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February 15, 1869 (Meiji 2/1/5)
Teramachi-dōri just south of Marutamachi, Kyoto (present-day Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto City)
Forces
Totsukawa gōshi and jōi activists (6 men)
Yokoi Shonan (in palanquin) and his escorts
About 18 min read
The assassination of Yokoi Shonan was carried out on February 15, 1869 (Meiji 2/1/5) on a street at Teramachi-dōri just south of Marutamachi in Kyoto, by six exclusionist rōnin, including Totsukawa gōshi. Yokoi was an enlightened Confucian scholar from Kumamoto Domain. After serving as a brain trust to Matsudaira Shungaku, lord of Fukui Domain, and influencing the kōbu gattai movement in the late Tokugawa period, he had been invited to serve as san'yo (councilor) in the new Meiji government. He was 61 years old. This incident, in which a senior figure of the new Meiji government was assassinated, is recorded in modern Japanese history as an event in which the remnants of exclusionist thought in the early Meiji period erupted in the form of a violent attack with blades.
Yokoi Shonan (real name Tokihiro; 1809–1869) was a Confucian scholar and political thinker from Higo Province, Kumamoto Domain. Going beyond the framework of Shushigaku, he actively praised modern Western systems (republican, constitutional, and parliamentary systems) and was a pioneering proponent of opening the country. Through Sakamoto Ryōma, Katsu Kaishū, and Matsudaira Shungaku, his ideas had a major influence on the national reform debates of the late Tokugawa period. From Ansei 5 (1858) onward, he gave political reform guidance under Matsudaira Shungaku, lord of Echizen's Fukui Domain, and in Bunkyū 2 (1862) he drafted a memorial for reform of the shogunate's governance titled "Kokuze Shichijō" (Seven Articles of National Policy). Sakamoto Ryōma's "Senchū Hassaku" is said to have been influenced by Shonan's "Kokuze Shichijō," and Shonan's advocacy of opening the country is positioned as one of the sources of the progressive reform thought of the late Tokugawa period. In Meiji 1 (1868), Shonan was invited to the new government as a san'yo (councilor). However, from the perspective of conservative exclusionists, Shonan's position advocating the opening of the country appeared as that of a "traitor to the nation."
On the afternoon of the 5th day of the 1st month of Meiji 2 (1869), Yokoi Shonan was on his way back from the imperial palace. When the palanquin reached the area of Teramachi-dōri just south of Marutamachi, six men, Ueda Tatsuo, Nakai Toneo, Tsuge Shirōzaemon, Maeoka Chikarao, Yanagida Naozō, and Kashima Matanojō, suddenly attacked it. Ueda first fired at the palanquin, and then the six men charged in with swords. The escorts fought back, and Shonan also tried to defend himself with a single short sword, but he fell before the surprise attack and died at the age of 61. Of the perpetrators, four (Ueda, Tsuge, Maeoka, and Kashima) were executed in the 10th month of Meiji 3 (1870). The weapons used were a combination of firearms and Japanese swords. This was a composite method, often employed in political assassinations from the late Tokugawa to early Meiji periods, in which the target's movements were first restrained by gunfire and then reliably finished off with a sword. The Shonan assassination vividly shows that the blades of exclusionism continued to be aimed at government officials even after the Meiji Restoration.
Regarding the motive for the crime, the perpetrators raised the baseless claim that "Shonan was preaching the opening of the country in order to spread Christianity and convert Japan to a foreign religion." Yokoi Shonan was not a Christian but a rational proponent of opening the country grounded in Confucian values. Yet within the logic of the exclusionists, a simple equation operated: "one who praises the West = traitor to the nation = enemy to be put to death." The single year from the Meiji Restoration (1868) to the assassination of Shonan (1869) was the period of the most severe confusion during the transition to the new government. At Hakodate, the Boshin War was still ongoing (the Battle of Hakodate lasted until the 5th month of Meiji 2, 1869), and while remnants of the old shogunate forces continued to resist, radical proponents of sonnō jōi were unable to accept the new government's policies of opening the country and modernization. The assassination of Yokoi Shonan was a product of this compound confusion, and it embodies the historical paradox that the "blade of exclusionism" was now wielded against the high officials of the new government.
Meiji 2 (1869), the year Yokoi Shonan was assassinated, was seven years before the Haitōrei (Meiji 9, 1876), and it was an era in which Japanese swords were still officially recognized as the formal sword-wearing right of the samurai (shizoku). The new Meiji government progressively promoted the abolition of the han system (1871), the abolition of samurai stipends (1876), and the Haitōrei (1876), but at this point it was still a natural right for the former samurai class to wear swords at the waist. The sword used in the assassination of Yokoi was very likely a typical shinshintō battle sword of the late Tokugawa period. The shinshintō began with Suishinshi Masahide in the An'ei era (1772–1781), and was the product of an age in which master smiths such as Minamoto no Kiyomaro of Edo and Gassan Sadakazu of Osaka competed in their smithing skill; it is characterized by a combat-oriented style that emphasized sharpness and strength. The Totsukawa gōshi, the perpetrators, were shizoku with origins in the mountainous areas of Yamato Province (present-day Nara Prefecture), and they had a record of participating in the exclusionist movement since the late Tokugawa period. The swords they wore are thought to have been either old swords passed down for generations among local shizoku or shinshintō newly commissioned in the late Tokugawa period.
The assassination of Yokoi Shonan is an incident that sharply illuminates the ideological fault line within the Meiji Restoration, a modernizing revolution. The "positive opening of the country based on Confucian rationalism," embodied by Shonan, and the "unitary worldview of exclusionism and reverence for the emperor," embodied by the perpetrators, were the greatest ideological axis of conflict in Japanese society from the late Tokugawa period through the Meiji era. Shonan's death shows the premodern political culture's remnant in which an enlightened thinker was removed by the sword. At the same time, the ideas of "opening the country and modernization" carried on by Katsu Kaishū, Matsudaira Shungaku, and others who had associated with Shonan did not stop with his assassination but took firm root as the mainstream of the Meiji state. Paradoxically, the assassination of Yokoi Shonan became an incident that proved the irreversibility of this current of thought. From the perspective of sword history, the assassination of Yokoi Shonan is one example in which the Japanese sword functioned as a tool of political violence. It is remembered as a scene on the eve of the historical transition in which the Japanese sword changed its status from a practical weapon to an artwork, following the Haitōrei (1876) and the Satsuma Rebellion (1877).
Around Yokoi Shonan gathered many people who were versed in both the sword and thought. Sakamoto Ryōma was a swordsman trained in Hokushin Ittō-ryū, and he resonated with Shonan's advocacy of opening the country and opened the way toward the Satchō Alliance and the return of political power to the emperor (Taisei Hōkan). Katsu Kaishū trained in the sword of Jikishinkage-ryū while studying Western naval technology, and he laid the foundations of the Japanese navy. Yamaoka Tesshū was a swordsman and thinker who embodied the unity of sword and Zen, and he devoted himself to realizing the peaceful surrender of Edo. In this way, in Japan from the late Tokugawa to the early Meiji period, "technique of the sword" and "thought and intellect" coexisted within the same individuals, and both were forces that moved the age. Among them, Yokoi Shonan leaned most toward the side of "intellect"; rather than the sword, he sought to influence the age through discourse and writing. Yet the fact that Yokoi was deprived of his life by a sword shows that an age in which the sword spoke more eloquently than discourse was still continuing.
The assassination of Yokoi Shonan is also an event that symbolizes how "the sword and thought" came into conflict in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods. The series of assassinations of government figures and enlightened individuals (Sakamoto Ryōma, assassinated in 1867; Yokoi Shonan, assassinated in 1869; Ōmura Masujirō, assassinated in 1869; and Ōkubo Toshimichi, assassinated in 1878) lies within the historical context in which former samurai strata, opposing the direction of Meiji toward "opening, modernization, and Westernization," drew Japanese swords as a last resort. The feature of the Yokoi Shonan case is that it was not a head-on confrontation by sword technique but a surprise, one-sided attack by a group. This form of "organized assassination by a group" shows that the culture of "hitokiri" of the late Tokugawa period had transformed from individual swordsmanship into organized political violence. The Haitōrei of 1876, seven years after Shonan's death, was an attempt to put an institutional end to this kind of political violence using swords. In practice, however, sword-related incidents such as the Kioizaka Incident (1878) and the Shinpūren Rebellion (1876) continued even after the Haitōrei. The assassination of Yokoi Shonan is remembered in sword history as one episode in the long transitional period in which the Japanese sword moved from "weapon" to "cultural property."