Kioizaka Incident

The Kioizaka Incident (Kioizaka no hen) took place on May 14, Meiji 11 (1878), at Shimizudani, Kioi-chō, Kōjimachi Ward, Tokyo Prefecture (present-day Kioi-chō, Chiyoda City, Tokyo). Minister of Home Affairs Ōkubo Toshimichi was assassinated by six shizoku from Ishikawa and Shimane Prefectures. Ōkubo received wounds to his entire body, 16 in all, including to the head, inflicted with Japanese swords, and died instantly. Age at death: 49. The sword used by the principal assailant, Shimada Ichirō, was seized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as evidence and is now on display in the Police Reference Room on the second floor of the department's headquarters building. The incident occurred two years after the Sword Abolition Edict (Haitōrei) (Meiji 9, 1876) took effect. It is a particularly shocking case, remarkable in both Meiji history and sword history, in which former shizoku used Japanese swords as a means of political violence even after the abolition of swords.

Ōkubo Toshimichi and the Power Structure of the Meiji Government

Ōkubo Toshimichi (1830–1878) was a leading figure of the Meiji Restoration from the Satsuma domain. He led the abolition of the domains and establishment of prefectures (haihan chiken) (1871), the Iwakura Mission (1871–1873), the land tax reform (chisō kaisei) (1873), and the suppression of the Seinan Sensō (1877), and was one of the most powerful figures of the early Meiji period. He founded the Home Ministry and took office himself as its first Minister of Home Affairs (naimukyō), building the centralized administrative machinery of the modern state. Ōkubo is regarded as one of the “Three Heroes of the Restoration” together with Saigō Takamori and Kido Takayoshi. In the Seinan Sensō (1877), however, he made the agonizing decision to suppress his close friend Saigō Takamori with government forces. That decision was also accompanied by deep personal pain for Ōkubo. On the morning of the assassination, Ōkubo had spoken to Fukushima Prefectural Governor Yamayoshi Morisuke about a “thirty-year plan,” dividing the thirty years from Meiji 1 into three periods. He said he wished to devote his efforts to the second period, up to the consolidation of domestic governance and the promotion of industry (shokusan kōgyō). After the Seinan Sensō, Ōkubo faced the dual political pressure of the rise of the freedom and people's rights movement (jiyū minken undō), led by Itagaki Taisuke and Gotō Shōjirō, who had left the government over the Seikanron controversy (1873), and the discontent of the former shizoku stratum.

The Course of the Assassination and the Attack with Japanese Swords

At about 8:30 a.m. on May 14, Meiji 11 (1878), Ōkubo Toshimichi was traveling by carriage toward the Akasaka Temporary Imperial Palace (present-day vicinity of Akasaka Gosho) and reached Shimizudani, Kioi-chō, Kōjimachi Ward (present-day vicinity of Shimizudani Park). Six shizoku lay in ambush: Shimada Ichirō, Chō Tsurahide, Sugimoto Otogiku, Wakita Kōichi, and Sugimura Bun'ichi, all shizoku of Ishikawa Prefecture, and Asai (浅井寿篤), a shizoku of Shimane Prefecture. They suddenly surrounded the carriage and attacked. First they cut the horse's legs to stop the carriage, then they stabbed to death the coachman, Nakamura Tarō. After that they dragged Ōkubo out of the carriage and slashed at him. Ōkubo Toshimichi received 16 wounds across his entire body, including to the head, from Japanese swords, and died instantly. The six assassins surrendered themselves immediately after the crime. They were tried by a provisional court established within the Great Court of Cassation (Daishin-in) as political offenders (kokujihan), for whom the criminal law contained no specific provision. On July 27 of the same year they received their verdict and were executed by beheading (zanzai) the same day. Ōkubo's body was carried to his residence on the day of the incident, and the news shocked the entire Meiji government.

The Sword Used and Its Preservation by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department

The sword used by the principal assailant, Shimada Ichirō, was seized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as evidence after the incident. The sword, together with its scabbard, is still on display in the Police Reference Room on the second floor of the department's headquarters building, and it holds extremely high historical and documentary value as a Japanese sword actually used in a real political assassination of the Meiji period. The Sword Abolition Edict (1876) prohibited the wearing of swords, but it did not ban the possession of swords themselves. The sword preserved by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is an extant document that testifies to an era in which Japanese swords, even after the Sword Abolition Edict, were still used as “weapons.”

The Assailants' Motives and the “zankanjō” (statement of grievances)

Before the incident, the assassins prepared a “zankanjō” (statement of grievances), a letter setting out the reasons for their crime. Drafted at Shimada's request by Kuga Yoshinao, this letter cited five points as crimes of “yūshi sensei” (autocratic rule by officials): “they cut off public deliberation, suppress popular rights, and monopolize government affairs for themselves”; “they issue laws and decrees arbitrarily and appoint officials on the basis of personal favor”; “they undertake non-urgent public works and squander the national treasury”; “they dismiss patriotic men of high principle and foster domestic unrest”; and “they mishandle foreign relations and cause national sovereignty to fall into disrepute.” This accusation condenses the political contradictions of early Meiji, namely the Seikanron controversy, the freedom and people's rights movement, and the economic hardship of the former shizoku, and it was an explosion of the structural contradictions of the era that went beyond the emotional grudge of a single individual. The assassination of Ōkubo can be interpreted as the eruption, through Japanese swords, of the resentment of the former shizoku stratum, which had lost its privileged status and stipends through a series of policies, namely the abolition of the domains and establishment of prefectures, the Sword Abolition Edict, and the disposal of stipends (chitsuroku shobun), and which had even been deprived of the right to wear swords.

Japanese Swords After the Sword Abolition Edict

The Kioizaka Incident occurred only two years after the Sword Abolition Edict (1876) took effect. That edict was a groundbreaking law that prohibited all wearing of swords except “when wearing the grand ceremonial uniform, and when military personnel and police officers wear swords as part of their duties.” Immediately afterward, however, the Shinpūren Rebellion (Kumamoto) broke out in October of Meiji 9, and the Hagi Rebellion erupted in October Meiji 9 (1876), in both of which former shizoku took up swords and muskets and raised the banner of revolt against the Meiji government. In the following year, Meiji 10 (1877), the Seinan Sensō saw the Satsuma shizoku army led by Saigō Takamori challenge the government forces, but they were ultimately defeated by the government's modern equipment and conscript army. The Kioizaka Incident occurred the year after the end of this Seinan Sensō (1877), and it showed that a sword after the Sword Abolition Edict was used not in an armed uprising but in the form of a political assassination.

Shinshintō and Early Meiji Swordsmiths — Sword Culture on the Eve of the Sword Abolition Edict

Meiji 11 (1878), the year of the Kioizaka Incident, came immediately after the Sword Abolition Edict (1876), and it was a period in which social change surrounding the making, distribution, and possession of Japanese swords was advancing. In the shinshintō period before the Sword Abolition Edict (Kansei to Keiō, 1789–1868), master smiths such as Minamoto Kiyomaro (Yamaura Kiyomaro), Koyama Munetsugu, Yamaura Saneo, and Gassan Sadakazu I left masterpieces. Smiths continued to make swords after the Sword Abolition Edict, but because practical demand (demand as weapons) had been lost, they shifted to demand for art swords, ceremonial swords, and military swords (for officers). In the Meiji period, Gassan Sadakazu I and Miyamoto Kanenori became Imperial Household Artists (Teishitsu Gigein) in 1906, carrying the tradition of sword making as art and craft into the new era after the Sword Abolition Edict. The Kioizaka Incident can be positioned as the event that most dramatically shows the turning point from “the sword as a weapon” to “the sword as art and craft.” The fact that the sword used in the assassination is preserved by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as “evidence” itself shows that the sword had already been incorporated into a modern value system in which it was treated as an object of management and preservation.

Historical Consequences — Meiji Politics and Sword Culture After Ōkubo's Death

The death of Ōkubo Toshimichi dealt a serious blow to the Meiji government. The vacuum in the strong political leadership that Ōkubo had provided promoted the rise of Itō Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, Yamagata Aritomo, and others, and transformed the power structure of the Meiji government. The unresolved political issue that Ōkubo had faced, the confrontation with the freedom and people's rights movement, was settled to a degree through the Imperial Edict on the Establishment of the National Diet (1881) and the promulgation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Dai Nihon Teikoku Kenpō) (1889). The fact that the sword used in Ōkubo's assassination is preserved by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department quietly conveys, even today, the weight of a living witness to the historic turning point at which Japanese swords moved from the “age of weapons” to the “age of cultural property.” In the roughly 70 years until the founding of the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (NBTHK) in Shōwa 23 (1948), many shinshintō swords born in the same era as the sword used in the Kioizaka Incident were preserved as art objects through the storms of war and modernization. In that sense, the Kioizaka Incident is remembered in sword history as the event that most symbolically marks the historic juncture at which Japanese swords turned from “weapons” into “cultural property.”