XVI The Shirandô Academy at the Ôtsuki Residence in Nagasaki

Sunset on the Twenty-fourth Day of the Tenth Month

‘I conclude,’ Yoshida Hayato, the still-youthful author of an erudite monograph on the true age of the Earth, surveys his audience of eighty or ninety scholars, ‘this widely-held belief that Japan is an impregnable fortress is a pernicious delusion. Honourable Academicians, we are a ramshackle farmhouse with crumbling walls, a collapsing roof and covetous neighbours.’ Yoshida is succumbing to a bone disease, and projecting his voice over the large sixty-mat hall drains him. ‘To our north-west, a morning’s voyage from Tsushima Island, live the vainglorious Koreans. Who shall forget those provocative banners their last embassy flaunted? “Inspectorate of Dominions” and “We Are Purity”, implying, naturally, “You Are Not”!’

Some of the scholars grizzle in agreement.

‘North-east lies the vast domain of Ezo, home to the savage Ainu, but also to Russians who map our coastlines and claim Karafuto. They call it Sakhalin. It is a mere twelve years since a Frenchman…’ Yoshida prepares his lips ‘… La Pérouse, named the straits between Ezo and Karafuto after himself! Would the French tolerate the Yoshida Straits off their coast?’ The point is well made and well received. ‘The recent incursions by Captain Benyowsky and Captain Laxman warn us of a near future when straying Europeans no longer request provisions, but demand trade, quays and warehouses, fortified ports, unequal treaties. Colonies shall take root like thistles and weeds. Then, we shall understand that our “impregnable fortress” was a placebo and nothing more; that our seas are no “impassable moat” but, as my far-sighted colleague Hayashi Shihei wrote, “an ocean-road without frontiers which links China, Holland and Edo’s Nihonbashi Bridge ”.’

Some in the audience nod in agreement; others look concerned.

Hayashi Shihei, Ogawa Uzaemon remembers, died under house arrest for his writings.

‘My lecture is finished.’ Yoshida bows. ‘I thank the Shirandô for its gracious attention.’

Ôtsuki Monjurô, the Academy’s bearded Director, hesitates to ask for questions, but Dr Maeno clears his well-respected throat and raises his fan. ‘First, I wish to thank Yoshida-san for his stimulating thoughts. Second, I wish to ask how best the threats he enumerates can be countered?’

Yoshida takes a sip of warm water and a deep breath.

A vague and evasive answer, thinks Uzaemon, would be safest.

‘By the creation of a Japanese Navy, by the foundation of two large shipyards, and by the establishment of an academy where foreign instructors would train Japanese shipwrights, armourers, gunsmiths, officers and sailors.’

The audience was unprepared for the audacity of Yoshida’s vision.

Awatsu, an algebraist, is the first to recover. ‘Is that all?’

Yoshida smiles at Awatsu’s irony. ‘Emphatically not. We need a national army based on the French model; an armoury to produce the newest Prussian rifles; and an overseas empire. To avoid becoming a European colony, we need colonies of our own.’

‘But what Yoshida-san proposes,’ objects Dr Maeno, ‘would require…’

A radical new government, thinks Uzaemon, and a radical new Japan.

A chemist unknown to Uzaemon suggests, ‘A trade mission to Batavia?’

Yoshida shakes his head. ‘ Batavia is a ditch, and whatever the Dutch tell us, Holland is a pawn. France, England, Prussia or the energetic United States must be our teachers. Two hundred bright, able-bodied scholars – a criterion that,’ he smiles sadly, ‘excludes me – must be sent to these countries to study the arts of industry. Upon their return, let them spread their knowledge, freely, to the ablest minds of all classes so we may set about constructing a true “Impregnable Fortress”.’

‘But,’ Haga the ape-nosed druggist raises the obvious objection, ‘the Separate Nation decree forbids any subject to leave Japan, on pain of death.’

Not even Yoshida Hayato dare suggest, thinks Uzaemon, the decree be annulled.

‘Hence the decree,’ Yoshida Hayato is outwardly calm, ‘must be annulled.’

The statement provokes fearful objections, and some nervous assent.

Should someone not save him, Interpreter Arashiyama glances at Uzaemon, from himself?

He’s dying, the young interpreter thinks. The choice is his.

‘Yoshida-san,’ calls out Haga the druggist, ‘is naysaying the Third Shogun…’

‘… who is not a debating partner,’ the chemist agrees, ‘but a deity!’

‘Yoshida-sama,’ counters Ômori the Dutch-style painter, ‘is a visionary patriot and he should be heard!’

‘Our society of scholars,’ Haga stands up, ‘debates natural philosophy-’

‘- and not matters of state,’ agrees an Edo metallurgist, ‘so-’

‘Nothing is outside philosophy,’ claims Ômori, ‘unless fear says it is.’

‘So whoever disagrees with you,’ asks Haga, ‘is, therefore, a coward?’

‘The Third Shogun closed the country to prevent Christian rebellions,’ argues Aodo the historian, ‘but its result was to pickle Japan in a specimen jar!’

Clamour breaks out, and Director Ôtsuki strikes two sticks together for order.

When relative quietness is re-established, Yoshida wins permission to address his detractors. ‘The Separate Nation decree was a necessary measure, in the day of the Third Shogun. But new machines of power are shaping the world. What we learn from Dutch reports and Chinese sources is a grave warning. Peoples who do not acquire these machines of power are, at best, subjugated, like the Indians. At worst, like the natives of Van Diemen’s Land, they are exterminated.’

‘Yoshida-san’s loyalty,’ concedes Haga, ‘is beyond question. What I doubt is the likelihood of an armada of European warships sailing into Edo or Nagasaki. You argue for revolutionary changes to our state, but why? To counter a phantom. To address a hypothetical “what if”?’

‘The present is a battleground,’ Yoshida straightens his spine as best he can, ‘where rival what-ifs compete to become the future “what is”. How does one what-if prevail over its adversaries? The answer -’ the sick man coughs ‘- the answer, “Military and political power, of course!” is a postponement, for what is it that directs the minds of the powerful? The answer is “Belief”. Beliefs that are ignoble or idealistic; democratic or Confucian; Occidental or Oriental; timid or bold; clear-sighted or delusional. Power is informed by Belief that this path, and not another, must be followed. What, then, or where, is the womb of Belief? What, or where, is the crucible of ideology? Academicians of the Shirandô, I put it to you that we are one such crucible. We are one such womb.’

During the first interval the lanterns are lit, braziers are stoked against the cold and conversations stew and bubble. Interpreters Uzaemon, Arashiyama and Goto Shinpachi sit with five or six others. The algebraist Awatsu apologises for disturbing Uzaemon, ‘but I hoped to hear news of an improvement in your father’s health…’

‘He is still bedbound,’ replies Uzaemon, ‘but finds ways to wield his will.’

Those who know Ogawa the Elder of the First Rank smile downwards.

‘What ails the gentleman?’ Yanaoka is a sake-blushed doctor from Kumamoto.

‘Dr Maeno believes Father suffers from a cancer of the-’

‘A notoriously difficult diagnosis! Let us hold a consultation tomorrow.’

‘Dr Yanaoka is kind, but Father is particular about who-’

‘Come, now, I have known your honourable father for twenty years.’

Yes, thinks Uzaemon, and he has despised you for forty.

‘ “Too many captains,” ’ Awatsu quotes, ‘ “sail the ship up the mountain.” Dr Maeno is no doubt doing an excellent job. I shall offer prayers for his swift recovery.’