This note follows eight earlier ones on Hokuriku, from prehistory to the early and middle Edo period. It covers about 1780 to the change of era name to Meiji in 1868, following the Hokuetsu campaign and Maeda Yoshiyasu to 1869–1874. Month and day dates follow the Japanese calendar of the time and are not converted to Gregorian dates; dates from the English memoir are given as Satow wrote them.

In the late Edo period Kenroku-en was gradually enlarged into the garden seen today, and Hokuriku’s shipping, medicine trade, and Kutani ware kept growing. The Hietsu earthquake of 1858 brought down mountainsides around Tateyama, and two debris flows later swept across the Toyama plain. In the bakumatsu years the Kaga domain watched foreign ships off its coast, was drawn into politics in Kyoto, and in 1868 sent troops into Echigo. This note follows the people and events around Kanazawa, Toyama, and Komatsu, and the buildings and monuments that can still be seen.

1. The Late Edo Period and the Bakumatsu

The late Edo period is usually taken to run from about 1780 to about 1850; 1853 to 1868 is the final period, the bakumatsu¹. Through most of these years Kaga was ruled by a father and son: the thirteenth lord, Maeda Nariyasu (1811–1884), and the fourteenth, Maeda Yoshiyasu (1830–1874)².

Nariyasu became lord in 1822. In 1827 he married Yō-hime, a daughter of the eleventh shogun Tokugawa Ienari, tying the Maeda more closely to the shogunate³. Yoshiyasu, Yō-hime’s son, took over in 1866; Nariyasu stayed involved after retiring and backed his son in major crises².

2. Kenroku-en and Seisonkaku

Part of today’s Kenroku-en was the site of the domain schools, the Meirindō and Keibukan, built in 1792. The twelfth lord, Narinaga, moved the schools and in 1822 built his retirement residence, the Takezawa palace, in their place; the garden was named Kenroku-en that year⁴.

After Narinaga died, Nariyasu pulled down the Takezawa palace, enlarged Kasumi-ga-ike pond, planted trees, and in 1860 removed the gate and wall between it and the neighbouring Renchi garden, joining the two⁴.

In 1863 Nariyasu built the Tatsumi palace as a retirement home for his mother, Shinryūin. It is now Seisonkaku, and with it the garden reached roughly its present form⁴. Tatsumi means southeast, the building’s direction from Kanazawa Castle⁵. It combines formal daimyo shoin architecture with the lighter sukiya style, and its snow-viewing shōji are glazed with glass imported from the Netherlands at the time. It became an Important Cultural Property in 1950⁵. The Seikōken tea room, the Seikō Shoin, and the Hikaku-tei garden are normally closed⁵.

3. Sea and Merchants: Zeniya Gohei and Ōno Benkichi

Zeniya Gohei was born in 1773 at Miyanokoshi, now Kanaiwa in Kanazawa, into a family that had been money-changers for six generations. He took over at seventeen and added wholesale trade in cloth, used clothing, timber, marine products, and rice. Only in his late fifties did he go seriously into shipping with kitamaebune vessels, and over the next twenty years he became one of the great shippers of the Edo period. He also raised funds for the domain more than once⁶.

Late in life Gohei began a scheme to reclaim Kahoku-gata lagoon. He died in prison in 1852, aged eighty. The Zeniya Gohei Memorial Museum says he was falsely accused, slandered by opponents who used a case of poisoning from dead fish against him⁶⁷. The museum presents the stories of his voyages abroad only as legend that it cannot confirm⁸. The lagoon was finally reclaimed by a national project begun in 1963 that took more than twenty years⁹.

Zenigo-no-Yakata today incorporates part of the Zeniya main house, moved to the site, and its tea room Shūsuien also came from the old Zeniya residence. Zenigo Park in Kanaiwa has a bronze statue of Gohei¹⁰⁶.

The inventor Ōno Benkichi settled in 1831 at Ōno village, next to Kanaiwa, and knew Zeniya Gohei¹¹. Besides mechanical dolls he designed clocks, lighters, cameras, and telescopes, built an erekiteru static-electricity machine, and left many finely carved netsuke¹². The Ōno Karakuri Memorial Museum near Kanazawa port shows about 100 items: exhibits connected with Benkichi, mechanical dolls, and working mechanical pieces¹².

4. Learning and Industry: Ishiguro Nobuyoshi, Medicine, and Takamine Jōkichi

Ishiguro Nobuyoshi (1760–1836), born in Takagi village in Imizu district, Etchū, was a mathematician and surveyor. He and three generations of descendants left about 12,000 items on mathematics, calendars, surveying, and mapmaking, known as the Kōju Bunko. The collection is kept at the Imizu City Shinminato Museum, and several thousand items in it are national Important Cultural Properties¹³.

The Toyama domain set up a Hangontan office in 1816 to protect and regulate the medicine trade¹⁴. By 1853 the domain’s itinerant medicine sellers numbered 2,258 in 22 groups and paid the domain about 3,200 ryō¹⁴. Around 1850 the tenth lord, Maeda Toshiyasu, compiled the Honzō Tsūkan, a 94-volume work on medicinal plants¹⁵.

Toyama’s medicine sellers followed regular rounds recorded in customer ledgers (kakebachō). They left Toyama once or twice a year and came home when the round was done¹⁶. By the Bunsei era (1818–29) at the latest some were trading in the Matsumae domain in Hokkaido, and in the Ansei era (1854–59) a petition was filed to sell medicine farther north in Ezo¹⁶.

Takamine Jōkichi was born in Takaoka in 1854, entered the Meirindō in Kanazawa in 1862, and in 1865 was chosen by the Kaga domain to study in Nagasaki¹⁷.

5. Komatsu: Revived Kutani, Kanjinchō, and the Haneda Insect Mound

In 1807 the Kyoto potter Aoki Mokubei came to the Kasugayama kiln in Kanazawa. His assistant, Honda Teikichi, found porcelain stone at Hanasakayama in Komatsu. With help from Hayashi Hachibei, the tomura of Wakasugi village (a local notable appointed by the Kaga domain to manage villages and collect taxes), Teikichi used Hachibei’s tile kiln to fire porcelain in 1811¹⁸. This Wakasugi kiln was later expanded by the domain to promote local industry¹⁹. After a fire in 1836 it moved to neighbouring Yawata, whose climbing kiln was used until about 1965 and is now preserved at the Komatsu City Noborigama Exhibition Hall²⁰.

The kabuki play Kanjinchō shows Yoshitsune’s party passing the Ataka barrier in Kaga. The seventh Ichikawa Danjūrō created a new version in 1840, borrowing the backdrop and costumes from noh²¹. Ataka and Kanjinchō are covered in the Kamakura note.

The Tenpō era (1830–1843) brought repeated crop failures, famine, and epidemics. In 1839 the weather was good and a fine harvest was expected, but from the middle of the seventh month planthoppers swarmed and badly damaged the rice as it came into ear²². The domain had villages spread nut oil on the paddies to make a film, then knock the insects into it so they suffocated. The insects collected in Haneda village are said to have filled 23 bags²².

Tanaka Saburōemon, the tomura who led the work, buried the bags, raised a memorial mound for the insects, and carved instructions on its stone for dealing with future outbreaks²². The Haneda insect mound is a Komatsu City historic site. Iwabuchi village has a similar mound, now moved to the grounds of Hakusanmachi Shrine in Iwabuchi-machi²².

6. Etchū: The Hietsu Earthquake of 1858 and the Ukita House

Before dawn on the twenty-sixth day of the second month of 1858 (9 April in the Gregorian calendar), a major earthquake struck along the Atotsugawa fault²³. Ōtombi and Kotombi mountains and other parts of the Tateyama caldera collapsed, and the debris dammed the upper Jōganji River. About a hundred villages are said to have been affected, with 140–150 houses destroyed²³.

On the night of the twenty-eighth, warnings went out across Toyama’s castle town, and everyone from samurai to townspeople fled to higher ground²³. On the tenth day of the third month (23 April), another tremor broke the debris dam; mud and boulders swept down on the temple lodgings and houses of Iwakuraji²³. On the twenty-sixth day of the fourth month (7 June) a second great debris flow broke the embankments and poured onto the Toyama plain, killing 140 people and injuring 8,945 in Kaga territory alone²³.

The Ukita house in Ōta-minami-machi, Toyama, built in 1828, was the official residence of a Kaga okuyamamawari, an officer who patrolled the Tateyama and Kurobe area to guard the forests and the border²⁴. Its main house, gate, and storehouse survive; it is a national Important Cultural Property and open to visitors²⁴.

7. Foreign Ships, Castaways, and the Englishmen of 1867

In 1839 the Chōjamaru from Etchū drifted at sea. Its crew were rescued by a foreign ship and came home in 1843 by way of Hawaii, Kamchatka, Okhotsk, and Alaska²⁵. Sado Yōjun, a doctor in Takaoka, wrote down crewman Kinzō’s account as the Hyōkai Ryakki, and the domain questioned the returned men and compiled a record named Tokei Monogatari after the clock they brought back²⁵. On the seventeenth day of the third month of 1849, four crewmen told their story before Lord Nariyasu, Kinzō wearing clothes he had been given in Russia²⁵.

When Perry reached Uraga in 1853, the shogunate asked the daimyo for their views. Nariyasu answered that Japan should act leniently until its defences were ready and then respond as the other side behaved; Yoshiyasu agreed²⁵.

In the fourth month of 1855 a foreign ship was seen off Kanaiwa, and in the fourth month of 1859 others were sighted off Fushiki and Uozu in Etchū. Naruse Masaoki, stationed at Uozu, drew the ship’s flag, a cross on a white ground; the Kanazawa City Tamagawa Library suggests it was Russian²⁵.

In the eleventh month of 1858 Hori Oribe-no-shō Toshihiro, newly appointed as a shogunal commissioner for foreign affairs, toured the Hokuriku coast with more than 120 people and made his last stop at Ataka for a midday rest. Ataka borrowed about sixty percent of the cost of receiving him from the domain; its later request to have the loan forgiven was refused²⁶. In the sixth month of 1859 a foreign ship appeared off Ataka itself, and Komatsu was thrown into an uproar²⁷. From 1863 farmers were drilled with muskets and enrolled as riflemen; by the end of 1864 Nomi district had four units, 114 men in all²⁷.

In 1867 the port of Tokoroguchi, now Nanao, was considered as a Sea of Japan port that might be opened in place of Niigata, and American, British, and French ships came to survey it²⁵. In the seventh month the British minister Harry Parkes arrived with the interpreter Ernest Satow and the secretary Algernon Mitford, and Satow and Mitford were told to travel overland from there to Osaka²⁵. On the twelfth day of the seventh month Murai Matabei issued a notice that the Englishmen would reach the castle town the next day and that there must be no discourtesy²⁵.

Satow described the journey in his memoir A Diplomat in Japan, published in 1921²⁸. The party passed Tsubata and Morimoto and caught “a glimpse of the white castle walls of Kanazawa peeping through the pine trees.” At one of the first houses in the town they met domain officials and were served “delicious melons and apples … with frozen snow from the mountains behind the town”²⁸.

When Mitford asked to thank the lord in person, the messenger answered, “My master is unfortunately indisposed”; Satow suspected another reason²⁸. In his account, the Kaga men he spoke with “wished to trade with foreigners, but did not wish avowedly to make an open port of Nanao, because the Tycoon’s government would then try to deprive them of it.” They also felt the shogunate “ought to be supported, and not done away with altogether,” but with limits on its authority²⁸. These are a memoir written many years later, not Kaga records.

The party left Kanazawa “on the morning of August 14,” lunched at Matto, reached Komatsu that evening, and crossed into Daishōji territory the next day²⁸.

8. Kyoto Politics, the Tengu Party, and 1868

Yoshiyasu Leaves Kyoto

After Nariyasu accompanied the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to Kyoto in 1863, the Kaga domain kept a senior retainer stationed at Kennin-ji there². During the Kinmon Incident in the seventh month of 1864, the heir Yoshiyasu left the city, and the domain was thrown into turmoil; afterwards Yoshiyasu was confined and dozens of retainers were punished²²⁹. In the eighth month he wrote from Kaizu in Ōmi that he would obey his father as a son should and told his retainers not to stir up trouble²³⁰.

The Tengu Party at Tsuruga

After the Kinmon Incident the Kaga domain sent troops on the shogunate’s orders for the first Chōshū expedition and against the Mito Tengu party’s march west³. The Tengu party, Mito’s sonnō jōi faction, rose at Mount Tsukuba in 1864 and marched toward Kyoto, but were surrounded at Tsuruga and surrendered³¹. The next year 353 of them were executed at Raikō-ji in Tsuruga; their graves are now the national historic site “Graves of Takeda Kōunsai and Others”³². The 823 who surrendered were held in sixteen warehouses at the port, one of which was later moved and is now the Mito Martyrs Memorial Hall, the former herring storehouse³³. A Tengu diary records a petition from their leader, Takeda Kōunsai, to the Kaga domain³¹³⁴.

Strife in the Toyama Domain

From around 1844 the tenth lord of Toyama, Maeda Toshiyasu, and his son, the twelfth lord Toshikata, fought over control of the domain. Toshikata issued large amounts of paper money to fix the finances, which only threw them into confusion, and the domain split into a Toyama faction and an Edo faction³⁵. In 1857 Toshikata fell from power, and the Edo-faction senior retainer Tomita Hyōbu committed seppuku³⁵³⁶.

Yamada Kazen, a senior retainer from 1859, brought the four-year-old thirteenth lord Maeda Toshiatsu from Kaga and set about reforming the domain. Seven retainers, including Hayashi Tachū, formed a league to press for change. One of them, Fujita Gokō, tried to stop the plan and, failing, left; the remaining six submitted a memorial, which was rejected, and they were confined to their homes³⁶.

In 1864 one of the six, Shimada Shōma, killed Kazen inside Toyama Castle, and was later ordered to commit seppuku³⁶³⁷.

The Utatsuyama Development

In 1867–1868 Yoshiyasu developed Mount Utatsu, east of Kanazawa, setting up a hospital (yōjōsho), a welfare facility (buikusho), and a workhouse (shosasho)³⁸. According to Naitō Seisai’s Utatsuyama Kaitakuroku, workshops for pottery, lacquer, and smithing, a theatre, restaurants, and a bathhouse were built on the lower slopes and opened to the public³⁸. Work on the hospital began in the sixth month of 1867 and finished in the tenth; the project stalled with the Meiji Restoration³⁸. Utatsuyama Tenmangū on the mountain is the shrine Yoshiyasu moved from the Takezawa palace in Kenroku-en³⁹.

Siding with the New Government and the Hokuetsu Campaign

On the ninth day of the twelfth month of 1867, the day Yoshiyasu reached Kyoto, the restoration of imperial rule was proclaimed². On the sixth day of the first month of 1868, after consulting Nariyasu and senior retainers, Yoshiyasu told his household that the domain would go to Kyoto to support Tokugawa Yoshinobu against Satsuma². After the battles of Toba and Fushimi, however, the Tokugawa were declared enemies of the court, and Kaga dropped its support for them, declared its loyalty to the court, and submitted to the new government²³.

In the fourth month of that year Kaga was ordered to join Satsuma and Chōshū in subduing the Hokurikudō and sent units under Ogawa Sennosuke and others². Its troops went into action at Kujiranami at the end of the intercalary fourth month and helped take Nagaoka Castle at the end of the seventh month; the last unit came home to Kanazawa in the second month of 1869². The dead were buried in Echigo, and the Kanazawa City Tamagawa Library holds a plan marking eighteen of their burial places². The Toyama domain followed Kaga to the government side, sent troops to Echigo, and fought on into southern Aizu and Shōnai⁴⁰.

The era name changed to Meiji in 1868. Yoshiyasu moved to Tokyo after the domains were abolished in 1871 and died in 1874².

9. Later Works

The list below keeps to what publishers and broadcasters state in their own descriptions. Plot details are not treated as history.

• Shibata Renzaburō, Nemuri Kyōshirō Sappōchō: the Shūeisha bunko edition’s blurb has Kyōshirō heading into Hokuriku to foil “the plot of the Kaga merchant Zeniya Gohei”⁴¹; Daiei filmed it in 1963 with Ichikawa Raizō⁴².
• Dōmon Fuyuji, Zeniya Gohei to Bōkensha-tachi: Shūeisha’s description presents Zeniya Gohei and Ōno Benkichi as men who took the path of “internationalisation” in the turbulent bakumatsu years⁴³.
• Yoshimura Akira, Tengu Sōran: Shinchōsha’s description says the Tengu party, abandoned by Yoshinobu, met a merciless end in Echizen⁴⁴.
• NHK taiga drama Seiten wo Tsuke, episode 18, “Hitotsubashi no Futokoro”: the official synopsis has Seiichirō deliver Yoshinobu’s secret letter to Kōunsai and witness the Tengu party’s plight⁴⁵.

10. Places You Can Visit Today

References