Teradaya Incident

In the spring of Bunkyū 2 (1862), Japanese politics was boiling over. The storm of “sonnō jōi” (revere the emperor, expel the barbarians) swept through the domains, and radical samurai tried to go beyond their domains' policies and take independent political action. In the midst of this torrent, a serious rift inside the Satsuma domain erupted in bloodshed at the Teradaya inn in Fushimi, Kyoto. This was the “Teradaya Disturbance,” one of the most shocking fratricidal clashes in the history of the late Tokugawa period.

The political fever of late-Tokugawa Kyoto: the rise of the sonnō jōi faction

During the Bunkyū era (1861–1864), Kyoto was shaken by the sonnō jōi movement. Activists of the sonnō jōi faction who had been suppressed in the Ansei Purge (1858–59) revived after Ii Naosuke, the senior councillor (tairō), was assassinated in the Sakuradamon Incident (1860), and gathered in Kyoto one after another from the various domains.

Within this movement, serious rifts emerged between “radical” and “moderate” factions inside each domain. The radicals argued, “Overthrow the shogunate under the authority of the emperor and carry out the expulsion of foreigners at once.” The moderates, or “kōbu gattai” faction, believed that reform should proceed in stages through cooperation between the imperial court and the shogunate. This conflict over the line was not merely a difference in political policy; at times it produced the tragedy of samurai of the same domain drawing swords against each other.

Shimazu Hisamitsu's ascent to Kyoto and the radicals' plan

In the spring of Bunkyū 2 (1862), Shimazu Hisamitsu, the powerful figure of the Satsuma domain (father of Shimazu Tadayoshi, and the leader of domain affairs as kokufu (the lord's father)), planned to travel to Kyoto to demand reform of shogunal government. Hisamitsu's concept was kōbu gattai, political reform through harmony and cooperation between the imperial court and the shogunate. Its core points were to appoint Tokugawa Yoshinobu as guardian of the shogun (shōgun kōken-shoku), to relax the sankin kōtai system, and to reflect the opinions of the daimyō in shogunal government.

However, the radical sonnō jōi samurai within the Satsuma domain harbored strong discontent with Hisamitsu's moderate line. A faction centered on Arima Shinshichi (1825–1862), Shibayama Aijirō, and Hashiguchi Sōsuke planned, after Hisamitsu entered Kyoto, to conspire with sonnō jōi activists from other domains to attack the kanpaku Kujō Hisatada and the Kyoto shoshidai Sakai Tadaaki, and to urge Hisamitsu to take up arms. About thirty men gathered at the Teradaya inn in Fushimi, Kyoto.

Hisamitsu learned of the radicals' reckless actions and judged that his own political plan would collapse at its foundations. He dispatched eight samurai, including the skilled swordsmen Ōyama Kakunosuke (later Ōyama Tsunayoshi), Narahara Kihachirō (later Narahara Shigeru), and Michijima Gorobei, to the Teradaya inn as pacification envoys (chinbushi). Later one more man volunteered to join, making nine. Their orders were: “Persuade the radicals and take them into custody; if they resist, suppress them by force.”

The 23rd day of the 4th month: the night of fratricide

On the night of May 21, 1862 (Bunkyū 2/4/23), Ōyama Kakunosuke and the other pacification envoys stormed into the Teradaya inn.

“By the order of Lord Hisamitsu, we ask that you accompany us,” they tried to persuade, but Arima Shinshichi and the others refused. The sonnō jōi argument that loyalty to the emperor outranked a domain order was fundamentally incompatible with the feudal relationship of obedience that treated the authority of the domain lord as absolute. Samurai of the same Satsuma domain, and comrades from the same home province, now stood opposed to each other at the stakes of their lives.

As negotiations broke down, swords were drawn. Samurai of the same Satsuma domain fought desperate battles with each other in the narrow inn corridors and tatami rooms.

In an environment that was extremely far from ideal for wielding swords (low ceilings, narrow corridors, dark rooms), the Satsuma swordsmen fought one another at the risk of their lives.

When his sword broke, Arima Shinshichi grappled with Michijima Gorobei and pinned him against the wall, ordering, “Stab me along with him!” Comrade Hashiguchi Kichinojō ran both of them through, and Arima died. Six radicals, namely Arima, Shibayama Aijirō, Hashiguchi Sōsuke, Nishida Naogorō, Deshimaru Ryūsuke, and Hashiguchi Denzō, were killed on the spot. Tanaka Kensuke and Moriyama Shingozaemon, who were seriously wounded, were later made to commit seppuku. On the pacification envoys' side, Michijima Gorobei was killed and five men were wounded.

Sakamoto Ryōma and the Teradaya Incident: a memory four years later

Four years after this incident, a still more famous event was inscribed at the same place: in the 1st month of Keiō 2 (1866), the Teradaya Incident, in which Sakamoto Ryōma, staying at the same inn, was suddenly attacked by officials of the shogunate's Fushimi magistrate's office.

Ryōma sensed the danger when Oryō, who had noticed the arresting officers while she was in the bath, warned him. Ryōma defended himself with a pistol given to him by Takasugi Shinsaku, and his companion Miyoshi Shinzō fought with a hand spear, but Ryōma had the thumbs of both hands cut. The two barely escaped and were saved with help from the Satsuma domain residence.

The Teradaya inn in Fushimi thus became the stage for two bloody incidents: the fratricidal clash within the Satsuma domain in Bunkyū 2 (1862) and Ryōma's ordeal in Keiō 2 (1866). Where these two incidents overlapped, the Teradaya became the most emblematic place where the sword and politics of the late Tokugawa period intersected. The present Teradaya (the buildings from the late Tokugawa period were damaged in the Battle of Toba–Fushimi, and the inn was rebuilt afterward) draws many visitors as a historic site of Fushimi and Kyoto.

Historical significance: the victory of the kōbu gattai line and the politics of the sword

The Teradaya Disturbance is an incident located at the crossroads of modern Japanese history and sword culture.

Politically, Hisamitsu's judgment proved correct in its results. By purging the radicals, the Satsuma domain won trust from both the shogunate and the imperial court as an organized political actor. In the Bunkyū Reforms of the same year (the relaxation of sankin kōtai, the establishment of the shōgun's guardian post, and the establishment of the seiji sōsai-shoku), Satsuma played a leading role.

From the perspective of sword history, this incident is an important record showing how kenjutsu functioned in actual combat in the late Tokugawa period. The inseparable bond between politics and the sword, and the cultural mode of late Tokugawa samurai, “expressing thought with the sword,” appear in this incident in their most condensed form.

The entanglement of sword and politics shown by the Teradaya Disturbance

Arima Shinshichi was a scholar who studied the Kimon school of Confucianism and served as an instructor at the Zōshikan. He also studied swordsmanship in the Shinkage-ryū (Jikishinkage-ryū), and was praised as an outstanding figure in both the civil and martial arts. Ōyama Kakunosuke (later Ōyama Tsunayoshi), the pacification envoy, became the first governor of Kagoshima Prefecture in the Meiji period, but was executed for aiding Saigō Takamori's side in the Seinan War. Meanwhile, Ōyama Iwao, who later became a field marshal of the army, was on the radical side at that time, on the second floor of the Teradaya, and surrendered after being persuaded.

The late Tokugawa period was an age in which the sword functioned as a cultural medium that went beyond being merely a weapon, expressing “thought,” “vows,” “protest,” and “sacrifice.” The Teradaya, as a symbolic space of that age, will continue to draw many people in the future.