Broken Commandment
Shimazaki Toson: New Life
Shimazaki Toson: The Family
***W.G. Beasley: The Meiji Restoration
W.G. Beasley: The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan
Works of Motoori Norinaga
The Four Books: The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Confucian Analects, and The Works of Mencius
The Five Classics: the Book of Odes, the Book of Documents, the Book of Changes, the Book of Rites, and the Spring and Autumn Annals
Mark McNally: Proving the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism
Michael Wachutka: Kokugaku in Meiji-Period Japan
Tu Fu: Selected Poems
William E. Naff: The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Toson