Kurosawa Tokiko

T H E C H A O S A N D C O S M O S O F
KUROSAWA TOKIKO
One Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan
LAURA
NENZI
THE CHAOS
AND COSMOS OF
KUROSAWA TOKIKO
THE CHAOS
AND COSMOS OF
KUROSAWA TOKIKO
One Woman’s Transit

from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan
Laura Nenzi
University of Hawai‘i Press

honolulu
© 2015 University of Hawai‘i Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nenzi, Laura, author.
The chaos and cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko : one woman’s transit from
Tokugawa to Meiji Japan / Laura Nenzi.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0-8248-3957-4
1. Kurosawa, Tokiko, 1806–1890. 2. Women political activists—
Japan—Biography. 3. Japan—History—Tokugawa period,
1600–1868. 4. Japan—History—Meiji period,
1868–1912. I. Title.
DS881.5.K86N46 2015
952'.025092—dc23
[B]
2014028771
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc.

C ON T E N T S
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction The Flight of a Sparrow 1
PART I: Tokiko’s World
1 / A Nest and a Nexus 17
2 / Circles and Circumstances 38
PART II: The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko
3 / Glimpses of History (The Script) 53
4 / From Script to Stage 66
5 / Caged Bird 83
6 / The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko 98
7 / Transitions 120
PART III: Memory, Manipulation, and Amnesia
8 / Rescuing the Past from the Present 141
9 / The Many Reincarnations of Kurosawa

Tokiko 159
10 / Circles Redrawn: The View from 1930s Mito 177
11 / Encores: New Scripts 190
Conclusion The Doing That Matters 199

vi Contents
Appendix 205
Notes 209
Bibliography 241
Index 257
A C K NOW L E D G M E N T S
The first person I wish to thank is Gotō Norio, without whose help,
knowledge, generosity, and friendship this project would have simply never
come to fruition. A lso at the top of the list is A nne Walthall, who spent
many hours commenting on chapter drafts, suggesting opportunities to
work and publish in Japan, and writing letters of support for grants and fel-
lowships. For many of the same reasons David Howell is also deserving of
my utmost gratitude. O ther academics and friends have offered invaluable
help during the research and writing phases of this project, giving me access
to archives, proposing alternative interpretations, and answering all sorts of
questions and calls for help. T hey include Luke Roberts, Bettina Gramlich-
Oka, Itasaka Noriko, Ikeda Kazuomi, Nishizawa Naoko, Yokoyama Yuriko,
Ōguchi Yūjirō, G aye Rowley, T homas Harper, Hōya (Kumazawa) Tōru,
K ate Wildman-Nakai, Valerio Luigi A lberizzi, Steven Heine, Gregory
Smits, William Scott Wilson, and Peter Kornicki. C olleagues who invited
me to give talks on Tokiko provided opportunities for constructive criti-
cism; I am especially grateful to Morgan Pitelka, Sabine Frühstück, Linda
Chance, Erik Esselstrom, Adriana Boscaro, and Ron Toby. Paola Perin was
the fi rst to teach me how to analyze a text; this acknowledg ment is long
overdue.
In Shirosato, Ōsawa Toshio treated me to his delicious soba and never
failed to “enshrine” my Tokiko articles and conference papers in the special
room of his restaurant. The late Kurosawa Seiichi as well as Horie Katsumi,
Fukihara Katsumi, Nakamigawa Takeo, Saruta Yukio, and Anzō (Hasegawa)
Ryōko made me feel welcome and facilitated my research. I also owe a debt of
gratitude to Kido Shizuko and Saiki Kumi of Ibaraki University and to Sa-
same Reiko at the Rekishikan in Mito. In Tokyo I benefited from the assis-
tance of Niels Van Steenpaal, Ōhashi Akiko, Kimura Kazu and Ken, Kimura
Rieko, and Michelangiolo Severini. At the University of Tennessee I wish to
thank Tom Burman, Ernest Freeberg, Marina Maccari-Clayton, Monica
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Black, Noriko Horiguchi, Alan Rutenberg, Chris Boake, Will Fontanez, Anne
Bridges, and the staff of the History Department—Kim Harrison, Bernie
Koprince, and Mary Beckley.
My thanks go out to the librarians who made my research possible at the
Rekishikan, at the Ibaraki Prefectural Library, at Ibaraki University, at the
Historiographical Institute of Tokyo University, at the National Diet Library,
at the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura, and at the University
of Tennessee.
Financial support and much-needed time off have come first and foremost
in the form of a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities in 2008. The National Museum of Japanese History invited me on a
research fellowship in the winter of 2011; I am grateful to Kurushima Hiroshi
for the opportunity. I also wish to acknowledge the History Department at the
University of Tennessee and the University of Tennessee’s Award for New Re-
search, Scholarly and Creative Projects in the Arts and Humanities for fund-
ing several trips to Japan. The University of Tennessee’s Exhibit, Performance,
and Publication Expense Fund and the History Department kindly shared the
cost of producing the maps.
Pat Crosby and Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press were
dream editors. The two anonymous readers did a formidable job of combing
through my manuscript, suggesting avenues for improvement, pointing at in-
felicities, and greatly improving the quality of my work. Tatiana Holway has
been a phenomenal copy editor.
This book began during hurricane season in Miami and was completed
during a snowy semester at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
where Nicola Di Cosmo, the other resident fellows, and the staff (especially
Marian Zelazny and the dedicated librarians) made the stay pleasant and
rewarding. Funding for the membership came courtesy of Martin L. and
Sarah F. Leibowitz, whose generosity and commitment to research I wish to
acknowledge.
Parts of this book appeared as “Caught in the Spotlight: The 1858 Comet
and Late-Tokugawa Japan,” Japan Forum 23, no. 1 (2011): 1–23, and “Portents
and Politics: Two Women Activists on the Verge of the Meiji Restoration,”
Journal of Japanese Studies 38, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1–23. They are reproduced
with permission.
Over the years I have benefited from the untiring support of my mother,
my sister, my late father, and the late nonna Elena. If this is a book about
(among other things) microcosms, it is fitting that I would turn to my own
small world to conclude. The two other characters who populate it, Peter and
Acknowledgments ix
Furball, have provided countless distractions, mostly in the form of comic

relief and requests to be fed. One of them resorted to strutting up and down
my keyboard to let his need for attention be known. Out of respect I will not
name the culprit, but it goes without saying that all typos are entirely his
fault.
Introduction
The Flight of a Sparrow
In That Mighty Sculptor, Time, Marguerite Yourcenar likens

the life of man on earth to the flight of a sparrow
who enters through a window in the great hall warmed by a blaz-

ing fire . . . while outside the tempests and snows of winter rage. And
the bird swiftly sweeps through the great hall and flies out the other
side, and after this brief respite, having come out of the winter, he
goes back into it and is lost to our eyes. Such is the brief life of man,
of which we know neither what goes before nor what comes after.1
This is the story of one such sparrow, Kurosawa Tokiko (1806–1890), who hap-
pened to fly into the room in a meaningful place and at a momentous time:
Mito domain in the final century of the Tokugawa period (1600–1868).
Ruled by one of the Tokugawa’s three collateral houses, Mito domain was
located a three days’ journey north of the shogun’s capital of Edo (now Tokyo).
Beginning with domain lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni’s (1628–1701) sponsoring
of the Great History of Japan (Dai Nihonshi) in the seventeenth century, Mito
had played a key role in political discourse and had fostered the rise of the so-
called Mito ideology, a creed anchored on the notions of reverence for the
emperor and the rejection of foreign elements. By Tokiko’s time, Mito ideol-
ogy had reached the rural areas and made the transition from scholarly to pop-
ular; no longer the sole preserve of urban intellectuals and samurai, it had been
appropriated by the general population as well and had mutated from discourse
into (often violent) action.2
For a good part of her life, Tokiko lived under the realm of Tokugawa Nar-
iaki (r. 1829–1844), a domain lord whose radical reforms often placed him on
a collision course with the Edo government. The sparrow Tokiko was in the
room during the years that marked the collapse of the Tokugawa. She witnessed
the political showdown between the government and xenophobic loyalist
ideologues (known for the motto “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”)
1
2 Introduction
that followed the signing of treaties with foreign powers in the 1850s. She en-
dured the 1864 civil war in her domain, lived across the 1868 Tokugawa-Meiji
divide, and experienced first-hand the modernizing policies of the Meiji gov-
ernment. She left the room for good in 1890 after a long life during which,
among other things, she worked as a traveling peddler, learned the art of
poetry, absorbed the basic principles of the mountain religion Shugendō (a
syncretic belief combining elements from Buddhism, shamanism, Daoism,
and Shinto), practiced divination, ran a village school in the Tokugawa period,
and became an elementary school teacher and the local representative of a
sectarian Shinto organization in the Meiji period. Her life, in other words,
unfolded against the background of Japan’s bumpy transition from the “early
modern” to the “modern” eras, reflecting some of its key moments but also
illuminating some of its less known aspects.
Tokiko is not a household name in late-Tokugawa and Meiji studies be-
cause none of her actions changed the course of history in the slightest. Her
gender and status also made her inconspicuous; by her own admission—one
that she articulated with a touch of poetic flair—she was a “base-born nobody”
whose life was as evanescent “as dew on roadside grasses.”3 Unimportant and
unknown, Tokiko may as well have lived her life in near-complete anonymity
and may have exited the room leaving no trace behind. But she did not, for two
reasons. First, Tokiko was a prolific writer; she composed hundreds of poems
and kept several diaries that for the most part have survived the test of time
and continue to tell her story. Second, despite being a base-born woman
from a rural community, she engaged in activities that brought her out of her
microcosm and within the purview of “big history.” (I use this expression as a
term of convenience to indicate the milestone events of her day and age—the
textbook moments that occurred far from her rural village and were decided
by lead historical actors she would have never personally known.) Acting against
the expectations imposed by her gender, Tokiko did not quietly sit on the side-
lines as the country was falling into disarray. Outraged at the concessions made
to foreign powers with the Ansei Treaties of 1858, incensed at the punishment
that the government meted out to her former domain lord Tokugawa Nariaki
(a vocal opponent of the treaties), she elected to become an active player in the
loyalist movement of the late Tokugawa. In the spring of 1859 she composed a
long poem extolling Nariaki and lambasting Prime Minister Ii Naosuke, the
architect of the treaties, and traveled to Kyoto to deliver it in the hands of Em-
peror Kōmei. She was arrested, imprisoned (including a stint in Edo’s infamous
Tenmachō prison), and sentenced to banishment. The Meiji government recog-
nized her efforts on behalf of the loyalist movement and honored her with a land
grant in 1875 and with posthumous court rank in 1907. Her story, therefore, is
The Flight of a Sparrow 3
not only well documented but also worthy of attention for the ways in which it
intersects with, and enriches, the broader narrative of the late-Tokugawa crisis,
the collapse of the shogunate, and the rise of the modern state.
This book follows the flight of the sparrow with three goals in mind. The
first is to offer a fresh perspective on what it meant to be a woman and a politi-
cal activist in the late Tokugawa period. This topic has been taken up before,
most notably in Anne Walthall’s biography of Matsuo Taseko (1811–1894), a
loyalist woman from Shinano, and, if to a lesser extent, by Tanigawa Kaeko’s
research on the Fukuoka nun Nomura Bōtō (1806–1867).4 While gender and a
devotion to the loyalist cause may have put Tokiko, Bōtō, and Taseko in the
same general category, their cultural and economic backgrounds, their moti-
vations, their cosmologies, and the ways in which they articulated and enacted
their participation in the political debate of their times were vastly different,
and each deserves due attention. In the pages that follow I will compare To-
kiko’s experience to that of other female participants in the loyalist movement
to highlight significant idiosyncrasies that make Tokiko’s case enriching rather
than redundant. Specifically, I will show how, in order to engage with the pol-
itics of her day and age, Tokiko deployed strategies that other female loyalists
would have never considered and may have even abhorred, including divina-
tion, flirtations with ghosts, and frequent appeals to the cosmic forces.5 Such
strategies were neither more effective than those of others nor did they guar-
antee impunity. Rather than their concrete results, I argue, it is their very de-
ployment that matters, for it bespeaks creativity, resourcefulness, and variety
in terms of approaches. In its distinct trajectory, the fl ight of this sparrow
illuminates hitherto unknown paths to female intrusion into the political
landscape of the late Tokugawa.
In making this point, I challenge the notion that the study of any one given
individual is meaningful only insofar as such person is representative of a col-
lective trend. It is not my intention to present Tokiko as exemplary of the way
in which “women” experienced the collapse of the Tokugawa and the rise of
the modern state—contrary to the opinion of the anonymous reviewer of an
article I wrote, who cited Matsuo Taseko’s biography to argue that a gendered
history of late-Tokugawa loyalism already existed, hence the case for women
was closed. By the same token, one must assume that the publication of a study
on Yoshida Shōin would have made subsequent monographs on Sakamoto
Ryōma or Saigō Takamori repetitive and unnecessary, for the history of male
loyalism had already been written.
The second goal of this study is to expand beyond gender and to see how
Tokiko’s case nuances our understanding of late-Tokugawa ideology and soci-
ety. Historians of this period have already been treated to a vast English-language
4 Introduction
corpus of scholarship on the lives and deeds of prominent loyalists and of less
illustrious ones, from the educated samurai to the rural peasants.6 Regions
where no insurrections ensued, no incidents occurred, and, simply put, “noth-
ing happened,” have also been studied.7 Equally well researched is the broader
intellectual milieu of late-Tokugawa Japan, with monographs spanning from
the most sophisticated spheres of discourse and ideology to the rural language
of dissent, all the way to the colorful and imaginative takes on foreign encroach-
ment by commercial publishers and urban commoners.8
Narratives of late-Tokugawa loyalism tend to emphasize the rational ap-
proach of its adherents (often referred to as “men of high purpose,” or “war-
riors with intention” or “with determination”) and of its sympathizers. Victor
Koschmann, for example, calls attention to the detailed plan for a return to
order envisioned by the Shōkōkan scholars in Mito and to the lucid motiva-
tions behind the Tengu rebels’ pilgrimage to Nikkō in 1864.9 Mark Ravina de-
scribes Saigō Takamori (1828–1877) as a man “uncomfortable with ambiguity,”
who, even in the turmoil of the mid-1860s, urged his allies to “proceed with
reason.”10 Haga Noboru also emphasizes how, when it came to their mission,
the “men of high purpose” acted rationally. Citing Yoshida Shōin, he paints a
portrait of the loyalists as men who “in times of peace read books, learn the
Way, formulate policies for the administration, and ponder over the pros and
cons of past and present, but the moment things change and war breaks out
they practice their usual determination.” He adds that while their mounting
sense of purpose could spill over into obsession (to the point that some of them
incorporated the character for “obsessed” or “maniac” into their nicknames),
in general “they wholeheartedly emphasized the fact that one must exercise
restraint.”11 Likewise, H. D. Harootunian points out that, even though the atti-
tude of the activists veered toward the hysterical after the 1850s, their behavior
remained “tempered by a concern for appropriate knowledge.” Even Yoshida
Shōin’s post-1858 descent into madness, adds Harootunian, was a strategy
whereby he could highlight the threat to national survival and create a cult of
his own person.12 Last but not least, Anne Walthall reminds us that even a
woman like Matsuo Taseko thought and acted with a degree of “rationality men
can understand.”13
Studies that take an approach from below either emphasize open conflict
and acts of violence14 or focus on the emotional challenges to the sociopoliti-
cal order (the blossoming of new religions, runaway pilgrimages, or frenzied
dances accompanied by looting) on the part of the faceless and “charmed”
masses—“the rabble and the hoi polloi.”15 Most agree that behind popu lar acts
of dissent—from foot dragging to false compliance, from veiled threats to open
insurrection—lay not so much a loft y ideological stance as a basic quest for
economic stability if not straight-out financial gain, with the main concern
being always localized and “petty.”16
Tokiko’s story refuses to fit snugly into any of these narratives. While she
acted with the same sense of purpose as all other loyalists, Tokiko also drew
on the realm of the spiritual and of the uncanny. She blended focused deter-
mination with frequent appeals to portents and cosmic forces, and enacted plans
for action based on the analysis of yin-yang permutations, the interpretation
of celestial omens, and the occasional conversation with a ghost. Unlike some
of the self-anointed prophets and visionaries of her day and age, however, To-
kiko communicated with the heavens not from a place of frenzy or opportun-
ism but from one of erudition, pragmatism, and analytical proficiency;17 unlike
the panic-stricken loyalists of the late 1850s, she never descended into mad-
ness (either “authentic” or calculated) but remained focused on and, to the ex-
tent that the times allowed it, consistent in her vision. Her goals were neither
localized and petty nor universal and abstract, but situated somewhere in
between: in appealing to the heavens, Tokiko looked for ways to manage the
chaos of her day and age and restore order in her life and in the realm. The
original manner in which she approached the crisis of her times and envi-
sioned possible solutions enriches our understanding of ideology and society
in the late Tokugawa by blurring the line between (what we would call) ratio-
nal and irrational, between focus and folly, and between discourse and action.
The third and final goal of this book is even broader: to assess the role of
the ordinary individual in the large historical process and to measure the de-
gree to which personal experiences intersected, overlapped, and engaged—if
at all—with key historical moments. An acute yet admittedly unimportant ob-
server, Tokiko wrote about the gyrations of late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji his-
tory from a personal and often peripheral viewpoint that blended the large and
the small scales, the abstract and the tangible, the momentous and the mun-
dane. On the one hand, her musings reflect well-known historical junctions
(the Ansei Purges, the Mito civil war) as they were understood, experienced,
and acted upon by an ordinary person; across the 1868 watershed, her story
allows us to gauge the extent to which a citizen of “modern Japan” negotiated
between change and continuity. On the other, the same musings bring to light
a picture of personal preoccupations that were often disconnected from, and
entirely unrelated to, the textbook moments of history. In this respect, Tokiko’s
experience reminds us that the lives of most individuals were defined by dif-
ferent but no less remarkable benchmarks; births and deaths in the family, the
materializing of unexpected educational opportunities, or chance encounters
with like-minded folks often had a far greater, more immediate impact than the
signing of diplomatic treaties or the distant rumbles of revolutions. Overall, her
6 Introduction
life trajectory shows that the yardstick with which we quantify the advance of
big history often fails to account for the nooks and crannies that add depth to
the picture; it shows us that, without footnotes, the main text is nowhere near
as rich and meaningful.
By looking at history writ large through the eyes of an unimportant per-
son who did not change its course, The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko
is an exercise in microhistory, one that owes much to the work of other histo-
rians who have placed the single individual, the irrelevant nobody, at the front
and center of their narratives.18 There is, of course, no clear-cut definition of
microhistory. To some, it means dissecting “with almost maniacal detail” the
fifteen hours that preceded and followed a single battle;19 to others, the “mi-
cro” in “microhistory” is less synonymous with a short span of time and more
with an inconsequential place or person. Giovanni Levi, for example, speaks
of his study of Giovanni Battista Chiesa, a healer and exorcist in seventeenth-
century Piedmont, as the “undistinguished story” of an “unsophisticated” man
living in a “banal place” at a time when “nothing seem[ed] to be happening.”20
There is no shortage of metaphors to define the approach of microhistory: it
is the historiographical equivalent of a cinematographic close-up, the examina-
tion of the leaves at the expense of the tree, the obsession with “cosmic irrele-
vance,” the focus “on scraps rather than on larger entities.”21 It is refuge history,
not prospect history; the stuff of truffle hunters rather than parachutists;22 the
observation of a frog’s skin cells through a microscope as opposed to a study
of the frog’s place in its ecosystem.23
In a sense, many of these definitions apply to this study, which is based on
“circumscribed documentation, tied to a person who was otherwise unknown.”24
In other ways, however, Tokiko’s story defies some of the principles of micro-
history: it covers a relatively long time span, it deals with mundane but also
with extraordinary circumstances, and it is anything but the account of an il-
literate, inarticulate, or voiceless ignoramus oblivious to the world outside her
village. To quote Tokiko’s own words, this is a social history of the late Tokugawa
period as lived by someone “born far from heaven, in the countryside”;25 a study
of gender as defined by the experience of a “foolish woman”;26 an examination
of loyalism as practiced by someone whose actions amounted to “one drop in
the ocean.”27 It is, lastly, a snapshot of big history as it percolated in a place so
inconsequential that “the bamboo in my garden looks like my only friend.”28
To add to the long list of metaphors, then, The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa
Tokiko is the story of a sparrow, but also a glimpse of its encompassing bird’s-
eye view.
Cosmic Configurations and Human Connections

Two organizational principles connect the dots throughout the pages that fol-
low. The first is the role of spirituality and the heavens in Tokiko’s life before,
during, and after the collapse of the Tokugawa. The three sections into which
I organize the book reflect, in part, the different ways in which Tokiko’s use of
divination and visions evolved in response to mutating historical and/or per-
sonal circumstances. Mine is an artificial division, one that suits a preferred
organizational and analytical principle but does not intend to exclude other
important aspects of Tokiko’s experience. Most prominent among those other
aspects—and effectively functioning as a second theme—is the impact of hu-
man connections in shaping Tokiko’s political persona and in providing sup-
port, assistance, and comfort at various stages in her life. Her tangible social
world, therefore, features just as prominently as her cosmic configurations in
this study.
Part 1,“Tokiko’s World” (chapters 1 and 2), occupies the turf of microhis-
tory in the strictest sense, for it centers mostly on the spaces of the house, the
community, and the domain. It introduces Tokiko by mapping her geograph-
ical and social microcosms, observing her day-to-day activities, and tracing
the contours of the social networks she established in the years leading up to
her political awakening. The cosmic and divine appear from the start as part
and parcel of Tokiko’s daily life; their function, at this stage, was mostly eco-
nomic and social. Tokiko’s ability to carry out a conversation with the heavens
was a source of income and identity. The divination ser vices she offered likely
supplemented the income generated by teaching and put her on the map, rais-
ing her profile and enabling her to establish important networks that gave her
access to information. Her proficiency in the language of the heavens cast To-
kiko in the role of link between her community and the cosmic forces: when
the time came for her to take a leap into history, Tokiko built upon those foun-
dations to fashion herself as the one who would communicate the heavens’ will
to a wider audience, helping not just her fellow villagers but the realm writ large.
Part 2, “The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko” (chapters 3 through
7), places Tokiko within the frame of large-scale history. It begins with her po-
litical awakening in the catastrophic Year of the Horse Ansei 5 (1858), at a time
when the world around her had descended into chaos. It outlines her foray into
activism, from the 1859 mission to Kyoto and her arrest, to her time in prison,
her release, and her return to Mito, where she eventually bore witness to the
1864 civil war. In this section, Tokiko’s dialogues with the heavens serve a new
purpose, becoming an integral part of her political project. It was an anomaly
in the cosmic harmony, she tells us, that first alerted her to the magnitude of the
8 Introduction
ongoing crisis and ignited her political activism: with its eerie white light,
the comet of 1858 revealed to Tokiko a world marred by instability (“trem-
ors”), “turned . . . upside down,” and in a “life-or-death situation.”29 The heavens
are also the site where Tokiko looked for solutions. In the turmoil of the late
Tokugawa, she consulted them as sources of answers and strength and re-
ferred to them as “the orderly heavens” (shōten, a term that I will also trans-
late as “cosmos,” not in the sense of the entire universe itself but to indicate a
“cosmic order” antithetical to the world’s chaos).30
In this section we fi nd Tokiko keeping her ears cocked to the whispers
of the cosmos while at the same time conversing with her peers and listening to
the “words of the people of the floating world.”31 Despite some of her claims
to the contrary, Tokiko’s political consciousness did not entirely descend
upon her from the sky but was also rooted in the fertile soil of late-Tokugawa
Mito domain and of interregional networks that connected poets, Shugendō
practitioners, and loyalists. (These are not mutually exclusive categories, of
course, and many of Tokiko’s acquaintances were in fact all of the above.) Her
feat of activism would not have been possible without a heft y dose of human
interaction and on-the-ground support from her social networks, which, like
the heavens with which she spoke, gave her comfort, assistance, and direction.
Tokiko’s relation with the heavens and with her community changed yet
again starting in the early Meiji era and continuing well into the twentieth cen-
tury, as detailed in part 3, “Memory, Manipulation, and Amnesia” (chapters 8
through 11). On the one hand, the crisis that had precipitated her political ac-
tivism was now a thing of the past, meaning that the quest for answers in the
cosmos and within loyalist circles was no longer pressing. On the other, the
Meiji government’s abolition of Shugendō in 1872 and the replacement of pri-
vate village schools with state-controlled elementary schools in the same year
deprived Tokiko of a significant part of her identity, income, and social func-
tion, forcing her to seek new ways to define her role and worth. From joining
the ranks of a sectarian Shinto organization to reinventing herself as an ele-
mentary school teacher, Tokiko adapted as best she could to mutating histori-
cal circumstances while at the same time striving to preserve her past.
Part 3 does not end with Tokiko’s death in 1890. After the sparrow flies
out the window and is lost to our eyes forever, I continue to trace the fuzzy
contours of its flight as it was reconstructed by others in the late nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Chapters 9 through 11 examine the renditions and
manipulations of Tokiko’s story after she was no longer there to speak for her-
self. Two important facets of the modern age inform these chapters: the replace-
ment of “superstition” with science, and the 1930s and 1940s articulation of
acceptable models for Japanese women. The gravitational pull of scientific
modernity and of the model citizen warped the ways in which Tokiko’s story
was understood and retold. Specifically, her ability to speak to the heavens,
which she had deployed as an asset in the late nineteenth century, became a
liability in the eyes of twentieth-century biographers, for it bespoke irratio-
nality. Her political activism was an even thornier issue, hailed as an example
of patriotic behavior on the one hand, but feared as a model of female insub-
ordination on the other. Popular as well as academic renditions of Tokiko’s
story produced after her death and throughout the first half of the twentieth
century downplayed or omitted altogether her fascination with comets, ghosts,
and hexagrams and walked a fine line in presenting her political side.32 Mono-
graphs, encyclopedias, magazine articles, pamphlets, and biographies took
turns in commemorating her as an accidental heroine, as a paragon of frugal-
ity, as a skilled poet, or as a talented and compassionate teacher; one work of
fiction from the immediate postwar period even cast her as an arch-villain and
female daredev il who did in fact change the course of history (see chapter 11).
They all but failed, however, to give prominence to her identity as a mediator
between heaven and earth, and in doing so, they forgot to acknowledge that
Tokiko thrived best in the interstices between rational and emotional, between
discourse and action, between chaos and cosmos.
Fragments and Footnotes

In retracing the genesis of the project that would yield The Cheese and the Worms,
Carlo Ginzburg wrote that, by reducing the scale of observation, what could
have been a mere footnote in the narrative of the Protestant Reformation in
Friuli ended up becoming a book.33 Much like Ginzburg’s Friulian miller Men-
occhio, Tokiko too initially came to me in fragments and footnotes. She first
surfaced while I was researching women travelers of the Tokugawa period;
among the many studies I consulted, one cited excerpts from her Kyoto travel
diary, another whispered her name from a note at the bottom of the page.34
As I set out to investigate her life, I was struck by the dearth of material
dealing with her, both in English and, surprisingly, in Japanese. Not entirely
unknown,35 Tokiko is conspicuously absent from important reference works
such as Heibonsha’s Great Dictionary of Japanese History (Nihonshi daijiten,
1993) or Yoshikawa Kōbunkan’s Great Dictionary of National History (Kokushi
daijiten, 1990). There is no trace of Tokiko in Nakahara Masao’s Women and
the Meiji Restoration (Meiji ishin to josei, 1974) either. Studies dedicated to fe-
male writers of the early modern period have left her out as well, despite her
undeniable proficiency with the brush.36 None of her diaries or her numerous
poetry collections has been printed in full, much less translated into English;
10 Introduction
they can be consulted only as manuscripts at the prefectural archives in Mito

(Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan) or, until 2009, at the Tokiko Shiryōkan, a small
annex adjacent to her native home in the village of Katsura, Shirosato town.
(After 2009 most of the documents preserved in the Tokiko Shiryōkan were
donated to Ibaraki University, where they have been cata loged as Kurosawa
Family Records, or Kurosawa-ke monjo.) Several academics in Japan, includ-
ing scholars of the Meiji Restoration, confessed to having never heard of her.
Despite the best efforts of Mito-based sympathizers past and present,
who have been hard at work since the turn of the twentieth century to make
sure her story would not be lost, circumstances big and small have conspired to
keep her at the margins. A selection of her writings that Tokiko’s great-grandson
Kurosawa Minesaburō had collated in the 1930s, for example, was forever lost
when the Joshi Gakushūin library in which it was stored went up in flames dur-
ing the air raids that ravaged Tokyo in the final months of the Pacific War.37
Her native home with the classroom in which she tutored the village children
still stands (figures 1.1 and 1.2), but all efforts to have it recognized as a cul-
tural property have failed. At the time of my first visit in 2007, the house was
well kept and open to the public; a charming soba restaurant, appropriately
named Toki Soba, operated nearby. Tokiko’s sixth-generation grandson,
Seiichi, lived next door, and the adjacent Tokiko Shiryōkan served as storage,
archive, and impromptu museum. The property, however, had recently gone
up for sale, and its future remained unclear. Things looked much bleaker in
the summer of 2008. A private investor had bought the property; while he had
not, as many feared, turned it into a pachinko parlor or a convenience store,
the house now sat in disrepair and was no longer open to the public. The soba
restaurant had relocated, though keeping the same name and actually gaining
in charm. Seiichi, in poor health, no longer left his house; an email came early
in 2009 announcing his passing. By February 2011, signs in the front yard
warned of a possible roof collapse, and rat droppings soiled the tatami inside.
One month later, the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 caused a por-
tion of the floor to cave in. By October 2012, blue tarp covered the roof and the
surrounding garden was overgrown with weeds; wild vegetation also ob-
structed the path to the commemorative stone monument that was erected in
a nearby grove in 1937 to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Tokiko’s post-
humous rank (figure 10.2).
Tokiko’s story lives on through the efforts of local volunteers. In 1978 To-
kiko memorabilia was displayed at the Katsura Village Industry and Culture
Festival.38 Kurosawa Seiichi and other private citizens contributed some of her
personal items, including her school primers, her poetry collections, her stu-
dent rosters, her portrait, and mundane household objects.39 The following year,
the Katsura Village Historical Society put together a special issue of the Kat-
sura History Bulletin (Katsurashi kiyō) entirely dedicated to Tokiko, crowning
her “our village’s foremost individual”;40 a second installment was published
in 1981. To this day private citizens periodically organize festivals in her honor:
on the two-hundred-year anniversary of her birth in 2006, for example, or in
2007 for the centenary of the bestowal of posthumous rank. Local volunteers
produce pamphlets about her, and plow through and transcribe her manuscripts
with the dedication of consummate academics; the efforts of Ōsawa Toshio
(president of the Association in Honor of Kurosawa Tokiko, or Kurosawa To-
kiko Kenshōkai) and of Shirosato resident Gotō Norio in this respect are es-
pecially noteworthy. On New Year’s Day in 2010, Ibaraki Newspaper (Ibaraki
shinbun) broke the news of a movie project based on Tokiko’s life as a teacher.41
Received with great hope for a Tokiko revival, the project ran into financial
difficulties, then stalled following the Great East Japan Earthquake of March
11, 2011, and at the time I write has all but been archived.
Recent scholarship on Tokiko is limited and disorienting. Different works
emphasize only select aspects of her story, and the picture that emerges is one
of a mutilated historical character. In some versions she is a political activist
and not much else. For example, the brief chapter of Mito Pioneers (Mito no
sendatsu, 2000) dedicated to Tokiko opens in medias res with the poignant im-
age of a solitary woman appearing on the streets of Kyoto, “where the winds of
the Ansei Purges were blowing furiously.” From the start, the image of Tokiko
this work projects is one of engaged activism. Only after her credentials as a
loyalist are established does the entry mention her work as an educator. This
brief aside functions as a rhetorical flair better to emphasize the rupture brought
about by the events that triggered her foray into loyalism, a foray that occurred
despite and against the fact that, “as a woman, she had no business being in-
volved either in national or domain politics.”42
Elsewhere Tokiko is treated mostly as a woman of letters and an educator.
Her entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Local History: Ibaraki (Kyōdo reki-
shi jinbutsu jiten: Ibaraki, 1978) opens with these words: “The first female teacher
in Japan. The daughter of a Shugendō practitioner. . . . Since her childhood she
grew up being exposed to [such primers as] The Imagawa and The Greater Learn-
ing [for Women] among others, for her house had also functioned as a village
school for generations.” A detailed description of the political landscape of the
1850s follows, leading to a distilled version of Tokiko’s adventures in activism:
“Intending to proclaim Nariaki’s innocence before the imperial court, Tokiko
traveled to Kyoto in the second month of 1859. However, she was arrested and,
12 Introduction
following a strict investigation, was sentenced to banishment.” The entry ends

with her return to the classroom and her role as elementary school teacher in
the Meiji period.43
In Shiba Keiko’s Dictionary of Women’s Travel Diaries from the Early Mod-
ern Period (Kinsei no onna tabi nikki jiten, 2005), Tokiko matters mostly as the
author of a travel diary. Shiba dwells on the fact that Tokiko was a seasoned
traveler and revels in such details as the fact that she did not carry a travel per-
mit, that she braved the winter weather, and that she rested her sore body at
various hot springs along the way.44
Perhaps most bizarre of all is Tokiko’s image from Ōga Tetsuo and Taki-
guchi Yasuhiko’s Talented Women of the Restoration Period (Ishinki no saijo-
tachi, 1980). A widow from a rural village suddenly transformed into a
strong-willed heroine, Tokiko is portrayed as a feisty, sword-wielding warrior
on the offensive (figure I.1); with her hollow eyes, she appears in an eerie demon-
like incarnation, hard to reconcile with the image of a teacher and modern
educator.
For all their different narrative choices, these renditions of Tokiko’s
life have one thing in common: almost nowhere do they give her credit as a
religious specialist who applied spiritual and cosmic remedies to political
problems, as a mediator who envisioned a synergy between chaos and
cosmos.
Like all research projects, this one too had its challenges. The abundance
of manuscripts penned by Tokiko has been a blessing. However, relying exclu-
sively on her version of the story presented some problems. For example, in 1875
Tokiko rewrote and edited the diaries of her 1859 trip to Kyoto (Travel Diary)
and of her incarceration (Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration). The benefit of
hindsight, coupled with the knowledge that her side would emerge victorious
and that she would be honored by the Meiji government (precisely in 1875),
unquestionably affected some of her narrative and editorial choices (see chapter
3). I have made every attempt to triangulate her story with other records; in
some cases, however, complementary sources simply did not exist.
The diaries themselves shed light only on relatively brief intervals in
Tokiko’s life, most prominently the years between 1858–1859 and the year 1864.
There are poems, letters, and other records written before and after, but the fact
remains that entire stretches of her life are left in the dark or are illuminated
only by the flickering light of short poems and occasional letters: we know al-
most nothing about Tokiko’s early years as a young bride, and relatively little
about her life between the time she was released from prison at the end of 1859
and the onset of the Mito civil war in 1864. Tokiko is silent on momentous,
textbook-worthy events like the Restoration, the Meiji-era forced separation of
Figure I.1. Tokiko as a demonic warrior.

Ōga Tetsuo and Takiguchi Yasuhiko, eds., Ishinki no
saijotachi (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1980), 150. Courtesy of
Shōgakukan.
Shinto deities (kami) and buddhas, or the propagation of Western-based ideas

of “civilization and enlightenment.” We know she became one of the first teach-
ers in the Meiji government’s national school system, but she does not write
about it directly. For all such reasons, this work harbors no pretense of being
Kurosawa Tokiko’s definitive biography: like Yourcenar with her sparrow, it
can examine only the short interval during which Tokiko’s life trajectory neared
the light of the fire. Brief as such glimpse may be, it still illuminates a hitherto
unknown intersection of small- and large-scale history against the backdrop
of late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji Japan.
14 Introduction
Incomplete and inconsequential, Tokiko’s life story adds a human face to

a big moment in time and enables us to tread not only the main avenues but
also some of the less known side roads along which such a moment unfolded.
From her mountain village on the sidelines of history, Tokiko lived and told a
story that illuminates the large and the small, the forest and the trees. And that,
for a base-born nobody, is no small feat.
Part I
TOK IKO’S WOR LD

1 A Nest and a Nexus
The flight of the sparrow ought to start from the nest. This
chapter follows Tokiko’s early years as a daughter, bride, mother, peddler, poet
in training, tutor, and divination specialist while keeping her native home at the
center of the narrative. More than just a descriptive survey of Tokiko’s life
through the 1850s, this chapter also attempts to situate the individual at the
intersection of the small and the large scale. It does so in two ways. The first is
by seeing how the choices Tokiko made within her microcosm measured up
against the gyrations of history writ large. Inscribing Tokiko’s actions against
such textbook moments as the Tenpō crisis of the 1830s, the fi rst clash be-
tween Tokugawa Nariaki and the shogunate in 1844, or the arrival of Com-
modore Perry to Japan in 1853 enables us to assess the extent to which events
unfolding within the frame of big history impacted (or not) the daily life of
the ordinary person. Juxtaposing the wide angle and the close-up brings to
light direct correspondences as well as telling divergences between the master
narrative and the personal chronicle. What emerges is a richer, sharper, more
nuanced picture not only of the historical moment in general but also of the
historical actor within his or her microcosm.
The second way in which this chapter places Tokiko at the junction of the
large and the small is through an analysis of two distinct niches carved within
the sparrow’s nest—the school and the Shugendō center. At a basic level these
spaces performed a socio-economic function and defined Tokiko’s role within
the community. In a more abstract sense, as sites where Tokiko squared theo-
retical principles (as defined in pedagogical treatises or divination manuals)
against the demands of “real life,” the classroom and the Shugendō center also
contributed to defining Tokiko’s identity as a mediator between the intangible
and the concrete, the cosmic and the mundane. At the end of this chapter To-
kiko’s native home—her nest—will emerge as more than just a dwelling; it will
be a nexus between different scales of magnitude, a space that enabled Tokiko
to connect things large and small. Appropriately, it is the starting point for our
17
18 Chapter 1
Map 1.1. Hitachi Province (modern-day Ibaraki Prefecture) and some of the locations
mentioned in this book. Map by Will Fontanez.
sparrow’s flight into big history. But let us start with the small scale first: let us
find the sparrow’s nest.
Kurosawa Tokiko was born in the village of Koya (later renamed Suzu-
goya, now Katsura village, Shirosato town, in Ibaraki Prefecture; map 1.1),
Mito domain, on 1806/12/21.1 Her birth name was Kon; the name Tokiko is a
later acquisition. At approximately twenty kilometers (twelve miles) north-
A Nest and a Nexus 19
Map 1.2. Suzugoya and surrounding villages. Map by Will Fontanez.
west of Mito castle town, Tokugawa-period Suzugoya was an average-size

rural community; a source compiled two years before Tokiko’s birth lists 116
households.2 Located on a plateau, Suzugoya is surrounded by hills and low
peaks; nearby Mount Takatori, for example, is only 355 meters high (map
1.2). To the north loom the taller mountains of the Yamizo range, including
Mount Yamizo, Mount Torinoko, Mount Toriashi, and Mount Tsukuba.3 In
Tokiko’s times wild boars, deer, wolves, and monkeys roamed the surround-
ing forests and groves, occasionally crossing paths with the human popula-
tion; the people of Suzugoya were familiar with the tale of two local brothers
who, in 1783, had killed a wild boar responsible for attacking one of their
friends.4 Despite the occasional run-ins with wildlife, however, life in the
hills was by no means brutal, and Tokiko often spoke of her “mountain village”
in bucolic terms.
Her native home, nestled amidst bamboo groves (figure 1.1), included a
Shugendō center known as the Hōjuin, the Temple of Treasures and Longev-
ity, and a village school (terakoya). Such dual function was not uncommon: in
rural areas, Shugendō practitioners, local doctors, and clergy often doubled as
teachers. At a time when most common people were barely literate, running a
20 Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Tokiko’s native home in 2007. Photo by author.
school and a religious center would have placed Tokiko’s family in one of the
top tiers of local society.
While both teaching and divination would form a substantial part of To-
kiko’s life, one cannot credit her father, Masakichi5—a teacher and Shugendō
priest (yamabushi)—as her role model, for when she was two (three by Japa-
nese counting) he divorced Tokiko’s mother and left. Tokiko was raised by her
mother, Fusako (1787–1871), and by her grandfather, Kissō (1758–1821). Kissō
was the third man in the family to run the school, which had been founded by
his uncle Senmei (1705–1781) in the 1750s and had then been run by his father
(Tokiko’s great-grandfather), Gen‘eki (1718–1792).6 It was Kissō who guided and
shaped Tokiko’s intellectual growth, introducing her to such primers as The
Imagawa, Teaching the Words of Truth (Jitsugokyō), and The Greater Learning
for Women (Onna daigaku).7
At age nineteen, in 1824, Tokiko (or Kon, as she was still called) married
Kamoshida Hikozō (or Genzō) Masatoki (n.d.) and moved to Kojima village
(modern-day Kanasagō; see map 1.1). That same year a foreign vessel landed
on the coast of Ōtsu. Several other such ships had recently been spotted off the
Mito shore, prompting concerns about espionage, the “return” of Christian-

ity, and foreign encroachment in general: “Pretending to be hunting whales,”
wrote one observer, “they anchor off the coast or come near to the land, in or-
der to spy out our country. . . . Our people who approach their ships and are
tempted to believe in their religion, are greatly to be pitied.”8 The vessel that
landed in Ōtsu was in fact a British whaler in need of supplies, but it came to
be seen as the forefront of a possible foreign invasion.9 While the debate raged
and criticism against the weakness of the domain’s coastal defense program
spread, in Kojima the young bride Kon spent her days tilling the land. Within
a few years she would give birth to two daughters, Kumeko, in 1827, and Teruko,
in 1830.
Her married life coincided in part with the early tenure of Tokugawa Nar-
iaki (1800–1860, r. 1829–1844) as lord of Mito domain. A ruler with a penchant
for strict sumptuary laws, Nariaki required his retainers to shun silk and wear
cotton and to refrain from such frivolous activities as playing music, perform-
ing the tea ceremony, or engaging in the art of flower arrangement.10 Young
women of the warrior class were to devote themselves to sewing, weaving, and
training with the naginata (a type of halberd).11 Though restrictive, these mea-
sures had no immediate impact on Kon’s life, for she was not of samurai stock.
In the early years of Nariaki’s reign, Kon’s preoccupations centered not on the
choice between cotton and silk or on the threat of foreign invasion but on the
difficulties involved in raising two daughters and attending to a husband who,
as some scholars have speculated, was prone to drinking and squandering
money.12
Hikozō died in the early 1830s—the exact year is a matter of debate.13
After his death, Kon left Kojima and, with her daughters, returned to her na-
tive home in Koya. The elder, Kumeko, was betrothed to another member of
the Kamoshida clan, but after he became ill and died, all relations between the
Kurosawa and the Kamoshida families ended. With old ties severed and her
marital life over, Kon prepared for a new beginning; she marked the transi-
tion by acquiring the name Tokiko.14 In the uncharted road ahead, Koya of-
fered a familiar territory and a safe haven. Returning to the nest made sense.
Koya was known for its tin ore. Deposits were discovered in the late six-
teenth century and first excavated in 1631; smelting began shortly thereafter.15
Mito lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni visited the local mines in 1663;16 in 1834 Nar-
iaki also came to the area and inspected the local production. By then, how-
ever, the business was in decline; the mines would be shut down during the
final years of the Tokugawa period. Still, Nariaki must have been impressed
by what he saw, or must have thought of a publicity stunt aimed at boosting a
22 Chapter 1
struggling industry, for after his visit he requested the word suzu (tin) be added
to the name of the village to honor the local economy. Only a few years after
Tokiko relocated there, Koya thus became Suzugoya.17
Tokiko’s life as a widow and as the sole caretaker for her aging mother and
young daughters began at a difficult time: the Tenpō era. Corresponding to the
1830s and early 1840s, the Tenpō years witnessed crop failures, famines, and
disease outbreaks in several regions, Mito included. In 1837 merchant Tokush-
uku Tajurō of Awayama, near Suzugoya (see map 1.2), captured the general mis-
ery with these words:
From Shirakawa all the way to Nasu [in modern-day Tochigi Pre-
fecture, north of Ibaraki] there have been poor harvests for two,
three years, and on top of that the spreading of a contagion since
last year. As a result people—men and women—are eating tree roots
and plant seeds; their faces are pale, their bodies exhausted to the
extreme. Gardens are overgrown with weeds and the dilapidated
homes are a pitiful sight. Since the end of last year, not only beg-
gars and outcasts, as one would expect, but also peasants have been
dropping dead along the roads. The dead are so numerous that vil-
lage officials cannot properly take care of all [the bodies].18
To history writ large intruding into her microcosm and to collective miseries
overlapping with personal losses, Tokiko responded by reinventing herself: not
only did she change her name, she also began what would become an almost
decade-long stint as a peddler, often traveling to other provinces to sell combs
and ornamental hairpins.
Made out of necessity and in the context of a widespread crisis, Tokiko’s
choice came with unexpected personal benefits. Her peregrinations put her in
touch with regional literati who helped her hone her poetic skills. Starting in
the 1830s, Tokiko began writing Chinese and Japanese poetry. In the follow-
ing decade she learned haikai from Obana An of Ōta (in modern-day Ibaraki,
map 1.1), a follower of the Bashō school, and from Kangiku An of Shimodate
(also in Ibaraki, map 1.1).19 Beginning in 1833 she received tutoring in comi-
cal verses (kyōka) from Ryokuju-en (a.k.a., Kobayashi Heishichi) of Edozaki
(in southern Ibaraki, map 1.1), a disciple of Ōta Nanpo and Yadoya no Meshi-
mori. She also practiced classical poetry (the thirty-one syllable waka) with
Katōgi Shunzō of Magone (near Suzugoya, map 1.2), with Morita Yoshio of
Shimōsa Province, and with Kojima Harutaka (or Shunson), an itinerant Shinto
priest from faraway Iwate, in the northern Tōhoku region.20 (Tokiko never ped-
dled her hairpins that far north; she probably met Kojima while he was visit-
ing the Mito area, though she does not elaborate on the point.) As she traveled
to sell small commodities, Tokiko thus established a network of poetic con-
nections that stretched across multiple provinces of northeastern Japan.
It is not inconceivable that a traveling peddler would interact with the li-
terati. In her study of late-eighteenth-century intellectual circles, Anna Beer-
ens demonstrates how a person’s source of income, though important, did not
affect his or her ability to forge connections. What mattered was the existence
of common interests, be that painting, poetry, or the tea ceremony. Moreover,
“employment” was a fluid notion, and career changes—whether dictated by
choice or circumstances—were the norm.21 Likewise, Takeshi Moriyama makes
a compelling case for the extent and liveliness of information exchange net-
works in the late Tokugawa period. Using the case of Echigo Province village
elder Suzuki Bokushi (1770–1842), whose contact list included such celebrity
writers as Jippensha Ikku, Santō Kyōden, and Ōta Nanpo, Moriyama shows
how even rural residents partook in circles that stretched far and wide between
urban centers and the peripheries.22 That a traveling peddler with a thirst for
poetry would be able to weave a network of inter- and intra-provincial con-
tacts with like-minded individuals was, therefore, entirely possible.
Like all men and women of letters, Tokiko was familiar with the classics
of Japanese literature as well as with works from the Chinese tradition. In her
writings we find references to the tenth-century poetry collection Kokinshū,
to The Book of Songs, and to odes by Chinese emperors of old.23 She continued
to look for sources of intellectual fulfillment throughout her life; in a poem from
1857, for example, she mused (perhaps ironically):
Morokoshi no As I learn
hijiri no michi o the way of the
manabitsutsu Chinese men of virtue, I wonder:
yamatogokoro ni will it carry over
utsushite shi kana into a Japanese heart?24
Though evidence for her erudition transpires more clearly in the works she com-
posed decades after her stint as a traveling peddler, it is fair to assume that such
works are the result of the appetite for knowledge she nourished in her earlier
interactions with the regional literati.
In the 1840s another man entered Tokiko’s world: Sukenobu Hōin (or Shin-
suke), whom the Kurosawa family took in as an adopted heir (muko) in 1839.
Depending on the source, Sukenobu is described as either Tokiko’s second hus-
band or as her stepfather. Tokiko’s own diaries never mention a new husband,
but the documents produced by the Tokugawa authorities at the time of her
24 Chapter 1
arrest refer to her as Shinsuke’s wife. Similarly, the proclamation with which
she was conferred a land grant in the early Meiji period addresses her as the
“wife of the late Kurosawa Nobusuke” (meaning Sukenobu).25 Hōin is a reli-
gious title; Sukenobu was affiliated with the Nansōin in Naka district, a Shugendō
center under the same administration as the Hōjuin. He took charge of the
Shugendō facility, which had been inactive since the death of Tokiko’s grand-
father in 1821, and of the school, where he served as its fourth teacher.
Sukenobu’s arrival coincided with the wave of anti-Buddhist reforms that
swept through Mito domain in the 1830s and 1840s: Buddhist funerals were
prohibited, statues and bells were confiscated, children were forbidden from
studying in temples, and the erection of roadside Buddhist monuments was
outlawed. The reforms also caused the closure of many Shugendō centers, for
the spiritual power of the yamabushi threatened the domain’s vision of order.
The same reforms also targeted oracles and diviners, whose practices the do-
main deemed uncontrollable.26 It is unclear how and to what extent these pol-
icies affected the Kurosawa family, for Tokiko unfortunately is silent on the issue.
In any case, the Hōjuin weathered the storm, and Sukenobu Hōin remained
in Suzugoya for a number of years.
Besides running the family’s businesses, Sukenobu further introduced To-
kiko to the joys of Japanese and Chinese verses.27 Her mother, Fusako, was
no stranger to poetry-making either, so Tokiko had an opportunity to flex her
poetic muscle at home as much as she did on the road.28 This was Tokiko’s life
in the 1840s: pursuing her education, working to support her family, raising
her daughters, and forming local and long-distance bonds based on common
interests.
In the fift h month of 1844, Mito domain was jolted by the abrupt resigna-
tion of the lord Nariaki, followed by his first stint in home confinement as a
punishment for his unorthodox reforms. The exact reasons behind Nariaki’s
clash with the Edo government may have escaped those who were not involved
with the high spheres of politics, but one would be remiss to write off the com-
moners of Mito domain as oblivious to the ongoing political strife. News of
Nariaki’s fall spread fast: then magistrate Kaneko Magojirō put out a circular
announcing the punishment and ordering that everyone in the domain show
dejection for the lord’s fate by refraining from talking in a loud voice, from en-
joying communal activities, or from “taking lives” (i.e., hunting and fishing).29
The diary of merchant Tokushuku Tajurō from Awayama shows how widely
and quickly the news traveled. Five days after the punishment was meted out,
Tajurō wrote: “Today the news has come that the Middle Councilor [Nariaki] . . .
was ordered to withdraw into the Komagome residence [in Edo]. . . . Rumor has
it that [his son] Tsuruchiyo [Yoshiatsu] will inherit the household.”30 Given
Awayama’s proximity to Suzugoya (map 1.2), one can assume Tokiko heard sim-
ilar rumors.
As the news spread, many organized an “exculpation movement” (setsuen
undō) to defend Nariaki. Far from being confined to Mito castle town, the move-
ment spread throughout the rural areas as well. People from all walks of life
joined in the call for Nariaki’s release. Some appealed to the local tutelary dei-
ties; Tokushuku Tajurō, for example, reports:
1844/9/8: Pilgrimage to Shizu Shrine. Since the third of this month,

[people] have been offering prayers there for the lord [Yoshiatsu’s]
prolonged fortunes in war and for a quick and lenient conclusion
to the Middle Councilor’s [i.e., Nariaki’s] [ordeal]. . . . Awayama
Shrine and Iwabune Shrine are offering prayers for three days, un-
til the ninth.
He also added that similar prayers were being intoned at Kashima Shrine—
referring to the tutelary deity of Takane village (map 1.2) and not to the more
famous Kashima Shrine, home to the earthquake-quelling Kashima god, which
is further south in modern-day Ibaraki.31
While many were busy asking the gods for assistance, others took a more
practical approach, delivering petitions for Nariaki’s release to the Edo resi-
dences of government officials and domain lords. One of Tokiko’s fellow vil-
lagers, Takaba Gihei, delivered his petition to the Aizu residence;32 Katōgi Toyo
and her son Shunzō (Shōzō, 1815–1893), from Magone village, near Suzugoya,
brought their pleas to the Kii residence.33 While collective prayers in rural
shrines may not have warranted the attention of the Edo authorities, present-
ing unauthorized petitions to the gates of government officials most certainly
did. As Watanabe Hiroshi explains, such acts bespoke defiance and disrespect,
a behavior the Tokugawa considered threatening.34 Nariaki was eventually freed
from home confinement later that year, but the strife would only increase.
Tokiko had no way of knowing that her destiny would one day resemble
that of these early activists. Busy as she was making ends meet and taking care
of her family, she may not have had the opportunity to mull over the news,
though she almost certainly became aware of emerging political tensions in
her domain. In the meantime, her life went on, taking its own turns.
Attesting to the fluidity of career choices in nineteenth-century Japan, To-
kiko gradually phased off her activities as a peddler and made the transition
to tutoring. In 1851 she was hired to tutor the grandson and daughter of the
26 Chapter 1
retired head of the Kikuya family in Kusatsu (modern-day Gunma Prefec-

ture). She held the appointment for about six months. In the second month of
1852 she moved on to a tutoring position in Shioko (now Nanakai, map 1.2).35
The class roster from this time lists the names of her students as well as the
gifts they brought her.36
Tokiko was in Shioko when, in the eleventh month of 1852, Tokugawa Nar-
iaki was welcomed back to Edo castle for the first time since 1844, bringing
his first clash with the Tokugawa government to a conclusion.37 She was still
in Shioko on 1853/6/3, when Commodore Perry’s fleet entered Uraga Bay to
request the opening of trade relations with the United States. Perry would re-
turn early in 1854 to demand an answer (in the positive) to his request.
All traditional narratives of the Restoration agree that the arrival of Per-
ry’s ships and the signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa, with which Japan made
ample concessions to the United States, are among the milestones in the path
that led to the fall of the Tokugawa. Harootunian, for example, identifies sho-
gunal councilor Abe Masahiro’s decision to consult with the emperor and with
the domain lords on issues of foreign policy after Perry’s arrival as the moment
that forever altered the nature of Tokugawa political discourse. By acting against
established precedent, Abe created a fracture through which an alternative vi-
sion of order emerged, one anchored on the return to direct imperial authority.
In 1854, argues Harootunian, the figure of the emperor made the transition from
“principle” (which is to say, abstract and aloof) to “principal”—a true leader.38
References to the arrival of foreign barbarians are commonplace in To-
kiko’s later writings, but as far as she was concerned, the year 1854 coincided
with a different kind of momentous change—one that originated not within
the frame of history writ large but in the contained space of her microcosm.
In the fall of 1854 Sukenobu Hōin took ill and returned to his native home,
where he died the following year. His departure meant that Tokiko, who had
by then established her credentials as a tutor, could take charge of the school
annexed to her house. She thus gave up the tutoring job she had retaken in
Kusatsu since the fift h month of 1854, returned to Suzugoya, and became the
first female member of the Kurosawa family to run the school.
Tokiko’s appropriation of a business hitherto run by men was not as un-
usual as one may think: educated women in nineteenth-century Japan often
worked as teachers and could inherit schools founded by their male relatives.39
In this respect, her experience may exemplify Edoardo Grendi’s concept of the
“exceptional/normal” (eccezionale/normale). The sources of microhistory,
Grendi argues, are exceptional in that they often reveal a normalcy that, precisely
for its being ordinary, tends to be dismissed and forgotten. By impelling us to
include the “normal,” however, microhistory nuances the picture.40 In its being
relatively commonplace, Tokiko’s choice also reminds us that historical char-

acters large and small did not live their lives either entirely in the shade and
on the margins, or entirely center stage and in the limelight. Rather, like Your-
cenar’s sparrow, they moved in and out of the light, engaging in that which was
exceptional as much as in that which was ordinary and often inconsequential.
To be clear, there are many episodes in the life of Kurosawa Tokiko that
are truly extraordinary, that do clash against the main narrative and impel us
to reconsider it, even to rewrite it. But the point here is different. Whether she
responded with exceptional inventiveness or whether she followed standard pat-
terns in the face of change, what matters is that Tokiko placed her own value
on what are generally treated as equally relevant textbook moments in the his-
tory of the late Tokugawa—the Tenpō crisis, the Nariaki exculpation movement,
the arrival of Perry. She adapted her life trajectory in response to large-scale
historical events and to small-scale personal circumstances in ways that invite
us to reevaluate the reach and impact of the traditional turning points of
historical narratives by measuring them against the experience of the single
individual.
With the Shugendō center, the classroom was one of the places where To-
kiko first became conscious of, and nurtured, her role as a mediator between
things large and small, near and far. It is from within these spaces that Tokiko
defined her identity and her role in the community, and it is from within these
spaces that she developed a sense of her standing at the intersection of the ab-
stract and the practical, of the village and the heavens. When she cast herself
as the intermediary between chaos and cosmos in 1859, Tokiko was applying
a lesson she had learned precisely within her own nest.
Teaching: The Abstract and the Practical

The school Tokiko inherited was not a high-level domain academy but a sim-
ple “temple school,” or terakoya. As the name indicates, such entry-level facili-
ties catered to the neighborhood children whose families had registered with
the local temple, as required by law. Unlike domain academies, temple schools
enrolled mostly children of the commoner class. The kind of training they of-
fered depended on the individual teachers but rarely went beyond the basics.41
Despite its modest ambitions, the school enabled Tokiko to define her role as
a member of her community; more importantly, it became the place where she
honed her ability to reconcile the abstract and the practical—the beautiful but
sometimes unattainable pedagogical goals of her instruction manuals and the
tangible aspects of being an educator, including temper tantrums, snow days,
and the bottom line.
28 Chapter 1
The main sources that give us a glimpse of Tokiko’s activities in the

classroom are Diary of Ansei 5 (Ansei gonen nikkichō) and Priceless Record of
Daily Necessities (Nichiyō chōhōki). The first covers the period between
1858/7/1 and 9/18 (corresponding to August 9– October 24, 1858), and the
second begins on 1858/9/19 and ends on 12/28 (October 25, 1858–January 31,
1859). Aside from revealing what life was like in the school, these diaries also
shed light on Tokiko’s economic and social worlds; they are records of in-
comes and expenditures as much as maps of human interactions and per-
sonal networks. Consisting of lengthy lists of household chores, tales of the
daily grind, as well as snapshots of gossip, social engagements, and com-
memorations of joyous moments, they are the quintessential sources of
microhistory.
At the time Tokiko took charge in 1854, the school enrolled sixteen stu-
dents, including two girls.42 Coed tutoring was common; in neighboring Takane
(map 1.2), for example, the school run by Takayama Munenobu also enrolled
boys and girls from the village as well as from nearby Magone and Iwabune.43
In Suzugoya, the change in leadership and in the gender of the instructor did
not affect the popularity of the Kurosawa school, which enrolled more than
eighty students between 1854 and 1859.44 The class rosters indicate that they
hailed not only from Suzugoya but also from the nearby communities of Ma-
gone, Kosaka, Shioko, and Fukuhara.45 Tokiko meticulously took note of early
arrivals and no-shows.46 Attendance rates fluctuated widely; sometimes just two
students showed up, and at other times as many as nineteen crammed into the
small classroom (figure 1.2).47
The entries in Tokiko’s diaries also shed light on her teaching methods and
curriculum. On most days teaching took place in the morning; afternoon classes
were a noteworthy exception. Reading practice focused on poetry and covered
various writing styles: square, semi-cursive, and “grass.”48 The curriculum fol-
lowed a seasonal pattern: in the twelft h month, for example, students learned
to compose greetings for the New Year.49 Such a practical approach was com-
mon to late-Tokugawa rural teachers and served to integrate the needs of edu-
cation with the life of the community. In Ono village (Shinano Province), teacher
Ozawa Watoku (1796–1869) organized his schedule around the ritual and
agricultural calendars: the school year ended on 12/20 and resumed on 1/21,
after the New Year hiatus. Attendance in the classroom tended to ebb and flow
accordingly, peaking in the slack season between the eleventh month and the
end of the third. Watoku also collected his fees around the ritual calendar, spe-
cifically at Obon (the Festival of the Dead in the summer) and the New Year.50
To understand more about Tokiko’s pedagogical principles, we need to
browse through her personal library, which included two manuals she had
Figure 1.2. The classroom annexed to Tokiko’s house as seen in 2007. Photo by author.
copied early in her tutoring days: The Wheel of Teaching (Oshieguruma) and
Rules for Learning (Tenarai shikimoku).51 Though not her own works, it is rea-
sonable to infer that Tokiko copied them because she agreed with the advice
they dispensed.
Both manuals emphasize the social importance of education. The Wheel
of Teaching opens with a stern exhortation for parents to educate their chil-
dren, for without an education children will grow into adults who have “no
knowledge of any character, do not know how to do calculations, and have nei-
ther wits nor [sound] judgment.”52 Like an unpolished jewel that does not shine,53
says The Wheel of Teaching, so the human spirit requires learning to reach its
splendor. Similarly, Rules for Learning begins with the declaration that no
person can live his or her life without writing, for that would be tantamount
to blindness, not to mention an embarrassment for the teacher and the par-
ents, and a disgrace for the individual in question.54
The best education, add the manuals, is one that covers all the bases. Writ-
ing skills are especially important, but the primers also encourage students to
practice with the abacus and to perfect whichever vocation they find inspir-
ing, be it poetry or cooking, archery or theater, music or the martial arts. The
30 Chapter 1
essential point, one that The Wheel of Teaching makes more than once, is to
bear in mind one’s station in life (kagyō, “occupation”) and to act accordingly.
The Wheel of Teaching specifically (and pedantically) indicates that occupations
include samurai, farmer, artisan, or merchant.55
Learning also requires obedience and proper manners. The Wheel of Teach-
ing is a regurgitation of Confucian platitudes, most prominently invitations to
show fi lial respect toward one’s parents, devotion to one’s master, and loyalty
toward one’s friends.56 Unacceptable behavior—what The Wheel of Teaching
calls the “bad habits” (kuse) of children—includes being unreliable, unruly, and
foul-mouthed, making up excuses to dodge chores, interrupting, scribbling on
walls, fighting, and rolling in the mud. Rules for Learning echoes these preoc-
cupations with its own list of dos and don’ts: chatting, dozing off, or chewing
paper, for example, “is the stuff of scoundrels.”57
Finally, the manuals outline the great benefits of education. Extending well
beyond personal gratification, they include honor to one’s family and even re-
wards from the heavens. Those who attain mastery in their art will “receive
divine protection. Their posterity will prosper and they will safely enjoy the
pleasures of old age right before their eyes; the social standing of their household
will last for thousands of years.”58
This was the theory. Reality in the classroom, however, was a different thing
altogether. All exhortations to obedience notwithstanding, discipline was of-
ten lacking (“Nakanoya Minekichi got in a bad mood and threw a tantrum,”
writes Tokiko).59 Rambunctious behavior sometimes carried over outside the
classroom. On the day one of her students fell into a nearby creek, Tokiko per-
haps recalled the words of The Wheel of Teaching, which listed among the bad
habits of children their taking advantage of outings to “run into the rivers and
fields.”60 Maybe she had in mind Rules for Learning, which criticized all activi-
ties that could result in injury, including climbing on the sides of moats and
rivers, as “most unfilial.”61 Or maybe she just shrugged the incident off as a case
of reality versus principles. As R. P. Dore reminds us, teachers in village schools
knew that enforcing perfect discipline was unrealistic and were in fact sympa-
thetic to the students for having to conform to the impossibly strict standards
of education manuals.62 Tokiko was doubtless a thoughtful teacher, but it is also
true that on more than one occasion, when reality failed to conform to theory,
her patience ran out, and in the pages of her diaries she vented by calling some
of her more undisciplined students “bad,” “idiots,” and “annoying.”63
Despite such occasional outbursts, Tokiko was a compassionate teacher,
attending to her students almost like a mother. She cared for the ones who were
sick and strove to create a comfortable learning environment. One day she
brought rice cakes to the classroom; on a snowy day in the winter, realizing
that her students were shivering, she lit the stove and eventually sent them home
early.64
The school was also a source of income and identity. Diary of Ansei 5 and
Priceless Record of Daily Necessities double as accounting books, tracking as
they do earnings and expenditures. Students paid a monthly tuition and chipped
in for supplies.65 Tuition was collected in advance, around the end of one month
for the following one, though exceptions were possible: one student, for instance,
paid his dues for both the tenth and eleventh months on 11/15.66 Tokiko dis-
played a pragmatic degree of flexibility not only with regard to the timing of
the payments but also to the amounts, with some students paying 120 mon and
others two hundred. Oftentimes tuition included a combination of cash and
rice, usually one or two shō (one shō corresponds to 1.9 quarts, or 1.8 liters).67
Seeing that the fees differed from student to student, Anzō Ryōko suggests that
Tokiko took into account each family’s financial situation.68 This ensured the
popularity of her school and, more importantly, its survival. R. P. Dore, how-
ever, has a different explanation for the variations in tuition fees: even at the
village level, he argues, teaching was such a respected occupation that for an
instructor to put a price tag on learning would have been undignified. Rather,
the parents paid a fee they saw as commensurate with the teacher’s benevo-
lence in educating their child. The differences in fees may thus indicate vary-
ing degrees of social standing and prestige.69
Aside from paying tuition, Tokiko’s students brought her gifts in the form
of seasonal food items and helped her collect and store firewood. They also lent
her a hand in plowing the fields and working in the garden and thereby con-
tributed to a source of supplemental income, for, as the diaries show, Tokiko
also sold some of her produce.70 Between the school and the sale of produce
Tokiko earned enough to make a living and even to lend money: the Kurosawa
Family Records at Ibaraki University, for example, include the receipt for a five
ryō loan signed by a certain Mimura Shōji[bei] and dated 1858/8.71 Tokiko also
mentions that in the ninth month of 1858 her landlord came to borrow money
from her for an upcoming trip to Edo.72 The school thus enabled Tokiko to gauge
theory against reality while at the same time providing a basis for her dealings
with the neighboring community.
Between Village and High Heavens: Divination

on Demand
Aside from the school, a second business thrived under the Kurosawa roof: the
Shugendō center known as the Hōjuin. A syncretic system that originated in
the ninth or tenth century and became popu lar ized in the late medieval
32 Chapter 1
period, Shugendō combines Buddhist principles, shamanism, Daoism, and

Shinto.73 It is based on the premise that the human world and the world of the
gods are interlocked and that travel between the two is possible, though not
for everyone. As Carmen Blacker points out, crossing over from one world to
the next entails “a rupture of level, a break in ontological plane”;74 for this rea-
son, most ordinary men and women are powerless to do so. Shugendō adepts,
however, train specifically for this purpose. For them to access the realm of the
gods and spirits, the presence of a “bridge” is necessary. Such a bridge often
takes the form of a sacred peak—hence the common designation of Shugendō
as “mountain religion.” While each mountain over time developed its distinc-
tive set of practices, there are sufficient commonalities in rituals and beliefs that
one can speak of a general “Shugendō culture.”75
In Tokiko’s day and age both men and women could become Shugendō
adepts, but there were differences in what they could perform and achieve. Male
practitioners, known as shugenja or yamabushi, entered sacred mountains and
engaged in ascetic practices such as sitting under cold waterfalls or enduring
sleep deprivation and strict dietary restrictions. In doing so, they attained an
altered state of consciousness and were able to cross the bridge between this
world and the world of the gods and spirits. Women were generally precluded
from accessing sacred peaks, or were allowed to go up only to a certain point,
but not beyond it. Their contribution to Shugendō culture took a different form.
Like their male counterparts, female practitioners, known as miko, also enabled
a connection between the human world and the other world, but while the yam-
abushi physically crossed into the sphere of the sacred, the miko stayed put, so
to speak—they worked as mediums and invited the spirits to come to the world
of humans, turning themselves into the vessels through which the deities would
speak.76
Another way in which the Shugendō adepts mediated between the two
worlds was through divination. Early modern divination took many forms, in-
cluding geomancy, oneiromancy (the interpretation of dreams), astrology, nu-
merology, and physiognomy. Not all of these practices were viewed positively
by the educated elites, and not all of them were the province of Shugendō prac-
titioners. Their rich variety, however, attests to the importance that early mod-
ern individuals vested on the ability to communicate with the divine. In the
rural villages of early modern Japan in particular, prognostication was big busi-
ness: oracles predicting crop yields, sickness, impending catastrophes, or weather
patterns had the power to point entire communities in certain directions and
steer them away from others; the words of a diviner could determine endings
and beginnings, sanction enterprises or nip them in the bud, even support the
decision to conceive a child or to resolve that a newborn should not live.77
Because fortunes and misfortunes were believed to originate in the sphere of

the sacred, Shugendō practitioners performed a key social function, being the
ones with the tools to invite the former and deflect the latter.
On a day-to-day basis Shugendō facilities also catered to an assortment of
practical requests from the villagers, from healing rituals to rites of passage,
from exorcisms to funerals. Lastly, as Kanda Yoriko has shown in her study of
the Rikuchū region, inviting a miko to one’s home could be an excuse for the
women of the village to gather together and forge personal bonds.78 Wherever
they existed, in short, Shugendō centers played a pivotal role in the religious
and social life of the community.79
The Hōjuin also served the Suzugoya community by supporting its min-
ing industry: a source produced in or after the mid-1880s indicates that the
Shugendō center of the Kurosawa family was charged with honoring the tute-
lary gods of the local mines.80 As Tanigawa Ken‘ichi explains, there existed a
deep connection between Shugendō and the mining industry, for most mines
were located in the mountains, and mountains were the stomping grounds of
the yamabushi.81 According to Gorai Shigeru, the association between Shugendō
and mines was also the result of Daoist influences, namely the Daoist sages’
belief that immortality could be obtained by drinking elixirs that contained
mercury.82 Given the relevance of tin ore in Suzugoya (a place that owed its
name to tin), such convergence of religious and economic factors would have
emphasized the role of the Hōjuin in the local economic fabric.
Like all religious organizations, Shugendō evolved over time. By Tokiko’s
day and age Shugendō was split into two main sectarian branches: the Hon-
zan sect, whose head temple was the Shōgoin in Kyoto and which followed the
precepts of Tendai Buddhism, and the Tōzan sect, which had strong affiliations
with Shingon Buddhism and whose headquarters were at the Sanbōin in Kyoto.
The divide had not always existed. Around the fifteenth century yamabushi be-
gan referring to either the Sōgōin or the Sanbōin as their main temples, but it
was not until the mid-sixteenth century that the two groups acquired the dis-
tinct names of Tōzan and Honzan; the difference was then codified under the
Tokugawa. By the eighteenth century the relevant texts indicated on a consistent
basis a clear sense of affi liation.83
In Mito, Tōzan and Honzan facilities had coexisted for a long time; a sur-
vey taken in the 1660s indicates that, at the time, more than half of the yama-
bushi in the domain identified with either one or the other. Honzan adherents
were for the most part based in and around Mito castle town and tended to
spread out along the coastal routes, while Tōzan practitioners tended to aggre-
gate along the Tanakura and Motegi roads (map 2.1). The fan-shaped area en-
closed between these two roads also included Tokiko’s native village.84 The same
34 Chapter 1
document that describes the Hōjuin as the tutelary shrine of the mine gods also
indicates that the facility belonged to the Tōzan branch.
Tokiko’s exact role in the Hōjuin is unclear. Although it was common
practice for the wives, daughters, mothers, or sisters of the yamabushi to
inherit the practices and to serve as miko independently from any shrine af-
fi liation,85 the records are mum as to whether Tokiko ever ran the facility. More-
over, she never uses the word miko to describe herself. In any case, we know
she played a role as a spiritual figure in Suzugoya by performing divination
sessions in which she used the hexagrams from The Book of Changes (Ch. Yijing,
Jp. Ekikyō) to forecast the future. (In a hexagram, a combination of six solid
and broken lines represents one of sixty-four possible configurations of yang
and yin forces in the universe, providing a key to understanding cosmic pat-
terns that affect the world of humans at various levels, from the political to the
physiological.)
Interest in The Book of Changes had peaked during the Tokugawa period,
and the book ranked among the most influential Chinese texts. The availabil-
ity of punctuated versions contributed to its popularization: by the nineteenth
century its readership also included the lower classes.86 Aspiring fortunetell-
ers could also count on introductory texts to divination and “Cliffs Notes”
versions of The Book of Changes, as in The Basics of Divination: Master Arai’s
Secret Text (Ekidō uimanabi Arai sensei himitsu no sho, 1842; figure 7.1). A
pocketsize booklet written in easy-to-read kana script and mass-produced
using woodblocks, this “secret text” was in fact anything but exclusive and
esoteric.
Next to educational primers Tokiko’s library would have thus included a
selection of divination manuals: The Book of Changes, of course, but also the
All Important Aspects of the Whistling Arrow (Hikime no daijizen), a manual
on the proper way to utter healing incantations.87 As Carmen Blacker points
out, bows and arrows were traditional instruments of the miko, who plucked
the string to cajole the gods and used the bow as a vessel for the spirits to de-
scend into the world of humans. Arrows were shot to alert the gods that a cer-
emony was about to begin; whistling arrows could also be used to drive away
evil spirits.88 Tokiko may have also been acquainted with a number of other
divination manuals widely available at the time, such as The Bamboo Basket
Tradition (Hokiden) or the Excerpts from Assorted Books on Yin and Yang
(Onmyō zassho nukigaki). Dating to the medieval period and transmitted by
provincial yamabushi families, both had become available in printed form in the
Tokugawa period and were popular with Shugendō practitioners.
Consulted in the course of divination sessions, these manuals enabled the
yamabushi to establish auspicious and inauspicious days and to forecast crop
yields, wars, upheavals, or weather patterns. A typical entry in The Bamboo Bas-
ket Tradition, for example, would read:
If the first day of the first month [New Year] corresponds to the fifth
or sixth sign of the Chinese calendar, then the first, second, and
third months [will bring] rain and wind; in the seventh month the
people will be stricken with disease and the sun will scorch [the
earth]. If, in the midst of this, a black cloud were to appear, it would
be most auspicious.89
Tokiko’s Diary of Ansei 5 records divination sessions on 1858/8/26, 9/6, and

9/16, even including drawings of the hexagrams she interpreted (figure 1.3). Un-
fortunately, there is no record of the specific methods she used to select them.
In ancient China, prognostication with The Book of Changes was performed
by using yarrow stalks or coins to configure a hexagram; in ancient Japan or-
acles placed a deer shoulder bone over an open flame and examined the cracks
that appeared. By Tokiko’s time, however, using bamboo sticks or drawing lots
was the norm.90 Tokiko also says little of the resulting interpretations, possi-
bly because she simply relied on the explanations of The Book of Changes with-
out adding much of her own. (She provides more detail about the reading of
the hexagrams in her 1864 diary, as we will see in chapter 7.)
Tokiko also offered healing incantations on demand. The evidence, in this
case, is scarcer, but we know from one of her diaries that on 1858/8/7 a young
woman from Magone came to the Hōjuin. “She asked for an incantation,” writes
Figure 1.3. Hexagrams for the divination session of 1858/9/16 from Tokiko’s Diary of
Ansei 5: No. 29 (Pitfalls), No. 7 (the Army), No. 15 (Modesty), and No. 52 (Keeping Still).
Photo by Gotō Norio. Courtesy of Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan.
36 Chapter 1
Tokiko. “I recited one for the cooper, [who had gotten] a splinter.”91 It is diffi-
cult to determine whether this was an isolated episode or whether Tokiko per-
formed such rituals on a regular basis, for she does not mention other instances
in which she provided healing incantations. It is possible that she received no
other requests in the short months covered in her diary, or that, as other edu-
cated people did in her day and age, she ranked such apotropaic ser vices a step
below hexagram-based prognostication—and only accommodated the request
for an incantation on this one occasion. (The silence in her later works is eas-
ier to explain: the diaries of her life in 1859 were edited in 1875, at a time when
such activities would have been considered most un-modern and when Tokiko
was trying to establish her legacy as a political figure, not as a ritualist.)
Tokiko’s diaries do not mention any remuneration for these kinds of ser-
vices, though receiving payments or, at a minimum, gifts would not have been
unusual. In his autobiography, rascal samurai Katsu Kokichi (1802–1850) for ex-
ample, admits to having used incantations as a source of income.92 Tokiko’s
reluctance to record any income generated by the readings of the hexagrams
may be attributable to ongoing disputes about who held the monopoly on div-
ination. An imperial order issued in 1683 had granted the Tsuchimikado fam-
ily sole control over yin-yang divination. A 1791 shogunal decree had extended
their authority, requiring all practitioners of yin-yang divination to affi liate
themselves with the Tsuchimikado or to stop their activities altogether. The
roots of the dispute were, of course, economic. The Tsuchimikado argued
that the competition of unlicensed masters of divination threatened the core
of their livelihood; unlicensed practitioners countered that they offered divina-
tion ser vices only to avert calamities and to heal diseases as part of their social
and religious commitment to their supporters. Over the years the government
produced several proclamations against private oracles; one was issued in
1842, when Tokiko was in her mid-thirties.93
Despite her silences, what Tokiko does say about her activities as an ora-
cle, healer, and teacher enables us to draw some conclusions about her role in
the space of Suzugoya and of its surrounding villages. As a person associated
with a Shugendō facility, Tokiko provided spiritual and (occasional?) apotro-
paic ser vices that answered to the day-to-day needs and anxieties of her fellow
villagers. More importantly, she served as a link between her community and
the heavens.
Her cosmology offers a key to interpret her personal understanding of so-
ciety and of her role therein. As a yin-yang prognosticator, Tokiko conceived
of a universe where everything, from health to sickness, from peace to unrest,
from bliss to misfortunes, was regulated by clearly identifiable cosmic forces.
She knew how to read the signs that the universe sent her way and believed
that what lay ahead could be charted. Acting in response to the needs of her
fellow villagers, she served as a conduit between them and the high heavens,
offering guidance, channeling positive forces, and removing evil (even when
evil took the rather undignified form of a splinter in the cooper’s fi nger). Not
unlike the school, where she had the opportunity to measure abstract peda-
gogical principles against the reality of the classroom, the Hōjuin enabled
Tokiko to combine the abstract and the practical, the eternal and the contin-
gent, and to see herself as an interpreter who asked the heavens questions and
received and transmitted answers. As we will see, she would eventually recon-
ceptualize her role as community diviner and healer on a much larger scale,
casting herself as the one who could eliminate illness and misfortune not just
from individual bodies but also from the country’s body politic writ large.
2 Circles and Circumstances
As the previous chapter has shown, the school and the Hōjuin en-
abled Tokiko to square theory with reality and formed the core of her identity
as a mediator between the heavens and the everyday. At the same time, these
spaces also played a social function: the bonds Tokiko created in and around
them integrated her within the community and the surrounding area. Tokiko’s
nest was thus a nexus not for one but for two reasons: along a vertical line, it
linked the cosmic and the commonplace, and on a horizontal plane it con-
nected Tokiko to peers, like-minded individuals, teachers, mentors, and in-
formants near and far.
Lodged as it was at the intersection of a series of circles—like the center of
a Venn diagram—Tokiko’s microcosm was the place where her many interests
and identities converged, generating opportunities for gain and growth. With
that in mind, this chapter traces the contours of Tokiko’s circles better to iden-
tify the space where they overlapped to form the fertile soil into which her world-
view and her subsequent plan for action took roots, grew, and blossomed. The
exercise is especially relevant because twentieth-century scholars have had the
tendency to tell the story of “Tokiko the activist,” “Tokiko the poet,” or “Tokiko
the teacher,” giving the impression that such stories, and such identities, were
compartmentalized and mutually exclusive. Her 1858 diaries, however, show
that none of the various activities in which Tokiko partook existed indepen-
dently from the others and that no one occupation defined her more than
another. She was a prognosticator, teacher, poet, and (eventually) political
person all at the same time, and transitioned from one role to the next seam-
lessly, many times over in the same day. “Transitioned” may in fact be the wrong
word: in the dense area at the center of her Venn diagram, Tokiko lived and
embodied all those roles simultaneously.
A discussion of space requires a discussion of time. Along with the social
spaces out of which Tokiko formed her worldview, this chapter also looks at
the moment when historical circumstances caused the many inputs coming to
Tokiko from her circles—what she refers to as “the words of the people of the
38
Circles and Circumstances 39
floating world”1—to coalesce into an invitation to act. It was in the Year of the
Horse Ansei 5 (1858) that Tokiko began her transition from mediator between
the village and the heavens to healer and interpreter of the cosmos for the coun-
try writ large.
Circles
Immediate family formed the first circle. As chapter 1 has shown, those who
shared the nest with Tokiko exposed her to Shugendō lore, fostered her inter-
est in poetry, and enabled her career in education. Besides providing the in-
spiration for teaching and divination, her household also supplied her with the
physical space to carry out such activities.
Exposure to politics also began within the family. Anzō Ryōko speculates
that Tokiko first became acquainted with the “revere the emperor, expel the
barbarians” rhetoric at the time of her marriage to Kamoshida Hikozō, when
she lived in Kojima. As Anzō points out, Kojima was a hotbed of loyalist dis-
course. Meiji-era anthologies indicate that, while most villages in the Suzugoya
area were on average home to two famous loyalists, Kojima was home to six-
teen, seven of whom were members of the Kamoshida clan into which Tokiko
had married.2 Additionally, in a 1902 article published in the magazine Women
and Children (Fujin to kodomo) Shimomura Miyokichi speculates that Tokiko’s
growth as a loyalist also benefited from her proximity to Sukenobu Hōin (Shin-
suke), whom the Kurosawa had taken in as an adopted heir in 1839 and who
was well versed in nativist ideology (Kokugaku).3
Nativism had originally developed within a literary framework, namely
the philological studies of Kada no Azumamaro (1669–1736), Kamo no Ma-
buchi (1697–1769), and Motoori Norinaga (1731–1801). Collectively, these
early nativists had advocated the return to a “pure” Japanese model unsullied
by the intrusion of foreign (meaning Chinese) elements.4 Their point was
strictly a linguistic one, but in the nineteenth century, in light of the pressure
exerted upon Japan by Western powers, nativism’s invitation to discard for-
eign elements and to focus on what was intrinsically Japanese found relevant
political applications. Particularly with Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), nativ-
ism became entangled with the notion of imperial restoration. Even then,
however, nativism was not a monolithic entity and disagreement on an array
of issues existed within its circles. While it did provide an intellectual scaf-
folding for the xenophobic rants of many a “revere the emperor, expel the bar-
barians” enthusiast, given its lack of internal cohesiveness and its literary
origins, nativism should not be taken as synonymous with late-Tokugawa loy-
alism.5 Shimomura, writing in 1902 for a popu lar audience in a women’s
40 Chapter 2
magazine, may have chosen to simplify his message. While his suggestion is
duly noted, there are not enough elements to determine whether Sukenobu
Hōin’s interest for nativism stemmed from a radical belief in Japan’s innate
cultural superiority or whether it was simply a corollary to his taste for Japa-
nese poetry. Where Shimomura is correct, however, is in suggesting that
Tokiko’s exposure to politicized rhetoric did not end with the death of Hikozō.
Through the members of her other circles, she gained additional access to rel-
evant political news.
The second circle centered on Tokiko’s activities as an educator. As we have
seen in the previous chapter, teaching was not only a source of income but also
a platform though which Tokiko interacted with local villagers and with peo-
ple from neighboring communities. For those who treasured learning as a way
to social betterment, Tokiko would have been an authority figure of sorts, the
conduit through which, as The Wheel of Teaching proclaimed, one’s family
would attain a social standing that could “last for thousands of years.”6 Corol-
laries to teaching included the establishment of financial as well as personal
bonds with the students and their families, the privilege of receiving assistance
in performing daily chores, and the occasional conversation with peers to com-
pare notes about the classroom experience (on 1858/8/1, for example, Tokiko
received a visit from a certain Kaga Ginshirō with whom she “discussed teach-
ing”).7 The contours of this circle stretched well beyond Suzugoya and the sur-
rounding areas: during her earlier years as a traveling tutor, Tokiko had
established long-lasting bonds with families in other provinces. As we will see
in chapter 4, members of this extended circle ended up playing a supporting
role at the time of her mission to Kyoto in 1859.
Being associated with a Shugendō lineage placed Tokiko within the con-
tours of yet another large circle. Its extent can be gauged from a document pre-
served at Ibaraki University, which includes a request the Hōjuin had sent out
in 1820 to all officials in the nearby villages asking for donations to build a new
facility. Likely penned by Tokiko’s grandfather Kissō, who ran the household
at the time, the document indicates that the Hōjuin’s gravitational pull extended
beyond the limits of Suzugoya.8 As with teaching, Shugendō-based channels
brought people in and out of Tokiko’s life. Diary of Ansei 5, for example, men-
tions the visit of six blind women (mōjo) in the eighth month of 1858—possibly
a group of itako, or blind female shamans who specialized in the summoning
of the spirits of the dead.9 (Blind people in general were often considered am-
biguous and were thought to be dwelling between realms of existence, their
disability alternatively interpreted as the result of karmic retribution or as a
source of great magical powers.)10
As with all other networks, membership in this circle came with benefits
that included anything from receiving gifts to enjoying the opportunity to keep
abreast of news about events unfolding near and far. When they were not tucked
away in sacred mountains, Shugendō practitioners were actively involved in
the life of their communities and receptive to political debates. Essential Sources
on the Restoration (Ishin shiryō kōyō), for example, indicates that many of the
loyalists arrested at the time of the Ansei Purges were also yamabushi. More-
over, Akutsu Takuo has shown that Shugendō followers were among those who
took up arms during the 1864 Mito civil war.11
The fourth circle encompassed Suzugoya’s community writ large. Village-
based events, religious festivals, gatherings to celebrate the changing of the sea-
sons, the Festival of the Weaver (tanabata), the New Year, and the Festival of
the Dead (Obon) all provided yet more threads to enrich the tapestry of To-
kiko’s social relations.12
In rural villages like Suzugoya, information traveled less by way of printed
broadsheets, as it did in the large urban centers, and more by word of mouth
and by way of personal connections. Take for example the Diary of Ansei 5 en-
try for 9/7: that evening Tokiko’s landlord, who had just returned from Mito,
came by to chat. Two days later, when a certain Nakanoya (possibly related to
Tokiko’s mischievous student Nakanoya Minekichi) visited Tokiko, the two
“talked about the castle town.” While the content of such exchanges remains
a matter of speculation, it may well have referred to the tensions escalating be-
tween the domain and the Tokugawa government; only a few days earlier, for-
mer domain lord Tokugawa Nariaki had returned to Mito to serve the rest of
his sentence in domiciliary confinement.
The landlord’s movements also suggests that regional highways played
a key role as conduits of information; local villagers, pilgrims, merchants,
poets, and recreational travelers all came and went along these highways,
bringing news in and out of the community. In the early modern period
nine main roads radiated out of Mito castle town in all directions (map 2.1).
One, the Nasu highway linking Mito to Shimozuke Province, ran through
Suzugoya; Tokiko herself had used it many times in her years as a traveling
peddler. The movement of people and ideas, in short, was part and parcel of
Tokiko’s world.
Not only the presence of a physical infrastructure but also the gyrations
of history brought visitors and news of current events to Suzugoya. In the late
summer and fall of 1858, as tensions erupted between the former lord Nariaki
and the Tokugawa government, Mito samurai began leaving an increasingly
hostile Edo and returning to their domain. Anzō Ryōko has pointed out that
42 Chapter 2
Map 2.1. Main highways around Mito: 1. Edo highway (a.k.a. Mito highway); 2. Iwashiro
Sōma highway; 3. Tanakura highway; 4. Nanbu highway; 5. Nasu highway; 6. Motegi
Utsunomiya highway; 7. Yūki highway; 8. Setoi highway; 9. Iinuma highway. Map by Will
Fontanez.
due to its position—isolated enough to be safe, yet not entirely out of the loop—
Suzugoya became a popular destination for Mito loyalists on the run.13 They
brought news of the political situation, which, Anzō suggests, may have in-
creased Tokiko’s exposure to loyalist thought and may have fostered her “sense
of awe” toward Tokugawa Nariaki.14
While many of Tokiko’s poems bemoan the isolation of her “mountain vil-
lage,” Suzugoya’s position along the Nasu highway suggests that her lamenta-
tions were in fact exercises in poetic melancholy and/or sophistication rather
than expressions of concern for being cut off from the world. When, in 1856,
she wrote
Marenidani With hardly anyone

tou hito mo naki visiting me
yamazato ni in this mountain village
koyoi no tsuki o I’ll make tonight’s moon
utagaki no tomo my partner in poetry15
Tokiko used the idea of seclusion to project the image of a resourceful poet,
not to lament her fate as a disconnected one. Likewise, her 1857 poem which
reads
Yo no naka o Such a sad world,

ushi to miyama ni I thought, and came to hide
shinobu mi o in the deep of the mountains.
toi kuru hito no Those who visit me
onaji kokoro wa are of the same heart16
celebrates Suzugoya’s purported remoteness as a source of bonding among li-

terati and recluses rather than as the cause of regrettable disengagement.
This brings us to the fifth and final circle, the one centered on poetry. Mem-
bers of this network included people close and far, men and women, the old
and the young, and extended from her own mother to the Katōgi family (Toyo
and her son Shunzō, Tokiko’s junior by seven years) in nearby Magone to the
literati and scholars she had encountered while traveling as a peddler and poet-
in-training in the 1830s and 1840s.
Participation in poetic circles afforded Tokiko two seemingly contrasting
but in fact mutually reinforcing opportunities: connection and exposure on the
one hand and withdrawal to a world untainted by the everyday on the other;
engagement but also escapism. Take this poem, which she composed in 1855:
Upon Visiting a Poet
Koromode no Leaving Hitachi

Hitachi o idete and its folded sleeves,
Shikishima no I look for
44 Chapter 2
michi aru miyo o the august age

tazunete zo tou of the Way of Shikishima.17
On the one hand, these verses celebrate the fostering of connections. The
title suggests an actual physical journey, but the reference to “the Way of
Shikishima”—a metaphor for the training a poet must endure to reach the height
of sophistication18—and the deployment of elegant pillow-words (“sleeve” for
Hitachi Province)19 indicate, allegorically, her growth as a literata. Either way,
these verses bespeak Tokiko’s involvement in an ongoing conversation with, and
self-assessment vis-à-vis, her peers. They indicate engagement.
On the other hand, the poem suggests the opposite—a trend toward es-
caping from the present and idealizing a return to the past. Because Shikishima
is also a pillow-word for the ancient Way of Japan,20 the poem can also be read
as follows:
Koromode no Leaving Hitachi

Hitachi o idete and its folded sleeves,
Shikishima no I look for
michi aru miyo o the ancient age
tazunete zo tou of Japan.
Tokiko, in other words, may have written these verses to mythologize the past
as an alternative to a troubled present. The dating of the poem, in this respect,
is telling: the anthology in which it is included was composed in the tenth month
of 1855, at the time of the devastating Ansei Edo earthquake. Whereas in far-
away Kyushu the nun Nomura Bōtō bemoaned the earthquake in elegant verses
that focused on the present,21 in Mito, Tokiko chose to offset the tensions, prob-
lems, and ugliness of her day and age by looking away and calling on the past.
(As we will see in chapter 4, the image of the “ancient age of Japan” returns in
her petitionary poem to the emperor precisely in that sense.) In this respect,
poetic circles offered an escape. Appropriately, Tokiko signed off on the poem
with her pen name, Rikkyō, combining the characters for Plum and Courte-
ous, in a not-so-subtle tribute to an endearing poetic tradition.
For all the untainted beauty that poetry could afford, the reality of late-
Tokugawa tensions was never too far in the background. By the mid-nineteenth
century any poet would have known that a return to “the ancient age of Japan”
required more than proficiency with the brush and a talent for suggestive im-
agery: it demanded a political stance and real-life action. Tokiko’s fellow poets
were as versed in their art as they were fluent in the idiom of politics, and ex-
erted a great deal of influence on her growth as an activist. As a later chapter
will show, at least one of her poetry tutors, Kojima Harutaka, was probably re-
sponsible for her decision to travel to Kyoto; other fellow literati provided not
only diversion and encouragement but also logistical support during her jour-
ney to the imperial capital and after her release from prison.
In outlining these circles in sequence I do not mean to suggest that they
developed in a neat chronological order, nor that, once formed, they remained
fi xed in time. Some bonds lasted, but others dissolved to be replaced by new
ones, or not to be replaced at all. Finally, precisely because they intersected at
the center of a Venn diagram, these circles were not mutually exclusive. Poets
and oracles, family members and fellow villagers, activists and teachers forged
bonds with Tokiko by moving in and out of her many networks without re-
strictions or boundaries. The aforementioned Kojima Harutaka, for example,
first came into Tokiko’s life as poetry tutor, but by the end of 1858 he was speak-
ing to her in his capacity as a political activist. Katōgi Shunzō of Magone also
connected with Tokiko by way of poetic networks, but over time their lyrical
affinities became complemented with ties fostered in the context of their com-
mon involvement with the loyalist movement.22
Ever evolving and adaptable, Tokiko’s networks tell the story of how a ru-
ral villager from Mito’s hinterland defined her social coordinates while at the
same time gaining access to information from a variety of angles. Their extent
and complexity help us understand what Tokiko meant when, in narrating the
story of her involvement with the loyalist movement, she claimed that it was
precipitated, among other things, by troubling news that reached her via “the
words of the people of the floating world.”
If Tokiko’s political consciousness did not mature in a social vacuum, it
also did not do so in a geographical one. In this respect, the fact that she lived,
of all places, in Mito domain is of no small significance. The history of the do-
main in Tokiko’s formative years had been an eventful one to say the least. From
the tenure of Tokugawa Nariaki as domain lord (1829–1844) to the rise of the
exculpation movement in 1844, Mito had been home to opinionated leaders
and vociferous commoners, not a few of whom originated from Suzugoya and
its neighboring communities. In the 1850s the domain was still a cauldron of
political opinions that often boiled over into open factionalism, inflaming the
hearts of intellectuals and rural peasants alike. Domain policies enacted in the
1850s and 1860s, such as the conferral of semi-samurai status to commoners,
the creation of schools that propagated Mito ideology, and the organization of
rural militias, would further facilitate the involvement of Mito peasants in po-
litical diatribes.23 (Tokiko’s relation to Mito ideology is examined in more
detail in chapter 4.) Not all of these avenues led to mass mobilization and
politicization, and not all of them were open to women. Indeed, as another Mito
46 Chapter 2
woman, Yamakawa Kikue, tells us, women usually “remained ignorant of the
political issues swirling around them.”24 Kikue spoke of samurai women, whose
lives were especially controlled. However, in the 1850s, as a commoner (not to
mention a widow with adult daughters), Tokiko would have enjoyed numer-
ous opportunities to gain exposure to the ideological milieu of her domain and
of the country and to develop a keen awareness of simmering political tensions.
A fertile soil is only one of two required elements for a seedling to grow
and bloom; equally important is the season in which one plants the seeds. Hav-
ing placed Tokiko in a defined space (the terrain at the intersection of various
circles) and place (Mito domain), I must therefore introduce the fi nal piece of
the puzzle, time. Tokiko’s political persona came of age between the summer
and fall of 1858—the Year of the Horse Ansei 5.
Circumstances
In the summer and fall of 1858, Japan experienced a string of unsettling events.
Ii Naosuke (1815–1860) became prime minister (tairō, or Great Elder) on 4/23;
despite the opposition of the imperial court, Ii negotiated treaties with the United
States (6/19), the Dutch (7/10), the Russians (7/11), the British (7/18), and the
French (9/3). Emperor Kōmei threatened abdication, deeming the Tokugawa
incapable of fending off the foreign threat.
Former Mito lord Tokugawa Nariaki, his son and then-lord of Mito
Yoshiatsu, and lord of the collateral Owari house Tokugawa Yoshikumi (Yo-
shikatsu) showed up at Edo castle to challenge the decision five days after the
signing of the first treaty. Their action signaled the beginning of a rift between
imperial court, shogunate, and domain lords that would escalate in the weeks
and months to follow. Nariaki was placed under house arrest on 7/5; Yoshi-
kumi and Yoshiatsu received similar sentences. Notification of the punish-
ment traveled fast, reaching Mito castle on the morning of 7/7 and triggering
consternation and anger. Before long, the news arrived in the rural areas as
well: a record from Shimoanozawa village, near Suzugoya (map 1.2), mentions
Nariaki’s punishment in an entry dated 7/10.25
In Kyoto, the emperor manifested his disapproval by issuing a “secret” de-
cree addressed not to Edo, as protocol demanded, but directly to Mito.26 The
document decried Ii’s capitulation to foreign demands and invited the Tokugawa
to consult with other lords and draft a plan to repel the barbarians. The origi-
nal reached the Mito residence in Edo on the morning of 8/16; by 8/19 a copy
arrived in Mito domain. While some, even in Mito, criticized the edict as a
breech in protocol and demanded its return, others saw it as vindication.27 In
the meantime, Ii reacted to the mounting criticism by rounding up and im-
prisoning countless members of the opposition both in Edo and in Kyoto. The
Ansei Purges had begun.
In Mito, supporters of Nariaki once again mobilized to demand his lib-
eration, as they had done in 1844. By 9/8, five hundred people had assembled
in the post town of Kogane, along the Mito highway; one week later their num-
ber had risen to 1,300.28 They poured in from every corner of the domain and
from every group in the social spectrum; Tokushuku Tajūrō, a merchant from
a village near Suzugoya, observed that “from village officials all the way down
to people of no rank, groups of sympathizers kept transiting, day in and day
out, by day and by night.”29 While women were less likely to be among those
who marched on Edo (though exceptions did exist, as we have seen in the case
of Katōgi Toyo in 1844), many contributed to the collective effort by praying
at local shrines.30
In the midst of these controversies, the shogun Tokugawa Iesada suddenly
passed away (7/4). News of his death eventually became known; the records of
Mito domain report: “On the eighth day of the [eighth] month the death of the
shogun was announced; a great funeral is expected on the eighteenth.”31 Ru-
mors that the shogun had been poisoned began to circulate, testifying more to
the collapsing political situation than to the existence of actual conspiracies.
The choice of Iesada’s successor once again exacerbated the feud between Ii Nao-
suke and Tokugawa Nariaki, with Ii emerging victorious in enthroning the lord
of Kii domain, Tokugawa Yoshitomi (later to be renamed Tokugawa Iemochi,
1846–1866). Aged twelve, the new shogun was but a puppet in Ii’s hands.
Just as everyone was reeling from the news of the shogun’s death and of
the treaties with the foreign barbarians, another calamity struck, one that “did
not give a moment’s respite to the people’s upset spirits.”32 Cholera had arrived.
The epidemic, the second major one in Japanese history,33 had begun in Naga-
saki early in the sixth month. Some blamed the disease on the presence of bar-
barians onto Japanese soil, while others, more prosaically, attributed it to the
consumption of spoiled seafood.34 By the eighth month, cholera had reached
Edo, killing thousands. Extraordinary measures were taken in order to halt the
contagion: when a large funeral procession crossed Nihonbashi, for example,
the bridge was washed not just once, as was customary, but six times.35
Fear of death resulted in a frantic quest for blessings and remedies; as In-
oue Jōshō (1816–1869), the abbot of a temple in Tosa, noted, many sought com-
fort in the ser vices of religious figures and divination specialists: “During this
outbreak . . . Shingon priests, yamabushi who practice yin-yang divination, and
other such fellows have seized the opportunity and are plenty busy making
tons of money.”36 Many deployed the protective powers of amulets and writ-
ten incantations; others purified their rooms by burning pine branches, sugar,
48 Chapter 2
and even gunpowder.37 A chronicler from Himi village (in modern-day Toyama
Prefecture), Tanakaya Ken‘emon, compiled a list of possible remedies that in-
cluded charms made with leaves and chili peppers wrapped in red paper as well
as soup with kirazu (a byproduct of tofu) and pickled plums—“it is comfort
food,” he wrote, “and it works well at warding off the disease.”38 We do not
know whether any of the divination or incantation sessions Tokiko performed
in the summer and fall of 1858 were related to the epidemic or whether she
assisted in the making of amulets, but it is possible that she did.
Cholera was not the only adversity plaguing the population in 1858. Early
in the sixth month a fire ravaged Kyoto. Throughout the summer and fall, var-
ious regions experienced floods and earthquakes. In Etchū, unseasonable
weather ruined the crops; the price of rice rose, triggering violent uprisings in
the seventh month. Tanakaya Ken‘emon’s words leave little to the imagination:
the area, he says, plunged into a “warlike” state (sensō no gotoku).39 The situa-
tion was just as dire in neighboring Kaga domain, where a long rainy spell had
also ruined the crops.40 On 7/11 hundreds gathered at Kanazawa castle and
forced the city magistrates to release emergency supplies. As one observer put
it, “this is an unprecedented emergency, like nothing we have seen in this coun-
try in the past 250 years.” He also added, “these days there is no peace of mind,
no way of forgetting about the world out there and having a good time; indeed,
even while sipping one’s favorite sake, one cannot [fully] enjoy it.”41
As is often the case, when one shifts away from the wide-angle view and
zooms in, the story changes a bit. And so, if we turn to Suzugoya, we will no-
tice that, in the midst of these upheavals, for Tokiko life went on and even
included pleasant moments. On 7/24, for example, she penned the following
poem:
Mura ame no Passing showers over the village,

furu to mo kaze wa yet the winds
shizukanite are calm.
miyo odayakani Could this then be a year
sugiru toshi kana of peace and quiet?
One should not take these lines as ironic or, worse yet, write them off as
“last famous words.” Rather, they indicate that the wheels of history turned
at different speeds and that a master narrative of gloom and doom does not
by default cast a dark shadow into every corner of the scene onto which it
unfolds.
This is not to say that Suzugoya was immune to the troubles that affected
the other regions, or that Tokiko ignored them. In some of the poems she wrote
in the sixth month of 1858, for example, one detects seeping anger at the fact
that the country had been “violated by foreigners.” This was the month during
which American consul Townsend Harris had entered Edo Bay (6/17), the treaty
with the United States had been ratified (6/19), and Nariaki had protested for-
mally at Edo castle (6/24). In reaction to such news Tokiko included occasional
xenophobic outbursts amidst poems that celebrated the snow and the quails,
the geese and the dew:
Omohiki ya I never thought that

ikokujin ni [our country would be] violated
okasarete by foreigners;
ono ga mi yori o may I strike them
utsu yumiya to wa with bow and arrows.
Kotokuni no Violated
emishi no funa ni by barbarian vessels
okasarete from foreign lands:
kuni no midare no thus began, I surmise,
moto to naruramu our country’s chaos.
Hi no moto no The barbarian vessels

kami no chikara ni and the foreign lands
kotokuni to shall be destroyed
emishi no funa ya by the might of the gods
uchihatasuramu of the [land of the] rising sun.42
Still, for all of Tokiko’s anger at foreign encroachment, big history remained
distant, taking a back seat to the everyday. On the day Nariaki was placed un-
der house arrest (7/5), for example, Tokiko’s irritation stemmed from a much
more personal situation: a student had fallen asleep at the desk and would not
wake up. As the ink began to dry on the treaties with the Dutch and the Rus-
sians, Tokiko aired out her books to prevent mold and bug infestations (7/10
and 7/11). While Ii Naosuke was signing the treaty with the British (7/18), To-
kiko was pickling plums. It was not the issuing of the “secret” decree or the
announcement of the shogun’s death that made 8/8 noteworthy for her, but the
five large melons she received with her tuition fees. The distant rumbles of big
history, however, would only become louder and closer.
As the terrible Year of the Horse Ansei 5 finally came to an end, news of
brewing political factionalism became ever more disquieting. In Awayama vil-
lage, near Suzugoya, merchant Tokushuku Tajūrō did not put up festive decorations
50 Chapter 2
and did not exchange New Year’s greetings; he just visited the local tutelary shrine
and prayed. No decorations adorned the streets of Mito castle town either, and no
visits were paid to the lord’s castle to offer congratulations.43 It was a somber New
Year, foreshadowing the much darker days that lay ahead for the domain.
If we shift our gaze away from Mito and into the village of Suzugoya, we
will find Tokiko teaching, reading The Book of Changes, and socializing with
her neighbors. She even put up her festive New Year’s decorations on 12/26.44 It
would appear as if, again, the wheels of macro- and microhistory were moving
at different paces—the former, slow and grave, the latter, fast and upbeat. The
two, however, were not disconnected, as Tokiko would soon find out. Her life
may have remained a mere footnote on the narrative of history writ large had it
not been for a series of events that, as she would later recall, reconfigured her
priorities, propelling politics to the front and center of her existence and taking
her out of her confined microcosm. It is to these events that we now turn.
Part II
THE CHAOS AND COSMOS OF

KUROSAWA TOKIKO
3 Glimpses of History (The Script)
Between the fall of 1858 and the spring of 1859, the small world of
Kurosawa Tokiko came within full sight of big history. Transitioning from one
to the other required a coherent plan with gradual shifts and logical steps. The
ordinary individual, in other words, could not hope to alter the course of his-
tory unless some important premises were met and some endorsements ob-
tained. This was especially true for a woman—a point, as we will see in the
pages that follow, not lost on Tokiko. Like poets in training and like Shugendō
practitioners preparing to enter the mountains, the common person wishing
to connect with history writ large needed guidance. In reality, many ignored
this rule; those who acted on the spur of the moment, improvising all along,
are precisely the faceless masses that some history books write off as charmed
and frenzied. Tokiko knew better.
To write the script of her journey into large-scale history, Tokiko combined
the rational and the uncanny, the calculated and the unexpected. Drawing on
her experience, she deployed an arsenal of rhetorical figures, lyrical images,
and cosmic cameos worthy of the most talented poet and prognosticator. The
resulting narrative reads as follows: between the end of 1858 and the spring of
1859 Tokiko’s path crossed the orbit of big history at least five times. With each
encounter, Tokiko became increasingly aware of the trouble brewing beyond
Suzugoya and of her putative role as a problem solver. To put it in different words,
in her 1859 diaries Tokiko organized the narrative of her involvement with the
loyalist movement around the idea of signs and distress signals, portraying
herself as the chosen recipient and talented interpreter of hints large and
small. Each sign, each glimpse functioned either as an inspiration or as an
endorsement, making it not only possible, but in fact unavoidable for a base-
born nobody to step out of her microcosm and cross over into a much larger
historical stage.
It all began with a portent. On the evening of the twenty-fourth day of the
eighth month of 1858, Tokiko’s landlord rushed to her house: “There is a comet
53
54 Chapter 3
in the sky. It is right over the road in front of the house.” Tokiko went to see for
herself and, awestruck with the celestial body, “worshipped [it] profusely.”1
There was much to admire about this unusual comet. Known to western
astronomers as Donati’s comet (after its discoverer, Italian astronomer Giovanni
Battista Donati, 1826–1873), it is the fourth largest comet in history and one of
the brightest on record.2 Its prolonged visibility to the naked eye throughout
the last four months of 1858 also commanded attention. For all such reasons
Donati’s comet became the centerpiece of written records, paintings, and
portraits not only in Japan but also in Europe, North America, and even
Australia.3
In Japan, appearing as it did in the midst of the calamities of 1858, the comet
seemed like a confirmation that the world was falling apart. The records of Mito
domain, for instance, comment:
On top of this turmoil, an uncommon comet has appeared since

the middle of the [eighth] month. It is a dreary object, which flut-
ters midway through the sky with a long tail of a cold blue light.
Rumors have begun to circulate, and some argue this is a sign of
disaster.4
Inoue Jōshō, an abbot from Tosa, added, “this is not at all a good omen; this is
a calamity-star.” He feared the portent announced the end of days and advised
his parishioners to invoke the name of Amida many times over.5
Other records confirm that the general population was troubled by the ar-
rival of “the strange star.” “The farmers are depressed,” wrote one chronicler,
“for they do not know whether this means good or ill fortune.”6 Some observ-
ers, however, took it as a positive sign that better times were on the way and
referred to the comet (hōkiboshi) as the “star of the year of abundance”
(hōnenboshi), the “plentiful-vapor-star” (hō-ki-boshi), or the “treasure-day-star”
(hōhiboshi).7 Either way, the comet did not go unnoticed.
Tokiko’s 1859 diaries indicate that she took the comet as an encrypted mes-
sage to decipher. “Beginning in the middle of the eighth month,” she wrote,
“every night a comet moving from the northwest to the east appeared; its color
was white.” Recalling that another white comet had appeared in the tenth cen-
tury, shortly before Taira no Masakado’s rebellion (939), Tokiko added:
At that time [i.e., in the tenth century], astronomers were sum-

moned to the imperial palace. They pondered over the colors [of
comets], [and agreed that] comets come in five colors. If a comet is
blue, the kings and princes will fall and the emperor will suffer
Glimpses of History 55
because of a war. If it is red, a villain will rise and the people in the
country will be unsafe. If it is yellow, the beauty of a woman will
cause great damage. If it is white, the shogun will disobey and a
great war will break out within two years. If it is black, a flood will
devastate villages and homes and there will be no crops.8
Tokiko does not say which historical record precisely she consulted,9 but
there would have been no shortage of options for her to link comets and ca-
lamities, for awareness of comet lore was widespread. Terajima Ryōan’s popu-
lar Illustrated Japanese-Chinese Encyclopedia of the Three Elements (Wakan
sansai zue, 1712), for example, cited Chinese lore in saying that “blue comets
indicate that the ruler will be defeated; red comets that a rebel will rise.” 10 The
State of Affairs in This Floating World (Ukiyo no arisama), a chronicle from
the first half of the nineteenth century, traces the five-color classification to
China and lists as possible outcomes war, floods, fires, disease of a ruler, and
despotism.11 Nineteenth-century nativist Mito scholar Nishino Nobuaki
wrote that “if a comet is blue, the ruler will fall; if it is red, a rebellion will
arise.”12 Finally, Hamamatsu Utakuni and Funakoshi Seiichirō, authors of The
Wonders of Osaka (Setsuyō kikan, 1833), also read blue comets as indicators
that the ruler would fall; red comets as harbingers of rebellions; yellow comets
as warnings that the beauty of a woman would compromise the authority of
the ruler; and black comets as portending floods.13
While the association between portents and disasters was not new, there
are at least two points in Tokiko’s account that deserve attention, for they shed
light on the specific keys she used to read the comet as a distress signal from
the heavens. The first point concerns the color of the 1858 comet. Tokiko de-
scribes it as white, which, according to the celestial taxonomy she provides,
would indicate an imminent act of rebellion on the part of the shogun. Other
sources, however, disagree: the Mito domain records speak of a cold blue light,
and other documents mention a crimson halo.14 The actual color of the comet
is not important. What matters is that seeing it as white enabled Tokiko to in-
fer that a war would break out within two years. It is as if, in Tokiko’s narra-
tive, the comet appeared and, with its eerie white light, illuminated all the
troubles engendered by the Ansei Treaties, the purges, and Nariaki’s punish-
ment, all the while alerting her to the catastrophic outcome that lay ahead.
The second point to consider is the use of the term “shogun” in the con-
text of the tenth century. This is not entirely anachronistic: before “shogun”
became the official hereditary title of the Minamoto clan in the twelft h cen-
tury, the term had been used to indicate some of the generals who had served
in the expeditions against the “northern barbarians” in the eighth century.15
56 Chapter 3
In Tokiko’s story, however, the term makes more sense if taken in its post-
twelft h-century connotation, indicating a single military ruler commanding
sufficient resources to bring an entire country to war. The white light of the
comet, in other words, not only brought the Ansei crisis into sharper focus for
Tokiko but also pointed at a direct culprit: the ruling shogun.
Like the hexagrams from The Book of Changes, the comet was a readable
sign from the heavens, one that had chosen the base-born Tokiko as its recipi-
ent and interpreter. In Travel Diary (Kikō, 1859) Tokiko describes the 1858 comet
as the “warning” (keisei) that triggered her foray into political activism, trans-
forming her from teacher into loyalist.16 She was already aware of the faction-
alist strife at play in Edo and Mito, but it was the realization that “a great war
will break out within two years” that set in motion the events that led to her
1859 mission to Kyoto. The centrality of the comet in Tokiko’s 1859 diaries will
be examined in more detail in chapter 5. For now suffice it to say that in 1858
the comet rose as the first of several distress signals that impelled Tokiko to
turn her attention to the trouble brewing outside Suzugoya.
The second signal came in the form of an encounter that took place later
in the fall of the same year. On the sixteenth day of the ninth month a visitor
named Kubōgame shared with Tokiko a poem attributed to Emperor Kōmei.
It read:
Nigori e no We may have sunk

mizu ni wagami wa in the waters
shizumu to mo of a muddy stream,
nigori wa sejina but all our people
yorozu kunitami will not be smeared.17
Had the acts of defiance carried out by the shogun, the signing of the treaties,
and the punishment inflicted upon Tokugawa Nariaki caused the country to
sink? Already alerted by the comet, Tokiko may have interpreted the poem in
just such a key. Her response read as follows:
Kimigayo ni Under Your august reign

sumeru irie no the stream water
mizu naraba will clear;
tomoni koso sume we will clear it together
yorozu kunibito all of us countrymen.
By penning a response Tokiko engaged in a symbolic dialogue with the em-

peror. Not only that, but she figuratively consoled a somewhat dejected Kōmei
and called for the participation of all “countrymen” (kunibito) in the fight against
the barbarians. A not-so-subtle incitation to remain defiant, this imaginary con-
versation, Anzō Ryōko argues, was one of the sources of inspiration for To-
kiko’s 1859 journey to Kyoto.18 It forced her to look beyond the confi nes of
Suzugoya, at the country writ large, while connecting her to the emperor and,
by extension, to the loyalist cause.
It may be worth pausing here to reflect upon Tokiko’s use of the word “coun-
try” (kuni). More than a simple homage to the original poem by the emperor
(which also includes the term kuni), Tokiko’s choice of word illuminates her
wide-ranging field of vision. In the early modern era kuni referred mostly, but
not exclusively, to a large domain or a province.19 To Tokiko, born in the nine-
teenth century and witness to major reconfigurations of authority and politi-
cal spaces (what Konta Yōzō calls “expanding geographic consciousness”),20
kuni would have been a fluid term. Indeed, while her immediate loyalty stood
with Nariaki and Mito domain, her political concerns, as we will see, extended
to the realm writ large—what we would now identify as “Japan.” Kuni to her
would have indicated Hitachi Province, Mito domain, and “the country,”
and it is in this sense that she used the word while “conversing” with the
emperor.
The third glimpse of big history, and the third cause for concern, came on
the twenty-sixth day of the twelft h month, the day Tokiko decorated her
house for the New Year. In the evening a man showed up at her door; his name
was Shishido Nakatsukasa. He had just escaped from custody and, as Tokiko
would later recount, was fleeing north disguised as a peasant.21 Who was this
man? Gunji Atsunobu and Nunomura Yasuhiro identify Nakatsukasa as Ko-
jima Harutaka (or Shunson), the Shinto priest and loyalist from the northeast
who had tutored Tokiko in the art of poetry years earlier. A 1937 article from
the magazine The Housewife’s Companion (Shufu no tomo) presents Nakatsu-
kasa as a scholar from Hitachi Province.22 Others have suggested that he was
an acquaintance of Tokiko’s second husband (or stepfather), the late Suke-
nobu.23 Either way, Nakatsukasa knew Tokiko through one or more of her
circles.
He did not stay long, but what he said had a long-lasting effect on Tokiko.
Before taking leave, he “spoke in secret” about the Ansei Purges:
Because of the state of public affairs these days, they [i.e., the gov-
ernment officials] are summoning all Confucian scholars and
people versed in the letters and are killing them without an in-
vestigation. Moreover, we see that the enemies of the court are
revered.
58 Chapter 3
Additionally, Nakatsukasa lamented the fact that “many within the government
have deceived our lord.”24 Tokiko’s Travel Diary does not name Nakatsukasa
explicitly but does mention the visit of “an itinerant man” who decried the ex-
istence of sycophants who had led the government astray. More to the point, it
refers to the words the man spoke as “tantamount to a warning oracle” (keisei
no otsuge no gotoku), using the same term (“warning”) with which Tokiko had
characterized the comet’s message.25 (In the semi-hagiographical version of the
story told by Gunji Atsunobu in 1900, Nakatsukasa allegedly added: “The sho-
gun Iemochi is a young boy; the government officials mete out punishment ar-
bitrarily, killing patriots. There is probably no one of our kind [i.e., a loyalist]
left, let us flee north.” Tokiko reacted with “indignation and resentment” at
Nakatsukasa’s invitation; “despite being a woman,” says Gunji, she refused to
acquiesce.)26
Tokiko of course already knew about the crisis and had been “worried about
how to spare the realm such evil” since the appearance of the comet in the fall.27
How was the encounter with Nakatsukasa any different? Of all the things Na-
katsukasa said, one in particular may have caught Tokiko’s attention: his state-
ment that, as a result of the purges, it had become especially difficult for him
“as a man” (danshi nite) to travel.28 The comment was not the centerpiece of
Nakatsukasa’s speech, and in Tokiko’s diaries it features as no more than a pass-
ing remark. Tokiko, however, had been faced with subtle hints before and knew
how to catch one: Was Nakatsukasa implying that, with men out of the pic-
ture, the intervention of a woman was now necessary? She does not elaborate
on this point, but she does admit that, following the encounter with Nakatsu-
kasa, her “brave heart” was “awakened.”29 At this stage, the signs that had alerted
her to the collision course upon which the country had embarked and that had
brought to her attention the victims and culprits of the Ansei drama began also
to demand her direct involvement, not despite, but because of her gender. But
how? What was she supposed to do? The fourth encounter with large-scale his-
tory provided the answer.
While Tokiko was mulling over possible ways to “avert grief for the realm”30
(tenka no urei o nozokan) the curtain came down on the Year of the Horse An-
sei 5. The Year of the Sheep Ansei 6 (1859) is the one that put Tokiko in the
pages of history books, for it was then that she actively joined the loyalist move-
ment, traveled to Kyoto, and attempted to make a direct plea to the emperor.
The year, however, began with a much shorter yet no less meaningful trip. A
few days after welcoming the New Year (the exact date is unclear), Tokiko made
a short excursion to the coastal town of Ōarai, near Mito (map 1.1). There, tucked
amidst pine trees at a site called Nenohigahara (or Nenohinohara), stood a stone
monument inscribed with verses by the former lord of Mito, Tokugawa

Nariaki:
Bandai o Pledging to pine

matsu ni chigirite for eternity
kyō koso wa today
Nenohinohara ni I was drawn
hikare kinikere to Nenohinohara.
Once again in the presence of history and of its iconic figures, Tokiko engaged
in a symbolic rendezvous with her former domain lord by offering a response
poem titled “The Pines at Nenohi”:
Kimi iwau They are charged with

chiyo no tameshi ni celebrating you, my lord,
hikiukuru in perpetuity
kyō no Nenohi no and so they do today, the pines
matsu zo ureshiku at Nenohi: what a joy.31
The existing sources do not allow us to establish with certainty whether it

was this abstract encounter with her former lord that triggered her decision to
travel to Kyoto or whether she had already made up her mind and was simply
looking for a symbolic endorsement. What they do indicate is that, after the
excursion to Ōarai, Tokiko had achieved a distinct vision, one she likened to
“a perfectly clear, unclouded mirror.”32 Having read the hints and connected
the dots, she finally knew what to do: travel to the imperial court “above the
clouds.”
Shikishima no Following the Way

michi tadoru mi wa of Shikishima
sasagani no a spider’s thread
kumoi no niwa ni pulled me
hikarekinikeri to the court’s yard.33
This poem encapsulates Tokiko’s fourth encounter with history. It all began,
as she points out, with a poetic exchange celebrating a political golden age of
sorts (where Shikishima is taken to mean “the ancient Way of Japan”). The quest
for such a golden age, an age antithetical to the (unmentioned, yet implied) chaos
of the present, then evolves, seamlessly and elegantly, into a clear vision of
60 Chapter 3
engagement and then into a plan for action: a mission to the imperial court.
What we see here is Tokiko’s political awakening as it unfolded.
Let us not forget, however, that Tokiko was a poet as much as she was a
diviner, and that her foray into history was also precipitated by her ability to
read cosmic signs. In the verses with which she announced her newly acquired
vision, therefore, Tokiko also paid homage to the sphere of the divine:
Azusayumi Catalpa bow:

harukeki michi o the spider’s thread
sasakani no is never loose,
ito mo tayumazu all the way to the far-off
kumo no ue made [court] above the clouds.34
As Carmen Blacker explains, the catalpa bow enabled shamans and mediums
to connect with the gods; when plucked, it commanded the attention of the
spirits, cajoling them into communicating with the humans and even into de-
scending amongst them. The bow could also serve as a conduit though which
the gods became manifest.35 While there are no indications that Tokiko pos-
sessed such a bow, the spiritual connotations of this poetic trope would not have
been lost on a professional diviner (nor would the poetic pedigree of the ritual
implement have been unknown to a trained literata). It was not just as a poet
but also as a person conversant in the language of the spirits that Tokiko, “pulled”
(hikarekinikeri) by cosmic hints and by the forces of history, prepared to go to
Kyoto and obtain an imperial document exonerating Tokugawa Nariaki.36
The spring came and Tokiko selected an auspicious date for her departure:
the twenty-second day of the second month (March 26, 1859, in the Gregorian
calendar).
Harusame no As it leaves its nest

furu su o idete in the spring rain,
uguisu no the nightingale
kumoue e kayou flies back and forth above the clouds:
kyō zo medetaki today is a blessed day.37
The “blessed day” coincided with the day of a memorial ser vice for her late fa-
ther. Tokiko decided not to change her plans: the crisis facing the country, she
reasoned, was a “life-or-death situation” (kikyū sonbō no toki); in times like this,
she added, even King Wu of Zhou had not paid homage to his father’s grave.
“He thought first and foremost about the welfare of the country and its people”
(tenka kokka banmin no tame o omohi) and eventually “pacified the realm”
(tenka o osamu).38 Tokiko may have included such a historical footnote to make
amends for not fulfi lling a fi lial duty or for the fact that she would leave be-
hind her elderly mother. However, it is not inconceivable that, at this point, she
had already begun to see herself as the modern-day equivalent of King Wu,
the one who would bring peace to the realm and to its people.
As her comment on King Wu indicates, at the time of the Kyoto trip To-
kiko conceived of the geopolitical space around her as a realm/country (tenka
kokka) hinged on the poles of the emperor and the domain lord(s). In the early
modern period, tenka indicated a large realm under heaven (“Japan”) coalesc-
ing, in theory, under the emperor but governed, for all practical purposes, by
the Tokugawa. Kokka, on the other hand, was used primarily to refer to the
domain.39 The geopolitical order Tokiko invoked at various points in her jour-
ney reflected, in part, this arrangement, but with one telling variation: she did
away with the Tokugawa middlemen, and, beyond the domain, she looked up
directly at the emperor. Trekking along Shibu Pass, for example, she reminded
herself that she was enduring the hardships of her mission “for the sake of the
emperor, for the sake of my lord, for the sake of the realm and of the country”
( jūzen tenshi no ontame, hōkun no ontame, tenka kokka no ontame).40 This com-
ment also illuminates Tokiko’s view of the role of the individual in the larger
space of the tenka kokka and, by extension, on the larger stage of history. Not
simply an accessory, the individual had the power to affect the fate of the realm.
At Mount Togakushi (a Shugendō mountain whose inner shrine, as a woman,
she could not access) Tokiko requested that prayers be offered “for the peace
of the realm [tenka], for the safety of the country [kokka], for the long lasting
military success of my lord, for [my] safety along the road, and for the [suc-
cessful] completion of a great undertaking.”41 As on Shibu Pass, Tokiko pre-
sented her own mission as integral to the safety and prosperity of the tenka
kokka, questioning her purported irrelevance as a historical actor and casting
herself as the linchpin upon which rested the recovery of the entire realm.
Other scholars have highlighted the ways in which, “before the nation,”
intellectuals like Mootori Norinaga, Hirata Atsutane, or Tachibana Moribe (to
name a few) theorized a sense of community along sophisticated exegetical lines
and by way of intricate cosmologies.42 Tokiko’s understanding of the geopo-
litical space around her was not as articulate, but it was functional, and, more
to the point, it enabled her to take a stand. To her, the political space of tenka
kokka was neither remote nor ethereal; it was all around her, concrete and within
reach. It was the road she walked, the pass she crossed, the wind in her face,
and the grasses through which she waded. In the tangible landscape of the tenka
kokka, physical trials were a manifestation of the challenges required of her
mission, as this verse suggests:
62 Chapter 3
Kakutodani And so I crossed

kewashiki yama o these
koeru to mo steep mountains:
kimi ga tame ni ya there is nothing I would not do
nani itoubeki for my lord.43
Or, elsewhere,
Kumoue made The divine winds

ware o izanau that lured me
kamikaze wa above the clouds
fuku to mo mi ni wa blustered, but they did not
sawarazarikeri thwart me.44
Tokiko drew strength from such challenges; in facing them head-on, she was
reminded of the urgency of her mission; in overcoming them, she gained faith
in her ability to bring a solution to the tribulations of her times.
If the space of the tenka kokka was within the reach of the individual, so
was its time. At Mount Togakushi, Tokiko made this point clear by bowing to
tradition first, and then seizing it and putting it to her ser vice. Upon admiring
the surrounding mountains, she recalled a poem from the tenth-century an-
thology Kokinshū:
Kimi o nomi Thinking of you only

omohi Koshiji no on the road to Koshi,
Shirayama wa some day the time will come
itsuka wa yuki no for the snow to melt away
kiyuru toki aru on White Mountain.45
Citing famous verses of the past before striking vistas was not especially orig-
inal. However, what Tokiko did next is, and it speaks volumes about her view
of time, tradition, and history. After citing the Kokinshū lines, she rewrote them
by adapting them to her personal situation:
Kimigayo o Thinking of my lord’s realm

omohi Koshiji no on the road to Koshi,
Shirayama ni I am one and the same with
tsumoreru yuki wa the snow piling up
ware to hitoshiki on White Mountain.46
By modifying the original poem, Tokiko turned a reflection on love and sepa-
ration into a political mission statement. She did so because, to her, literary tra-
dition (like the space of the realm) was not ethereal, aloof, and beyond grasp.
Paradigms, to Tokiko, did not float in a vacuum. Their usefulness rested on
the fact that they could be adapted to reflect (or remedy) immediate, present,
and tangible vicissitudes—a lesson she had learned squaring theory and real-
ity in the classroom and in the Hōjuin. In her view of tradition, as in her view
of the realm, Tokiko takes infinitives and conjugates them in the present tense
and in the first person, putting the individual in charge.
In short, Tokiko postulated that history was within reach of everyone and
understood the tenka kokka as a tangible space within which practical actions
could be performed and concrete results obtained. She did not see an unbridge-
able gulf between the large-scale political upheavals of her day and age and the
actions of a single person. In fact, a single person had the ability to help the
realm avert disaster and turn things around. Her fift h encounter with big his-
tory, which occurred at the onset of the Kyoto journey, confirmed the pivotal
role of the individual in the historical process.
As she was leaving Suzugoya, Tokiko caught sight of a group of men.
Yukichigau I asked,
hito o da so ya to who is that man
na o toeba I just walked by?
kore zo Yamato no He is Japan’s
kaname to zo kiku cornerstone, I hear.47
The man was a Shinto priest from Furuuchi village; cornerstone, kaname, was
his given name. Tokiko, in other words, was in the presence of Koibuchi Kaname
(1810–1860), one of the men who, one year later, would ambush and kill Min-
ister Ii Naosuke at Sakurada Gate (3/3/1860).
At the time of the encounter, Tokiko would have known Koibuchi Kaname
as a local celebrity for the role he had played in the 1844 movement to excul-
pate Tokugawa Nariaki. As the embodiment of devotion to the former Mito
lord, his appearance at the onset of Tokiko’s mission served as nothing short
of an imprimatur. It was the final confirmation that she had read the signs cor-
rectly all along and that she was headed in the right direction, both literally
and metaphorically. Like King Wu, she would pacify the realm. Like Kaname,
she would be a pivot. By the time she set out on her Kyoto journey, Tokiko saw
herself as the person capable of turning the tenka kokka around. More than
that, she saw herself as a virtual axis mundi. To use her own words, her plan
64 Chapter 3
for action had “sprung out of a place as [powerful as] Mount Sumeru.” The cos-
mic mountain at the center of the Buddhist universe, the core out of which ev-
erything originates, Mount Sumeru is, indeed, the ultimate pivot, the axis mundi
by definition.48 So, by extension, was Tokiko, as she left Suzugoya with her great
plan for action.
Tokiko’s ascent into large-scale history is the story of how a base-born no-
body deciphered a string of encrypted messages and subtle signs that pointed
her away from her rural village and in the direction of the imperial capital. The
white comet brought the first warning, alerting her to the imminent crisis and
squarely blaming the shogun for it. Emperor Kōmei called for help with a poem
bemoaning the country’s sinking to the bottom of a murky river. Nakatsukasa
appeared, lamenting how difficult it had become for males to take to the road.
The solution, Tokiko must have thought, had to come from a woman. The trip
to Ōarai enabled Tokiko to reaffirm her devotion to Tokugawa Nariaki and gave
her a clear vision of what to do. On her way out of Suzugoya the final sign came,
confirming she could play a pivotal role in rescuing the realm. History had spo-
ken, and Tokiko had heard it loud and clear.
This neat sequence of signs is as poetic as it is artificial. The fast-forwards
and whispered hints of Tokiko’s intricate script are, as it turns out, the result
not of divine intervention but of hindsight and editing. As Kanamori Atsuko
reminds us, the versions of Travel Diary and of Letters from the Kyoto Incar-
ceration preserved in Mito are the ones Tokiko rewrote in 1875,49 the year in
which the Meiji government honored her with a land grant (see chapter 8). At
the time she rewrote Travel Diary and Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration, To-
kiko knew how the story would play out. Such awareness may have inspired
her to highlight certain moments at the expense of others, better to create the
story of how cosmic signs and subtle hints enabled a self-described “speck of
dust in the wind” (fūzen no chiri) to become an honoree of the Meiji govern-
ment.50 A comet thus became a “warning”; a brief visit provided the frame for
a secret conversation laden with implicit suggestions—an “oracle,” no less; and
an exchange of glances suggested that her actions would be pivotal.
There are other examples of retroactive editorial work in Travel Diary. On
2/24, two days into her journey, some acquaintances offered her a series of po-
ems as parting gifts; in a note on that day’s entry Tokiko adds: “When I was
arrested in Kyoto I offered all these writings to those above me.”51 On 1859/2/24
Tokiko would have had no way of knowing she would be arrested—but in 1875,
of course, she would. Added to her narrative, this glimpse of things to come
gives value to her mission, anticipating that it would take her close enough to
her target as to catch the eye of the authorities. By dropping this hint, Tokiko—
the consummate storyteller—warned her readers to stay tuned while infusing

her actions with resonance.
In 1875 Tokiko (re-)wrote the script of her Kyoto journey and, with the
clever deployment of ad hoc rhetorical tactics, told the story of her ascent onto
the large stage of history and onto the space of the tenka kokka. Signs from
heaven and whispers from iconic figures cast her in a lead role, despite her be-
ing born as an extra. With the script ready, it was time for action.
4 From Script to Stage
Much has been made in twentieth-century works of Tokiko’s “sol-

itary” mission to Kyoto, particularly in light of her gender. In Gunji Atsuno-
bu’s Unparalleled Now and Then: The Woman Loyalist Tokiko (Kokon musō
retsujo Tokiko, 1900), a fellow (male) loyalist praises Tokiko because “with the
body of a woman you have faced, alone, the blizzard and you have traveled
across mountains and rivers.”1 In 1936, Takamure Itsue and Nunomura Yas-
uhiro hailed Tokiko for having acted with no help from others.2 More recently,
The Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Women (Nihon josei jinmei jiten, 1993)
also specified that she went to Kyoto alone.3 Tokiko herself, in Travel Diary,
mentions the difficulties she faced in being on her own (hitori nite).4
The same diary, however, also reveals a much more intricate picture than
the simplistic (but irresistible) “woman travels alone” headline. Tokiko lived
at the intersection of several circles, and neither her political education nor her
journey to, and sojourn in, the capital occurred in a vacuum. Like all scripts,
hers too required plenty of behind-the-scenes work to be enacted on stage. Such
work came in the form of support from her peers, whom we find interacting
with Tokiko at every step of her mission, from the early days on the road to
the stint in the imperial capital. The transition from script to stage also neces-
sitated a clever work of lights and shadows, of half-whispered lines and dra-
matic silences, so that Tokiko could perform her act safely, effectively, and
convincingly. The story of Tokiko’s journey to Kyoto illuminates another side
of political activism on the part of the non-elites in nineteenth-century Japan,
one defined not by improvisation, emotion, or folly, but by networking, plan-
ning, and focus.
To Kyoto
Tokiko was not the only character on stage. At the onset of her journey (map 4.1),
for example, she traveled with Koibuchi Jihei (not to be confused with the afore-
mentioned Koibuchi Kaname), whom she describes as a man “who harbors
66
From Script to Stage 67
Map 4.1. Tokiko’s 1859 journey to Kyoto. Map by Will Fontanez.
an exquisite devotion in the bottom of his heart.”5 From Travel Diary we know
that she had met with Jihei along the road on 2/26; they traveled together and
parted ways on 3/1, when Tokiko stopped in Kusatsu while Jihei forged ahead.
He reached Kyoto before her and, by the time she arrived, he had already left.
Tokiko does not offer much insight into the figure of Koibuchi Jihei, but
other sources indicate that he was Suzugoya’s village head (shōya) and had been
an active member of the Nariaki exculpation movement since 1844.6 On that
occasion, Jihei had traveled to Edo and had delivered a petition to an official of
Kii domain.7 Moreover, Jihei had connections with Katōgi Shunzō of Magone,
an acquaintance of Tokiko’s; when Shunzō traveled to Edo in 1844, he stopped
to see Jihei and consult with him.8
Jihei’s role in the Nariaki exculpation movement is at the root of a case of
mistaken identity: a report produced in 1859 by an anonymous retainer of the
Ii clan who was on the hunt for Jihei mistakenly identifies him as the loyalist
Saitō Tomejirō (1830–1860).9 Tomejirō is known for his loyalist fervor as much
as for his spectacular suicide, which he performed on the grounds of Mito
castle on 1860/2/24 to protest Mito’s decision to return the emperor’s secret
decree. He would receive posthumous rank in the Meiji period for his dedication
68 Chapter 4
to the loyalist mission.10 The speculation of the Ii retainer turned out to be un-
founded, but the hunt for Jihei and the anxiety about his identity provide evi-
dence for the reputation he had created as a potential threat to the Tokugawa
government. Additionally, it confirms that Tokiko’s “solitary” rise to the cen-
ter of the stage was in fact made possible by the support of other, more experi-
enced historical actors.
On the way to Kyoto, Tokiko regularly visited with members of her net-
works. Not all of them were privy to the purpose of her trip, but all provided
assistance. In Sawatari, for example, she lodged with Yumoto Tarōuemon, whom
she had known since her earlier travels to Kusatsu.11 In Koume she visited with
Yumoto Heibei, an acquaintance from her days as a hairpin peddler and poet
in training; the fact that she refers to him by his pen name, Tōjū, also indi-
cates they had a connection nurtured in the context of poetry circles.12 As To-
kiko tells us, she had fi rst met Heibei through the intercession of Kikuya
Gontarō, whose daughter and grandson she had tutored in 1851. The Kikuya
family took her in for three days at their Kusatsu home when a snowfall shut
down the Shibu Pass road and gave her food when she resumed her journey.13
It is unclear whether they were aware of her plan; Tokiko tells us they spent an
evening “discussing various topics,” but does not say whether such topics in-
cluded the circumstances of her journey.
In other cases it appears as if she was open about her mission. In Shimodate,
Tokiko stayed with a certain Sōgo, the younger brother of one of her poetry
tutors, Kangiku An. Evidence of the fact that she may have revealed the true
goal of her journey comes from the farewell poem Sōgo offered her:
Maiagete Springtime butterfly,

hayaku mo modore soar high,
haru no chō and then quickly come back.14
In an indirect way, the poem reads like an exhortation for her to be safe in her
great enterprise and may indicate awareness of Tokiko’s plans on the part of
Sōgo. In any case, Tokiko’s writings enable us to reconstruct an intricate net
of personal connections that provided a veritable support group. Be they overt
loyalist sympathizers, fellow poets, or individuals with whom she had first re-
lated as an educator, Tokiko’s acquaintances joined her along the road, gave
her shelter, and provided supplies and words of encouragement.
Outside this support group, of course, it made good sense for Tokiko to
keep a low profile. In the volatile atmosphere of the late 1850s, talk of current
events could bring unwanted attention. While at an inn in Sano, for example,
Tokiko overheard some guests discussing politics; rather than intervene, she
decided to feign ignorance.15 Elsewhere, she encountered a group of wayfarers

who began debating contemporary events. Tokiko records their exchanges word
for word:
“These days the retired lord of Mito does not act with restraint, and
trouble is brewing in Edo and in the capital [Kyoto].”
“What happened now?”
“Why, I heard they sealed an alliance with America. He [Nar-
iaki] acted disrespectfully, so now we are in the midst of a war and
the people from Edo have nowhere to go. That’s why everyone, and
I mean everyone in Edo is speaking ill of the lord of Mito.”
Hearing such badmouthing, Tokiko, who considered Ii Naosuke a traitor

(gyakuzoku), felt “enraged deep down inside” and “indignant.” However, she
again kept quiet, “not expecting people to understand [my views].” 16 She parted
ways with the group as soon as she could.
Another reason to exercise restraint came from the fact that Tokiko was
travelling without official documentation. The checkpoint system implemented
in the early seventeenth century was, by the mid-nineteenth, compromised by
leniency, carelessness, and corruption. Nevertheless, in 1859 obtaining official
permission to travel was still a requirement; failure to do so would result in
delays, denial of transit, and even arrest. Aware of her vulnerability in this re-
spect, Tokiko had planned accordingly, not only trying to deflect unwanted at-
tention but also traveling along the Ina Road to elude the Kiso Fukushima
barrier. Being from Mito—a simmering hotpot of anti-governmental rhetoric—
gave her an additional reason to exercise caution. At an inn in Moriyama, for
example, “the controls were so strict” that she “lied and registered as a traveler
from Kusatsu, in Kōzuke Province.”17
Lastly, there was the ever-pressing issue of gender. Even in the nineteenth
century, the presence of an unescorted woman on the road raised questions.
When asked about the purpose of her trip, Tokiko cited literary pursuits. The
deception worked, though it occasionally backfired: believing that she was trav-
eling for poetic training, her host in Kuwahara insisted on escorting her to
Mount Obasute, a renowned site in Shinano. Despite her resolve to reach the
imperial capital, Tokiko had to feign interest: “My spirit is in a rush [to get to
Kyoto], but if I go ahead without so much as glancing at this famous place, peo-
ple will doubt me and will say I do not have the true motivations of a [poetry]
practitioner.”18 By appealing to her background as a poet and inscribing her
journey within an accepted practice, Tokiko deflected all suspicions. Even the
best of scripts, as it turned out, required the occasional improvisation.
70 Chapter 4
The Petitionary Poem

After a journey of thirty-four days, Tokiko reached the imperial capital on the
twenty-fift h day of the third month (April 27, 1859) and took residence at the
Ōgiya inn on Karasuma Avenue. The choice, again, was not coincidental, for
the Ōgiya was the default destination of Mito loyalists. She was indeed greeted
with these words: “Welcome, thank you for staying with us. There were many
other [guests] from Hitachi [Province], but they have all left.”19 The innkeeper
did not offer a specific reason for the exodus of Mito visitors, but it is safe to
assume it had to do with the escalating tensions in the capital. Kyoto in those
days was abuzz with news of the arrest of numerous members of the Sanjō and
Ichijō families and of Muraoka no Tsubone (Tsuzaki Noriko, 1786–1873), a key
liaison between the Kyoto nobility and the loyalist movement.20
Reaching Kyoto was, of course, only half of the plan. Now Tokiko had to
make her plea before the emperor. Inclement weather the day after her arrival
forced her to stay inside; she used the opportunity to put down on paper “the
long poem I had composed in my heart.”21 The petition finally materialized.
Tokiko offers no explanation as to why she had not written it down before leav-
ing Suzugoya, but one can assume it was a calculated move: had she been stopped
and searched, the petition would have been incriminating.
Petitioning the authorities was common practice in early modern Japan,
so common, in fact, that by the final century of the Tokugawa it had come to
follow predictable, “even ritualized” patterns.22 Tokiko was aware of the pre-
cedent established by the Nariaki exculpation movement in 1844, when some
of her own acquaintances had traveled to Edo to deliver petitions to various
officials and domain lords. But to this choreographed dance between authori-
ties and subjects Tokiko responded with an act of her own. First, the magni-
tude of the 1858 crisis convinced her to skip the middleman and go directly to
the imperial court. Second, unlike her predecessors had done in 1844, Tokiko
penned her request in the form of a long poem, or chōka. Why did she do so?
Other scholars have offered an answer to this question. Kanamori Atsuko, for
example, argues that Tokiko did not have a strong political identity; she was a
poet at heart and the petition was less a political act and more an opportunity
to test her literary skills.23 Kanamori’s interpretation, however, does not explain
why, to demonstrate her poetic abilities, Tokiko would have chosen to embark
on a journey to the capital. More importantly, it fails to recognize the coexis-
tence of multiple identities: being a poet did not prevent Tokiko from being a
political person.
A more appropriate explanation links the choice of format to the content
of the message and to its intended recipient, and hinges on issues of language
proficiency and length requirements. Tokiko was indeed a poet; the language
of poetry was the one with which she was most familiar. Penning the petition
in any other mode would have placed her at a disadvantage, forcing her to dab-
ble with formats and registers with which she was less comfortable, minimally
trained, or utterly unfamiliar. Poetry, by contrast, was an idiom she spoke flu-
ently; it enabled her to make her point clearly, elegantly, and convincingly.
Of all formats, the long poem is the one that made the most sense. Haiku
and “crazy verses” (kyōka) were too vulgar, not to mention short (seventeen and
thirty-one syllables, respectively). Traditional Japanese poems (waka) would
have been more adequate, and were indeed among the preferred outlets for late-
Tokugawa loyalists to promote their political visions. However, at thirty-one
syllables, they would have also been restrictive. If there is indeed a correspon-
dence between the length of a poetic form and its social use, with brevity indi-
cating intimacy and length suggesting openness toward the public,24 then the
magnitude of Tokiko’s enterprise required the longest of platforms. Chōka fit
the bill: its open-ended format, with alternating lines of five and seven sylla-
bles but otherwise lacking any length restrictions, enabled Tokiko to cover all
the bases and to digress as much as she saw fit. The actual length of her peti-
tion may indeed be a good indicator of the social importance (and even vi-
sionary hope) she vested on her mission: the final version consists of more
than 150 lines.25 Moreover, long poems carried the prestige of tradition; the
earliest examples are found in the eighth-century Anthology of Ten Thousand
Leaves (Man‘yōshū), where they are used for private as much as for public
proclamations.26
Lastly, Tokiko broke with the mold of ritualized patterns because her gen-
der demanded she do so. Her long poem needed to accomplish more than just
advocate for the emperor’s intervention to solve a crisis: it also needed to ex-
plain and justify a base-born woman’s decision to step into action and to rise
above her lot to approach the court. With that, it needed to celebrate her abil-
ity to become the pivot that could steer history in a new direction. This brings
us to the poem’s content.
The petition opens with a tribute to the land of the rising sun, created in
the distant age of the gods and destined to shine, unchanged, “until the end of
time.” It then recounts the arrival upon Japanese soil of the foreign barbarians,
who came in their ships “surging like white-crested waves.” The country ca-
pitulated “all because of the will of a certain official named Ii [Naosuke]” and
his accomplice, the Senior Councilor (rōjū) Manabe Akikatsu.27 Besides betray-
ing the country, Ii unjustly imprisoned the only voice of reason, the lord of Mito
Tokugawa Nariaki. Moreover, as the following verses clarify, he squandered pre-
cious resources and disrespected the imperial court:
72 Chapter 4
Ayanaku madou In collusion with

nubatama no his accomplice Manabe,
kokoro no yami no who is lost, without direction,
kurakarishi and whose heart
kuroki Manabe o has turned
kataraite pitch black,
isaoshi aredo [Ii] imprisoned
toga no naki my august lord,
kashikoki kimi o who has all but merit
oshikomete and no blame;
kogane no iro o he wasted
yamabuki no gold
hana chiru gotoni as if scattering
makichirashi yellow flowers
omoki kumoi o and had no respect for
osorenaki the loft y [court] above the clouds:
takumi no hodo zo how manipulative!
The first part of the petition, and especially Tokiko’s understanding of his-
tory, impels us to pause and clarify her relation to Mito ideology (Mitogaku)—or
to whatever remnants thereof still lingered in 1859. (Harootunian postulates
that by the late 1850s Mito ideology, shaken at the core after the signing of the
1858 treaties, was virtually dead in the water.)28
Like all systems of thought, Mito ideology was never a monolith. In
general terms, it is fair to count the view of the emperor as the spiritual leader
of the country (with the shogun as de facto ruler), the belief in the existence
of a pure “national essence” distinctive to the divine land of Japan, and the
determination to obliterate any threat—foreign or domestic—to such an
idealized “original order” among its basic principles.29 Tokiko would have
agreed with most of these ideas. At the same time, other aspects of her per-
sona and of her cosmology would have put her at odds with the traditional
Mito scholars.
First, as a commoner-turned-activist Tokiko would have been the target
of harsh criticism on the part of early Mito ideologues, whose concern was with
the reaffirmation of a social order in which “designations and duties” were set,
the masses (ignorant by default) existed to be ruled, and disregard for one’s place
in society equaled moral failure.30 Therefore, while Tokiko responded to the
sense of frustration felt across her domain in the 1850s and 1860s in ways that
reflected some principles of Mito thought, in other respects—first and foremost
her rising above her lot in life—she marched to the beating of her own drum.
Second, Tokiko, who came from the Shugendō tradition and who had de-
scribed her determination to reach Kyoto as springing from Mount Sumeru,
the center of the Buddhist universe, was always critical of Mito’s treatment of
Buddhism. The domain had a history of persecuting Buddhism: in the 1660s
domain lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni razed more than half of the domain’s
temples. The assaults continued in the 1830s, under Nariaki. Temples were de-
stroyed, statues and bells were melted, and orders went out for the population
to enroll in the registers of Shinto shrines.31 To Mito’s hostility toward Bud-
dhism Tokiko responded (in a document dated 1864) by bemoaning the attacks
on temples and worrying that her domain would turn into an unwelcoming
place for “the celestial beings.”32
Third, her view of history was different from that of the Mito scholars—
which brings us back to the petition. As Victor Koschmann points out,
nineteenth-century Mitogaku was predicated upon holistic notions of change
over time; Aizawa Seishisai, for example, envisioned Japanese history as a cy-
cle with alternating spells of laxity, retrenchments, and rebellions.33 His ap-
proach to history, adds Harootunian, privileged cause-and-effect dynamics and
a concern for continuity.34 Such attention to the smooth rhythms of the longue-
durée is absent from Tokiko’s petition, whose view of history is compressed and
predicated upon ruptures. In the poem, the mythical age of the gods gives al-
most sudden way to the foreign intrusion and to Ii’s betrayal. What interests
Tokiko is the collapse of a seemingly (and conveniently) immobile order pre-
cipitated by the arrival of the barbarians; the abrupt chronological jump be-
tween one historical moment and the other allows her to make a case for the
magnitude of such disruption and for the catastrophic state of the country in
her day and age.
Just as remarkable, and a last point of divergence, is the fact that Tokiko
would name names, using the petition to present Ii as a shortsighted, vindic-
tive, and conniving squanderer who orchestrated “despicable and wretched
schemes” in cahoots with an equally corrupt Manabe and in complete disre-
gard of the emperor’s will. At a time when denunciation of existing political
institutions was prudently carried out (if at all) by way of metaphor, and when
even Mito scholars treaded lightly in their criticism (Aizawa Seishisai, for ex-
ample, had insisted that one must obey the laws of the Tokugawa government),35
Tokiko is refreshingly, shockingly outspoken. Short of indicting Ii Naosuke and
exculpating Tokugawa Nariaki, however, Tokiko did not articulate any large-
scale plan for reform.
Her rising above her lot in life and her stance on religion, history, and pol-
itics force us to conclude that, while using the ideological scaffolding of Mi-
togaku would provide a tempting frame within which to inscribe Tokiko’s
74 Chapter 4
actions, such temptation must in fact be avoided. If Mitogaku principles ever

reached Tokiko’s ears, they did so as fragments, incomplete and bent out of
shape. In any case, even if it had reached her intact, ideology, like every other
paradigm, would then have had to come to terms with Tokiko’s penchant for
squaring the abstract with the practical. Once again, the lessons she had learned
in the classroom and in the Hōjuin guided her: theory had to adapt to reality.
Moreover, even though Tokiko was connected to various networks, she never
spoke as the representative of a larger group: she always and only spoke in the
first person and with an eye to the present. It is to the present tense and to the
first person that the second part of her poem indeed turns.
Whereas the first half of the poem portrays history in a wide-angle, fast-
forwarding from the mythological age of the gods to the ongoing crisis, in the
second half the pace slows down and the camera zooms in, bringing the indi-
vidual into the picture. In this section Tokiko answers the following ques-
tions: How did she become involved? Why would a putative nobody from a
rural village feel impelled to approach the emperor and change the course of
history?
Here Tokiko begins by readjusting, if cautiously, her social coordinates:
the Kurosawa clan, she suggests, descended in fact from none other than “the
meritorious Fujiwara / who come from the line of [living] gods [i.e., emperors]
/ originating with / [the sun goddess] Amaterasu.” Of the many biographers
and apologists who have written about Tokiko in the early twentieth century,
only one, Tatebayashi Miyatarō, has picked up on this claim. In his Kurosawa
Rikkyō (1937) Tatebayashi explains that the Kurosawa of Suzugoya were the de-
scendants of Kamakura-period lord Nikaidō Tamenori and that the Nikaidō
were a branch of the Fujiwara clan.36 Writing in the heyday of genetics and eu-
genics, Tatebayashi found the Fujiwara connection especially useful to argue
that Tokiko’s loyalty to the emperor was a quality she had “inherited” from her
ancestors (see chapter 10). The silence of all other biographers (and of Tokiko
herself beyond this poem), however, suggests that the claim may have been in
fact fictitious. Even if it had been founded, the fact remains that, by the nine-
teenth century, the Kurosawa were far removed from Fujiwara-level status; in
the petitionary poem Tokiko indeed admits to having been “born far from
heaven, in the countryside.” Nonetheless, real or not, the mentioning of a Fu-
jiwara blood tie helped Tokiko in two important ways: first, it added poetic lus-
ter to her verses and second, it established a plausible (if thin) bridge between
the imperial court and the rural Mito village. In the verses that follow, Tokiko
proceeds to cross that bridge.
Uninvolved in politics, she tells us, she was just a schoolteacher (“I have
made of the way of teaching / my occupation”) caring for her aging mother.
But then, one day, echoes of Ii’s “evil deeds” (akuji) came to her “in the words
of the people of the floating world.” She discussed the matter with her mother:
koto o tsubarani We talked this over

kataraite in detail;
shibashi no itoma when I asked her
koikereba for a short leave
tomoni kokoro o she joined in
soirarete with her spirit [i.e., she agreed].
mikuni no tame ni “For the sake of the country,
toki o eba it is high time to
hayatoku ike to go quickly and go fast,” she said.
Having linked macro- and microhistory, the imperial court and the ru-
ral village, the august descendant of Amaterasu and the woman born far
from heaven, Tokiko then narrates her own journey from one world to the
other:
Asaborake At dawn,
hi mo tachiizuru in my travel outfit, I parted with
koromode37 no Hitachi Province,
Hitachi o idete where the sun rises,
Shikishima no longing for
michi aru miyo o the ancient age
shitaitsutsu of Japan;
tsue o chikara no with a cane for strength
tabi no sora I followed
tadoru mo kimi ga the travelers’ sky,
miyo no tame always thinking this was
omoitsuzukeshi for the sake of my lord’s reign.
oi ga mi no With a brave heart
yatakegokoro wa in an old body
haru no no o I trod back and forth
iku mo kaeru mo the fields of spring.
azusayumi Catalpa bow:
harukeki michi o pulled
sasakani no a long way,
ito mo tayumazu untiringly,
hikiaete the spider’s thread tight,
kumo no ue made with the thought of crossing
76 Chapter 4
kekebashi o the suspended bridge

wataru omoi ga that leads above the clouds.
Here Tokiko presents her other credentials—she is an old woman, yes, but also
brave and resolute; a base-born nobody, yes, but also a loyal subject (yearning
to reestablish the ancient age of Japan) and a person conversant with the gods
(the catalpa bow whose sound entices the spirits).
The poetic images from this section of the petition recall those in the verses
Tokiko had written at Nenohigahara at the time of her fourth encounter with
the forces of history (see chapter 3) in a way that creates, for the modern reader,
a sense of continuity and consistency within her oeuvre. To Tokiko at the time
these inner echoes would have indicated—and celebrated—the successful tran-
sition from vision to action: what at Nenohigahara was a budding idea, at this
point, months and miles later, had coalesced into a concrete undertaking. Once
again, Tokiko had applied the lessons from her experience in the classroom and
in the Hōjuin, squaring ideals with practice, abstraction with reality.
Having created a sense of continuity between script and action, between
past and present, Tokiko introduces the idea of hope for the future in the final
section of the long poem:
Mikuni no tame to Day and night,

asayū ni over and over,
chijini kokoro wa I wondered what to do
kudake to mo for the sake of my august country.
tada hitosuji ni In the end I resolved
yukimizu no to purify myself
Semi no ogawa ni in the flowing waters
misogi shite of the Semi River38 [i.e., come to Kyoto]
harubaru kinuru so I have come here from far away
tabigoromo wearing my travel outfit.
akatsuki nagara At dawn
uguisu no the first song
hatsune no kyō no of the nightingale
kotobuki ya is an auspicious sign for today;
nozue ni niou it sends
ume ga ka o the scent of plum blossoms
amatsu sora made from the edge of the fields
tsutaeage up to heaven.
osore ōku mo Graciously
hisakata no I bow
kumoi no niwa ni in the celestial garden

nukazukite above the clouds
osoremi osoremi and ever
tsuzushimite so humbly
mōsu koto no ha offer You
tatematsuru nari these words.39
The leitmotif here is that of auspicious new beginnings, symbolized not only
by the poetic images of the spring, the dawn, and the first song of the nightin-
gale, but also by the religious notion of purification through ritual ablution—
once again, Tokiko the poet embraces Tokiko the religious specialist. The poem
that had begun on a dark note, with the arrival of the foreign barbarians, the
evil deeds of Ii Naosuke, and Manabe’s pitch-black heart, ends here with a hint
of optimism for a possible resolution.
It is worth noting that the pivot facilitating the transition from chaos to
order, from dark days to auspicious ones to come, is none other than Tokiko
herself, though she does not say so explicitly—aiming the spotlight directly at
herself would have been tasteless, and as a poet she knew better. What Tokiko
did, however, was to position herself in the scene by way of allusion: transmog-
rified into the scent of plum blossoms, the poet Tokiko (whose pen name in-
cluded the character for plum) rose from “the edge of the fields” to the “celestial
garden above the clouds”—from Suzugoya to Kyoto. And there, with deferen-
tial words proffered as if in the actual presence of Kōmei, Tokiko’s long jour-
ney, Tokiko’s long poem, and Tokiko’s transformation into a full-fledged political
activist all came to an end.
The poem had three main goals. First, it vilified Ii and Manabe and pro-
claimed Tokugawa Nariaki’s innocence, thus advocating his release from home
confinement; second, it outlined and justified the intervention of a woman “born
far from heaven,” enabling her to claim a legitimate voice; and third, it pro-
vided a vision of hope for the future. Overall, it linked the world of ordinary
people to major historical developments, the lowly peripheries to the imperial
court, proclaiming in no uncertain terms that even a humble subject could rise
from the former to rescue the latter.
The content of the poem is important not only for what it says but also
for what it fails to mention. As exhaustive as it was, the poem left out one im-
portant detail: nowhere in its 150-some odd lines is there any reference to the
comet that had shaken Tokiko’s world in the fall of 1858, first alerting her to
the distress signals from heaven. I will return to this silence in chapter 5. For
now, let us trace the sequence of events that followed Tokiko’s penning of her
poetic petition.
78 Chapter 4
Doors and Gates

As much as she believed in the ability of the individual to make a leap into his-
tory, Tokiko would not have been so naïve as to think she could gain access to
the court and present the petition into the hands of Emperor Kōmei. While
she did not articulate her precise expectations in her Kyoto travel journal, years
later, in 1873, she penned another long poem in which she acknowledged the
disjunction between ideals and reality. Reminiscing about “the time now past”
when she “gave it my all / for the sake of my lord / and for the sake of my coun-
try,” she mused:
Ima wa ta kimi ni Had I had the chance

mamienaba to meet
mōshiagetaki with my lord
kotonoha no I would have had so much to say:
tsumoru omoi no mountains
yamayama o of words
katarau koto no and accumulated thoughts,
kazukazu wa as many
hama no masago ni as the grains of sand
kotonarazu on a beach.
shikawa aredomo Alas,
kumoue yori while he may
amasagaritsuru come down
kimi nareba from above the clouds,
au kotogatashi meeting is not easy.40
Unlike the poetic gates of the celestial garden above the clouds, the actual doors
to the imperial court could not be opened, at least not by Tokiko. However,
if the front access remained shut, Tokiko could always deliver her message
through the backdoor. The story of her days in Kyoto is indeed the chronicle of her
search for such a backdoor. Once again, old networks and advance planning
proved useful.
On 3/27, two days after her arrival, Tokiko visited Kitano Tenmangū, the
shrine dedicated to the spirit of Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), and met
with the head priest Keien. Through him she hoped to be introduced to the
former imperial counselor (zendainagon) Higashibōjō Sugawara Tokinaga
(1799–1861). In 1854 Higashibojō had been selected for the post of densō, the
liaison between the emperor and the Tokugawa. He was, in other words, the
backdoor Tokiko needed. Unfortunately, in late 1858 Higashibōjō had fallen
out of grace for having interceded on behalf of Senior Councilor Hotta Ma-
sayoshi on the issue of the Ansei Treaties; by the time Tokiko arrived in Kyoto,
he had resigned and was under home confinement.
Keien thus referred Tokiko to official (tai‘i) and loyalist Saida Sahei (Ubei)
Koresada (1800–1859).41 A renowned man of letters and history connois-
seur, Koresada is listed in the 1852 edition of Record of Important People in
Heian (Heian jinbutsu shi), a Who’s Who of scholars and “men of taste” in
Kyoto.42 Koresada’s political ideas are best represented in a treatise titled
Foundations of the Country (Kokki), which he coauthored in 1837. There, Ko-
resada uses the example of China to decry the degeneration that ensues when
foreigners arrive: “The stench of the barbarians penetrated China,” he writes,
and “people who for thousands of years had shown ritual respect changed and
took on the habits of dogs and sheep [i.e., beasts]; their manners became cor-
rupted.” Foundations shows Koresada’s interest in issues related to the proper
administration of the realm (tenka) (“the realm is a precious treasure. The
people are the foundation of the country”),43 as well as his conviction that the
realm must be protected at all costs. His stance, as (presciently) expressed in
this work, is encapsulated in a slogan that would have resonated well with
Tokiko: “Tell good from evil. Revere the ruler. Expel the barbarians.”44
Keien knew Koresada because the two had cooperated in creating a monu-
ment featuring Sugawara no Michizane’s spurious “dying instructions.” The
actual author of the instructions was, in fact, Higashibōjō. In Letters from the
Kyoto Incarceration Tokiko explains:
It is a document written by the former Imperial Counselor

[Higashibōjō Sugawara] Tokinaga, the descendant of the Tenmangū
[Michizane], thirty-one generations down the line. By the good
grace of Saida Ubei Koresada . . . it was carved in stone and erected
[as a monument] at the Tenmangū. It is a document carved on a
monument with the intention of making it available to all people
so that it would serve them as guidance. . . . It proclaims, among
other things, “Hail the eternal mystery of the country of the gods.”45
With Higashibōjō out of the picture, Koresada, a loyalist with credentials to

enter the court, was the open backdoor Tokiko needed. It was indeed to Kore-
sada that she showed her long poem on 3/28.
How did Tokiko know of Keien, Higashibōjō, and Koresada? Once again,
it was through networking. In the fall of 1858, a traveling poetry master from
Shimōsa by the name of Morita Yoshio (one of her tutors) had visited Tokiko
in Suzugoya. On that occasion, he had shown her a Chinese poem penned by
80 Chapter 4
Higashibōjō. The poem, written in praise of the “national” body (kokutai), had
been requested by Koresada; Keien had then carved it onto a stone monument.46
Gunji Atsunobu speculates that the poem was part of the dying instructions
attributed to Sugawara no Michizane.47 Moreover, in a poetry collection put
together after the completion of the Kyoto journey, Tokiko explains that be-
fore the trip a certain Yokokura, an acquaintance of Keien’s, had given her a
fan inscribed with this poem—the equivalent of an introductory note:
Hisakata no If ever shall you meet

kumo no ue naru with the court nobles
miyabito ni above the heavenly clouds,
itsuka au ki no let this be a letter
kaze no tayori o carried by the wind.48
In the same collection Tokiko includes a poem Keien had sent to Yokokura. In
other words, there was a direct and ongoing conversation between the loyal-
ists in the imperial capital (and within the court) and Tokiko’s acquaintances
in and around Mito. Like her choice to lodge at the Ōgiya inn, her visit to the
Kitano Tenmangū and her approaching of Keien were the result of instructions
and advice conveyed via an extended network of loyalists and poets.
Having delivered the petition to Koresada, Tokiko returned to the Ōgiya,
where she spent a sleepless night wondering whether “this could be the begin-
ning of great things to come.”49 On 3/29 she rose early, visited Kiyomizu Tem-
ple and Fushimi Inari Shrine, then went to Osaka, where she met with an old
friend. The following day, the first day of the fourth month, Tokiko stayed with
her friend and spent hours “telling tales of elegance and refinement.” When
the friend brought out a copy of The True Record of Ōshio Heihachirō (Ōshio
Heihachirō no jitsuroku), the story of a government official’s 1837 rebellion
against the shogunate, Tokiko shed tears. As Ivan Morris points out, mid-
nineteenth-century loyalists idolized Heihachirō (“quite mistakenly”) as a ded-
icated enemy of the Tokugawa.50 To Tokiko, the parable of Heihachirō must
have held a special appeal, for it could be read as the story both of Tokugawa
Nariaki and of Tokiko herself. On the one hand, Heihachirō epitomized the
idea of dissention from within the ranks of the establishment and a commit-
ment to righting wrongs. In this respect, the parallel with Nariaki would have
been hard to miss. On the other, the content of Heihachirō’s manifesto mir-
rored in many ways Tokiko’s assessment of her own day and age: corrupt bu-
reaucrats, a world in chaos, the need to restore harmony in the land, and a call
to action directed to common people.51 Like Tokiko, Heihachirō had experi-
enced disillusionment and had turned to action; like her understanding of the
tenka kokka, his vision was one in which ordinary individuals united directly
under the emperor, no middleman needed.52 Like Tokiko, Heihachirō had in-
tervened with a written petition in hopes to avert the exacerbation of an exist-
ing crisis, the Osaka famine. And while he did not see the famine as an “act of
heaven” (tensai) but as an “act of the government” (seisai), in his manifesto he
did read natural calamities as manifestations of heaven’s disapproval.53 Tokiko,
here, may have thought about her own encounter with the comet: the disasters
of 1837 had motivated Heihachirō to voice his dissatisfaction just as the white
comet of 1858 had prompted her to look for other signs from the heavens and
leap into history.
Meanwhile, in Kyoto, the petition was making the rounds. Which rounds
exactly, however, is hard to say. In his 1900 biography of Tokiko, Gunji Atsu-
nobu claims that Koresada was impressed with Tokiko’s poetic skills; he thus
turned over the poem to Higashibōjō until it came to the attention of the em-
peror.54 A similar claim appears in Talented Women of the Restoration Period
(Ishinki no saijotachi, 1980), according to which Tokiko’s petition quickly
reached the hands of Kōmei.55 Lives of Restoration Loyalists (Ishin shishi mei-
meiden, 1935) also argues that Koresada delivered the petition to Higashibōjō
and that, through him, “it ultimately entered the imperial palace, where it was
offered to the emperor for perusal.”56 A bit more nebulous, but leaning toward
a declaration of success, is the version from Horiuchi Seiu’s One Hundred He-
roes of the Restoration (Ishin hyakketsu, 1910), according to which “the lord
[Higashibōjō] Tokinaga deeply understood [Tokiko’s] determination and un-
swerving loyalty, and that very evening he offered [the poem] for perusal.”57
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Nunomura Yasuhiro contends that, follow-
ing the Ansei Purges and the arrests of several members of the Kyoto aristocracy,
the anti-Tokugawa side had been decimated and that therefore delivering the
petition to court would have been next to impossible.58 Other sources claim
that, hailing from Mito and having stayed at the Ōgiya, a notorious haunt of
Mito loyalists, Tokiko had caught the eye of the authorities from day one. With
the volatile situation in Kyoto (as exemplified by the recent arrest of Muraoka
no Tsubone and the hunt for Koibuchi Jihei) and with government officials on
high alert, her encounter with Saida Koresada would not have gone unnoticed.59
While the exact trajectory of the petition may be veiled in mystery, its fi-
nal destination is known: the office of the Kyoto City Magistrate. Orders for
Tokiko’s arrest went out. As Tsuji Michiko reminds us, a total of eight women
were arrested and sentenced in the Ansei era for denouncing the policies of Ii
Naosuke. Of these, six were guilty by association for being the wives or daugh-
ters of male loyalists; only two were arrested because they were considered fully
responsible for their own actions: Muraoka no Tsubone and Kurosawa Tokiko.60
82 Chapter 4
While Tokiko would have had no way of knowing it at the time, such a dubious
honor proved that she had been right all along: even a nobody could step into
the center stage of history.
Even the most meticulous of scripts, in the end, does not guarantee suc-
cess. On the evening of 4/1 Tokiko was walking home from a public bathhouse
in Osaka when two guards approached and arrested her. “They pulled out a
rope from under their sleeves, tied me up, and took me away. I am fift y-four
years old, and for the first time [in my life] I am tied up [i.e., arrested] for the
sake of the realm” (tenka no tame ni).61 After a long journey from her rural vil-
lage to the imperial capital and from the margins to the center stage, and after
coming ever so close to the gates of the celestial court above the clouds, To-
kiko now prepared to walk past the very real doors of prison.
5 Caged Bird
Kimi ga tame I have long

kokoro wa chijini agonized
kudakake no for my lord, and for him
toya no sumai mo I did not mind
itowazarikeri living in a cage.
Kurosawa Tokiko, “Caged Bird” (Kago no tori)1
Tokiko chronicles her arrest and incarceration in a long, two-

part memoir titled Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration (Kyōto toraware no
fumi, 1859).2 The memoir contains extensive recollections, in the form of direct
quotations, of the conversations that occurred between herself and the magis-
trates in Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo. In the modern era, prison diaries would
become a veritable literary genre,3 although precedents had already been es-
tablished in the Edo period, for example by Yoshida Shōin (1830–1859). From
a literary and historical standpoint, Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration
makes an important contribution to the genre not simply by adding the per-
spective of a woman but also by showing how deeply gender permeated late-
Tokugawa legal proceedings.
Diana Wright has argued that justice and punishment in the Tokugawa
period were relatively gender-blind and that status or age weighed more heav-
ily in the decision-making process of the authorities.4 Tokiko’s case supports
the claim that status was part of the conversation (as we will see, in her de-
fense she highlighted her commoner status, and her sentence focused on the
fact that she had slandered high-level officials). At the same time, however, her
prison memoir also draws attention to a strong gender consciousness within
the penal system. For this reason, historians interested in the penal proceedings
of the Tokugawa period as well as gender historians would greatly benefit
from reading Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration. That such a document would
83
84 Chapter 5
have gone hitherto unnoticed and untapped is as surprising as it is unfortu-

nate.
The gender angle is not novel. So many decades have elapsed since schol-
ars first became attuned to the notion that gender is a useful category of anal-
ysis,5 and so many monographs have successfully written female actors into
history, that it is easy to take women’s presence for granted and to become jaded
against those who trumpet gender as a meaningful paradigm. Moreover, in a
historiographical landscape where everyone—from women to peasants, from
outcasts to nonhuman animals—has been assigned some degree of agency, a
female activist can hardly hope to make the headlines. Gender history has es-
tablished itself in academia, and we have moved on to other avenues of inves-
tigation; historians, after all, are expected to say something new about the old.
In snubbing the gender issue as passé or dismissing it as “done,” however,
we would fail to recognize that, in the eyes of the people who populated To-
kiko’s world, and of Tokiko herself, gender was a relevant category. Along with
status and geographical location, gender defined one person’s place in society
as well as the gamut of activities such a person was expected and allowed to
perform. Gender also determined the kind of information to which one (theo-
retically) had access—as the Mito woman Yamakawa Kikue proved with her
assertion that it was not “customary to tell women anything about what was
going on in the outside world.”6 Gender factored in as a variable in the crimi-
nal codes as well: Tokugawa period regulations pertaining to the handling of
exile prisoners, for example, included special instructions for women.7
Not only a useful category of analysis for the contemporary historian, gen-
der was also, and more importantly, a basic yardstick through which Tokiko
and her contemporaries measured the extent of what was feasible and accept-
able. Consequently, gender categories permeated Tokiko’s vocabulary as well
as that of the people around her, as many of the anecdotes included in Letters
from the Kyoto Incarceration prove. Before fleeing north, for example, Shishido
Nakatsukasa had told her that the Ansei Purges had made it difficult for him
“as a man” (danshi nite) to take to the road, a gender-tinged comment Tokiko
did not fail to catch and to which she replied, “Having heard of such grave mat-
ters, even though I am a woman [fujin nagara mo] I could not ignore them.”8
Following her arrest, gender featured prominently both in the accusations lev-
eled against her and in her defense strategy. Seeing in Tokiko a living reminder
that the social norms pertaining to the control of women were crumbling, the
shogunal officials reacted with a mixture of incredulity and condescension oc-
casionally bordering on anger. In examining the authorities’ reaction to female
political activism, this chapter argues that gender doubled the anxiety the
Tokugawa representatives felt toward the loyalist movement by raising the added
Caged Bird 85
specter of female insubordination. Used cleverly as part of a defense argu-

ment, however, gender could in fact aid the accused, who would underscore
the gravity of a crisis so deep even a woman felt impelled to act. Mundane ex-
planations, however, could only go so far, and, as this and the following chap-
ters will show, divine intervention was also needed to get a woman out of
trouble.
Gendered Logics on Both Sides of the Law

Following her arrest in Osaka, Tokiko was questioned and imprisoned. Her
clothes, hair, and sleeves were searched; her comb and hairpins confiscated.
Some versions of her story inform us that, packed with her travel gear, the guards
found the rough draft of the petition.9
On the third day of the fourth month she was brought before the “court-
yard of white sands” (shirasu) for formal questioning. As Dani Botsman ex-
plains, prisoners brought before the courtyard of white sands were already
presumed guilty. Low-level functionaries carried out the first, informal inter-
rogation, which took place immediately after one’s arrest. Its goal was to as-
certain the basics of the case and to determine whether the person under arrest
was guilty or innocent. Bringing an innocent person or even just a shaky case
before the courtyard would have made for a slow trial and, worse yet, would
have undermined the seriousness of the process by implying “that officials did
not already know whether a person was guilty or not.” “Fallibility of any kind,”
adds Botsman, “was something the warrior state was loath to admit.”10
During her stint in Osaka, Tokiko was questioned several times. Her in-
terrogators brought up the issue of gender from day one—though not imme-
diately as an incriminating factor. They too had the welfare of the realm in mind
and commended Tokiko for having had “no qualms about following the path
of loyalty.”11 Unlike her, however, they anchored the prosperity of the realm on
the stability of the shogunate. Their approach thus hinged on what they pre-
sented as a flaw not in Tokiko’s sentiment, which they found admirable, but in
her logic: “You are a woman, so you have pure intentions. . . . Yet, if you act for
the sake of the realm and of the country (tenka kokka no ontame), explain to
us why you say that the current [prime] minister, the lord Ii, is evil.”12 In the
early stages of the interrogation the officials professed appreciation for Tokiko’s
(misplaced) loyalty in order to put her at ease and obtain a quick confession:
“If you are determined indeed to follow the Way of Japan (Nihon no michi),
then do not be afraid, speak without concealing anything.” The modern reader
may catch a hint of condescension in their words. To Tokiko, however, their
demeanor registered less as paternalistic and more as sympathetic; she was
86 Chapter 5
grateful for their “gracious words” (megumi no kotoba) and described one of
them as “a brave man of wisdom and benevolence.”13
Perhaps comforted by such gracious words, on 4/11 Tokiko gave her first
version of the story: she had heard of Nariaki’s unfair punishment and of the
false charges; shocked, she had decided to inform the court “in order to spare
the emperor any misfortune.” “I see, I see . . . ,” mumbled one interrogator. And
with that, the questioning ended.14
The next day she was summoned again and was informed she would be
transferred to Kyoto. “When you get there,” one of her captors advised her, “tell
them exactly what you told us and you will be released in no time. Make sure
to tell them that you are in poor health, and you will have nothing to worry
about. In Kyoto, too, they will be sympathetic.”15
In Kyoto Tokiko found herself surrounded by other people arrested “in
conjunction with the Mito situation,” likely a reference to the fallout from the
debate over the secret decree as well as to the Ansei Purges. Locked up in
the same prison were Aoki Ukyōnosuke (1832–?), the high steward (taifu)
of the lord Takatsukasa Masamichi,16 and Irie Iori, the high steward of the
Nijō clan. Surveillance was so strict that Tokiko likened the guards to Enma,
the King of Hell.17
On 4/14 Tokiko faced her new interrogators for the first time. If the offi-
cials in Osaka had played the gender card to lure her to their side (“You are a
woman, so you have pure intentions”), in Kyoto gender became an incriminat-
ing factor: as a woman, she surely had needed the help of (male) accomplices,
and she was expected to provide their names. There was no trace, in Kyoto, of
the compassion she had been promised; paternalism gave way to heavy accu-
sations and even threats. The gracious words she had heard in Osaka were re-
placed by “shrewd words” (surudoki kotoba).18 Male fears of female activism
had coalesced.
Nowhere is the anxiety of her captors more evident than in the fact that,
in Kyoto, Tokiko was threatened with torture.19 Dani Botsman’s study of the
Tokugawa criminal system helps us understand the significance of such a threat.
Torture was used more frequently during the first stage of questioning in or-
der to establish whether the case could stand trial. The use of torture at subse-
quent stages was allowed only in the case of grave crimes and when the evidence
of guilt was undisputed.20 When the Kyoto functionaries intimidated Tokiko
with torture after she had already stood before the courtyard, they sent a clear
message: this was a serious and troubling case. Even though the details of her
mission remained fuzzy in the absence of a confession, her presence alone proved
her defiance of gender roles. In this respect, she was already guilty.
Caged Bird 87
The night of 4/14 was a sleepless one for Tokiko. She kept reliving her mis-
sion to Kyoto and her attempt to contact the emperor (“It was for the sake of
my lord, I reasoned in my heart, all night long, over and over”) while dreading
the arrival of a new day and of a new wave of interrogations.21 A long poem
she included in one of her collections several years later (1873) describes, per-
haps with retroactively added flair, that restless night. In it we find a dejected
and silenced “caged bird” locked in a prison that echoed with the tolls of the
evening bell and the shouts of the night guards. The night eventually gave way
to dawn and to new ominous sounds: the crows of roosters, the croaks of
ravens.22
When she was brought before the officials the next day, her gender was,
again, at the root of the conversation (“You, being a woman . . .”). However, a
new element had been added to the proceedings: better to obtain a confession,
various instruments of torture were lined up on full display. The threat never
came to fruition, and Tokiko herself concluded that “there was no indication
I would be tortured,” at least not that day.23 That the officials did not resort to
torture is significant only in retrospect; Tokiko was in no position to determine
whether they were bluffing, or what kind of course the events would take in
the days ahead. To her the threat was real. “Old and frail as I am, I prepare to
die tomorrow,” she wrote on the evening of 4/14. “Should I die,” she asked a
fellow prisoner, “please have just a Buddhist memorial ser vice.”24
By 4/18 the officials had patched up the basics of her case, but were still
trying to work out the gender issue. Especially puzzling to them was the fact
that, as a woman, Tokiko could have carried out such a mission without any
help. Already on the first day of questioning Tejima Keinosuke, chief investi-
gator and interrogator, had confronted her with this accusation: “As a woman,
you cannot possibly have traveled alone, someone must have escorted you.”25
They also suspected that a man had authored the petition and that Nariaki’s
wife, Tominomiya (Teihōin Yoshiko), had asked Tokiko to take it to Kyoto:
“Were you not sent by the wife of the Mito lord? Someone else must have writ-
ten this long poem, then they entrusted it to you. Tell the truth!”26 Anne Walthall
has examined the ways in which women were recruited as intermediaries be-
tween prominent (male) figures in the late Tokugawa period.27 That Tokiko’s
interrogators would see her as one such liaison may indicate awareness of such
practice. Additionally, their vision of a grand conspiracy theory involving other
female figures, namely Nariaki’s wife, betrays a high level of anxiety about fe-
male insubordination, a troubling variation on the theme of treason.
Their doubts about the authorship of the petition, moreover, illuminate yet
another side of such anxiety. In a day and age when women commonly joined
88 Chapter 5
literati circles, questioning a woman’s ability to write verses (in Japanese, no

less) made little sense, and indeed the issue of authorship per se was not what
concerned the officials: what concerned them was the alleged purpose of the
long poem. In their eyes, the poem was “possibly [meant] to overthrow the
realm” (tenka o kutsugaesan tame ka).28 Incapable of seeing in a woman “just”
one isolated case of activism, they were equally unable to see the petition as
“just” the outburst of one disgruntled individual.
Though they did not articulate this point on the first day, during the in-
terrogation of 4/15 they explicitly asked Tokiko whether the long poem con-
tained encrypted messages. They wondered whether “an official named Ii”
indicated Naosuke (to which she answered in the affirmative), whether “scat-
tering yellow flowers” stood for “bribing” (it did, confirmed Tokiko), and whether
the line “the source of my deep resolve is as deep as a mountain spring” was not
in fact code for Nariaki (“No, by that I mean a water source”). Tokiko also ex-
plained that a line in which she suggested that she was “grateful for living under
the Tokugawa of Mito” did not refer to Nariaki’s seventh son, Hitotsubashi
Keiki (Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 1837–1913), being chosen as shogun.29 During
yet another round of interrogations the issue of encryption resurfaced:
Interrogator: One of the supplements to the long poem we found in Osaka

says:
Amagashita30 The true spirit of a lowly person

terasu hikari no reflected, pure,
masukagami on the shiny surface
sayakani utsusu of the mirror
shizu ga magokoro under heaven.
Is the shiny surface of the mirror under heaven a reference to the Middle
Councilor [Nariaki]?
Tokiko: No, that indicates one of the three sacred regalia of the august em-
peror, the mirror in the Office of Palace Attendants (Naishidokoro).31
While the interrogators were mistaken in this particular instance, their

suspicions were not entirely unjustified, for Tokiko was no stranger to embed-
ding messages in her verses. A poignant example is found in a poem she com-
posed at a later time, in the early 1860s:
Azumaji ni On the road to the east

omou kokoro o the storm lures
Caged Bird 89
kimi ga moto e my thoughts

sasou arashi o back to your place,
matsukage no io the hut in the pines’ shade.32
These seemingly innocuous verses hide not one but two references to known
loyalists. The characters for “pines’ shade” (matsukage) can also be read “Shōin,”
revealing an indirect tribute to Yoshida Shōin, one of the key figures of the
loyalist movement. While there is no indication that Tokiko ever met Shōin in
person, she certainly knew of him; as a later chapter will discuss, the two were
incarcerated in Edo’s Tenmachō prison at the same time and were even sen-
tenced on the same day. The second reference is subtler: this poem is an acros-
tic. The first syllables of each line combine to spell “Aoki-sama,” a homage to
Aoki Ukyōnosuke, steward of the lord Takatsukasa Masamichi, whom Tokiko
had met while imprisoned in Kyoto. In the space of thirty-one syllables, To-
kiko thus paid homage to two iconic figures of the loyalist movement, two men
whose tribulations Tokiko had, in part, shared.
Tokiko even experimented with acrostics at the time of her incarceration
in Kyoto, precisely when she was being accused of hiding messages in her verses.
On the second day of the fift h month (after the conversation being discussed
here had taken place) she composed a series of poems whose first syllables paid
homage to ninth-century minister and loyalist Sugawara no Michizane by
spelling out his divine title of Kitano Tenman Daijizai Tenjingū (Kitano Shrine
of the Heavenly Deity Tenman Mahesvara; see appendix).33 Such exercises in
allusion were part and parcel of the poet’s repertoire and did not ipso facto
indicate an intention to commit treason. In Tokiko’s case we can read her indi-
rect references to Shōin, Aoki, and Michizane as tributes to people whose de-
votion to the imperial institution she admired. (In this respect, Tokiko’s dealings
with Michizane are especially meaningful, and we shall return to them in
chapter 6.) The Kyoto interrogators, in short, were not off the mark in suspect-
ing that Tokiko’s long poem contained allusions, for it did. Where they may
have been mistaken was in attributing to such allusions the power to bring down
the government. In voicing this conviction, they betrayed their apprehension
not only about activism but also about its intersection with gender.
The variety of accusations leveled at Tokiko suggests that in the eyes of
the authorities she had accomplished a mission that was doubly subversive.
First, from a political standpoint her actions were inappropriate at best, threat-
ening at worst: she had slandered two government officials, and her petition
was possibly an instrument of treason. Had Tokiko been a man, the case would
have rested there, as other examples attest. For instance, the posthumous sen-
tence handed out to Ōshio Heihachirō as a symbolic punishment for his 1837
90 Chapter 5
rebellion found him guilty of having “criticized the government.”34 In 1859 Yo-
shida Shōin was sentenced to death for having “broken the law.”35 But Tokiko
was a woman, and her gender too was taken into account: her actions were prob-
lematic on an entirely new level because they also ran against the grain of the
normative behavior expected of women. The interrogators never failed to bring
this point up: “Oh! You, a woman, [acting] for the sake of the realm and of the
country: that is unheard of.”36
Male discomfort with female political activism is not unique to late-
Tokugawa Japan. In seventeenth-century England, for example, Lady Eleanor
Davies (1590?–1652), considering herself the voice of the prophet Daniel, ap-
proached the Archbishop of Canterbury and advised him on international pol-
itics. She was arrested and imprisoned; the magistrates who wrote her sentence
made sure to specify that her actions “much unbeseemed her sex.”37
In nineteenth-century Japan as much as in seventeenth-century England,
men’s reactions to women’s activism aimed not only at halting their seditious
activities (as would have been the case with men) but also at underscoring, chas-
tising, and/or rectifying the breach in gender roles. For this reason gender of-
ten factored in the sentences handed out to women, either as an extenuating
or as an aggravating circumstance. In late-Tokugawa Japan such attention to
the intersection of gender and punishment transcended ideological divides; as
the examples that follow demonstrate, it colored both the proclamations of the
shogunate and those of its detractors. While both sides welcomed (within lim-
its) female collaboration, they found themselves unprepared when faced with
female opposition.
As an extenuating circumstance, gender sustained attempts to highlight
the benevolence of the offended side, and by extension its righteousness. For
example, when the Kyoto radicals pilloried Nagano Shuzen’s concubine Mu-
rayama Taka (Murayama Kazue) at the foot of Sanjō Bridge in 1862, the sign
they posted read:
The nun Murayama Kazue, age fifty-one or fifty-two, . . . concubine

of Nagano Shuzen. Since the Year of the Horse [1858] she has been
assisting Shuzen in his ruses [i.e., his enforcement of the Ansei
Purges], which were uncommonly dauntless and audacious. There
is no pardon for such crimes. However, in consideration of the fact
that she is a woman [sono mi joshi taru o motte], we are tying her
hands behind her back but forgoing the death penalty.38
In the opposite case, gender was deployed as an aggravating factor, enabling

the offended side to hand out severe punishments and to make a strong
Caged Bird 91
statement about its firm expectations on female behavior. For example, the
Tokugawa government sent loyalist nun Nomura Bōtō (1806–1867) into exile
in 1865 with a sentence that read:
For attending on scheming fellows and giving them shelter where

they would secretly meet with like-minded individuals, for con-
cealing those on the move, and for other such acts of misconduct,
not a few of which were utterly inappropriate for a woman [onna
toshite arumajiki shogyō sukunakarazu] and extremely insolent, she
must receive a heavy punishment.39
Bōtō’s sentence begs the question: what was, then, appropriate for a woman?
Gender propriety is a fuzzy concept, one that could and did mean different
things to different individuals at different times (and even at the same time).
While Tokugawa-era manuals for the education of girls spilled rivers of ink ex-
plaining the minutiae of lady-like deportment, there was no strict legal defini-
tion of what exactly constituted “appropriate” behavior for a woman. This is
not to say, however, that the authorities paid no attention to the issue. In 1789,
for example, the Tokugawa government had commissioned an anthology of ex-
emplary lives. The result was Records of Filial Piety and Righteousness (Kankoku
kōgiroku or, simply, Kōgiroku), a fift y-volume collection of over eight thousand
case studies published in 1801. The exemplary virtues extolled in the anthol-
ogy included filial piety (the most popular), loyalty, devotion, chastity, the abil-
ity to maintain harmonious relations at home and with the extended family in
general, as well as manners, purity, benevolence, and diligence in performing
agricultural work. As Sugano Noriko points out, in Records of Filial Piety and
Righteousness the most exemplary of women are those who, by way of their vir-
tues, strove to preserve the household.40 At the same time, fi lial piety was not
simply a moral imperative but also a convenient way to dress one’s question-
able actions with the coat of respectability. In her study of prostitution in
Tokugawa Japan, for example, Amy Stanley has argued that brothel proprietors
and even the Tokugawa state often deployed the notion of fi lial piety to main-
tain a façade of benevolence while promoting the sex trade purely in the name
of profit.41
In court cases as well, notions of appropriate behavior for women hinged
on one’s devotion to the household and family. Sugano Noriko examined over
nine hundred court documents from the Tokugawa period and pointed out that
when it came to women most recorded instances of crime and punishment cen-
tered on issues of adultery and illicit sex. Moreover, in the case of women, most
judicial documents tended to specify “status: married,” whereas no such
92 Chapter 5
specification appears in the case of male convicts.42 Such obsession with a

woman’s social “place” speaks volumes about the gendered prejudice in-
grained in the Tokugawa penal code, which frequently associated female in-
subordination with the collapse of the household and, by extent, of society
writ large.
Preoccupations with gender were not exclusive to the government: as the
case of Murayama Taka indicates, they also directed the rhetoric and actions
of its opponents. For this reason, the same concerns for gender and for the
household that informed the case against Kurosawa Tokiko also colored the
narrative choices with which she articulated her first line of defense. From
day one in Kyoto, Tokiko responded to the accusations by denying any prior
involvement in politics; she also addressed the concerns about gender and, for
good measure, cast aspersions on herself by mentioning her low status. “I will
tell you the whole story of how, as a base-born nobody, I came to the capital.”
She explained how she had first become incensed the previous year over mat-
ters involving her domain lord:
Even though I am a woman, I could not pretend I did not hear about
that. . . . I believed that the punishment leveled against the former
Middle Councilor [Nariaki] was uncommon, that he was framed,
and that I should immediately notify the court. Finding it hard to
trust the words of a single person, I asked two or three other
people and indeed was told that he had been falsely accused. At
that point the decision to go to Kyoto became unavoidable.43
Tokiko did not miss the chance to censure Ii: “Putting the shogun’s family in
the hands of a youngster [i.e., twelve-year old Tokugawa Iemochi] was espe-
cially unreasonable. . . . I wondered, is this not a selfish act?” Prudently, she
added conciliatory words toward the shogun: “I worried about the shogun’s fam-
ily. Up until now, I have received the blessing of peace and have lived in tran-
quility thanks to the three lords [i.e., emperor, shogun, and domain lord] and
the realm. Up until now, I have worked earnestly in the name of the debt I owe
my country [onkoku, mikuni].”44
In formulating her defense, Tokiko tried to turn the gender issue to her
advantage by using it as an aggravating factor in her indictment of Ii. She cre-
ated a narrative in which, first, she denied any previous interest in politics (“Up
until now, I . . . have lived in tranquility”) and reassured the authorities that
she had no accomplices (“despite what you say, I traveled alone”) and had never
met Nariaki or his wife. She then explained that, if she had acted inappropri-
ately, it was all because Ii had caused a crisis of such magnitude that no loyal
Caged Bird 93
subject, not even a woman, could ignore it. The traitor, in other words, was Ii
(“I wondered, is this not a selfish act?”); by contrast, her mission was benefi-
cial to her domain (“I was simply born there and acted because I wanted to
pay back for the benevolence of the domain”) and to the country in general,
shogun included (“I worried about the shogun’s family”).45 In short, she was
an obedient subject who knew her place, precisely as a woman should, but she
had been pulled into the orbit of big history by the extreme circumstances
Ii had precipitated. Appropriately, she concluded her explanation with these
words: “If you take into account the sorrows and sincere heart of this foolish
woman, you will not begrudge me in the least even though I was involved
with politics.”46
To clarify the extent of her loyalty and of her righteousness Tokiko also
appealed to Confucian principles and deployed the metaphor of the extended
family for the realm:
As The Book of Changes says, “The ruler is the mother and the fa-
ther of his people, the king of his subjects.” As The Book of Songs
says, nothing exists under heaven that is not the territory of the
ruler; there is no subject on earth who is not the retainer of a ruler.47
I am but a humble person, but I follow the path of [the five Confu-
cian virtues of] benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom, and sincer-
ity. . . . If I did something wrong, even if I committed a crime, do
not resent me.48
The passage from The Book of Songs was a favorite of late-Tokugawa loyal-
ists: both Aizawa Seishisai and Yoshida Shōin used it to state the centrality of
the emperor;49 Shōin also used it to decry foreign encroachment while showing
respect for the shogun.50 In admitting that she was a humble subject impelled
to repay her domain, Tokiko echoed the argument Yoshida Shōin had made in
Treatise on the Present Situation (Jiseiron, 1858): “Although of humble station,
I too am a man of the Imperial Land. . . . While thinking of my parental home
with regret because of Duty, it became unendurable for me to sit by, idle and
silent, neglecting the repayment of my on [debt] to the nation.”51 It is possible
that Tokiko was familiar with Shōin’s essay at the time of her incarceration,
even though he had penned it only one year earlier; as chapter 6 will show, in
the third month of 1855 she had acquired a book on the history of China that
had just been published the previous year. It is also possible that she included
this reference retroactively in 1875, when she edited her original memoir. Ei-
ther way, her deployment of well-known and frequently exploited examples re-
veals how loyalists high and low drank from the same source in the hope that
94 Chapter 5
the undisputable truth of the classics would provide an unassailable justifica-

tion for their acts. As Janine Sawada has demonstrated, in the late Tokugawa
period people from a variety of social backgrounds had learned to exploit the
polysemy of Confucian texts to legitimize all sorts of personal projects.52 In
Tokiko’s case, these quotations were general enough to offer an excuse for
various acts of misconduct: in Kyoto, she used them to explain her breach of
gender roles; later, in Edo, she repeated them almost verbatim to counteract
accusations hinged on her low status.53
At the same time, given the gravity of the accusations and the seriousness
with which the Kyoto officials treated her case, including allusions to torture,
Tokiko realized that blaming her actions on political circumstances alone did
not suffice. Precisely because gender was the cause of such heightened anxiety
on the part of the shogunal officials, and because her admittedly low status made
it especially inappropriate for her to criticize a high-level functionary, her
defense had to rely on something greater than personal animosities and “on
the ground” circumstances. She had no choice but to bring cosmic forces into
the picture, and make them the centerpiece of her story.
The Rise of the Comet

“. . . And then, from the middle of the eighth month, a comet began to appear
every night. I looked at its color and knew that there was going to be chaos in
the realm [tenka no midare ni mo ainaru beku]. I worried.”54 In the first version
of the events Tokiko provided on 4/14, the comet was part of a complex expla-
nation that included her discovery of the unfair punishment meted out to
Nariaki as well as Shishido Nakatsukasa’s visit. A few days later, however, the
comet was the only topic of discussion.
Interrogator: So, when the comet appeared you worried. Tell us about it.
Tokiko: This comet was white, which I believed was an indication of trou-
bled times. Therefore, I became anxious.55
Tokiko’s insistence in bringing up the color of the comet is striking for two rea-
sons. First, it seems exaggerated, if not contrived. Historical records show that
white comets were common. Of the 107 comets mentioned in documents from
634 CE to 1600 CE, forty-six include a note on their color.56 The vast majority
(thirty-three, corresponding to 71.7 percent) was white. In other words, there
was nothing especially extraordinary about white comets.
Second, and more to the point, Tokiko’s insistence on the color and on its
ominous meaning is a recurring feature of her dialogues with the Kyoto inter-
Caged Bird 95
rogators as reported in Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration, but not of the writ-
ings she penned at the time of the comet’s appearance in the fall of 1858. By
retroactively underscoring the importance of the color and its dire implications,
Tokiko elevated the comet’s place in the trajectory of her political activism. In
this new version of the story Tokiko presented her actions as triggered not only
by Ii’s selfishness but also, and more importantly, by a cosmic mandate. She
wanted the Kyoto interrogators to know that, though rumors coming from her
social circles had initially directed her attention toward politics, it was a cos-
mic sign that had ultimately propelled her into action. In ascribing her actions
to a portent, Tokiko brought into the conversation forces too powerful for the
shogunate to neutralize.
The comet, conspicuously absent from the long poem she had written for
the emperor, and never so much as hinted at before the Osaka interrogators,
rose as one of the pillars of Tokiko’s defense strategy in Kyoto. Why now? Be-
cause circumstances now demanded it. Tokiko had penned the poem/petition
shortly after her arrival in Kyoto, in the comfort of her lodging. Its goal was
the glorification of the imperial house and of the realm, coupled with the sham-
ing of Ii Naosuke and Manabe Akikatsu. In its conclusion, moreover, the peti-
tion hinted at Tokiko’s role as a pivotal figure who could bring about a resolution
to the ongoing crisis: the long poem, in other words, was written from a place
of strength and confidence. Then came the arrest. In Osaka Tokiko was a pris-
oner, but she never felt threatened; in fact, she made it a point to extol the gra-
cious words with which the officials spoke to her. In Kyoto the situation was
entirely different: the authorities attacked her with “shrewd words,” leveled
heavy accusations upon her, and used the threat of torture. The rise of the comet
in Tokiko’s story, therefore, occurred under extreme duress. As a loyalist, To-
kiko needed to convince the magistrates that she did not have any prior con-
nection to Nariaki and that she was not part of a wide conspiracy; she thus
deployed the portent to deflect their attention from the issue of networking.
As a woman, she was in dire need of a comprehensive justification for actions
that, in the eyes of the shogunal representatives, not only undermined the au-
thority and possibly the existence of the Tokugawa government but also sub-
verted established social norms for female behavior—a threat wrapped in a
menace, so to speak. As an oracle and the daughter of a Shugendō practitio-
ner, Tokiko conceived of the universe as a place where trained individuals could
cross bridges between realms of existence. The shogunal officials, however, did
not share her view: to them, boundaries were boundaries. It is in light of the
Kyoto officials’ heightened apprehension about conspiracy networks, gender
propriety, and status barriers that Tokiko had to reconfigure the role of the
comet in her political awakening.
96 Chapter 5
Tokiko’s experience enables us to measure the degree to which women were

able to step into the political arena in nineteenth-century Japan. Anne Walthall
has argued that the extraordinary events of the late Tokugawa allowed for a
momentary reconfiguration of gender roles and obligations, which empowered
female political activists like Matsuo Taseko to voice their opinions.57 Tokiko’s
decision to step into male turf and to petition the emperor is a testament to
the opening of such opportunities. Her story, however, also demonstrates that
important limitations remained in place and that the violation of boundaries
still carried consequences. Her clash with the authorities and her deployment
of the comet in her defense show that a woman’s transition from homebound
and uninvolved to on-the-move and active did not go unnoticed and still re-
quired a solid explanation. The portent provided Tokiko with just such a jus-
tification. That she would feel compelled to complement a narrative based on
human interactions with one colored by celestial hues precisely (and only) at
this point in her story is a good indicator of the obstacles women faced when
they acted against the grain even in the fluid climate of the late Tokugawa.
More than a justification, the comet also offered a shield with which To-
kiko tried to minimize the severity of her punishment. She did so by empha-
sizing the contrast between the magnitude of the portent and the inconsequential
nature of her actions: she was but “a speck of dust in the wind,” and her mis-
sion was nothing more than “one drop in the ocean, one hair out of nine cows,”
that is to say, utterly negligible.58 The comet thus achieved two seemingly ir-
reconcilable goals: it elevated Tokiko’s activism as cosmically mandated and
simultaneously reduced it to a drop in the bucket. In this respect, it functioned
as the ideal rhetorical device by means of which Tokiko celebrated her choice
while downplaying its degree of transgression.
To be clear, the comet was not a pure political gambit. The relevance of
celestial bodies and cosmic anomalies in Tokiko’s belief system as well as her
genuine amazement before the comet are not a matter of dispute: in Diary of
Ansei 5, for example, Tokiko often writes of her worshipping the comet, bow-
ing to it, and looking at it in awe.59 At the same time, the comet’s absence from
the petition, its sudden appearance in Tokiko’s exchanges with her interroga-
tors, its now-eloquent whiteness, and its newfangled centrality in Tokiko’s nar-
rative do call for a clarification. The notion of a retroactive defense against
heavy accusations based on gendered fears provides just such an explanation.
Tokiko’s 1858 diaries offer undisputable evidence that the comet was
assigned a pivotal role in Tokiko’s political awakening only ex post facto.
While they do record the arrival of the star and mention the correlation be-
tween colors and outcomes, there are no traces of what we may call an aha
moment. A closer look at these diaries in fact reveals not one single turning
Caged Bird 97
point but, as explained in chapter 3, a gradual series of inspirations and en-

dorsements. When it appeared, the portent did not prompt Tokiko to make any
life-changing plans; the entry for the day after the first sighting does not even
mention the comet, though it remained visible for several weeks thereafter. In
the course of those weeks Tokiko bowed toward it numerous times, but always
as part of her daily routine, as one activity among many. In 1858, the comet
was a noteworthy aside, but not much else. In 1859, however, the circumstances
of the Kyoto incarceration had reconfigured Tokiko’s world, causing the comet
to shine at the center of her story long after it had stopped shining in the sky
over Suzugoya.
The rise of the comet also illuminates the seamless way in which Tokiko
transitioned between her identity as a prognosticator and her political persona—
never privileging one over the other, always letting the divine mingle with the
mundane. In 1859, the experienced oracle who knew how to read celestial phe-
nomena came to the rescue of the freshly minted political activist facing a pre-
dicament. The former rewrote the script of the latter, putting the cosmos front
and center and offering a possible way out of trouble. It is to Tokiko’s cosmos—
and to the chaos it was meant to rectify—that we now turn. As the following
chapters will show, Tokiko appealed to the heavens not only to find strength
at times of personal crisis, but also to rectify the world writ large and to claim
a place of honor in the loyalist movement.
6 The Chaos and Cosmos
of Kurosawa Tokiko
Starting with the Ansei Treaties and the purges, Tokiko’s world had
plunged into chaos. Her arrest, the relentless accusations, and the threats of
torture only exacerbated her impression that madness pervaded society. To-
kiko speaks of her day and age as one of turmoil (literally, “tremors”) and of
subverted order: “they turned everything upside down,”1 she writes in refer-
ence to the events that triggered her ordeal. However, in the midst of such tur-
moil Tokiko still saw the universe as beautiful, harmonious, and worthy of
admiration. More than that, she saw it as the place out of which the rectifica-
tion of the world’s chaos would begin.
The comet had captured her attention as an anomaly, but regular celestial
occurrences mesmerized her just as much for their inherent beauty. The moon
in par ticular awed her. In a world where no light pierced through the dark-
ness of the night and where time was measured in lunar cycles, paying close
attention to the moon was inevitable. Moon phases marked the rhythms of
countless activities, from agriculture to the meetings of religious confraterni-
ties. For example, the members of a confraternity called Stupa of the Twenty-
third Night (Nijūsan‘yotō) convened on the twenty-third day of the month
and waited for the moon to rise while performing religious ser vices, eating,
and drinking; likewise, the Stupa of the Nineteenth Night (Jūkyūyotō), a
women’s religious group with a chapter in Suzugoya and nearby Magone, met
on the night of the nineteenth and revered the moon.2 In the opening page of
her Diary of Ansei 5, Tokiko sketched a crescent (figure 6.1) and wrote, “At
sunset I bowed to the crescent. It looked like this.” On 7/16 she observed a lu-
nar eclipse: “The sky was brighter than usual. I went out and worshipped.”
One month later, she “worshipped the moon amidst the clouds.”3
Not only was the universe splendid, it was also an orderly entity regulated
by the harmonic interplay of two opposite and complementary forces. Such
forces came together as hexagrams in which six solid and broken lines com-
bined in sixty-four possible configurations that explained everything under the
98
The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko 99
Figure 6.1. Sketch of a crescent in Tokiko’s Diary of Ansei 5. Photo by Gotō Norio.
Courtesy of Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan.
sun. The universe was also a kaleidoscope of signs that manifested themselves
to Tokiko in a variety of tones and hues. Comets came in five colors and so did
dragons, as suggested in one of the basic divination manuals of the yamabushi,
The Bamboo Basket Tradition (Hokiden):
If the fi rst day of the fi rst month corresponds to the seventh or

eighth sign [of the Chinese calendar] you must know whether it is
a White Dragon year. [In that case,] in the third and fourth months
there will be a drought. In the fifth, eighth, and ninth months, there
will be water and wind [events]. This is bad for green [i.e., unripe]
rice crops but auspicious for white, black, and yellow ones. In the
third and fourth months people will die, exercise caution.
If the first day of the first month corresponds to the ninth or tenth
sign [of the Chinese calendar] you must know whether it is a Black
Dragon year. [In that case,] in the third and fourth months it will
rain; in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth months there will be
rain and wind [events]. This is very good for black rice crops. It is
equally auspicious for paddy fields high and low [i.e., fertile and
with poor soil]. The people will be at peace.4
With its harmony, beauty, and consistent sets of correspondences, Tokiko’s uni-
verse was, as she called it, an “orderly cosmos” (shōten, “regular” or “straight-
forward” heavens)—the exact opposite of the chaos pervading her world.5
100 Chapter 6
Tokiko’s cosmos was not only a place of beauty and order but also one of
safety. To use an analogy with which, as a consummate traveler, she would have
been familiar, her cosmos was akin to a major highway, one along which way-
farers could proceed with confidence guided by mile markers and comforted
by the thought that there would be plenty of facilities catering to their needs.
It was not a place where one would become disoriented or lost. By contrast,
her world resembled some of the treacherous, forlorn, meandering roads she
had traveled on the way to Kyoto and had tellingly compared, in one case, to
hell.6 An illustration included in a 1938 article on Tokiko from the women’s
magazine The Housewife’s Companion (Shufu no tomo) encapsulates just such
an analogy (figure 6.2). Trekking alone in a dark forest, traveler’s hat and cane
in hand, hair slightly disheveled, Tokiko advances through thick grasses cau-
tiously looking behind. The image was part of a series on patriotic heroines
aimed at inspiring Japanese women at a time of great domestic and interna-
tional crisis—the original intention, thus, was not to portray Tokiko as con-
fused and indecisive but, rather, to hail her as a model of patriotic zeal and
Figure 6.2. Tokiko’s dark and chaotic world as captured in the pages of The Housewife’s
Companion (Shufu no tomo) in 1938. Yoshikawa Eiji, “Aikoku josei emonogatari,” Shufu
no tomo 22, no. 2 (February 1938): 52–53. Courtesy of Shufu no tomo.
dedication to the household (see chapter 9). And yet, inadvertently, the illus-
trator ended up capturing the essence of the world as Tokiko saw it in the late
1850s: a dark and chaotic place laden with obstacles and lurking with dangers,
a world where she had to wade through thick grasses, second-guess her where-
abouts, and look constantly behind her back.
One Woman Saves the World

Tokiko’s writings from the 1850s and 1860s tend to give prominence to the
chaos-cosmos dichotomy; only rarely do they describe the spaces in be-
tween, possibly because her world, at that time, was one of polarizing op-
posites. However, as the descendant of a Shugendō family, Tokiko would
have known that between chaos and cosmos there existed transitional areas
where one world gradually gave way to the other.7 Great marvels, but also
great dangers, lurked therein; populated by spirits and monsters, these were
sites into which only the adept should venture, and with the utmost caution
at that.
One example of such awareness is found in Brief Chronicles of the Ming
and Qing (Shinmei ryakki, 1855), one of the most unusual sources preserved
in the Kurosawa family collection. Brief Chronicles is unusual because it does
not fit in with any of the two literary platforms in which Tokiko specialized—
poetry and diary writing; it is, as the title suggests, a compendium of anecdotes
from Chinese history that Tokiko collated from existing works.8 Tucked amidst
tales of famines and wars, of sage rulers and rebellious subjects, is the story of
a woman, Lady Li Boyu—well versed in the letters and understanding of
righteousness—who entered Nine Hermit Mountain, a site “full of good omens”
in which one could hope to “acquire the strength of the gods.” After an appro-
priate purification routine,
she climbed into the inner recesses of the mountain, where she en-
countered a great many monsters. Despite being a woman and
being on her own, she was braver than a man and so she pressed
on, all the way in. Suddenly the sky became clouded and a demon-
like stranger with gray hair appeared. He said: “I have been waiting
for you. Come here.” He took her hand and led her inside a cave.
The stranger, the story continues, bestowed Lady Li with “mysterious powers”
so potent that, he assured her, they would never wear off, “not even when you
are touched by the fresh blood of battle or by all manners of base things.” With
such powers, he added, Lady Li was to go back and “save the world” (yo no
102 Chapter 6
tasuke to naru beshi). Only at the end did the stranger reveal his identity: he
was none other than legendary Ming loyalist Coxinga (Zheng Chenggong,
1624–1662), by then more than two hundred years old.9
Now a trained sorceress, Lady Li acquired the power to “climb upon the
clouds, start fires, and have mist descend [upon the world] at her will.” Later
in the story we find her uttering spells, making magical gestures with her fin-
gers, and producing amulets to heal the sick. Eventually Lady Li aids Zhu Yu-
anye (Zhu Hua), leader of the Taiping Rebellion, in his attempt to overthrow
the Qing and restore the Ming. By deploying her magic powers, she wins a stra-
tegic naval battle against the British and helps Yuanye capture Nanjing, where
he rises to power and changes the name of the reign to Tiande.10
Unlike Coxinga, Lady Li was not an actual historical character but a fic-
tional one made up by Japanese novelists. She appears in such works as Mili-
tary Tales of the Qing versus Ming (Shin Min gundan, 1854) and Chronicles of
the Battles with the Tartars (Dattan shōhai ki, n.d.), all of which circulated in
Japan in the 1850s.11 These are precisely the works Tokiko mentions at the end
of Brief Chronicles, where she explains the genesis of her work: she had bor-
rowed Military Tales and Chronicles of the Battles from an acquaintance and
had copied the anecdotes she did not want to forget.12
Tokiko’s interest in the legendary Lady Li illuminates key aspects of her
cosmology and her view of the place of the individual in the historical process.
First, it shows how Tokiko envisioned a synergy between the human and the
spiritual. The world of the spirits and the world of humans converged on Nine
Hermit Mountain, where Coxinga transformed Lady Li into an instrument of
“heaven’s will” (tenmei). It should come as no surprise that some of the pow-
ers Lady Li acquires by training call to mind the ones described in Shugendō
manuals, in which we find instructions on how to overcome physical pain, fly,
or become invisible.13
Second, and more important, the story of Lady Li demonstrates how To-
kiko had confidence in the ability of specially trained individuals (women, even!)
to change the course of history. The world Lady Li was to save was one in which
foreign invaders, the Manchu Qing, had overthrown the legitimate rulers, the
Ming. Not yet a full-fledged activist and restorationist—the Ansei crisis was
three years into the future—in 1855 Tokiko would have at least appreciated the
possible analogies with the state of her country post-Perry. Like Shugendō
manuals, the story of Lady Li taught Tokiko that the universe was a galaxy of
potent forces that may look menacing to the untrained eye, but to those suffi-
ciently acquainted with “the secrets of nature” (as Coxinga calls them) these
forces would in fact bring strength and victory against foreign invaders and
illegitimate rulers.
The Ghost of Michizane

Strength was precisely what Tokiko needed at the time of her incarceration,
when her act of loyalty to the realm was being interpreted as treason and her
life was threatened. On a larger scale, society was collapsing, court and shogu-
nate were at odds, Tokugawa Nariaki sat in home confinement, and little was
being done to end the foreign threat. It was not only to counter the accusations
leveled against her but also to rectify such widespread chaos that Tokiko sum-
moned the forces of the cosmos.
Calling on cosmic forces (like the comet) to justify her actions may have
made perfect sense to Tokiko, but the Kyoto officials were not convinced. Af-
ter several days of questioning by them, she admitted, “No matter how much
I tell them, their doubts would not dissipate.”14 She was going to be convicted.
In the Tokugawa legal system conviction required a confession,15 so toward the
end of the fourth month Tokiko was asked to produce a written one. Her hands
untied, she was placed before a desk and asked, yet again, to tell her story. The
resulting document read, in part:
Respectfully I hereby state that, regarding the punishment recently

[infl icted upon] the Middle Councilor [Nariaki], he was framed
without having committed any actual crime. I [resolved to] report
it to the court, so that an imperial decree would liberate [him] and
he would once again begin to guard the realm so that not another
foreigner would enter our country. I knew that it [i.e., Nariaki’s lib-
eration] was necessary to pacify the realm and it would also please
the emperor. So I, a woman, respectfully put together a clumsy
poem and left [my home]. Have mercy on the pure heart of this fool-
ish woman, who acted for her lord [kimi no ontame], for the realm,
and in order to give back to her domain for its benevolence. I will
reckon on your immense compassion.16
In this “confession” Tokiko addresses some of the concerns of the

officials—for example by mentioning her gender (hence implying she had acted
inappropriately) and by reassuring them that the petition was nothing but a
“clumsy poem” and not an instrument of treason. However, she fell short of
giving the officials what they wanted: she reiterated Nariaki’s innocence and,
more importantly, failed to acknowledge the existence of accomplices.
Also worthy of notice is the fact that in the final part of the confession To-
kiko drops the official title of Middle Councilor and refers to her lord as kimi.
As Luke Roberts has argued, the use of kimi to address one’s domain lord
104 Chapter 6
pertained to the language of inner circles. Its opposite, the façade language of
officialdom, would have used such terms as daimyō, retainer (shin), or territo-
rial master (ryōshu), all of which also meant “domain lord” but implied said
lord’s subordinate position as a subject of the Tokugawa government.17 Tokiko
addresses Nariaki as kimi in all of her poems, but that is to be expected: none
of the alternatives met the requirements of poetic language. For her to do so in
her formal confession (as well as elsewhere in her dialogues with the interro-
gators), however, was a different story;18 it indicated—subtly but unmistakably—
that she rejected the concept of Tokugawa authority, positioned herself as a
subject of the Mito lord, and affirmed her determination to be a member of his
inner circle. This, along with her refusal to provide the names of putative ac-
complices, meant that the interrogations would continue.
After almost one month in captivity Tokiko was ill, dejected, and frustrated.
The officials still did not believe her, “although I spoke frankly and with a sin-
cere heart.” The comet had not made the impression she had expected. The
fourth month ended and the fi ft h began with Tokiko still “living in dark
confinement.”19 The time had come to summon cosmic forces of a more potent
nature.
“At dawn, on the second day of the fifth month, a divine message came from
the Tenmangū.” The emphases appear in the original manuscript to underscore
the magnitude of the event that was unfolding: the ghost of Sugawara no Mich-
izane had just materialized.
In a dream, the pillar god of [Kitano] Tenmangū helped me stand

up and handed me a short text. Grateful, I received it in my hands.
Wondering whether it was a dream or reality I looked up, and [re-
alized] it was exactly a revelation that came to me in a vision [ta-
dashiki reimu no otsuge nari].20
Sugawara no Michizane, ninth-century courtier and minister, had risen to

high office engendering great resentment. Falsely accused of plotting to usurp the
throne in 901, he was exiled to Kyushu, where he died two years later. Not long
after his death, however, his vengeful spirit returned to the capital as the fearsome
God of Thunder to strike his former enemies with terror. To appease Michizane’s
angry ghost, the court granted him a series of posthumous honors and ranks; in
947 his spirit was given a home at Kitano Shrine as a “heavenly god,” or tenjin.21
He was (and still is) also glorified as the God of Poetry and Scholarship.
As a poet, Tokiko would have reserved a special place for the God of Poetry
and Scholarship in her pantheon. As a loyalist, she would have felt especially
close to Michizane as a paragon of devotion. It was within the precincts of
Kitano Shrine that she had begun her attempt to enter the imperial court—a
starting point whose symbolism could not have escaped her. Moreover, while
imprisoned in Kyoto, she had composed a series of poems whose first syllables
spelled out “Kitano Tenman Daijizai Tenjingū” (Kitano Shrine of the Heavenly
Deity Tenman Mahesvara).22 For the most part these poems celebrate her de-
votion to the loyalist cause; some tell the story of her journey to Kyoto and of
her arrival at Kitano Shrine; others glorify the land of the gods as well as the
imperial reign and incite the “people of Yamato” to fight for their country. One
pays direct homage to the undying legend of Michizane (see appendix).
The summoning of Michizane’s ghost at this par ticular stage of her incar-
ceration, however, was more than a tribute to a model of loyalty and poetic skills:
it was Tokiko’s renewed attempt to take charge of the situation. His appear-
ance helped her in at least four ways. First, it confirmed her innocence and righ-
teousness. Since the medieval period Michizane had come to be seen as a
protector of the falsely accused.23 His intervention, thus, conferred just such a
label on Tokiko.
Second, by visiting her in her cell, Michizane endorsed Tokiko as a tried
and true participant in the loyalist movement. With fourteenth-century
loyalist Kusunoki Masashige (1294–1336), Michizane represents one of the
ultimate paradigms of steadfast devotion to the emperor. Both were in fact
default models for late-Tokugawa loyalists—the Kurume priest Maki Izumi
(1813–1864), for example, copied thirteen volumes of Michizane’s writings
and became known among the Kyoto restorationists as “the Lord Kusunoki of
our times.”24 By summoning Michizane across the divide of time and space,
Tokiko—whom the Mito scholars, spiteful of the gullible, spirit-fearing masses,
would have derided as a peasant and magico-religious specialist—claimed a
legitimate place within the loyalist movement of the late Tokugawa.
Third, having legitimately joined the loyalist movement, Tokiko, who be-
fore the Kyoto interrogators had cast herself as a base-born nobody, a foolish
woman, and a speck of dust in the wind, secured a place of honor in the move-
ment by suggesting she may be a modern-day version of Michizane himself.
The parallels could not be missed. Both came from a line of educators. (Like
Tokiko, Michizane had expressed frustration at dealing with misbehaving stu-
dents who spilled ink and carved on their desks.)25 Both communicated with
the court—Michizane on a more regular basis, to be fair—by way of poetry.
Both regarded the imperial house with feelings of selflessness and admira-
tion; both had professed devotion to the emperor; both had faced false accusa-
tions. Tokiko may even have known that Michizane’s fall from grace at court
had begun with an act of prognostication portending a military insurrection
and the fall of the ruler by the hand of a retainer. Other versions of the story
106 Chapter 6
even speak of a celestial anomaly—a solar eclipse that, according to Mich-

izane’s enemies, announced that great political turmoil would ensue because of
his political ambitions.26 The poems Michizane had composed at the time of
his exile often reflected Tokiko’s circumstances so perfectly that, were it not for
the differences in format and language, they may as well have been penned by
her. In dealing with her interrogators, for example, Tokiko may have recalled
these lines by Michizane:
How could I escape from this disaster?

I hoped eventually to clear my name of slander.
Never yet had evil triumphed over good,
Although truth was sometimes confused with falsehood.27
In short, by calling on his ghost, Tokiko drew strength not only by underscor-
ing her legitimate place within the loyalist movement but also by stepping in-
side its inner circles.
Fourth, the association with Michizane provided not only a source of
strength for the present but also one of hope for the future. His example taught
that sufferings and humiliations were only temporary and that, at the end of
the road, great honors awaited. Like Michizane, Tokiko (and, by extension, the
entire loyalist movement) could expect resurrection from infamy and ultimate
triumph. The summoning of the ghost brought with it a forecast for victory
precisely at a time when everything seemed to be lost. By the same token, Mich-
izane’s intervention would have served as a powerful cautionary tale for To-
kiko’s enemies. His ghost was no stranger to making personal appearances, but
virtually each time he materialized he did so as the terrorizing God of Thun-
der. For him to come to Tokiko as a benign entity meant that he sided with
her; it also meant that Tokiko’s enemies were his enemies, and for this reason
alone they should be stricken with terror.
This last point has less to do with an actual threat Tokiko made against
the officials—to whom she said nothing of the encounter with the ghost—and
more with her quest for strength and answers in the world of spirits, ghosts, or
heavenly signs. Michizane’s experience offered a historical model of recovery
from ignominy and of revenge; his endorsement of Tokiko’s cause presaged the
defeat of the emperor’s enemies. The summoning of Michizane’s ghost was To-
kiko’s ultimate effort to gain the strength she needed in her tug-of-war with
the shogunal officials. Where the comet had failed to give her the upper hand,
the God of Thunder would surely succeed.
Inspired by Michizane, Tokiko wrote “a memo just like the one from the
prophetic dream” (reimu no gotoki okakimono), and, when summoned the next
morning, she presented it to the authorities. What did the memo say? Unfor-
tunately her diary is silent on this point. All we know is that the officials were
pleased. At long last, Tokiko heard not sharp words but “words of compassion”
(nasake no kotoba): “Do not worry about [being sentenced to] death. Do not.”
And with this, she was sent back to her cell, but not before she announced
that she no longer feared for herself: “Whatever happens next, I will not
mind.”28
The cosmos had descended to offset the madness of the chaos; in the form
of the ghost of Michizane, it had spoken to her face to face, giving her the
strength and confidence she needed to confront her ordeal and make her way
through it. As Coxinga had done for Lady Li, so a ghost from the distant past
had materialized to rescue a brave woman destined to change the course of his-
tory. Or had it?
To Edo
Tokiko’s victory was short-lived. Two weeks after her rendezvous with Mich-
izane, the Hyōjōsho (High Court, the joint office of the Temple and Shrine
Magistrate, the Finance Magistrate, and the City Magistrate) in Edo took up
her case—signaling that it was a problematic one.29 An official record dated
1859/5/15 reveals how much the authorities already knew:
A while back Toki, the wife of the farmer Kurosawa Shinsuke from
Suzugoya village, Higashi Ibaraki district, Hitachi Province, arrived
in Kyoto. This [occurred] on the twenty-fifth day of the third month.
By way of the former Imperial Counselor Higashibōjō Tokinaga she
set out to exculpate her former domain lord, Tokugawa Nariaki. She
was arrested in Osaka on the first day of the fourth month. On this
day [5/15] the shogunate, through the office of the Kyoto City Mag-
istrate, has Toki sent to Edo in a cage.30
Tokiko was placed in a portable cage and began a thirteen-day journey along
the Tōkaidō (map 6.1). A placard identified her not as a loyalist but as “Kuro-
sawa Rikkyō or Toki . . . instructor of haikai, poetry, writing.”31
As the placard announced, the Tokiko we find traveling to Edo in the cage
is less a political activist and more a poet; the journey became an occasion for
her to wax poetic by composing verses inspired by the various stages of the high-
way. They are included in her Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration as well as in
a separate collection aptly titled Poems from the Fifty-Three Stages of the Tōkaidō
(Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi no uta).
108 Chapter 6
Map 6.1. Tokiko’s return trip as a prisoner. Map by Will Fontanez.
It is surprising that a political prisoner traveling in a cage would have ac-

cess to writing implements. Gauging the extent to which Tokiko was in fact
able to write while in the cage is complicated by the lack of original documents
from 1859. The cover page of Poems from the Fifty-Three Stages of the Tōkaidō
preserved at the Rekishikan reads, “Composed by Kurosawa Tokiko inside a
cage on the Year of the Sheep Ansei 6 [1859],” but the last page is dated 1895,
five years after Tokiko’s death. This is, therefore, a later copy by someone else’s
hand. In Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration the verses are by Tokiko’s own
hand, but this document is the 1875 copy of the original. This makes it impos-
sible to determine how complete and clean the original version of her Tōkaidō
poems might have been.
Also remarkable is the fact that a caged prisoner would engage in an ac-
tivity reserved to itinerant poets and cultured travelers. This is easier to explain,
for Tokiko never compartmentalized her identities: as an oracle, she had sup-
ported her activist alter ego by interpreting the words of Michizane in the Kyoto
cell; now, as a poet, she provided her prisoner persona with a welcome distrac-
tion during her ordeal. There are also indications that, along the Tōkaidō,
Tokiko used poetry to bond with her captors. In Letters from the Kyoto Incarcera-
tion she describes several interactions during which verses were exchanged
and she and her captors discussed “the Way of Poetry.”32
Precisely because they were shared with the shogunal officials, the
Tōkaidō verses Tokiko composed from her cage deal with safe topics. Some
lament the hardships of travel (physical discomforts, the wayfarer’s longing
for home), others capture its joys (enjoying a gentle breeze during a rest stop)
or take the obligatory snapshots of famous sites and souvenirs—rice cakes in
Nissaka, grilled clams in Kuwana, or a famous monument in Ōiso. There are
occasional gleams of loyalist pride, but even these are presented with restraint
and steer clear of the vitriol of which Tokiko was capable. In Kakegawa, for
instance, she wrote:
Kimigayo no I made a vow for the sake of

tame to chikai o my lord’s reign
Kakegawa no to purify myself
kiyoki nagare ni in the pure stream
misogi o yasen at Kakegawa.33
The Kurami River, which ran through the Tōkaidō post town of Kakegawa, may
have offered Tokiko the excuse to allude to another act of purification by
ablution—the one in the waters of the Semi River in Kyoto of which she had
written in her long poem/petition. These verses were, perhaps, a way to remi-
nisce indirectly and safely.
When she indulged in loyalist thoughts, Tokiko compensated by produc-
ing alternative verses devoid of any political nuance. In Kakegawa, for instance,
she composed a second poem on the local entertainers. At Kanaya, site of the
dreaded Ōi River crossing, Tokiko wrote three poems: one reiterates her devo-
tion to Tokugawa Nariaki (“At Kanaya / even inside the cage / I pray day and
night / for the oath I made / to my lord”34), while the other two describe the
harrowing experience of crossing the river’s wave-breaking waters. Tokiko may
have purposely tried to soften the impact of her tribute to Nariaki by present-
ing it not as a sudden outburst of Mito pride but, prudently, as a sort of final
pledge of allegiance in the face of great danger and, possibly, death.
Tokiko arrived in Shinagawa on 5/27, not knowing that only one day ear-
lier British Consul General Sir Rutherford Alcock had landed there to estab-
lish his legation. On 5/28, the day the Tokugawa government declared the
opening of free trade with Russia, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and
the United States at the ports of Kanagawa, Nagasaki, and Hakodate, Tokiko
appeared before City Magistrate and High Court member Ishigaya Inaba no
Kami Atsukiyo at the North Office of the City Magistrate. While big history
110 Chapter 6
was moving forward, the extra who had tried to change its course was being
kept on the sidelines.
For the fi rst two months Tokiko remained confi ned “amidst swarms of
mosquitoes” in a solitary cell in Asakusa. On 6/3 she appeared before the Edo
High Court. While her interrogations in Osaka and Kyoto had been relatively
small-scale affairs, the one in Edo became fodder for gossip: Kanda bookseller
Fujiokaya Yoshizō, the great nineteenth-century chronicler of Edo life and pol-
itics, took due notice. It is not because of Tokiko, however, that Edo was abuzz
with news of the trial: that day, appearing before the High Court, was the Who’s
Who of the loyalist movement, including Muraoka no Tsubone and Mito re-
tainer Ajima Tatewaki.35 Some of the government officials in charge of the case
were also celebrities in their own right:36 Finance Magistrate Ikeda Harima no
Kami Yorikata (1801–1876), for example, was the same man who, one year ear-
lier, had sentenced Tokugawa Nariaki to house arrest.
The Edo functionaries had received a copious fi le on Tokiko and al-
ready knew the basics of the case. Their line of questioning was similar to
that of their Kyoto colleagues and for this reason does not need revisiting.
On 6/3 the council handed out the following sentences, as reported in Fujio-
kaya’s diary:
Retainer of the lord of Mito, Ajima Tatewaki.

Following the investigation, he is to be returned to the custody of
a retainer of Kuki Nagato no Kami [Takayoshi].
Muraoka [no Tsubone], senior lady-in-waiting of the lord Konoe.

Same verdict, to be returned to the custody of a retainer of
Matsudaira [Toda] Tanba no Kami [Mitsuhisa].
Hitachi, Ibaraki district, Suzugoya village.

Kurosawa Rikkyō, or Toki, age fift y-four.
Instructor of letters and writing.
Following the investigation, she is to be returned to the custody of
the Asakusa jail.37
Back at Asakusa jail and its swarms of mosquitoes, between 6/22 and 7/10
Tokiko was struck by such a severe illness (taibyō) that all proceedings had to
be halted. What could have been an especially miserable interval in her already
harrowing ordeal, however, became a platform for Tokiko to reassert her piv-
otal role in the rectification of the world’s chaos. In this respect, Tokiko’s use
of illness is also an ideal lens to examine the way in which her experience as a
healer and as a spiritualist related to the new religions of the late-Tokugawa

and early-Meiji eras.
Illness and Malaise: Tokiko and the New Religions

The term “new religions” indicates belief systems that developed outside the
mainstream and differed from the established religions in a number of ways:
for example, new religions did not draw a neat line of demarcation between
leaders and devotees; paid scant attention to differences of class and gender;
and used healing rather than textual erudition to attract followers. Founded
by persons claiming divinity or divine revelation and offering a way out of chaos,
new religions emerged at various critical times between the nineteenth cen-
tury and the postwar period; Helen Hardacre has identified the first sixty years
of the nineteenth century, the 1920s, and the postwar era as especially relevant
moments in this respect.38
On the surface, there appear to be remarkable similarities between Tokiko’s
background and the life trajectories of some of the best-known founders of new
religions. For one, many founders boasted Shugendō credentials, like Tokiko
did.39 Not a few among them were women. One can also notice resemblances
between Tokiko’s cosmology and the views of the universe as articulated by
some of these founders, many of whom laced their parables with visions and
treated celestial anomalies as messages from the heavens. Nakayama Miki
(1798–1887) of Tenrikyō, for example, contended that thunder, earthquakes,
great winds, and floods were manifestations of the anger of the god Tsukihi.40
Like Tokiko, the founders of new religions reacted to what they saw as a severe
crisis in contemporary society; for some of them (Deguchi Nao of Ōmotokyō,
for example) discomfort with current worldly affairs included anti-foreign
sentiments.41 In a few cases, their criticism of the establishment led to impris-
onment. Lastly, as with Tokiko, their low status and gender were remarked
upon: the priest at Oyamato Shrine, for example, manifested his contempt for
Nakayama Miki by calling her an old woman and a peasant.42
For as many dots as we can connect, however, there are many more we can-
not. Despite Tokiko’s interest in divination, her Shugendō background, and her
appeals to cosmic lore, her engagements with the divine in the 1850s and 1860s
hardly resembled those of Nakayama Miki or of Deguchi Nao. The differences
begin with their respective approaches and methodologies. Although spirit pos-
session was not alien to Shugendō,43 Tokiko never mentions falling into ecstatic
trances or being possessed by deities, something the prophets of new religions
routinely experienced; let us not forget that the ghost of Sugawara no Mich-
izane spoke to her, not through her and, for that matter, he visited her in her
112 Chapter 6
dreams only once. Unlike most founders of new religions, Tokiko never pro-
fessed personal divinity. She never performed miracles, and there are no rec-
ords of her stunning those around her with inexplicable feats in the way of
Deguchi Nao, who penned hundreds of thousands of divinely inspired pages
despite being virtually illiterate, or of Kurozumi Munetada (1780–1850), who
allegedly healed the lepers.44
The scope, modes, and purpose of Tokiko’s engagement with the cosmic
and the divine in the 1850s and 1860s also provide a point of contrast with
the new religions. Unlike the late-Tokugawa prophets, Tokiko did not intend
to found a new movement. Her articulation of the relation between the heav-
ens and the world of humans is not systematic but hinged upon ad hoc inter-
ventions and interactions recorded not in sermons or sacred texts but in
personal memoirs—sometimes explicitly, other times between the lines. At
least in the period covered by her diaries, Tokiko shows no demonstrable in-
terest in creating a long-term following and in rising as its charismatic leader.
This attitude, in turn, affected the way in which she deciphered the signs
from the heavens: it is clear from her writings that Tokiko often treated
omens and visions as a mathematician treats a problem—analytically, not
emotionally.
I shall return to the issue of leadership in chapter 8, for, three years before
her death, Tokiko asked for, and obtained, permission to become the Suzugoya
representative of Ontakekyō, one of thirteen sectarian Shinto sects officially
recognized by the Meiji government. Included in the same group were such new
religions as Nakayama Miki’s Tenrikyō, Deguchi Nao’s Ōmotokyō, as well as
Konkōkyō and Kurozumikyō. Tokiko’s Meiji-era association with Ontakekyō
does not change the fact that, at the time of the Ansei Purges and of the jour-
ney to Kyoto, Tokiko’s cosmology retained important differences with the mo-
dus operandi of the new religions. We cannot, in other words, read her actions
in the 1850s retroactively through the lens of decisions she would make thirty
years later. If anything, her 1887 involvement with Ontakekyō reminds the his-
torian that one person’s views are never frozen in time, as much as one may
want them to be for the sake of narrative coherence.
The issues Tokiko wished to address when she summoned the cosmos in
the 1850s and 1860s, moreover, were different in size and scope from the ones
with which the new religions concerned themselves. New religions oscillate be-
tween the narrow focus and the wide angle. On the one hand, they promise
worldly benefits such as wealth, health, or domestic bliss for their followers in
this life—as do mainstream religions.45 On the other, new religions deploy a
long-term view of utopian, universal goals: Nakayama Miki, for instance, wished
to save “all humankind,” while Deguchi Nao was inspired by the desire to
eliminate politics.46 Even the otherwise grounded Kurozumikyō ends its Great
Purification Prayer with a somewhat grandiose aspiration: “Beginning from
today / Each and every sin will be gone.”47 By contrast, Tokiko’s message es-
chewed both the narrow personal focus and the long-range millenarian quali-
ties of the new religions. Her view was mid-range: she neither concentrated on
the single individual nor on grand salvation plans for all mankind, but turned
her attention to one self-contained issue affecting her day and age, the injustice
of the treaties and of the purges. Whereas the problems of society pained Na-
kayama and Deguchi as much as they did Tokiko, the magnitude of their afflic-
tions thus differed greatly. Nakayama Miki’s and Deguchi Nao’s sufferings were
so profound, their burdens so heavy, that, in metaphorical terms, the two women
wore crowns of thorns. Troubling Tokiko, by contrast, was just one thorn in
her side (namely Ii’s policies)—painful, but hardly a reason to take on the
cause of universal salvation. It is to Tokiko’s localized thorn and to the dis-
comfort it generated that we now turn, further to underscore the difference
between her experience and that of late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji prophets.
One of the recurring motifs in the hagiographies of the founders of new

religions is personal suffering. A virtual prerequisite to claim and maintain the
title of founder, suffering could take the form of extreme physical pain, illness,
or of miserable conditions to overcome.48 Not only a test of endurance, acute
pain was also the manifestation of a divine presence, which could be either be-
nign or (more often) merciless and destructive. As Nakayama Miki’s The Tip
of the Writing Brush (Ofudesaki) explains, “Illness and pain of whatever kind
do not exist. / They are none other than the hastening and guidance of God.”49
Even outside the new religions, wandering spirits, malevolent spirits, and the
spirits of the dead, including the angry spirits of unborn babies, were believed
to cause sickness.50 In relating illness to a supernatural element, the new reli-
gions thus tapped into preexisting lore; at the same time, they took a common
theme and transformed it into a central and recurring element, a virtual sine
qua non. Tokiko begged to differ.
During her captivity, Tokiko endured three major bouts of illness: one
shortly after her arrest in Osaka; one along the Tōkaidō; and one while incar-
cerated in Edo. At no point did Tokiko present her suffering as a manifesta-
tion of divine anger or as an indication that the gods were attempting to speak
through her. When the gods are mentioned in the chronicle of her physical suf-
fering, it is simply in the context of an occasional prayer for the restoration of
health.
Pain, to be sure, became an allegory, but one anchored in the “here and
now” and serving practical goals. On a small scale, suffering enabled Tokiko
114 Chapter 6
to take the pulse of her own situation as a political prisoner. Additionally, since
Tokiko saw herself as the pivot between the world of base-born nobodies and
history writ large, by projecting her personal suffering onto a broader plane,
she also found a way to speculate on the current crisis, reiterate Ii’s responsi-
bility, and envision possible solutions.
The pain she suffered in Osaka was so severe that a doctor was summoned.
“The affliction you harbor inside is great indeed” (fukuchū no jaki hanahadashi),
he told her. To which Tokiko replied: “If this is the case, if the bug I feel in my
heart [kyōchū no mushi] does not abate, it will be hard to heal the bug that the
realm is feeling in its heart” (tenka kyōchū no mushi o osameru koto narigatashi).
Tokiko’s “bug” affected the abdomen (fukuchū, literally, “inside the belly”) as
well as the heart (kyōchū, literally, “inside the chest”) because it was illness as
much as it was malaise. As a physical condition, what plagued her body was a
reflection of the disorder that had struck down the body politic. As a psycho-
logical one, it was a symptom of her mounting anxiety over the tribulations of
the Ansei era.
Tokiko’s illness did not come from the same place as the ailments that af-
flicted the founders of new religions, nor did it come in the same form. Whereas
new religions depicted illness as a conduit through which a deity spoke, To-
kiko’s bug originates not in the sphere of the divine (which she identified with
order and harmony, not with anger and imbalance) but in the topsy-turvy world
of human affairs. Sickness, as Tokiko put it, was one of “the yokes of life” (ino-
chi no kizuna).51
As a channel through which a deity speaks, disease in new religions tends
to strike unexpectedly and ferociously; the divine blitzkriegs that targeted Na-
kayama Miki, for example, were as random as they were violent. Tokiko’s bouts
of sickness, on the other hand, were the exact opposite, recurring and predict-
able; her bug was not an ambush of the gods but, simply, a chronic condition
( jibyō).52 More importantly, the bug was treatable, and because Tokiko pres-
ents her body as a small-scale projection of the body politic, healing her body
meant curing the sickness as well as the malaise that affl icted her country. In
constructing a direct correspondence between what she felt inside her heart/
chest (kyōchū) and what the country felt in its chest (tenka no kyōchū), Tokiko
used illness to reaffirm a pivotal role in the process that would restore order
(health) to the realm.
We can read the process whereby Tokiko links her body to the larger so-
cial order through a model theorized by Helen Hardacre. (As always, excep-
tions exist, but the model fits several late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji religious
movements and is germane to this analysis.) According to Hardacre, the
worldview of almost all new religions resembles four concentric circles. At the
center is the self, followed in outward sequence by body, social order, and cos-
mos. “Everything is interconnected,” writes Hardacre, “so that a change in
one dimension, no matter how small, eventually ripples out and affects other
dimensions in a larger context.”53 Hardacre here envisions a unidirectional
process that begins with the self and unfolds from the inside out. The self, in
other words, is responsible for everything: in Reiyūkai Kyōdan all misfortunes
originate from an undisciplined heart; Kurozumikyō’s founder Kurozumi
Munetada blamed his bouts of sickness on his being too grief-stricken over
the death of his parents.54
Tokiko’s experience presents an important variation on this model, one
that demands our attention not because it was exclusive to her worldview (it
was not), but because it speaks volumes about her political stance and the way
in which she envisioned her role as a historical actor. Her linking of her ailing
body to the ailing body politic follows a fluid course, one that moves in both
directions, from the inside out and from the outside in. When she proclaims, “if
the bug I feel in my heart does not abate, it will be hard to heal the bug that the
realm is feeling in its heart,” Tokiko abides by Hardacre’s model: the healing
of her body signals the beginning of a larger healing process for the realm at
large—an outward progression. However, what brought her to suffer in the first
place was the result of a chain of events that began with the collapse of har-
mony in the ring of social (political) order and moved inward, toward the cen-
ter. By using this two-way model, Tokiko absorbs part of the suffering the
country is experiencing and transforms her body into a dynamic and pivotal
element in the process whereby the restoration of health and order begins. Clev-
erly, she takes credit for rescuing the realm but avoids any responsibility for
making it sick. The two-way model, in other words, enables Tokiko symboli-
cally to reiterate Ii Naosuke’s complete and unreserved culpability.
Alternatively, we can look at Tokiko’s physiological approach to political
rectification though the concept of “opening up good fortune” (kaiun), which
is to say controlling luck by way of specific rituals or changes in behavior. It
was common practice for late-Tokugawa prognosticators to link body and mind
with destiny and to try to direct the latter by controlling the former, for ex-
ample by monitoring breathing and food intake.55 The idea of modifying the
physiological body to affect the gyrations of one’s fate, in other words, was not
new; however, Tokiko brought it to a different level. While for most the prac-
tice of directing one’s fate led to the enhancing of personal fortunes, for To-
kiko the healing of the body extended beyond the sphere of the personal to
benefit the entire realm.
Lastly, we can think of Tokiko’s understanding of the realm as body as
a precursor to the emphasis on the national body (kokutai) that became a
116 Chapter 6
prominent part of state ideology in the 1880s. There are, of course, impor-
tant differences—first and foremost the fact that the hygiene-fi xated ideo-
logues of the modern era would have cringed at Tokiko’s identification of a
sickly body with the body of the nation. Still, Tokiko’s case shows that a meta-
phor commonly identified with the rhetoric of the modern state was in fact
within the realm of common knowledge, and within the purview of the ordi-
nary person, already in the Tokugawa period.56
The correspondence between her body and the body politic also informed
Tokiko’s use of sickness during her journey along the Tōkaidō. After weeks of
harsh interrogations in Kyoto, as she was being transported to Edo in a cage,
Tokiko had wondered: “What kind of torments will I encounter?”57 It was at
that point that illness struck. When the officials who escorted her went to great
lengths to offer her medicine and words of support, Tokiko was moved to tears.
Illness, in this case, enabled her to test the leniency of her captors—with their
attentive response partially assuaging her fears. If there was hope for her, by
extension there would also be hope for the loyalists.
Illness, in short, prompted Tokiko to reexamine the crisis of her day and
age and to think about possible remedies; it impelled her to reflect on her role
as a problem solver and on the relation between chaos and cosmos, reinforc-
ing her conviction that this world was sick and that the orderly heavens, if ad-
dressed correctly, could offer a cure. She stated this point explicitly several
months later when, looking back at her ordeal, she wrote:
With my old and frail body I endured prison time in Osaka, Kyoto,
and Edo, as well as the hardships of traveling in a cage along the
fift y-three stages [of the Tōkaidō] and an illness in Asakusa [jail].
I have braced myself for death so many times; I have faced danger
upon danger, like stepping onto the tail of a tiger, but all the while
I never stopped trusting that the orderly heavens [shōten] would
assist me.58
To the suffering engendered by chaos Tokiko responded with the soothing

harmony and ailing properties of her beautiful heavens, and thus overcame
adversity.
Physicality and Female Political Activism

in the Late Tokugawa
Tokiko’s understanding of her personal illness as a somatization of the suffer-
ing of the body politic is one of the many ways in which she cast herself as a
pivot between large-scale history and the microcosm of the individual. To this
extent, it is worth comparing Tokiko’s use of illness with that of another fe-
male loyalist of the time, the Fukuoka nun Nomura Bōtō, in order to assess
the extent to which women saw their physical bodies as either functional or
detrimental to political activism.
After her arrest in 1865, Bōtō (fift y-nine years old at the time) was exiled
and imprisoned on the island of Himeshima, off the coast of northern Kyushu,
where she too experienced frequent bouts of illness. Despite being caught in
circumstances similar to Tokiko’s, Bōtō never transfigured her own suffering
into an overarching allegorical message: to her, sickness was just sickness. In
the second month of 1866, for example, her pelvis hurt so severely that she was
barely able to stand. Bōtō did not turn this episode into an occasion for meta-
phorical ruminations, but simply stated, in a letter, that she alleviated the pain
by piling hot baked potatoes onto the affected area.59
If sickness was just sickness, by the same token medicines were just med-
icines, and not symbolic remedies to restore the health of the country. Thus,
by the end of the first month of 1866, we find Bōtō commenting on the efficacy
of a certain remedy for hemorrhoids, with not so much as a hint of allegorical
elaboration.60 (Using hemorrhoids as a metaphor would have been neither un-
dignified nor comical in Tokugawa Japan; if anything, it would have been
anticlimactic, the general view being that hemorrhoids were a temporary
inconvenience for which a host of readily available remedies existed.)61 Bōtō’s
letters from Himeshima are peppered with descriptions of health problems, re-
quests for medicines, lamentations about the chronically late shipments of med-
ications, and with almost monomaniacal ponderings on the exact number of
pills one should take to remedy this or that ailment;62 at no point do any of
these conversations veer toward the metaphorical.
Bōtō did not see sickness as a source of divine empowerment, as evidenced
by the fact that she went to great lengths to avoid it (“I just live taking the ut-
most care not to become ill”). She also did not see much of a link between her
personal physical suffering and the suffering of the country; if her bouts of ill-
ness in Himeshima were indicators of anything, it was the utter incompetence
of the local doctors and, by extension, the miseries of exile: “I requested to be
examined by the local doctor . . . but he did not have a clue; it is quite frighten-
ing [to think] how incompetent he is. I shall not ask to be visited [again]. . . . I
will put my life in heaven’s hands.”63
Only later, after she escaped from the island, did Bōtō speak of medicine
(but not of illness) in metaphorical terms. In 1867 she composed a poem in
which she linked the well-being of the Satsuma troops going into battle to the
well-being of the country:
118 Chapter 6
Ikusabito There was a time when

mamoru kusuri wa a medicine to protect
aru toki mo those who go into battle
naki koso kuni no did not exist. May there [now] be
kusuri narikere a medicine for our country.64
Elsewhere she added:
Azumaji no I wonder whether

akuta tsumoreru the medicine that will cleanse
Naniwae o Naniwa Bay, where the
arau kusuri mo rubbish of the East piles up,
kimi zo moruramu will also protect our lord.65
The “medicines” mentioned in these poems are entirely imaginary, not alle-
gorical projections of actual potions or pills. In other words, once again Bōtō
was not interested in linking her physical persona (or, to use a modern term,
her medical history) to the process whereby the country would be healed. While
she may have agreed with Tokiko (whom she never met) that some individual
bodies carried the potential to cure the realm, she was also convinced that hers
was not such a body. On a number of occasions she described it as frail and
unfit,66 which explains why, unlike Tokiko, she herself did not think of it as a
reliable site to take the pulse of the Restoration Movement. (Indeed, Bōtō fell
gravely ill and died not long after leaving Himeshima, only a few months short
of the collapse of the Tokugawa.)
To conclude, Tokiko’s articulation of a clear link between personal body
and the body of the realm is a rhetorical strategy that served a number of pur-
poses. At a personal level, it enabled her to rationalize her temporary misery
as part and parcel of a greater cause, giving her the strength to endure her or-
deal. Second, the correspondence between her body and the realm became a
platform for Tokiko to reiterate her pivotal role in the rectification of the world’s
chaos. Lastly, in broader terms Tokiko’s vision of a parallel between an ailing
body and the ailing realm offered a general model to achieve triumph over ad-
versity by transforming liabilities into assets. At the time of her incarceration,
physicality was not one of Tokiko’s strong suits, for she was middle-aged and
in poor health (not to mention a woman). However, by envisioning a correla-
tion between bodies small and large, real and metaphorical, Tokiko turned her
shortcomings into advantages: hers was not an imprisoned, sick body but a por-
tion of the realm under heaven; it was not a marginal entity but the fulcrum
upon which the country would turn.
Tokiko’s creative development of such correspondences brings to the fore

a new strategy through which women in the late-Tokugawa period could chart
paths of political action. Other female loyalists remained painfully aware of
the limitations placed upon them by gender (and, in many cases, age): Nomura
Bōtō saw herself as physically inadequate to represent the realm writ large; Mat-
suo Taseko bemoaned having “the weak body of a useless woman” and wrote
openly of despising her body; and the nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875) ex-
pressed envy toward “people who are males” for being able to take up arms and
fight for the country.67 Tokiko was no stranger to self-deprecation, yet in her
darkest moment in prison she found a way to reconfigure the paradigm: hers
was the weak body of a useful woman.68 To the notion that women could con-
tribute to rewriting the history of the realm only by adding footnotes Tokiko
replied by producing a dense script in which visions and symbols, metaphors
and allusions, placed a female (no)body at the center of the historical moment.
7 Transitions
This chapter deals with the ordinary individual and history writ
large by examining transitions large and small, public and private, historical
and personal. The story it tells is one of changes and adjustments. The first
part, “Clipping Wings,” covers the one-year span between the seventh month
of 1859, when Tokiko entered Tenmachō prison, and the eighth month of 1860,
when the lord Nariaki passed away. Along with Nariaki, in the course of that
year the other iconic figure at the center of Tokiko’s political awakening, Ii
Naosuke, also died, and Tokiko’s foray into engaged activism came to a close.
Her political zeal, however, was not extinguished, but simply found new out-
lets to manifest itself. The second part of the chapter, “Hexagrams,” offers an
example of one such new outlet, following Tokiko as she reconfigured her pri-
orities and reinvented her role as pivot between community and cosmic forces,
and between the small and the large scale, in light of the 1864 Mito civil war.
With the harmonious balance between chaos and cosmos compromised by the
ripple waves of these transitional moments, Tokiko adapted to times that kept
on changing—for the worst.
Clipping Wings
Tokiko’s final bout with illness was prolonged. It began with a high fever and
loss of appetite followed by the appearance of blisters and the swelling of her
ears.1 She was too debilitated to face her interrogators. By the time she was
able to talk again, on 7/27, they had decided to transfer her from Asakusa to
Tenmachō, Edo’s infamous prison.
Enclosed by a moat and a wall, Tenmachō had always had a reputation as
a rough place. Living conditions within its walls were so harsh that, aside from
the prisoners who were regularly executed, hundreds of inmates died each year
under suspicious circumstances.2 In 1859 the facility was at full capacity as a
result of the Ansei Purges; as Thomas Huber notes, the inmate population at
the time included some of the topmost loyalists in the realm.3
120
Transitions 121
As soon as she arrived, Tokiko would have been searched in a process rem-
iniscent of the procedures implemented at roadside checkpoints. She would have
then been sent to her cell. Unlike male prisoners, who were assigned to differ-
ent cellblocks on the basis of status, women at Tenmachō were few enough to
be all confined together in the upper rooms.4 Tokiko shared one such room
with fifteen other women, including at least another one from Mito.5
The illness that had stricken Tokiko in Asakusa still plagued her, and for
more than two months she was not summoned for interrogation. Then, on 10/11
(November 5, 1859), she was finally called, and, in a remarkable instance of an
extra sharing the spotlight with some of the lead historical actors, she under-
went a cross-examination with several other loyalists, including none other than
Yoshida Shōin.6
Five days later the interrogators produced a formal written statement (kuchi-
gaki) based on Tokiko’s deposition. City Magistrate Ishigaya Atsukiyo read it
in her presence. It was a lengthy document, over thirty pages by Tokiko’s own
estimate; in recording it for posterity, Tokiko confesses that she forgot the fi-
nal part and could only summarize its main points. The statement recapped
her odyssey, beginning with her rage at the unfair punishment meted out to
Nariaki, the sighting of the comet, and Shishido Nakatsukasa’s visit. It contin-
ued with her decision to go to Kyoto, the trip, the visit to Kitano Shrine, and
her arrest.7 Aside from the usual culprits, for the first time the name of another
informant appears in the paper trail: a certain Mimura Shōjibei. Though oth-
erwise unmentioned in Tokiko’s diaries, the Kurosawa Family Records at Ibaraki
University include a receipt Mimura produced in the eighth month of 1858 to
acknowledge a loan he had received from Tokiko (see chapter 1). Mimura had
shared with Tokiko “the details of [Nariaki’s] case” and had informed her that
it was Senior Councilor Manabe Akikatsu who had brought Nariaki’s connec-
tions with the Kyoto court to the attention of the Kyoto police superintendant.8
(Manabe’s 1858 mission to Kyoto had indeed resulted in the arrest of several
of Nariaki’s sympathizers in the imperial capital.)
What transpires from the formal statement, or at least from Tokiko’s rec-
ollection thereof, is that, in the eyes of the authorities, Tokiko’s case had less
to do with celestial omens and all to do with human networking. The officials
had reconstructed the web of informants, supporters, and enablers who had
inspired and facilitated the journey of a base-born woman to the imperial court:
Shishido Nakatsukasa, Mimura Shōjibei, the priest Keien, Saida Koresada. The
fact that Tokiko had been brought before the authorities with Yoshida Shōin
and other loyalists may also suggest that the officials were trying to ascertain
how far and how high her connections stretched. They sought, in short, to map
the contours of her circles, better to break them down.
122 Chapter 7
On 1859/10/27 Tokiko and the other loyalists were summoned to receive

their sentences. For Yoshida Shōin the verdict was death. Tokiko “heard it loud
and clear. At this point, we all looked at each other in the face and resigned
ourselves; our hearts were thumping.”9 She was not the only woman facing the
authorities that day: loyalist Katsuno Toyosaku’s wife, Chika, and his twenty-
four-year-old daughter, Yū, also stood among the accused. Unlike Chika and
Yū, however, Tokiko was not guilty by association but entirely responsible for
her own actions. This may explain why, while Chika and Yū were sentenced to
domiciliary confi nement, Tokiko received a harsher punishment. Found
“guilty of slandering [ashizama ni mōseshi] important officials,” she was
sentenced to medium-range banishment.10
After death and exile, banishment (tsuihō) was the third strictest form of
punishment in the Tokugawa legal codes.11 Rules for Determining Legal Mat-
ters (Kujikata osadamegaki, also known as One Hundred Articles or Hyakkajō),
the penal code compiled in the mid-eighteenth century, stipulated that
banishment could be “heavy” (omoki), “medium” (chū), or “light” (karuki) de-
pending on the severity of the crime. Crimes warranting heavy banishment in-
cluded bypassing a checkpoint, assaulting women, or unauthorized logging in
lands owned by the government, by a domain lord, or by the imperial court.12
Medium banishment was reserved for criminals who had failed to follow the
terms of a previous sentence (for example, by escaping from jail or from exile)
or for men guilty of leading a married woman to commit adultery, of selling
forgeries, or of wounding, crippling, or killing someone in a quarrel. Finally,
crimes falling under the rubric of light banishment included having an affair
with a woman promised in marriage to someone else or, in the case of farmers
and townsmen, carry ing swords, a privilege reserved for the samurai.13
A document issued by the Osaka City Magistrate in 1717 clarifies the geo-
graphical extent of each type of banishment, enabling us to map the strategic
centers and peripheries of the Tokugawa penal system. Heavy banishment en-
tailed the prohibition from setting foot in the provinces of Musashi, Sagami,
Kōzuke, Shimozuke, Hitachi, Kawachi, Awa (in Honshū, not to be confused
with Awa in Shikoku), Kazusa, Shimōsa, Yamashiro, Settsu, Izumi, Yamato,
Hizen, Kai, Suruga, and Kii; it also forbade travel along the Tōkaidō and Kiso
highways. In other words, this type of banishment created an enormous buf-
fer zone around the shogunal cities of Edo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagasaki and
made travel between these areas extremely difficult, if not impossible. The prov-
ince where the crime had taken place, if different from the ones listed above,
was also included and, after 1745, so was the native province of the convicted
criminal (if different from the one in which he or she resided). The land, house,
and belongings of those sentenced to heavy banishment were confiscated and
Transitions 123
their names were struck from the census registers. Usually they were separated
from their families—although in some cases the families could appeal for per-
mission to follow them.14
Medium-range banishment prevented criminals from entering the prov-
inces of Musashi, Yamashiro, Settsu, Kawachi, Izumi, Yamato, Hizen, Shimo-
zuke, Kai, and Suruga. Not only the Tōkaidō and Kiso highways but also the
Nikkō road would have been inaccessible. (In a 1742 document issued by the
magistrate’s offices in Osaka, Yamato Province is no longer included; the doc-
ument calls for the confiscation of the criminal’s lands and house as additional
punishment.) Finally, light banishment affected the area within ten ri (approx-
imately 25 miles) of Edo, the entire city of Kyoto, the provinces of Settsu and
Kawachi, the Tōkaidō and Nikkō roads, but not the Kiso highway.15
Unsurprisingly, gender and status factored into the equation: while the
Osaka High Court (Ōsaka Hyōjōsho) was allowed to punish female urban com-
moners and female peasants with heavy banishment after 1753, it could not do
so in the case of samurai women.16 The status categories identified in the codes
included warriors, farmers, townsmen, and the “homeless,” meaning those who
were not listed in any family register. Special provisions were occasionally made
for the members of the clergy.17
After 1745, the government slightly modified the parameters of banishment.
While they remained intact in the case of samurai, in the case of farmers and
townspeople the list was narrowed down to Edo (a five-ri radius from Nihon-
bashi), Settsu, Kawachi, the person’s home province, as well as the province
where the crime had taken place.18 With minor adaptations, this was the type
of punishment meted out to Tokiko. Her medium-range banishment included
the prohibition from setting foot in the provinces of Yamashiro (Kyoto)—
home to the imperial court and “crime scene”—and Hitachi—her place of
residence—as well as within five ri of Edo Nihonbashi.19 A manuscript version
of the sentence is preserved at the Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan.20 It was in-
deed common practice, after the sentence was read, to hand out the document
to the convicts; since they were tied up, the guards would have placed it in
their pockets. At this point the convicts would be escorted away and released; if
they were samurai and had not committed any crime deemed unbecoming
of their rank, they would also have had their swords returned.21
When the gates of Tenmachō finally opened, the caged bird Tokiko be-
came free again. However, from the authorities’ standpoint, its wings would
have been clipped and its voice muted. Banishment, as they saw it, would re-
move Tokiko from those very networks that had sustained her activism. It was,
with exile, the means by which the authorities took a dissenting voice and pushed
it far enough that it could no longer be heard. Despite the debates about the
124 Chapter 7
ineffectiveness of such form of punishment, which in the eyes of many simply

moved the problem around but did not solve it,22 if applied correctly, banish-
ment could effectively sweep the rug from under an activist’s feet by severing
connections and forcing a full reorganization, or rebuilding, of all lines of com-
munication. It caused displacement and approximated social death; it dissolved
the circles within which the individual operated, eliminating key sources of
support, information, identity, and income. It was the government’s weapon
against seditious networking, at least in theory. Tokiko’s story, however, shows
that some bonds were as resilient as the ability of the government to sever them
was fickle. As much as the shogunate tried, some circles may have gotten bent
out of shape, but could not be broken.
Released from custody, Tokiko went straight to her support base and spent
the night at an inn in Koishikawa, where her acquaintance Katōgi Shunzō served
in the Edo residence of the Mito lord. Shunzō hailed from Magone village, near
Suzugoya (map 1.2). With his mother, Toyo, he had played a prominent role in
the Nariaki exculpation movement since 1844 (see chapter 1). In the ninth month
of that year he had delivered a petition to the Edo residence of the Kii lord (one
of the Tokugawa collateral families). Detained and turned over to Mito, he had
gone into hiding, resurfacing the following month and orchestrating the de-
livery of more petitions. He was once again asked to return to Mito, but re-
fused. When he tried to hand in an appeal to the residence of Senior Coun-
cilor Abe Masahiro he was arrested again, sent back to Mito, questioned, and
returned to his village, where he was to remain confined. However, within eight
days even this requirement was lifted.23
Tokiko and Shunzō knew each other thanks to their membership in the
same poetic circles (he had been one of her early tutors) and because of their
similar political views. Their bond would continue well after the Restoration.
In 1867, for example, Tokiko included in one of her poetry collections a long
poem she had sent Shunzō; in 1871 she mourned the passing of his mother in
another poem. She mentions him in a verse collection from 1874.24 The Kuro-
sawa Family Records at Ibaraki University include several letters, dated as late
as 1890, which attest to ongoing contacts between Tokiko and Shunzō, and
between Shunzō and Tokiko’s family after her death.
On 1859/10/29 Tokiko left Edo and headed for Motegi in Shimozuke Prov-
ince, a village only ten miles away from Suzugoya. There she was taken in by
her former poetry tutor Kobayashi Heishichi. On 12/6 she crossed the border
into Hitachi Province and returned to her hometown and to her elderly
mother. In theory such disregard for the terms of her banishment was punish-
able by branding or tattooing;25 however, the government often turned a blind
Transitions 125
eye to such infractions. As long as order was maintained, the Tokugawa

accepted the existence of such “open secrets.”26 Moreover, in 1859 the govern-
ment had bigger problems than tracking an old woman around the countryside,
and so Tokiko was never caught. Her ordeal had come to a close. Appropri-
ately, Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration ends with a poem celebrating her
newfound freedom. Of all the possible Chinese characters available to indicate
the cuckoo (hototogisu), here Tokiko chooses the combination “time” (toki)
and “bird”; toki was also the character she occasionally used to spell her own
name:
Sumidareni A cuckoo [Toki, the bird]

koe furitatete singing loudly
hototogisu in the early summer rain.
suzu no kōya no Go and sing in the hills
yama ni koso nake of Suzugoya.27
The once caged bird, the bird whose wings the government thought it had clipped
and whose cry it thought it had silenced, was again flying high and singing to
its heart’s content.
The domain to which Tokiko returned had changed. On 1859/4/26, while
she was incarcerated in Kyoto, the arrests of Mito Finance Magistrate Aizawa
Idayū, of House Elder Ajima Tatewaki, and of others had precipitated a wave
of protests and exacerbated the tensions with Edo. Crowds of farmers, provin-
cial samurai, and local functionaries had marched toward Mito castle town
while other loyalists had assembled in Edo. By the end of the eighth month,
while Tokiko was suffering through her bouts of illness in Tenmachō, the gov-
ernment retaliated. On 8/27 Tokugawa Nariaki was found guilty of “being in
collusion with several [people] in Kyoto”;28 his sentence to house arrest was ex-
tended, with orders to serve it in Mito.
News of this renewed humiliation traveled fast across Nariaki’s domain.
Unlike all other lords, whose presence in Edo was required every other year as
per the regulations of the alternate attendance system, the lord of Mito was ex-
pected to remain in the city year-round. Such a requirement, as Kate Wildman
Nakai points out, eventually “gave rise to the compensating conviction that . . .
[he] had a mission to assist, or even guide, the shogun in the formulation of
national policy.”29 Nariaki’s de facto expulsion in 1859 thus represented more
than just punishment: it was a symbolic repudiation of a historic partnership.
On 9/4 Nariaki left Edo for the last time. Also punished were the current Mito
lord, Yoshiatsu, and Hitotsubashi Keiki (Yoshinobu), both sentenced to home
126 Chapter 7
confinement. Aizawa Idayū and Ajima Tatewaki would eventually face capital
punishment.30
Moreover, when Tokiko returned home at the end of 1859, Mito was still
in the midst of the controversy over the emperor’s secret decree (see chapter
2), with factions arguing as to whether it should be returned to the govern-
ment or whether it should be made public in other domains. The moderates,
led by Aizawa Seishisai, favored its return, while the radical faction, led by
Fujita Koshirō (son of Fujita Tōko), opposed it. In an effort to block the return
of the decree to Edo, in the last month of 1859 the radicals blocked the road
between Mito and Edo, splitting the Mito loyalist movement once and for
all into two opposing factions.31 Tokiko could not have returned at a more
critical time.
The year following her release brought more drama. In 1860 the two lead
actors in the great showdown of 1858 and the centerpieces of Tokiko’s petition
to the emperor, Ii Naosuke and Tokugawa Nariaki, died. Ii was ambushed and
slain outside Sakurada Gate in Edo on 3/3 by a group of disgruntled loyalists,
several of whom hailed from Mito (including the same Koibuchi Kaname with
whom Tokiko had crossed paths one year earlier). Nariaki died five months later,
on 8/15, while under home confinement.
There is no comment about the assassination of Ii Naosuke in Tokiko’s writ-
ings from 1860, but her later works betray her admiration for the men who took
his life. A poetry collection she assembled between 1864 and 1866, for exam-
ple, includes segments from the diary of Kaneko Magojirō (1803–1861), one of
the masterminds behind the killing. The excerpts were written between
1860/2/18 and 3/9, precisely around the time of the Sakurada attack.32 Magojirō
does not elaborate on the assassination, and, unfortunately, there is a gap in
his narrative between 3/1, when we find him composing verses before the cherry
trees in Yamazaki, and 3/4, when he reappears in Hakone after the assassina-
tion. In a sense, the details of Ii’s death do not matter. What matters is that, by
inviting Magojirō into her poetic world and by enabling him to tell the story
of the days that preceded and followed the attack on Ii, Tokiko endorsed
Magojirō’s actions; by giving him a voice several years after his death, she also
made sure he would not be forgotten. Approximately ten years later, in 1874,
she revisited the Sakurada episode in one of her own poems:
Sakurada ni I am
na nomi nokosu of the same mind
hitobito to as those men
onaji kokoro o whose names, and nothing more,
awasu wagami wa remain at Sakurada.33
Transitions 127
Anxious about the prospect of historical amnesia (a topic further explored in

the next chapter), Tokiko in 1874 contemplated the vanishing memories of these
warriors and extended a hand in their direction to rescue them (and herself)
from oblivion.
If Ii’s demise impelled Tokiko to mull over the ephemeral fate of men, news
of Nariaki’s death had larger cosmic implications and cast a dark shadow all
the way up to the high heavens. In Tokiko’s eyes, death had afforded Nariaki
some much-deserved peace; he had left the turmoil of this world and had joined
the beauty of the cosmos: as she put it, he had “faded away with the clear moon.”
On the one hand it made perfect sense that the man who had fought against
the onset of disorder and corruption would finally join the orderly heavens—a
convergence of positive forces that bespoke congruence and brought closure.
On the other, his passing was distressing for those, like Tokiko, who remained
in this world. In this respect, Nariaki’s death engendered great discord not
only on earth but also in the high heavens, momentarily upsetting the other-
wise perfect harmony of the cosmos:
Mochizuki no I was expecting

yoi o machiete a full moon’s night
akirakeku but the light
kumo kakure ni shi was obscured by clouds.
kimi zo kanashiki It was you, my lord. How sad.34
For a brief moment, as Nariaki faded away, the lights went out and Tokiko’s
cosmos turned dark.
If Tokiko’s life were a fi lm, her return to Suzugoya at the end of 1859 and
the deaths of Ii Naosuke and Tokugawa Nariaki in 1860 would provide an ap-
propriate chance to conclude the story of her adventures on the great stage of
history. The final pages of Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration would even sup-
ply an ideal voiceover to this fadeout:
I feel like I have now come back to life [nido yomigaerishi]. I shave
my head often and tend with the utmost care to my three grand-
children. . . . Now I have students once again, life is good. Each day
I go with the flow [suikō ni shite], without a moment’s respite. I do
not neglect to intone prayers for peace in the realm [tenka], for a
plentiful harvest, for the safety of my lord, for good luck in war,
for our enemies to leave our soil, for tranquility upon our land
[kokudo], for all people to be wealthy and at ease with safety in their
homes and a long-lasting progeny.35
128 Chapter 7
Equally appropriate would be the lines from a poem she composed in 1860—
thirty-one syllables synthesizing her foray into activism, her banishment, and
her final return to Suzugoya:
Ukime mishi I went through hard times

ukiyo no soto ni and was tossed out
hanatareshi of the floating world
mi wa yamazumi no to a mountain dwelling
kikakure no io hidden amidst the trees.36
Indeed, scholars who have taken an interest in Tokiko’s life often present
the Kyoto journey as the zenith of her activism and as a watershed of sorts, her
political fervor steadily declining thereafter. They remark upon her old age—to
their credit, something Tokiko herself did quite often—37and portray her as a
woman tamed by circumstances: she had returned to Suzugoya, but she was
still under banishment orders, hence vulnerable. (The government would not
issue an amnesty for those punished during the Ansei Purges until 1862.) With
her wings clipped and the flame of activism extinguished, they add, Tokiko
returned to teaching.38
To get a more nuanced image of Tokiko’s life after 1860 it may be useful to
distinguish between engaged activism and political passion. While it is true
that she never replicated a stunt as astonishing as her mission to Kyoto, there
is no denying that, even after the deaths of Ii and Nariaki, she continued to be
attentive to political strife and wrote conspicuously about it. Instead of dismiss-
ing her as tamed or defeated, then, one should pay attention not just to the
changes but also to the continuities that span the 1860 divide. To return to the
fi lm analogy, it is too soon for a fadeout. Instead, it is in the opening line of
one of Sugawara no Michizane’s poems that we fi nd the perfect voiceover to
introduce Tokiko’s life after banishment and her ongoing commitment to loy-
alism:
“When a bird escapes its cage, its wings do not tire.”39
Freed from its cage, the sparrow resumed its fl ight—facing new storms and
adapting to ever-changing winds, but flying no less.
Hexagrams
We cannot bring Tokiko’s story to a close in 1860, with the demise of Ii Nao-
suke, with the ascent of Nariaki to the orderly heavens, and with Tokiko’s (al-
Transitions 129
leged) retirement from the political scene, because despite her attempts to
reestablish a tranquil routine, the wheel of history was picking up speed, and
it would soon send Mito domain into a tailspin. We can still fade out on To-
kiko praying daily for peace in the realm and tranquility upon the land, but
we must fade back in four years later on a domain in the midst of civil war.
There are no records of Tokiko’s everyday life between 1860 and 1864. We
can only assume that she did indeed “go with the flow,” spending her days be-
tween her garden, her grandchildren, and her classroom. In the years follow-
ing her return to Suzugoya, the school enrolled as many as 153 students.40 In
the 1860s Tokiko was doing well from a financial standpoint, for her family
records include receipts (dated 1864 and 1866) attesting to sums of money she
lent.41
The years between 1860 and 1864 coincided with the intensification of con-
crete actions against the shogunate and against the foreign intruders—
assassinations, plots, alliances, attacks.42 The eye of the storm now loomed
directly over Kyoto, where the imperial court came to play an increasingly rel-
evant role in the political infighting. In his study of the fi nal years of the
Tokugawa, Conrad Totman identifies the year 1862 as the watershed moment
when the shogunate effectively lost control of the country.43 Other characters
took the lead in the ongoing drama, including members of status groups other
than the samurai. On the Kyoto stage new female actors, destined to greater
fame than Tokiko, made their debut—Nomura Bōtō in 1861–1862, Matsuo
Taseko in 1862–1863. By then, Yoshida Shōin’s dream of a collective rise of un-
affi liated patriots (sōmō no shishi), men whose allegiance would stand with the
divine country rather than with the domain, had become reality.44 The field of
vision had expanded and political issues had become a matter of “national” con-
cern.45 Nomura Bōtō’s poems from these years, celebrating the homogenous
“Japanese” spirit and the intricately woven brocade of the land of the gods, en-
capsulate such collective vision. In 1863 she wrote:
Samazamani They all differ greatly

shina wa kawaredo in quality,
mina hito no but isn’t
yamatogokoro wa each person’s Japanese soul
hitotsu naramashi one and the same?
And again, one year later:
Kurenai no Even the color of

yamato nishiki mo the crimson
130 Chapter 7
iroiro no Japanese brocade

ito majiete zo was woven by blending
dami wa orikeru many a thread.46
With the stage more crowded than ever, the pace faster, and the action
swifter, Tokiko the extra withdrew to the wings. At a time when most activists
were (finally) looking at the large picture and fighting for the country writ large
(the tenka kokka), Tokiko broke with rank and turned toward the small scale,
the village and the domain. Therein, she found no solace. In 1864, when she
picked up the brush and penned Priceless Record of Daily Necessities (Nichiyō
chōhōki; not to be confused with the 1858 diary by the same title), she noted
that the world around her had descended into chaos yet again: “Since the mid-
dle of the fift h month the world has been in turmoil. . . . Due to the great un-
rest, everyone is worried.”47
The great unrest of which she speaks refers to the Mito civil war and spe-
cifically to the strife between the Tengu and the Student (Shosei) factions. Ever
since the court had issued the secret decree in 1858, tensions had run high. Pre-
existing animosities pitted conservative retainers against the self-described
“righteous” reformists inspired by Nariaki. Then, following the Ansei Purges,
the reformist faction itself had split, generating an extreme wing (the future
Tengu) and a moderate Student group.48 The Tengu party had come together
in the third month of 1864, when “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”
idealists at the head of Tamaru Inanoemon had assembled on Mount Tsukuba.
Initially comprised of about sixty men, the small army grew rapidly to a force
of 150. After a march on Nikkō early in the fourth month, where they called
for nationwide support, the Tengu retreated to Mount Ōhira (in present-day
Tochigi Prefecture). Their forces had grown to about four hundred men by the
end of the fift h month.49 In an effort to convince them to disband, Mito sent
inspector Yamakuni Hyōbu to negotiate. On 5/30, while the Tengu were de-
scending from the mountain, a splinter faction led by Tanaka Genzō clashed
with a group of townsmen, killing some and burning their homes. The gov-
ernment then resolved to crush the Tengu, receiving the full support of the Stu-
dent faction. Open civil war broke out in the seventh month. By 10/23 the Tengu
troops would flee Nakaminato, where they had taken refuge, and head to Kyoto.
The population was affected, but not simply as victims devoid of any
decision-making power. In a microhistorical approach to the Mito civil war,
Akutsu Takuo has followed the deeds of four farmers from around Machida
(modern-day Suifu village, ten miles from Suzugoya) to gauge the extent to
which the Mito peasantry partook in the hostilities. Akutsu argues that do-
main schools encouraged peasant participation. Late-Tokugawa Mito domain
Transitions 131
had promoted the creation of such schools (including one in Machida in 1857)
to train the population in the face of the foreign threat. At the Machida acad-
emy trainees read the Confucian classics, treatises on Mito ideology, and books
on history and medicine while also practicing with the sword and with fire-
arms. Many of the students came from rural villages; Akutsu estimates that
80 percent of the men who attended a meeting at the Machida school in the
fifth month of 1861 were farmers—some so low in status they did not even have
a family name.50 Akutsu’s study deals with men who joined armies and fought
in battles; Tokiko’s case offers the perspective of a woman who experienced the
war by deploying forces not of the military but of the cosmic kind.
Tokiko’s diary, written in the midst of these events, is attuned to the mount-
ing tensions; it includes descriptions of marching troops, peasant revolts, vio-
lence, and destruction. It names the names of some of the principal actors in
this drama, including Tanaka Genzō and Matsudaira Yorinori, lord of Shishido
domain, sent to Mito in the eighth month of 1864 to quell the Tengu revolt and
restore peace. Despite her alleged retirement from political activism, Tokiko
had remained alert to political news and, in her writings, still discriminated
between heroes and villains. Not one to mince words, she refers to the coali-
tion of government and domain forces that attacked the Tengu rebels on Mount
Tsukuba as crooks and to Suzuki Iwami no Kami Shigemune, sworn enemy of
the Tengu group, as wicked.51 In the midst of the Mito civil war, in other words,
Tokiko was far from silent and far from neutral: she took sides and aligned her-
self with the most violent and radical elements.
Early in the eighth month of 1864 Matsudaira Yorinori arrived in Mito to
restore order. Though originally sent to represent the shogunate, Matsudaira
had a change of heart and joined in the cause of the Tsukuba rebels.52 Tokiko,
aware of the situation, wrote, “I heard the lord of Shishido [domain] will come
[to Mito].” And, a few days later, “In the afternoon my old neighbor came for a
visit. We discussed the coming of the [Shishido] lord and rejoiced. From now
on, our spirits can rest a little.”53
“Little,” more than “rest,” is perhaps the key word here, for by then the rum-
bling of war drums had become a permanent feature of Tokiko’s world. On the
fift h day of that month she and her fellow villagers hid their belongings, fled
their homes, and took refuge in the woods as troops advanced.54 On the twenty-
third Tokiko climbed a hill and witnessed the aftermath of the open conflict
between Matsudaira’s forces (by then comprised of Tengu sympathizers) and
the faction led by Ichikawa Sanzaemon, which had taken control of Mito cas-
tle: “I looked in the direction of the castle town [and saw] plumes of smoke ris-
ing. The roar of cannons was loud.”55 By month’s end the Shishido lord was
forced out of Mito; on 9/16 he committed suicide. The shogunate regained
132 Chapter 7
control of Mito. The poetry Tokiko composed at the time reflects a sense of
loss and confusion, an awareness that few if any certainties existed:
Yo no naka no Some people know

uki o shiru hito this world’s misery
shiranu hito and some do not;
yama ni sumu hito some dwell in the mountains,
yama ni hairu hito some go deep into the mountains.56
The allusion to the work of the Shugendō practitioners (who “enter the
mountains” to commune with the spirits) in this poem reminds us that, in times
of uncertainty, Tokiko looked up to the heavens. The Mito civil war was no ex-
ception, for it inspired her to resume her prognostications with renewed in-
tensity (more below). The extreme circumstances of 1864, however, demanded
a novel approach, and their magnitude forced Tokiko briefly to revisit her un-
derstanding of the relationship between chaos and cosmos. The two had always
interacted, but not in a perfectly equal relationship; generally, the world of hu-
mans followed its own path and, when the road turned bumpy, the cosmos in-
tervened with warnings (the comet), words of encouragement (Michizane’s
ghost), and solutions (the hexagrams; the illness that, if healed, could cure the
body politic). In all this, the cosmos itself remained unaffected, its beauty and
perfection untouched, its order intact. In 1864 this relationship changed.
In 1864 the logic regulating the interactions between chaos and cosmos
was turned on its feet: the chaos of the Mito civil war escalated to such a point
that it impinged directly upon the heavens, causing them to grieve. Tokiko
sensed the mounting imbalance. Upon hearing news of destruction, upon ob-
serving yet another village under attack, and upon hearing the roars of can-
nons all night, on 8/15 she wrote:
Mochizuki no Even the full moon sky

sora mo kumorite is cloudy.
furu ame wa Could it be that the falling rain
yo ni ukibito no is but the tears
namida naruran of those adrift in this world?57
By transmogrifying an otherwise common occurrence—a seasonal shower—

into a sign of cosmic angst, Tokiko stressed—poetically but no less compellingly—
the gravity of the crisis around her. The rainfall on the night of 8/15 was intense, as
Tokiko indicates, but it was by no means extraordinary; it became an allegory,
eloquent and troubling, because of the anomalous circumstances around it. It
Transitions 133
took extreme conditions indeed for the world’s chaos to reach up and distress
the cosmos. Only once had this happened before, and in the most unfortunate
of scenarios: when Tokugawa Nariaki died, the cosmos had briefly gone dark.
Now, four years later, a “world in disarray” (midareyo)58 was chipping away at the
splendor of the heavens, causing them to become clouded and shed tears. Or-
der had been subverted in the most compromising of ways; everyone, “young
and old, men and women, was shaken, because what was up has come down.”59
If ever there was a need for an intervention (or for Tokiko to come out of
her alleged retirement), this was the time. It is not a coincidence, then, that rec-
ords attesting to divination sessions abound in Tokiko’s 1864 diary; compared
to 1858 (the year for which we also have notes on divination), 1864 was a time
of much deeper anxieties, at least in Mito. In 1864, the heavens actually wept.
Tokiko’s queries to the heavens reflect local concerns, preoccupations that
extended from her immediate inner circles (family, village) to Mito castle town
and to the domain lord. Early in the eighth month, for example, she interpreted
a series of hexagrams to find out whether the days ahead would be peaceful
and whether thirty villagers displaced by the conflict would be able to return
home. The answer came in the form of hexagram number 31, Influence (or Woo-
ing): “Influence, the second line from the bottom is a yin.”60
Tokiko here uses a standard code to describe the lines of her hexagrams.
The number nine indicates the solid lines of the masculine yang force, while
the number six indicates the broken lines of the yin, the feminine counterpart.
In divination manuals and documents, and in Tokiko’s records, the characters
for “beginning” and “above” indicate the bottom and the top lines respectively,
while numbers from two to five indicate the position of the other lines, counted
from the bottom.61 Following this practice, Tokiko “read” the lines from the bot-
tom up—in the case of hexagram number 31, two broken lines, three solid lines,
and a broken line on top. The resulting reading, as suggested in The Book of
Changes, is one associated with perseverance and success, and Tokiko’s inter-
pretation was indeed optimistic: “This is good. They should go back by today
or tomorrow.”
On 8/11, following a day during which her fellow villagers, armed with bam-
boo spears and rifles, had marched toward Mito, she read hexagram number
13, Fellowship or Companionship, to foresee possible outcomes: “Companion-
ship . . . It is a good sign, but there will be war.”62 More promising were the for-
tunes of Mito castle and of the castle town, as suggested by hexagram number
30, Fire, a sign associated with perseverance and success: “Fortunes for the cas-
tle: Fire . . . A bit bad, then good.”63
Tokiko was not the only one consulting The Book of Changes for answers.
In the volatile climate of the late Tokugawa, many turned to it in search of
134 Chapter 7
solutions, to promote reform, or to push for change.64 Ideologue Sakuma

Shōzan consulted it as a treasure-trove of metaphors and inspirational quota-
tions, but not as a divination manual.65 The Book of Changes was, in a sense, a
timeless reference that would have seemed especially appropriate for the trou-
bled tenor of the times: not only did its permutations summarize every prob-
lem, every question, and every answer, but its organized sections also projected
a sense of order where order was lacking. Precisely because it addressed just
about every situation, the approaches to and uses of The Book of Changes were
as diverse as the permutations it described. It is against this multiplicity of ap-
proaches that we should evaluate Tokiko’s contribution to the debate on the fu-
ture of the country in the years of the Mito civil war and during the collapse of
the Tokugawa. A comparison with another woman’s use of the hexagrams is
especially illuminating.
Among those familiar with The Book of Changes we find another loyalist
sympathizer from the same generation as Tokiko: Yanagawa Kōran (1804–1879),
the wife of loyalist Yanagawa Seigan. Kōran had been arrested in 1858, at the
height of the Ansei Purges, shortly after her husband’s death from cholera. She
refused to provide the names of Seigan’s collaborators and languished in jail
until 1859/2/16. On the day of her release Kōran wrote a Chinese poem in which
she explained the course of recent events using an image from The Book of
Changes.
Roaring pain, difficulties, concerns

I wished they would be appeased in ten days.
If the heart is well trained
one begins to see the gods
and it all comes together
as a good portent in the sign Xu with yin on top.
Did they come?
The three uninvited guests.66
“The sign Xu with yin on top” indicates hexagram number 5, also known
as “Waiting” or “Nourishment.” Xu portends success based on a pure heart
and a steady resolve: “if you are sincere, you have light and success. Persever-
ance brings good fortune.”67 The allusion to the three uninvited guests comes
from the interpretation of the yin line on top, according to which, when one is
in trouble, all one has to do is wait and three men will come to the rescue; if they
are treated with respect, good fortune will result. Kōran, unexpectedly set
free from jail, wondered whether indeed someone (the three men) had come
to her aid.
Transitions 135
There are important differences in Tokiko’s and Kōran’s use of the hexa-
grams. Arrested and then released, Kōran summed up her odyssey by com-
paring it to hexagram number 5, which spoke of conflict and resolution. She
did not use the hexagram to read the future but, rather, to explain her imme-
diate past. Her reflection, moreover, took the form of a Chinese poem in which
she quoted from The Book of Changes as part of an exercise in erudition. Kōran’s
approach was as sophisticated and personal as Tokiko’s was down to earth and
holistic. A trained oracle, Tokiko would have thought of The Book of Changes
as a tool of her trade, not as a dictionary of elegant quotations. The readings of
the hexagrams as they appear in her diaries are succinct and to the point pre-
cisely because they serve a practical purpose: they answer questions and offer
guidance. Unlike Kōran’s, Tokiko’s concern is not with the immediate past of
one individual but with the present and near future of a community; she sees
chaos and tries to provide a vision of order. In the process Tokiko does not fi x-
ate on metaphysical ruminations and does not wax philosophical or poetic: she
formulates a question, reads the manual, and extrapolates an answer—end of
story. There is something of an analytical quality to Tokiko’s approach to the
universe: she crunches numbers, counts lines, consults charts, and solves prob-
lems, like a mathematician attending to the heavens’ equations. Her contribu-
tion to the political applications of the divine in the late Tokugawa rests precisely
in the no-frills attitude with which she used the cosmic forces to envision and
restore harmony in the face of discordance—be it a “national” crisis like the
Ansei Treaties and the purges, or a local one like the war in her domain.
In doing so Tokiko engaged in a process whereby, to borrow the words of
Michael Dylan Foster, “pandemonium” is turned into “parade.” Pandemonium,
in Foster’s definition, refers to “a condition of riotous disturbance, chaos”; pa-
rade, by contrast, is the nonthreatening, tamed version thereof.68 Foster’s study
is concerned with monsters, not with cosmic signs or portents, but the paral-
lel is still useful; the point is that the supernatural (broadly defined), requiring
as it does the acceptance of that which eludes logic, helps reconcile contradic-
tions. In the unpredictable world of late-Tokugawa Japan, the heavens provided
Kurosawa Tokiko with a sound template for order.
Almost every day Tokiko consulted the cosmic forces either on behalf of
fellow villagers or on her own initiative. The endless string of hexagrams in
the pages of her 1864 diary tells us that, in the catastrophic scenario of the Mito
civil war, Tokiko maintained her faith in the ability of the heavens to reestab-
lish balance. The questions she cautiously asked, however, bespeak a change
in priorities. Her political passion had not faded, but had reoriented toward
the local. She now had the well-being of her domain—not of the tenka kokka—in
mind. Her involvement too had changed, finding a different outlet to express
136 Chapter 7
itself: rather than jumping into action, Tokiko now chose to stay put and offer
guidance. By 1864, the extra who in 1859 had stepped center stage into the spot-
light had reinvented herself once again, this time taking on the role of director
in the local production of a very serious drama.
In one of the last divination sessions recorded in Priceless Record of Daily
Necessities Tokiko received encouraging news: before her stood hexagram num-
ber 14, Abundant Possessions (figure 7.1). This was a good sign indeed. As The
Book of Changes indicates, hexagram number 14 portends great progress and
success, error-free advancement, good fortune, and forthcoming help from the
heavens.69 Even though Mito domain was wrecked financially and politically
after the battles of the summer of 1864—“its very soul destroyed,” notes
Totman70—Tokiko summarized the reading in a positive light: “Divination
for the village: fire in heaven, great possessions. The bottom line is yang. Good
for renewing things.”71
Things indeed began to change. By the spring of 1865 the crisis in Mito
seemed to be on the wane, with the Tengu faction defeated and many of its mem-
bers executed, sent into exile, or banished. Following the eradication of the
Tengu, the moderate Student faction took control of Mito and held it until 1868,
when the Tokugawa government collapsed and the Students lost their support
base. Only then did drama resume, with several former Tengu returning to Mito
(now emboldened by the triumph of the imperial cause) and enacting a bloody
revenge of arrests, assassinations, and executions. Many Students fled north
to Aizu to join the remaining pockets of resistance to the new regime.72
Tokiko’s writings for the years after the Mito civil war consist of poetry
collections such as Miscellany for the Four Seasons: Third Month of Genji 2 (Shiki
zatsuei Genji ninen yayoi, 1865) or Draft Poems for the Four Seasons (Shiki eisō,
1867). Replete with conventional tropes hinged on the seasons and nature, oc-
casionally featuring poems in praise of “my lord’s reign,” these works make it
virtually impossible for the historian to reconstruct a coherent narrative of her
life in the final years of the Tokugawa; the information is simply too scarce.
Most regrettably, none of the existing manuscripts from the Kurosawa Family
Collection details Tokiko’s life in the months that marked the transition from
Tokugawa to Meiji.
Whatever little one can patch together from her anthologies suggests that
before and after 1868 Tokiko kept “going with the flow,” navigating around the
waves of political reconfigurations and turning around the buoys of private trag-
edies and personal achievements. These included a burglary that caused her
great grief in 1869, the joyous celebration of her mother’s eighty-third birth-
day, and the death of her daughter Kumeko in the twelft h month of the same
year. (Her mother would pass away two years later, in 1871.)73 But, as Tokiko
Transitions 137
Figure 7.1. Hexagram number 14 from The Basics of Divination: Master Arai’s Secret Text
(Ekidō uimanabi Arai sensei himitsu no sho, 1842). Author’s personal collection.
knew, “yesterday’s sorrows will be today’s joys” (sakujitsu no ui kyō no yoro-

kobi); on New Year’s Day, 1870, for example, she relished the thought that the
country was finally at peace:
Fuku kaze mo It is so quiet

eda o narasanu even the blustering winds
138 Chapter 7
shizukesa wa cannot shake these branches;

osamaru miyo no that is how I know this is a sign
shirushi to zo shiru of peaceful times.74
Hexagram number 14 had been right all along: things were changing, on the
large stage of history as much as in Tokiko’s small world. Adjustments large
and small—in the scope of one’s vision and the reach of one’s actions—made
it possible to manage the gyrations of the historical process on a day-to-day
basis, but new challenges arose at each turn. The question now became one of
memory and commemoration: what to do with the past in the midst of sweep-
ing changes.
Part III
MEMORY, MANIPULATION,
AND AMNESIA
8 Rescuing the Past from the Present
At a time when many, beginning with the Meiji government itself, were
looking forward, Tokiko was also looking back. Transitions, as it turns out,
come at a cost: pushed aside by the new, what was once meaningful, immedi-
ate, and inspiring loses its punch and starts gathering dust. The past, once vivid
and fresh, is consigned to the shaky hands of memory. In a world that had
changed, Tokiko felt displaced:
Toshi fureba As the years pass

yo o ukimono to I think of the world as a wretched [place].
yamazato ni In my mountain village
mukashi o shinobu I reminisce about the days of old:
io no akisame autumn rain on my retreat.1
Writing and teaching provided a modicum of continuity in a sea of change;

aside from the simple act of reminiscing and celebrating, poetry also enabled
her to bridge the gap between “then” and “now”—she continued to compose
verses until the year before her death.
If words offered the comfort of the familiar, they also indicated the intru-
sion of the new. Tokiko’s writings from the early Meiji include references to
the Ministry of Finance or to Ibaraki Prefecture—the former, a Meiji-era in-
stitution, the latter, the modern reincarnation of Hitachi Province.2 Two Meiji-
era neologisms in particular, “education” (kyōiku) and “religion” (shūkyō), best
encapsulate the radical changes of the post-Restoration period and their reper-
cussions on Tokiko’s microcosm.3 A teacher and a prognosticator, Tokiko saw
not one but two of the pillars of her life and identity undergo a major recon-
ceptualization.
In 1872 the Meiji government inaugurated a national school system, and
the old domain academies were either abolished or reinvented as public schools.
Tokiko’s small classroom was selected to become Suzugoya’s first elementary
school, making Tokiko the first female teacher in Ibaraki. Kurosawa Tokiko,
141
142 Chapter 8
prognosticator, convicted slanderer, and enemy of the Tokugawa, was now a

legitimate employee of the modern state. Her house and annexed school of-
fered a physical space where the vision of the new administration became
reality.
Along with the creation of a national school system, the policy that im-
pacted Tokiko the most in the transition from Tokugawa to Meiji was the
forced separation of Shinto deities (kami) and buddhas. The rationale for the
suppression was not new, and in fact mirrored arguments used against Bud-
dhist institutions since the seventeenth century: temples were accused of being
tax havens and home to profit-driven, meat-eating, sake-drinking, womaniz-
ing clergy. The eradication campaign began in the early years of Meiji and
entailed anything from the defrocking of Buddhist clergy to the physical de-
struction of temples, statues, and implements. The new state, wary of the sub-
versive potential of diviners, also outlawed Shugendō on grounds that it was
mere superstition.4 Much of this was not new to Tokiko, who had already wit-
nessed the wave of anti-Buddhist reforms in her domain in the 1840s. But the
impact, in this case, was amplified by the fact that, along with the religious
landscape, just about everything else was in a state of flux. She tried to adapt,
but with everything being reconfigured, Tokiko’s role was, to her, less and less
clear.
It was not just that times were changing: Tokiko was getting old, too. The
transition into the new era may have had a lesser impact had she been young
and energetic, but at this point she was beginning to feel the pinch of old age:
Itsu shikani Before I knew it

musoji no saka o I had crossed
koesugite the slope of sixty
nanasoji ni koso and had entered
mi wa irinikere the road of seventy.5
Everyone in the early Meiji needed to negotiate between a rapidly fading

past and a less than certain present. Tokiko did so in her usual creative way,
engaging the heavens and the spirits. In the pages that follow I will present three
key moments in the Meiji-era life of Kurosawa Tokiko during which she ad-
justed to the new but at the same time resourcefully fought back against the
intrusive demands of the state’s modern project and the onset of historical am-
nesia in order to preserve important elements of her past.
Rescuing the Past from the Present 143
Tominomiya’s Ghost
The first key moment occurred in 1873. With her mission to Kyoto almost fif-
teen years behind her and a formal recognition for her contribution to the loy-
alist movement nowhere in sight, Tokiko felt uncertain about her legacy. While
not a crisis of the same magnitude as the one she had faced while incarcerated,
the prospect of being confined to history’s limbo engendered anxiety no less.
To offset such anxiety, Tokiko did what she knew best: she summoned a ghost.
On the evening of 1873/2/10, Tokiko writes, “Teihōin entered my dreams and
penned a poem.” Teihōin was the Buddhist name that Tokugawa Nariaki’s wife,
Tominomiya, had chosen at the time of the Mito lord’s death in 1860. It is un-
clear whether the poem that follows is in fact the one Tominomiya allegedly
produced in the dream, but it very well may be, for it reads like the melancholic
mulling of a forlorn widow:
Hisakata no Ever since you [rose] near

kumoue ni chikaki the high sky
kimi nareba above the clouds
au koto gataki we cannot meet:
sasagani no ito a spider’s thread.6
Unlike the story of Michizane’s appearance in the Kyoto cell, which cor-
relates splendidly with the chronicle of Tokiko’s sufferings while in captivity
and functions as a veritable turning point in the narrative of her prison days,
the Tominomiya episode is striking both for its brevity and for its apparent dis-
connectedness from the surrounding text. The reader stumbles upon it and
leaves it baffled; there is no forewarning, no obvious crescendo leading to the
vision, and no explicit lesson drawn from it. Like the apparition itself, it is a
slippery fragment of the “was it a dream or was it reality?” (yume ka utsutsu ka)
variety.
A skilled woman of letters, Tokiko knew better than to fall into the traps
of non sequiturs. Its brevity notwithstanding, the summoning of Tominomiya
is in fact the endpoint in a series of subtle hints that bespeak Tokiko’s mount-
ing apprehension about the growing gap between “then” and “now.” While in
terms of simple numbers the distance between the present and the past was
not especially great, in practical terms an abyss separated the two eras. His-
tory textbooks would measure such a chasm with the yardstick of progress and
advancements, speaking, in some cases, of momentous transitions from “feu-
dal” to “modern” customs, but for Tokiko the divide simply boiled down to a
question of aging and vanishing memories. It was, in other words, personal.
144 Chapter 8
In the same anthology where she mentions Tominomiya’s brief appearance, To-
kiko presents the days of her captivity in Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo as fading away
in the distance:
Omoidete I think back,

dare ni kataran but whom do I tell
awareyo no about my life in a bird cage
mitsu no miyako no in the three capitals
toya no sumai o in those sad days?
Sugishigoro So much time has gone by

mitsu no miyako no since I escaped
torawa o mo my incarceration
nagarete ima wa in the three capitals
toshi o furusato and now I grow old in my old home.7
Tominomiya thus became one of the means by which Tokiko carried the
past into the present, ensuring continuity in the face of change and familiarity
in the face of novelty. At the time of her incarceration in 1859, Michizane had
symbolized the resilience and the ultimate triumph of the loyalist spirit, bring-
ing comfort at a difficult moment. He was, in other words, the past that came
to the rescue in the present. Tominomiya, on the other hand, was the present
coming to rescue the past.
Unlike Michizane’s, the ghost of Tominomiya was not, in fact, a ghost at
all. When she visited Tokiko in her dream on that night in 1873, the “real” Tom-
inomiya was still very much alive—and would go on to live another twenty
years. In the absence of Nariaki, by then dead for more than a decade and far
too removed into the high heavens to be within reach (au koto gataki), Tomi-
nomiya was a living, breathing reminder of Tokiko’s actions and of the cause
that had inspired them; she was the most powerful link between a past that
was slipping away and a present that looked more and more removed from its
prologue. Tominomiya’s cameo enabled Tokiko to reclaim her legacy, sweep-
ing off the dust of time and preserving the luster of the old in the midst of con-
stantly “renewing things.” For the time being, her past actions having yet to
catch the eye of the government, this trick had to suffice.
Official recognition for Tokiko’s contribution to the loyalist cause came
two years later, in 1875. By then seventy years old, Tokiko had just retired from
teaching. A new building had been completed to house Suzugoya’s elementary
school and her former classroom was no longer needed. Moreover, she now
belonged to an old generation of educators, not only in terms of age but also in
terms of professional background.
What she had known as the Way of Teaching, or, simply, “learning to write”
(tenarai), and what others in the late Tokugawa had understood as “cultivation”
(gakumon), were now relics of the past; the meaning, scope, and purpose of
education—indeed, the very word for it—had changed. Old-style cultivation
entailed an individual quest for personal amelioration on the part of gen-
tlemen scholars; modern education, by contrast, was imparted hierarchi-
cally, centrally controlled, and aimed at young citizens.8 Its building blocks were
practical, not abstract. In An Encouragement of Learning (Gakumon no su-
sume, 1872), for example, reformist Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) promoted
disciplines “closer to ordinary human needs” like mathematics, physics, eco-
nomics, or geography while advocating the rejection of “impractical pursuits”
such as the study of “obscure” Chinese characters.9 A village school teacher,
Tokiko did not belong to the cohort of domain academy scholars whose so-
phisticated yet sterile ruminations had come under Fukuzawa’s fire. Still, she
was not modern enough (or at all) for the new age. Article 40 of the Funda-
mental Code of Education, issued in 1872, required a diploma from a normal
school or a middle school for teachers to exercise their profession, and Tokiko
had none. Article 43 had allowed for a grace period of a few years in consider-
ation of the fact that no such schools had been created yet,10 but by 1875 the
time was up: Tokiko had to go. With her formal retirement from teaching, an
important line of continuity with her past dissolved, heightening already ex-
isting anxieties. (Tokiko continued to offer occasional private lessons after
1875.) The official recognition came at just the right time to assuage, if only
temporarily, some of her fears.
In 1875 Ibaraki Prefecture Councilor Seki Shinpei issued a request to
recognize, at long last, Kurosawa Tokiko. He extolled her dedication to the
imperial cause, explaining how “such heroism and zeal are not found among
all other grass-root-level [i.e., activist] women in the world,” and regretted
that the government had hitherto failed to offer Tokiko any praise. Fortu-
nately, he added, measures had been fi nally taken to acknowledge her ac-
tions: “After a special investigation on this person, we have arranged for
three people to offer testimonies on her life. Moreover, [we have] writings,
her personal history, and a written statement from her family, so we [can]
make our case.”11
The case Seki made turned the logic of the Tokugawa upside down, using
gender as a catalyst of commendation, not condemnation. The Tokugawa au-
thorities had considered Tokiko’s case doubly problematic because it combined
146 Chapter 8
insubordination against the status quo with disregard for gendered rules of
propriety. Seki’s appeal, by contrast, presents it as doubly extraordinary. First,
Tokiko rose above the limitations of a gender defined by apathy and trepida-
tion, achieving levels of courage and determination hardly ever seen among
women. Second, she also overcame women’s inferior literary skills, and, when
it came to poetry, she was “unmatched by men as well.” Straying beyond the
boundaries imposed by gender, once an incriminating factor, was now the
source of great admiration.
In recognition of her contribution to the imperial cause, Tokiko received
a lifelong grant of land worth ten koku12 (one koku, corresponding to 180 li-
ters or almost 45 gallons, was the amount of rice needed to feed one person for
one year; in the Tokugawa era it was the standard unit of measurement to es-
timate the agricultural output of a land, hence its value). The announcement
with which she was honored read as follows:
Ibaraki district, Suzugoya village.

Toki, wife of the late Kurosawa Nobusuke [Sukenobu], farmer.
Having harbored a remarkable determination to revere the em-
peror for a long time, she poured her whole heart [in favor] of the
country. In the fift h [sic] year of the Ansei era she secretly traveled
to Kyoto and was eventually arrested. Nevertheless, it is commend-
able that [such circumstances] could never change her determina-
tion, and for this reason she is to be honored with a lifelong grant
of [land worth] ten koku of rice.
February 3, 1875.
Ibaraki Prefecture.13
Whereas the Tokugawa authorities had refused to accept the notion that
as a woman Tokiko could have traveled alone and written the poem/petition
by herself, with this document the Meiji bureaucrats transformed her liability
into an asset. Tokiko is initially presented as an appendage to a male figure—
her second husband (or, depending on the source, her stepfather), Kurosawa
Nobusuke, or Sukenobu. Said link to a male figure, however, is entirely for-
gotten in the main text, where Tokiko is honored in her own right. Similar
proclamations from the Meiji era, by contrast, tended to celebrate the accom-
plishments of women loyalists by relating them to the deeds of their male
partners. The document with which Kyoto Prefecture posthumously honored
Kōran (Keien), wife of loyalist Yanagawa Seigan, in 1869, for example, reads as
follows:
Keien, the late wife of Yanagawa Seigan.

Since the days of the former [Tokugawa] government, the late
Seigan displayed a profound loyalist resolve; throughout his entire
life he devoted his efforts to the imperial cause. [His wife] Keien
followed suit. After her husband fell ill and died, she was arrested
by the officials of the Tokugawa, spent several months in jail, and
was subject to harsh reprimand. However, she did not compromise
her integrity in the least and endured her hardships awaiting the
final restoration of the imperial rule. Such virtue deserves recog-
nition. We hereby confer on Seigan’s loyal and virtuous [descen-
dants] a rice allowance for two.14
The proclamation opens and closes with the spotlight firmly on Seigan; Kōran’s
actions, however laudable, are contained between the two brackets that are Sei-
gan’s resolve as a young man and his equally loyal progeny. Tokiko, by contrast,
lived in nobody’s shade. Actions she had conceived and carried out with the
support of her circles were hailed in 1875 as her own.
Following the official recognition, Nariaki’s widow, Tominomiya, sent To-
kiko a congratulatory poem, which Tokiko took as a blessing and as “a much
joyful [occasion] for such a worthless person [as myself].”15 The “ghost” she had
encountered in a dream two years earlier now visited her again—not in per-
son, but by way of a symbolic object, a poem that signified continuity as well
as righteousness. There is, indeed, a sense of accomplishment that emerges from
Tokiko’s 1875 poems, many of which hint at having secured a metaphorical place
in the sun. Here is one example:
Kinō made How joyous: the summer rain

furitsuzukitaru that had been falling incessantly
samidare no until yesterday
harete ureshiki has now cleared
kyō no hikage wa and today the sun shines.16
Reinvigorated by the acknowledgement, in 1875 Tokiko basked in the glow of

her past actions, writing verses that extolled her unswerving devotion to her
long-gone lord:
Kimi ga tame Count me

kuni no tame ni to among those
ikinagara who lived and died
148 Chapter 8
naki hito kazu ni for their lord,

irishi wagami wa for their country.17
Along with a sense of validation came the resolve to reaffirm her worth as a
loyalist—1875 is also the year in which Tokiko added luster to her fading mem-
ories by revising Travel Diary and Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration. But while
the 1875 land grant temporarily boosted Tokiko’s ego—and ensured a comfort-
able source of income—the inexorable passing of time continued to erode her
confidence. She had to devise new methods to keep her past relevant.
A Blueprint for Survival

By the time she received the land grant in 1875, Tokiko lived not only in a dif-
ferent world writ large, but also at the center of personal circles that had evolved
over the years. Many of her old networks had dissolved; others were reconfig-
ured in the light of new circumstances. The family circle had expanded with
the arrival of grandchildren but had also suffered the loss of Tokiko’s eldest
daughter, Kumeko, in 1869 and of her youngest, Teruko, in the twelfth month
of 1875. The network borne out of her school had survived the Tokugawa-Meiji
transition with minor modifications. After the 1872 implementation of a na-
tional school system Tokiko’s classroom had become an elementary school, but
from a practical standpoint little had changed: as an educator she remained a
respected member of the community. After her retirement in 1875 she contin-
ued to offer private lessons through the fi nal years of her life. Many of the
individuals—poets and loyalists—who had been part of her circles in the late
Tokugawa were still in her life. Contacts with the Katōgi continued, as attested
by numerous letters preserved at Ibaraki University. Tatebayashi Miyatarō, writ-
ing in 1937, also mentions the existence, at Tokiko’s house, of poem drafts by
Morita Yoshio (one of the likely intermediaries between Tokiko and the Kyoto
loyalists) postdating the Restoration. He also indicates that Tokiko’s epistolary
exchanges with Kojima Harutaka (Shunson) from Iwate continued, and that
he visited her in Suzugoya in the years after the Kyoto mission.18
Equally important in defining Tokiko’s place in local society were the con-
nections she had nurtured by way of the Hōjuin. Tokiko does not mention
incantations and divination sessions in her works from the 1870s and beyond,
possibly because the new era was not one conducive to public displays of sooth-
saying powers. The early Meiji government, preoccupied with projecting a
modern image, cracked down on new religions, equaled spirit possession with
mental illness, and, starting in 1872, promulgated laws outlawing shamanism
throughout the country.19 Shugendō, one of the sources of income and iden-
tity for Kurosawa Tokiko throughout her adult life, was banned that same
year. In this respect it is especially telling that the 1875 document that bestows
Tokiko with the land grant refers to “Nobusuke” (Sukenobu) as a farmer and
not as a Shugendō practitioner and that it neglects to mention his religious
title, Hōin. None of this, of course, means that people stopped practicing or re-
questing healing and divination ser vices, but compliance was required, at
least on the surface. In light of the government’s new policies, Tokiko faced two
prospects: either severing her old connections to the heavens (which would have
meant denouncing and renouncing her past) or devising a new, acceptable way
to converse with them. She chose the latter and, in the fi nal years of her life,
she became involved with Ontakekyō, one of the thirteen sectarian Shinto
sects officially recognized by the Meiji government.20
Worship of Mount Ontake, a sacred peak in modern-day Nagano Prefec-
ture, had begun in the Nara period (710–784) and had developed under the in-
fluence of Shugendō. The mountain gained popularity in the late eighteenth
century thanks to the monks Kakumei and Fukan, who opened two routes to
the peak and organized religious confraternities.21 Kakumei also reduced the
number of days one had to spend in seclusion before entering the mountain
from seventy-five to twenty-seven, enabling more people to participate in On-
take rituals.22
Ontakekyō as a modern religious organization began in 1879, when Hi-
rayama Seisai (1815–1890), head priest of Hirakawa Shrine in Ōmiya (Saitama),
brought together various groups of former mountain ascetics under two or-
ganizational frames, Ontatekyō and Taiseikyō. Hirayama’s decision came on
the heels of the failed Great Promulgation Campaign of 1870–1884. To pro-
mote the idea of a unified Shinto creed, the Meiji state had recruited evange-
lists from a host of religious organizations old and new; among them were
members of the Buddhist clergy, reeling from the effects of the campaign to
separate kami and buddhas initiated in 1868, as well as former leaders of
Tokugawa-period new religions, all of whom saw the Great Promulgation Cam-
paign as a chance to receive state sanctioning and ensure survival in the face
of uncertain times.
The recruitment of evangelists from diverse backgrounds created problems.
On the one hand, several new religions had to compromise and lose part of
their original identity in the name of survival. On the other, many newfan-
gled evangelists never let go of notions and practices from their former creeds.23
Sarah Thal, for example, has shown how the religious administrators of Kon-
pira in Shikoku, a site with profound historical ties to Buddhism and Shugendō,
adopted a veneer of Shinto (renaming the site Kotohira, for example) but in
fact deployed a variety of tricks to spare the original identity of the site from
150 Chapter 8
historical oblivion. By compressing the characters for Kotohira so that, when

written vertically, they would in fact be read “Konpira,” by retaining ambigui-
ties in the content of the pilgrimage site, and by preserving Buddhist statues
on the grounds that they were important cultural properties, not religious im-
plements, the Kotohira administrators kicked the site’s traditions out the door
just to let them back in through the window.24 Given such premises, the re-
sulting message of the Great Promulgation Campaign, in Konpira as elsewhere,
was a hodgepodge of platitudes at best, an incoherent mess at worst. It is against
this background that major Shinto administrators like Hirayama attempted to
solve the problem by spearheading the creation of sects they founded and con-
trolled. Ontakekyō was one such organization.25
Tokiko already knew of Mount Ontake, having acknowledged the power
of its deities during her 1859 journey to Kyoto. She did not visit the mountain
at that time—even if she had wanted to, she would have been turned away, for
Mount Ontake was off limits to women. However, she stopped to worship its
deities from afar, “kneeling and worshipping, kneeling and worshipping, and
pledging from the bottom of my heart to bring my great undertaking to a suc-
cessful conclusion.”26 Her involvement with Ontakekyō began in 1885,
when she met Sekiguchi Minesaburō (1860–1942). In 1884 Minesaburō had
founded a local chapter of Ontakekyō in his village of Hōshido, Tochigi
Prefecture. The following year he decided to establish more associations in
the neighboring areas and turned to rural Ibaraki, where his path crossed
with Tokiko’s.
There are obvious reasons why Tokiko would have been attracted to prac-
tices centered on Mount Ontake. Like Shugendō practitioners, believers in the
power of Ontake enter into the mountains and perform austere rites of purifi-
cation. Ascetic practices in remote, rugged locations enable them to cross the
divide between the world of humans and the world of the gods and spirits, and
between life and death.27 From the foot to the summit, Mount Ontake is di-
vided into three zones corresponding to three different stages of proximity to
holiness: the space of humans (lay followers) at the bottom, the area reserved
for the ascetics in the middle, and the world of the gods and spirits at the top.
Encounters between humans and deities take place in the middle level, the space
of the religious specialists. Here the trained ascetics perform the so-called oza
ceremony, during which they speak to the spirits by way of ecstatic trances and
possession.28 Ontake’s belief in the presence of a porous barrier between the
world of humans and the world of the spirits explains why when given the pos-
sibility to associate herself with this particular organization Tokiko would not
have seen it as incongruous with her cosmology. Ontake’s notion that the spir-
its and the gods intervene to help humans deal with their problems, as they do
in the oza ceremony, would also have resonated with her, for the Ontake
spirits do precisely what Tokiko expected the cosmic forces to do: bring order
where there is chaos.
At the same time, Tokiko’s decision to join Ontatekyō may have been a
crime of opportunity, so to speak: the historical moment allowed for it, and
Minesaburō materialized just at the right time. By the mid-1880s the dramatic
actions of the Meiji state against Buddhism in general and Shugendō in par-
ticular were many years in the past; having realized that a complete eradica-
tion was not possible, the state had already begun the task of reincorporating
Buddhism into the nation’s history.29 By then, religious initiatives were no lon-
ger front and center, and the preoccupations of the Tokyo politicians had shifted
to military and industrial buildup. Becoming a religious leader may have brought
Tokiko additional income at a time when higher taxes and deflation had re-
duced the economic wherewithal of many a citizen.30 In her late seventies at
the time, Tokiko may not have been actively involved in the search for an al-
ternative to her previous affi liation, but Minesaburō appeared, and she seized
the chance.
In 1887 Tokiko penned a request to establish a chapter of Ontakekyō in
Suzugoya, with her house as headquarters. The following year Ibaraki gover-
nor Yasuda Sadanori (1844–1892) and Ontakekyō’s head Otori Sessō (1814–1904)
approved the request, making Tokiko the local chief representative of Ontakekyō
in Suzugoya with the title of Provisional Junior Prefect of Instruction (Gon no
Shōkyōsei).31 As Helen Hardacre points out, Otori Sessō was one of the many
“recycled religionists” who had survived the Meiji-era attempts to separate
Shinto and Buddhism by reinventing their religious affiliations. A former Bud-
dhist priest, Otori had turned to Shinto in 1871 and was appointed head of
Ontakekyō in 1885. A bureaucrat at heart, Otori probably saw his authorizing
of Tokiko’s request as part of his mission to educate the populace.32
Several documents preserved at Ibaraki University indicate that, even af-
ter Tokiko’s death, her house continued to serve as an Ontakekyō branch un-
der the leadership of Minesaburō, who by then had married into the family
and had taken the Kurosawa name, becoming Tokiko’s great-grandson by adop-
tion. A large number of Buddhist mortuary tablets found in the house (all dated
after Tokiko’s death) suggest that Minesaburō did not see his role as Ontakekyō
representative as irreconcilable with the performance of death rites. If the
sizeable stone phallus Gotō Norio, Yokoyama Yuriko, and I uncovered during
a visit to the house in 2012 is any indication, fertility rituals were also per-
formed under the Kurosawa roof. The Kurosawa, like Otori, were “recycled
religionists” who blended new and old beliefs without any sense of contra-
diction.
152 Chapter 8
Figure 8.1. The blueprint of Tokiko’s house from her 1887 request to establish a Suzugoya
chapter of Ontakekyō. 1. Address identifying the property: Ibaraki Prefecture, Hitachi
Province, Eastern Ibaraki district, Suzugoya village, House no. 84; 2. the “room of the
kami” (shinza), no longer standing; 3. the classroom (kyōjō); 4. the kitchen area (the small
rectangle indicates the hearth); 5. north (top)–south (bottom) axis. Courtesy of Ibaraki
University Library.
One of the documents attesting to Tokiko’s efforts to establish an associa-

tion with Ontakekyō includes a blueprint of her house, showing the arrange-
ment of her living and working spaces (figure 8.1). It indicates the areas reserved
for her private school and the space of worship—“the room of the kami.” (In
its current configuration the native home still includes the classroom and the
living space, but not the room of the kami.)33 The blueprint offers us another
key to unlock Tokiko’s Meiji-era efforts to rescue the past from the present, pro-
viding a snapshot of the process whereby individuals whose identities (and
sources of income) had been eradicated after the Tokugawa-Meiji transition
weathered the storm by squaring old circles. With the vision of Tominomiya
in 1873, Tokiko had reasserted her identity as a political activist at a time when
she felt that the deeds of the loyalists were becoming a relic of the past. Like-
wise, with the 1887 blueprint Tokiko managed to reclaim her role as a reli-
gious specialist on this side of the 1868 divide. By renaming the Hōjuin “the
room of the kami” Tokiko pulled a Konpira-to-Kotohira-type stunt, layering
the old with a thin veneer of the new. The makeover preserved her legitimate
role as a religious figure in the community, while rescuing the heavens—
Tokiko’s cosmos—from the relentless attacks of progress.
A Modern Vessel
If it is true that the new age contributed to the erasure and eradication of the
past, it is also undeniable that it provided hitherto unimaginable opportuni-
ties to preserve memories indefinitely. Thanks to a modern invention, the cam-
era, Tokiko found a third and final way to mediate between past and present
and to assuage her fear of historical amnesia. In 1889, one year before her death,
she posed for a portrait photograph (figure 8.2). I offer here one possible read-
ing of the image that is consistent with Tokiko’s view of the relationship be-
tween the world of humans and the world of the spirits and fits in well with
her previous attempts to keep the past present.
The circumstances that led Tokiko to pose for the photograph, as well as
the exact day in which it was taken, are not known, but one should assume that
an important event was involved. By 1889, photography was no longer the
exotic vector of “civilization and enlightenment” it had been two decades
Figure 8.2. Tokiko in 1889. Courtesy of Ibaraki University Library.

154 Chapter 8
earlier. At the same time, portrait photography was not yet a mundane, every-
day occurrence: it required at the very least a formal setting—a studio with
plenty of light and room for props, for example, and an artfully staged back-
ground.34 Photography, for most, was still the stuff of great occasions.
What great occasions did Tokiko enjoy in 1889? There are two options: the
first pertains to the large historical frame; the second, to Tokiko’s microcosm.
Let us start with the big picture. In Japan the year 1889 was memorable for the
promulgation of the Constitution on February 11. In the metropolitan areas,
in the rural villages, even in the remote mountain hamlets, February 11 be-
came a day to remember, a key moment in the country’s journey toward not
just modernity but also worldwide acceptance. On that day, decorations adorned
the streets, special meals were served, and citizens everywhere, including Su-
zugoya, celebrated.35 The festivities continued for months, culminating with
the investiture of the crown prince on November 3.36 Tokiko may have decided
to commemorate the event by posing for a portrait photograph.
While rejoicing about the great progress of the present, Tokiko would have
also been mourning the passing of the past. As Kokaze Hidemasa has compel-
ling argued, 1889 was “an epochal making year” that marked a beginning as
much as it did an end. On the one hand, the Constitution raised Japan’s inter-
national status and set in motion the process of acceptance that would lead to
the revision of the unequal treaties in 1894; on the other, 1889 turned the
Tokugawa past from political discourse into history. The tensions engendered
by the Restoration were neutralized as the Meiji government extended a hand
to the Tokugawa and celebrated them as the founders of “Tokyo.” In a similar
effort to wipe the slate clean, the state posthumously forgave Saigō Takamori
and bestowed court rank upon former loyalists Yoshida Shōin, Fujita Tōko, and
Sakuma Shōzan. By 1889, argues Kokaze, “to talk of the Restoration was no
longer to talk of the present; it had become a discourse about the past.”37 The
past, once again, needed rescuing.
There is a second option to explain Tokiko’s portrait, one that pertains not
to the sphere of large-scale history but to her personal microcosm. In 1889—
the exact date, unfortunately, is unknown38—Nariaki’s widow, Tominomiya,
visited the Tokugawa family tombs in Mito and met with Tokiko. After being
a fleeting vision in a dream, after materializing in the form of a congratula-
tory poem at the time of Tokiko’s official recognition, Tominomiya finally ap-
peared in person, bringing a long process of mutual acknowledgements and
distant admiration to completion. This occasion may also have merited me-
morializing.
There is no hard evidence linking the commissioning of the portrait
specifically to Tominomiya’s visit, to the conferral of rank to Restoration
loyalists, or to the promulgation of the Constitution, but that is almost beside

the point. The value of the image is elsewhere. Like Tominomiya’s dream ap-
pearance in 1873 and like the 1887 blueprint, the photograph is a bridge be-
tween past and present, an attempt by Tokiko to deflect the impositions of the
modern and to halt the onset of historical amnesia in ways that may not be
immediately obvious.
At first glance, the photograph immortalizes the Tokiko of the present, of
the 1880s. There is no evident trace of the past. A closer look, however, unveils
a different image. Despite all appearances, Tokiko is not alone in this portrait.
Posing with her is a small army of ghosts, of individuals otherwise elusive,
gone, and invisible to the naked eye, brought back for the occasion by way of
symbolic vessels not unlike the ones shamans used to summon the spirits. In
shamanistic practices such vessels are called yorishiro; they often take the
shape of elongated objects—trees, banners, wands, swords—to convey the
sense that the spirit is descending from a higher plane.39 None of the tradi-
tional yorishiro of the religious specialists is visible in the photograph because
none is there. The vessels Tokiko used on this occasion are metaphorical ones:
the strips of paper—elongated objects, no less—placed to her left. Saiki Kumi at
Ibaraki University has enlarged the original photograph, successfully deci-
phering one of the poems inscribed therein.40 It reads as follows:
[unreadable] Congratulations
Kimi ga tame For our lord

tateshi misao no you raised a clear mirror
masukagami of devotion
kiyoki hikari wa and it will shine brightly
yorozuyo mademo for all eternity.
Signed: Tokiko
It is thanks to this poem that we know Tokiko was posing not for an individ-
ual portrait but for a group picture, a final rendezvous with the iconic figures
of her past.
First in order of appearance among the unseen presences in the room is,
predictably, the ghost of Tokugawa Nariaki. The first line of the poem instantly
brings him (“our lord”) into the picture. Ever unforgotten, Nariaki is seized
from the past, from the oblivion of historical amnesia that so terrified Tokiko
in her final years. With the dust of time wiped away, the mirror polished, Nar-
iaki’s luster is made to shine “for all eternity.” The poem offsets the ruptures of
the historical process by reconnecting Tokiko with the figure at the center of
156 Chapter 8
her act of loyalty, by then thirty years in the past, and by cementing her bond
with him for centuries to come—the past, present, and eternal future converg-
ing in thirty-one syllables, now forever joined.
The second ghost lurking in this image is that of Katōgi Toyo (Shunzō’s
mother), who had died in 1871. Toyo was the original recipient of the afore-
mentioned poem (the “you” in the English translation), which Tokiko had sent
her in 1867.41 As noted in chapter 1, Toyo had traveled to Edo in 1844, after Nar-
iaki’s fi rst stint under house arrest, to petition for his release. Years later
Nariaki had heard about her feat of devotion and had acknowledged her
with a certificate of merit (hōjō) and with a mirror in which he had inscribed
these verses:
Kokonoe ni Even now,

ima mo masumi no a perfectly clear mirror
kagami koso at court:
nao yo o terasu may its light shine more and more
hikari narikere over this world.
This was a great honor. Nariaki had rewarded others among his supporters,
but usually with simple gifts such as fans or bowls. He presented mirrors in-
scribed by his own hand only on rare occasions; another recipient was, for ex-
ample, Kaneko Magojirō (of Sakurada Gate fame), whom Nariaki had recognized
in the Tenpō era (1830–1844) and whose poems Tokiko had copied in one of
her collections. Tokiko’s congratulatory poem was inspired by the honor Toyo
had received. Additionally, it may have been a belated acknowledgment of the
model of activism Toyo had provided: Saiki argues that Tokiko’s decision to
write a petition to exculpate Nariaki and to travel to Kyoto in 1859 may have
been fashioned after Toyo’s actions in 1844.42 Whether this was the case or not
is not important: what matters is that Tokiko looked up to Toyo as an exem-
plary loyalist, and in 1889 she brought her back from the dead to be included
in the photograph.
By choosing a poem that hinted at the “perfectly clear mirror” Tokiko also
invited a third ghost of sorts—the emperor himself. Otherwise elusive and above
the clouds, the emperor could at least be summoned, if not in person at least
symbolically, by invoking the mirror, one of the three sacred regalia that indi-
cate imperial authority. Tokiko’s awareness of the association between mirrors
and emperors is documented: at the time of her incarceration, when she was
being accused of embedding secret messages into her petition, one of the Kyoto
interrogators had asked her whether the word “clear mirror” included in one
of the poems attached to her petition was, in fact, code for Nariaki. Her an-
swer was: “No, that indicates one of the three sacred regalia of the august em-
peror, the mirror in the Office of Palace Attendants.”43 The mirror was thus a
projection of the emperor.
Sugawara no Michizane was also in attendance. One cannot help but no-
tice that the verses inscribed on the strip of paper are similar to those from
one of the poems Tokiko had composed in honor of Michizane during her 1859
incarceration (see appendix, sixth poem). The ghost of the illustrious courtier
thus returns yet again, this time not to give Tokiko strength at a time of crisis
but to partake in her final triumph. As his appearance in her cell thirty years
earlier had announced, at the end of the road great honors awaited indeed.
Last but not least, by resurrecting Toyo, Tokiko also paid tribute to Toyo’s
son Shunzō (still alive in 1889), whom she had sought at the time of her release
from prison. More than just a fellow loyalist and poetry tutor, Shunzō repre-
sented Tokiko’s loyalist network writ large, the entire support system that had
inspired and enabled her 1859 mission. By introducing a simple prop in her
portrait, Tokiko thus belatedly reconnected with a long-gone group of like-
minded people, a cohort of loyalists past and present, near and far, alive and
dead. Their presence in the room is not obvious at a first glance but becomes
evident if one looks at the delicate interplay of strategically placed “reflecting
mirrors.” The portrait, in sum, is a snapshot of Tokiko in 1889 as much as one
of Tokiko in 1859; it is one final act of negotiation between past and present,
between fading memories and timeless commemorations.
While there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty whose idea it
was to use this par ticular poem as a prop, it is safe to assume it was Tokiko’s.
Since there could not have been any expectation that the lines would be
readable in the photograph, the photographer was under no obligation to
embellish the scene with those specific verses, or even with verses penned by
Tokiko, for that matter; he could have picked any random strip of paper for
decorative purposes. This par ticular selection is too eloquent and laden with
symbolism to be strictly ornamental, much less accidental. Only Tokiko would
have grasped its full meaning. Nineteenth-century Japanese photography, Al-
len Hockley reminds us, was consumer-driven and the photographer/artist was
bound to accommodate the requests of his customers. “Agency for the imag-
ery,” Hockley writes, “ought to be posited with its consumers.”44 And agency is
precisely what Tokiko claimed in her battle against historical amnesia.
The use of the prop indicates one last thing about Tokiko’s determination
to call her own shots: the Meiji government’s calls for “modern rationality” had
spectacularly failed to erase her identity as a religious specialist of the old (that
is, un-modern) kind. The Tokiko we see in this image has ignored the requests
to eschew “superstition”; unconcerned with the Meiji-era diktats against the
158 Chapter 8
supernatural and the uncanny, she has successfully, if surreptitiously, deployed

a material object to channel a cohort of spirits into the room and to keep
them with her “for all eternity.” As Margarita Winkel reminds us, the word
for photograph means “the reproduction of reality.”45 Even in the modern age,
reality for Tokiko was never detached from the world of ghosts and spirits with
which she had conversed freely in her years as an oracle. Not only an act of
rescuing the past from the present, the prop in the portrait is also a symbol of
Tokiko’s resolve to keep the lines of communication between the heavens and
the everyday open at all times, at all costs, Meiji modernity notwithstanding.
Tokiko the sparrow flew out the window in 1890, at age eighty-five, after a
long life lived against the backdrop of dramatic changes, a life spent with an
eye to the heavens and one to the world, a life that brought her from mere foot-
note, to headline, to chief editor of her destiny’s script. As hexagram number
14 had anticipated, she had lived her life constantly “renewing things.” Having
left the room for good, Tokiko lost the ability to control her image and her
legacy. The chapters that follow continue to trace the flight of the sparrow by
examining not the way in which Tokiko told her own story, but the ways in
which others did it for her.
9 The Many Reincarnations
of Kurosawa Tokiko
Like the ghost of Sugawara no Michizane, the ghost of Kurosawa

Tokiko also came back from the dead. Two factors, one local and one national,
facilitated her return beginning in the early twentieth century. At the local
level, Mito natives resurrected Tokiko and heralded her as a symbol of their
former domain’s contribution to the birth of the Meiji state. On the national
stage, the promulgation of an 1899 law requiring the establishment of higher
schools for girls in every prefecture prompted the creation of a gender-specific
curriculum that would provide new and appropriate models of femininity.1 Both
local and national agendas spurred a historiographical interest in the lives of
Restoration women. In resurrecting the ghost of Tokiko, however, intellectu-
als and historians, state politicians, and provincial bureaucrats found them-
selves in a bit of an ideological pickle, for they unearthed aspects of her life
that did not always square well with new mainstream values.
On the surface, Tokiko’s story provided a template for admirable princi-
ples big and small—from patriotism to dedication to the household, from loy-
alty to erudition, from hard work to resourcefulness. One did not have to dig
deep, however, to detect a preoccupying penchant for independent thinking
(possibly a gateway to radicalism), a disregard for gender obligations, and trou-
bling flirtations with the (by modern standards) irrational. What twentieth-
century ideologues found difficult to handle were, in other words, Tokiko’s very
own chaos and cosmos.
The complex issue of female activism turned out to be as hard to ignore in
the twentieth century as it had been in the nineteenth. In the fi rst decades
after the Restoration, the Meiji government, preoccupied with the rise of the Pop-
ular Rights movement, did not pay much attention to the place of women in
politics.2 In 1875 Tokiko had even received recognition with a text that extolled
her ability to rise above the limitations of gender. In the 1880s, however, things
began to change. In response to the push for an increased participation of women
in the political debate, to requests for gender equality, and to appeals for wom-
en’s suffrage, the state curtailed women’s ability to act in the public sphere. The
159
160 Chapter 9
1883 Newspaper Law limited the ownership, directorship, and editorship of

print media to males over the age of twenty, with the result that the inspira-
tional stories about strong-willed women (including Tokiko) that appeared in
the press were always fi ltered through the male gaze.3 After 1888 only adult
males could claim the right to being “public persons,” to vote, and to serve in
municipal assemblies.4 Two years later, in 1890, the Law on Associations and
Meetings made it illegal for women to attend political rallies or join political
groups, a ban reiterated with the Security Police Law of 1900.5 In 1921, reflect-
ing back on the relation between women and politics since the 1890s, Baron
Fujimura Yoshirō even asserted in no uncertain terms that a politicized woman
“violates the laws of nature.”6
While enacting policies that wrote women out of the political sphere, the
government also promoted an image of femininity encapsulated in the slogan
“good wife, wise mother” and rooted in ideals of self-abnegation, frugality, hard
work, and devotion to childrearing. These good wives and wise mothers could
and should be at the ser vice of the state, but only insofar as they nurtured its
basic unit, the household. “Like civil servants,” housewives could think of them-
selves as “veritable officers of the state in its microcosm, the home.”7 It would
take some pushing and pulling to lodge Tokiko’s story within this frame.
Her conversations with the heavens presented another thorny issue. In an
effort to project the image of an advanced, progressive nation (one undeserv-
ing of the unequal treaties), the early Meiji government looked at all things su-
pernatural as “pests to the modern project” and, as Gerald Figal has compellingly
illustrated, “targeted [them] for extermination”:8 it abolished Shugendō in 1872
and pursued an active agenda of eradicating shamanism and spirit possession
and of persecuting the new religions. Nakayama Miki of Tenrikyō, for exam-
ple, incurred the wrath of the state for impinging on the turf of the clergy—
“On what authority do you base your belief?” she was asked. The authorities
ascribed her trances to a ner vous disorder and accused her “of bewitching peo-
ple by prayers and charms.”9 Divination survived the Meiji government’s at-
tempt to eradicate it, but did so mostly in the guise of a popu lar game
(kokkuri)—no longer pertaining to the loft y realm of the mystic, not yet fully
erased by science, it was now tolerated as an expression of the ludic: a bit child-
ish, somewhat undignified, occasionally smile-enticing, definitely harmless.10
The question thus arose: Could Tokiko’s ghost be brought back safely or
would it unleash uncontrollable forces of radicalism and superstition? Ghosts
are notoriously tricky, but if appeasement had worked with the fearsome Mich-
izane, it could also work with Tokiko. Enshrined in the pages of magazines,
proclamations, letters, and books, she would be retroactively assigned titles less
of the preternatural and more of the patriotic kind. Where everything else failed,
The Many Reincarnations of Kurosawa Tokiko 161
there was always creative editing. Like Sugawara no Michizane, Tokiko would
thus return after her death, not in the guise of a vengeful spirit but in the form
of a tamed heroine and a model for women to follow. As part of a series of po-
liticized memory projects, her resurrected phantom would bespeak current
agendas and ongoing preoccupations more than it would past indignations or,
for that matter, strict historical accuracy. The stage had changed and so had
the script.
In a way that befitted a base-born nobody, Tokiko began her post mortem
career from the sidelines. The first agenda that her ghost came back to serve
was not a grandiose national one, but a more modest one that appealed to lo-
cal Mito promoters. As Michael Wert reminds us, “memory activists” were es-
pecially dedicated to shaping memories of the Restoration, particularly when
it came to the fate of the losers.11 Because she had sided with the victors, To-
kiko did not need the kind of commemorative rehabilitation reserved for the
former Tokugawa supporters; however, not unlike them, she too became a tool
in the hands of local activists bent on shaping national narratives of the fall of
the Tokugawa.
It was in Mito that in 1900 Tokiko staged her first comeback in the pages
of Gunji Atsunobu’s Unparalleled Now and Then: The Woman Loyalist Tokiko
(Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko). As the title suggests, this was a triumphant re-
turn predicated upon the notion of exceptionalism. There are two introduc-
tions to the volume.12 The first, dated 1899, is penned by Kashiwada Morifumi
(1851–1910), then governor of Ibaraki Prefecture. The second, undated, is the
work of Sekito Kakuzō (1844–1916), author of Mito Castle (Mitojō, 1900) and
of A History of Civil Rights in the Far East (Tōsui minkenshi, 1903). Both intro-
ductions set the stage by drawing a clear line between heroes and villains: on
the one side, the shogunate, its misgovernment, and the tyrannical policies of
Ii Naosuke, a man who “defied public criticism” and, with the Ansei Purges,
killed patriots and men of virtue; on the other, Tokiko, “resolute and indomi-
table, wholeheartedly devoted, heroic in her determination and honor.” From
the beginning, readers understand that Unparalleled Now and Then is more
than Tokiko’s life story: it is the saga of Mito domain as a whole in its valiant
historical struggle against the injustices of the late Tokugawa government.
In attempting to handle Tokiko’s chaos and cosmos, twentieth-century
ideologues deployed two techniques: manipulation and omission. Gunji’s work
is a model of both. Tokiko’s gender, for example, is an issue only insofar as it
presents an obstacle for her to overcome and demonstrate her greatness. In a
narrative based on dialogues that are often embellished or fictional, Gunji has
Koibuchi Jihei (Suzugoya’s village head, with whom Tokiko had traveled for a
162 Chapter 9
small part of her trip to Kyoto) marvel that Tokiko would have crossed rivers
and mountains “with the body of a woman.” Elsewhere the work reminds its
readers that Tokiko was “a weak woman” and that she had embarked on her
mission “despite being a woman.”13 Stressing her handicaps accentuates the
exceptionality of her actions, all undertaken in spite of her gender. Her story,
thus, becomes so extraordinary that, as one of the contributors emphatically
proclaimed, it “ought to be told and retold in perpetuity.”
The narrative also makes no mention of Tokiko’s stint as a traveling
peddler or of her career as an educator, thus omitting examples of agency and
ingenuity that predated her embracing of the loyalist cause. Such silences make
for a much more memorable political awakening, as Tokiko goes from zero to
sixty in a matter of seconds. Gunji’s is, indeed, a narrative based on sharp turn-
ing points and defining moments: great indignation upon hearing of the An-
sei Purges, the sighting of the comet, and the unexpected visit from Shishido
Nakatsukasa lead Tokiko to her decision to go to Kyoto.
What purpose did this mutilated reincarnation of Tokiko serve? In sev-
eral ways, Gunji’s narrative echoed the story Tokiko had told her interrogators
after her arrest. Gunji’s goal, however, was not simply the defense of one his-
torical character but, more broadly, an encomium of the former domain writ
large: Gunji, who had published An Unofficial History of Mito (Mito yashi) three
years earlier, wrote with Mito in mind. With Unparalleled Now and Then he
told the story of a patriot who bursts onto the scene seemingly out of no-
where—an accidental heroine who represents the degree to which even the
weakest of the weak in Mito domain felt impelled to protest the unfairness of
the Ansei Purges. With Gunji’s monograph Tokiko comes back from the dead
to boost the historical and historiographical image of her domain and to re-
cover ostensible Mito values like true courage and unconditional devotion that
appeared to have been lost in the modern age. It is not a coincidence that one
of the contributors, in his introduction, explicitly decried the fact that only thirty
years after the Restoration “the samurai spirit has dried up and everyone, ev-
erywhere, merely courts profit.”14
With Unparalleled Now and Then Gunji brought attention to a remarkable
case study in Mito loyalty that had yet to make it big on a national scale. Dur-
ing her lifetime Tokiko had been conferred the land grant; a transcript of the
1875 document penned by then Ibaraki Prefecture Councilor Seki Shinpei is
indeed included in Gunji’s work. Tokiko had also been acknowledged by Nar-
iaki’s widow and had met her in 1889. After her death, however, bigger acco-
lades had failed to materialize. When Unparalleled Now and Then was fi rst
published, the Imperial Household Agency (Kunaishō) had already honored
four female loyalists from the late Tokugawa period with posthumous court
titles (see table 9.1), but not one of them was from Mito. Gunji does not explic-
itly declare whether Unparalleled Now and Then is in fact an attempt to pro-
mote Tokiko’s image so she too would receive court rank, but it is fair to assume
so. In any case, Gunji succeeded in his attempts at promotion, for his work ended
up influencing the author of the first piece on Tokiko to appear in a women’s
magazine circulating nationwide.
A couple of years after the completion of Unparalleled Now and Then, the
ghost of Tokiko resurfaced in the pages of Women and Children (Fujin to
kodomo). Shimomura Miyokichi (1868–1938) penned eight short installments
about her that appeared in the magazine between 1902 and 1904. The first four,
simply titled “Kurosawa Tokiko,” provide the basic biographical framework for
her life, from her birth to the bestowal of the land grant in the Meiji era. The
final four appeared under the title “The Legend of Kurosawa Tokiko: A Sup-
plement” (“Kurosawa Tokiko-den hoi”). Shimomura visited Mito in 1903 to
see firsthand the various sites associated with Tokiko. Moreover, between the
first and the second series of installments he had read Gunji’s Unparalleled
TABLE 9.1 Loyalist Women Honored with Posthumous Court Rank
RANK,
NAME DATES PROVENANCE DATE OF CONFERRAL
Muraoka no 1786–1873 Kyoto Junior Fourth Rank, 1891
Tsubone
Ikeda (Kawase) Kō 1818–1865 Ōmi Senior Fift h Rank, 1891
Nomura Bōtō 1806–1867 Chikuzen Senior Fift h Rank, 1891
Matsuo Taseko 1811–1894 Shinano Senior Fift h Rank, 1903
Keikōin Shuetsu ?—1509 Kyoto Senior Fourth Rank, 1905
Keikōin Seijun ?—1566 Ōmi Senior Third Rank, 1905
Keikōin Shuyō ?—1611 Ōmi Senior Fourth Rank, 1905
Kurosawa Tokiko 1806–1890 Mito Junior Fift h Rank, 1907a
Uryū Iwako 1829–1897 Iwashiro Junior Fift h Rank, 1924
Yanagawa Kōran 1804–1879 Mino Junior Fift h Rank, 1924
Muraoka Koto ?—1870 Marugame Junior Fift h Rank, 1928
(Sanuki)
Wakae Nioko 1835–1881 Kyoto Junior Fift h Rank, 1928
Adapted from Takaki, “Sōmō no josei,” 257.
a
Incorrectly, Takaki lists 1891 as the year when Matsuo Taseko received her posthumous
court rank and 1903 as the year when Tokiko attained hers.
164 Chapter 9
Now and Then and, realizing how succinct his earlier version of the story was,
decided to expand it.15
Aware of Tokiko’s lingering anonymity, Shimomura glorifies her by asso-
ciation with more illustrious loyalists. In the first installment, for example, he
compares her to Nomura Bōtō, the nun from Fukuoka, and to Tsuzaki Noriko
of Kyoto, better known as Muraoka no Tsubone. Both, by then, had established
their reputation as über-heroines of the loyalist movement, having been among
the first women to receive posthumous court rank from the Imperial Household
Agency in 1891. Shimomura also connects Tokiko to famous male loyalists by
the clumsy trick of pointing out that she was born in 1806, the same year as
Mito native Fujita Tōko. (Had he looked closer, Shimomura would have no-
ticed that Nomura Bōtō was born in 1806 as well, but that was not the point:
with Nomura Bōtō, Tokiko already shared her gender. Shimomura needed a
way to bring a prominent male figure into the mix fully to establish Tokiko’s
credentials.)
Since Shimomura’s purpose was not to hail the greatness of Mito, his ren-
dition of Tokiko’s story differs from Gunji’s in several important ways. Whereas
Gunji’s narrative is one of sharp turning points and quick-burning flames, Shi-
momura, writing for a female audience in a magazine whose title celebrated
motherhood, presents us with a slow, gradual scenario. Born in Mito, Tokiko
was exposed to nativist thought since her childhood, we are told, making it in-
evitable that she would blossom into a splendid loyalist flower. Even before the
arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853, “deep down in her heart she harbored a
concern for the state of the country.”16 With Perry’s arrival, “the gates of our
closed country were knocked down, and we were jolted awake from our lan-
guid dreams.” The country plunged into chaos and Tokiko felt the sting of a
“righteous patriotic indignation.” At the end of 1858 someone (Nakatsukasa,
but his name is not mentioned) advised her to go into hiding to escape the dan-
gers of the Ansei Purges, but Tokiko “was steadfast, and to this [invitation] she
replied that she had already devoted herself to the country. . . . The person who
had made such suggestion could not help but feel ashamed.”17 It was at this point
that Tokiko resolved to travel to Kyoto “all alone,” motivated by “unswerving
loyalty.”18
The phantom of Tokiko that materializes in the pages of Women and Chil-
dren is rational and suspiciously modern. Shimomura did not use either term,
but his editorial choices speak for him. The comet, which Gunji had at least
cited as one of the factors that had induced Tokiko to rush into action, is com-
pletely absent from this story. Shimomura includes a digression on Shugendō,
but does so to contextualize the figure of Tokiko’s father, not her. In the sec-
ond series of installments Shimomura presents several excerpts from Tokiko’s
prison diary (lifted from Gunji’s work and edited), but selects only the ones
that hint at her gender consciousness—a topic with which his readers would
have identified—and ignores any discussion of ghosts and portents. A maga-
zine dedicated to motherhood in the day and age of good wives and wise moth-
ers, Women and Children was an unlikely platform to endorse a rendezvous with
occult forces; Tokiko’s story thus became one of determination and inner
strength, “sincerity and zeal,” and “pure honor.”19 Each time she returned from
the dead, Tokiko had to reenact slightly different scripts.
With Shimomura, Tokiko made the first leap from regional to national
sensation, but major posthumous recognitions continued to elude her. In 1905
the Imperial Household Agency bestowed another round of titles upon loyal-
ist heroines of the past, but it ignored the late Tokugawa era altogether and fo-
cused instead on three sixteenth-century nuns connected to the revival of Ise
Shrine (table 9.1). Tokiko also failed to make the list in Biographies of Loyalist
Heroes (Kinnō resshiden), a Who’s Who of nineteenth-century patriots pub-
lished in Tokyo in 1906 by the gloriously named Office for the Erection of Mon-
uments and for the Celebration of Deeds of Loyalist Heroes (Kinnō Resshi Shōkō
Kenpi Jimusho).20
The following year, however, Tokiko’s ghost finally entered the inner sanc-
tum of loyalist tradition. On November 15, 1907, seventeen years after her death,
forty years since the Restoration, Tokiko joined the likes of Muraoka no Tsub-
one, Nomura Bōtō, and Matsuo Taseko and became one of only a handful of
women to be granted posthumous court rank as Restoration icons. She was the
fift h and last Tokugawa-period female activist to receive such recognition in
the Meiji period; four more women would be added to the list in the Taishō
and Shōwa eras. The certificate with which she was bestowed Junior Fift h Rank
carries the signature of Imperial Household Minister Tanaka Mitsuaki (1843–
1939). The November 16 morning editions of two major national newspapers,
the Asahi and the Yomiuri, reported the news.21 Along with Tokiko, twenty-
three other loyalists from the former Mito domain received posthumous rank
on November 15, but she was the only woman on the list.
The timing made sense in several ways. In November 1907 large-scale mil-
itary maneuvers were being carried out in Ibaraki, with none other than Em-
peror Meiji in attendance (the imperial headquarters had been set up in Yūki
city).22 With the spotlight focused both on Mito and on the emperor, the time
was ideal to remember and honor the deeds of the local loyalists. The Asahi
article openly links the emperor’s presence in Ibaraki to the posthumous hon-
oring of the loyalists.
The year 1907 in general brought progress, distinction, and a sense of
accomplishment to the former domain of Tokugawa Nariaki. Only one year
166 Chapter 9
earlier, the Great History of Japan (Dai Nihonshi), the monumental encyclope-
dic study of the imperial institution whose compilation had begun in the late
seventeenth century, had been brought to completion. In 1907 electric lights
and telephones had arrived to Mito city—tangible symbols of the advance of
progress.23 By 1907 Japan as a whole had reached several milestones worthy
of a modern nation, including important victories in war and the acquisition
of colonies. The Meiji Industrial Exposition held at Ueno Park between March
and July of that year had showcased such state-of-the-art marvels as electricity,
a Ferris wheel, and a swimming pool. The unequal treaties had been long lifted,
but new tensions with foreign powers had arisen: the Gentlemen’s Agreement
of February 1907, for example, curtailed the immigration of Japanese citizens
to the United States, resurrecting the specter of racial antagonism. In this am-
bivalent climate of optimistic smiles and degrading slaps in the face, of great
pride and renewed indignities, honoring Mito loyalists also made sense because
of obvious historical parallelisms: fift y years earlier, they had taken it upon
themselves to oppose foreign encroachment and stand up for their country.
In Tokiko’s hometown, news of the honor bestowed upon the local icon
was met with elation. The local Office of the Festivities for the Conferral of Rank
(Zōi Shukusai Jimusho) sent out a request for poems celebrating Tokiko’s great
achievement.24 Preparations began for a ceremony to be held at Minesaburō’s
house on the eighteenth anniversary of her death (1908/5/8); fellow villagers
“of a like mind” were invited to attend.25 The Kurosawa Family Records at
Ibaraki University contain various celebratory poems and congratulatory ad-
dresses dated 1908/5/8 and penned by long-time family friends (such as the
Katōgi) and prominent local figures, including Kurihara Yūichirō (principal
of Iwabune Elementary School) and Mito history scholar and Iwabune mayor
Takasu Kōzō.26
Within the span of seven years, from 1900 to 1907, local agendas, national
politics, and even international preoccupations brought Kurosawa Tokiko
from regional sensation to imperially sanctioned heroine. Having completed
her apotheosis, one would expect the ghost of Kurosawa Tokiko to become a
standard feature of all loyalist biographies produced thereafter. However, this
was not the case. In the decades that followed, Tokiko was ignored or barely
mentioned. There is a noticeable lull in Tokiko’s historiography between the first
decade of the twentieth century and the 1930s, one that even her biographer
Tatebayashi Miyatarō remarked upon in 1937.27 Anthologies that otherwise cel-
ebrated loyalists often neglected to include her; Arima Sukemasa’s The Loyal-
ist Collection (Kinnō bunko, 1919), for example, features the prison diaries of
Nomura Bōtō, Takasugi Shinsaku, and Saigō Takamori, but not Tokiko’s.28
Others did mention her, but in passing, with no fanfare,29 and often in tell-
ingly distorted ways. A 1921 anthology of verses by loyalists featured her long
petitionary poem and three of her thirty-one-syllable compositions (waka). The
version of the petition included therein, however, is slightly different from the
original; most notably, the direct reference to Ii Naosuke and his “evil deeds”
is missing, and what Tokiko had originally called “august reign” has become,
appropriately, “our country.”30 Horiuchi Seiu’s One Hundred Heroes of the Res-
toration (Ishin hyakketsu, 1910) also manipulates Tokiko’s story. Despite being
published three years after the bestowal of posthumous rank, the work makes no
mention of it. It is also silent on the comet and on Tokiko’s dabbling with divi-
nation. The entry praises her as “a brave woman of devotion and indignation”
and as a model citizen who enjoyed writing poetry in the spare time she had
from farming, spinning, and weaving. In so doing, this work deprives Tokiko
of any agency, firmly lodging her within a traditional niche of female respect-
ability and obedience. Moreover, in this version of the story Tokiko acts not
out of her own volition but on behalf of a man, Kusakabe Isōji, a loyalist who
had served under both Satsuma and Mito domains.31 With his attention to the
delicate balance between female activism and devotion to household chores,
not to mention his lack of interest in the role of the cosmos in Tokiko’s world-
view, Horiuchi anticipates several of the distortions to which the story of To-
kiko would be subject two decades later, during her second great comeback in
the 1930s.
In the 1930s the ghost of Kurosawa Tokiko returned to the world of hu-
mans to provide, again, much needed guidance. Many saw a parallel between
the current time and the turmoil of the late Tokugawa: in both cases thorny
domestic issues, severe tensions in the international arena, and the specter of
war afflicted the country. Against this background, late-Tokugawa loyalists (men
and women) were resurrected as paragons of loyalty, frugality, and focused de-
termination. Japanese Women: A Cultural History (Nihon josei bunkashi, 1938),
for example, argued: “Our country, Japan, ranks among the great powers of
the world; our armed forces attain glory each day, and there is no denying
that the foundations of this [glory] are found in the great deeds of the Meiji
Restoration.”32
In February 1938 Tokiko reappeared in the pages of a women’s magazine
when The Housewife’s Companion (Shufu no tomo) ran a story by Yoshikawa
Eiji, author of historical novels, titled “Patriotic Women: An Illustrated Story.”
Had it been a movie, “Patriotic Women” would have been a blockbuster, con-
sidering that the circulation of The House wife’s Companion in the 1930s
168 Chapter 9
amounted to almost one million.33 Guest starring with Tokiko were such
illustrious women loyalists as Muraoka no Tsubone, Nomura Bōtō, and Mat-
suo Taseko.34 Tokiko got the part because
she never stopped arguing that all citizens should join their hearts
under one ruler in the face of foreign threats. This [stance] did not
immediately pay off and she ended up traveling as a prisoner in a
palanquin in the frozen rain, but eventually, many years down the
road, she came to the new imperial capital, Tokyo, where she basked
in the glow of the imperial majesty and of a new Japan [shin
Nippon].
The historical circumstances had changed dramatically since her first come-
back in the early 1900s. What had not changed, in this “new Japan,” was the
uneasiness with which those who staged her return handled Tokiko’s penchant
for challenging gender boundaries and her conversations with the heavens. Most
authors still thought it important to give credit to female participation in
political activism while at the same time offering an excuse for it; as a conse-
quence, almost every acknowledgment of women’s contribution to the loyalist
movement included a “desperate times call for desperate measures” caveat.
Moreover, Tokiko’s dialogues with the forces of the yin and yang, her rendez-
vous with Michizane, and her experience with the comet remained problem-
atic. At a minimum, they were case studies in female irrationality, lack of
discipline, or hysteria; in the worst of scenarios, they could imply national
backwardness. For this reason they were to be minimized if not altogether
erased from the record. Tokiko’s 1930s and 1940s return to the stage thus re-
quired a strategic repositioning of the spotlights to create just the right bal-
ance of lights and shadows. As a result she came back in sporadic cameos, her
story told in fragmented, manipulated tidbits. She was offered a role—that of
paragon—that looked good on paper but that, in reality, required her to conceal
her true self behind a mask.
Consider for example Nunomura Yasuhiro’s Women and the Meiji Resto-
ration (Meiji ishin to josei, 1936). In the interwar years the appearance of the
“new woman” and of the “modern girl” had brought about both new freedoms
and new limitations.35 Coming as it did at the end of such an interval, Nuno-
mura’s monograph captures the tension between new and traditional roles, re-
vealing a special concern for the extent of women’s active participation in
politics. Women and the Meiji Restoration does not interest us for what it says
about Tokiko (which does not amount to much) but for what it omits. Its
silences illuminate a historical moment of transition and perplexity, a mo-

ment when nationalistic sentiment, the quest for inspirational models, and
the need to acknowledge new roles for women converged and had to be recon-
ciled with traditional expectations.
In Women and the Meiji Restoration Tokiko plays only one role, that of
“female warrior” willing to sacrifice her life for the emperor.36 The credits, so
to speak, roll immediately after her sentencing and banishment; her life as a
teacher and her life after the Restoration are completely ignored. Tokiko’s
political activism is not an interlude in an otherwise intricate and multifac-
eted life; it is her entire life. By saying nothing of Tokiko’s other interests and
identities, Nunomura turns her into an exceptional figure, one to admire
from a distance rather than emulate.
Nunomura’s work captures not only the endpoint of the debate on the new
woman that had developed in the interwar years but also the beginning of a
historical moment prominently defined by conflict. At this junction, as men-
tioned earlier, the parallels between “now” (the 1930s) and “then” (the late
Tokugawa) were coming into focus, and models of patriotism from the past were
in high demand. Lingering notions of feminine passivity, however, clashed with
the need to inspire women to be active. Such a dilemma transpires clearly in
the introductory pages to Nunomura’s work. Women and the Meiji Restoration
begins with the premise that history must tell the story of “the rulers with the
ruled, the privileged with the masses.”37 Inclusivity, however, does not mean
uncritical acceptance. Though he commends the activities of nineteenth-century
female loyalists, Nunomura is careful to emphasize that their involvement with
politics occurred under extraordinary circumstances, “at a time of [such] cri-
sis for the nation” that it became impossible for them “to sustain the household.”38
Ideally, it is suggested, these heroines would have stayed in the domestic sphere;
unfortunately, circumstances dictated otherwise. Along the same line, the afore-
mentioned Japanese Women: A Cultural History (1938) glorified the contribu-
tion of women to the loyalist cause, praising them for being fi lled with “a truly
patriotic spirit” and, in some cases, for outdoing men.39 When it comes to in-
troducing Tokiko, however, the text also specifies that, before the Ansei Purges
precipitated an inescapable crisis, she was “following the way of the household”
(kadō o mamori).40 Rather than endorsing female activism, these works in fact
apologize for it.
A similar attempt to compromise between gender and activism emerges
in Ogawa Enson’s Behind-the-Scenes History of the Late Tokugawa: Tales of Loy-
alist Heroines (Bakumatsu rimenshi: Kinnō retsujoden, 1943), published in the
midst of the Pacific War. In the opening pages Ogawa states that women in
170 Chapter 9
patriarchal societies owe obedience to their fathers, husbands, and sons; their
duties include being graceful, bearing children, and being subordinate. As the
word kanai (wife, literally, “inside the house”) exemplifies, argues Ogawa,
they are homebound by definition. How does domesticity square with politi-
cal activism, then? Loyalist women of the late Tokugawa, says Ogawa, did not
break the rules; rather, they demonstrated their loyalty while remaining obe-
dient to male figures: “these women were heroines who poured their hearts
into Japan’s distinct loyalist [cause] while at the same time following a purely
Japanese Way of the Women.”41 Like Nunomura, Ogawa presents Tokiko not as
someone who purposely acted against the social fabric but as someone who
had to make a tough call in the face of extreme circumstances, a call she would
not have made otherwise. Also like Nunomura, Ogawa casts Tokiko in a uni-
dimensional role. The illustration that accompanies the text portrays her as an
undercover traveler on a mission (figure 9.1). Suspended in a timeless land-
scape (as exemplified by the ancient temple), Tokiko has almost no facial fea-
tures. Like the abstract model she was supposed to present, this Tokiko was
reincarnated not as a physical person but as a concept.
Figure 9.1. Tokiko as a traveler on the move and an abstract model of female activism
in Behind-the-Scenes History of the Late Tokugawa: Tales of Loyalist Heroines (1943).
Ogawa Enson, Bakumatsu rimenshi: Kinnō retsujoden (Tokyo: Ryōkoku Minsha, 1943).
Courtesy of Kadokawa Shoten.
Ogawa’s indistinct portrait reveals how some of the editorial manipula-

tions to which the story of Tokiko’s life was subject in the 1930s and 1940s also
applied to the visual media. The 1938 article on patriotic women from The
Housewife’s Companion also included an image of Tokiko as a traveler (figure
6.2). Unlike Ogawa’s, however, this one featured an abundance of detail, from
the lush vegetation of the forest to Tokiko’s facial traits. It was, though, no less
manipulated, and sent subtle yet unambiguous messages that are worth
unveiling.
Because of its size (taking up half of the first page and virtually all of the
second), the illustration “speaks” to the readers before the text does, present-
ing them with the snapshot of a young female traveler lost in the woods—a veri-
table damsel in distress. For all its poignancy, however, this image is a fake; it
caters to 1940s agendas more than it does to historical accuracy and does so
by manipulating Tokiko’s looks. Far from being a young lady, the “real” To-
kiko was well into her fifties at the time of her journey to Kyoto. The attached
text suggests she had already “approached her forties,” but the image makes
her look much younger. There is an explanation for this case of creative edit-
ing, but before we get to it, let us pause for a moment and flip back one page,
where the discerning reader would notice a similar manipulation at work in
the story of Nomura Bōtō.
Bōtō, the loyalist nun from Fukuoka, is here depicted in the act of copy-
ing The Heart Sutra (Prajna-paramita sūtra) using her blood as ink. The epi-
sode is historically accurate: Bōtō writes about it both in a letter (“Recently I
started writing The Heart Sutra in blood, something I had been talking about
for some time”) and in her prison diary, where she says she performed the act
as a tribute “for those who are deceased,” referring to her fellow Fukuoka loyal-
ists.42 Her writings unmistakably indicate that Bōtō wrote The Heart Sutra in
blood while exiled and imprisoned on Himeshima in 1866, which means she
would have been sixty years old at the time (sixty-one by Japanese counting).
The woman in the illustration, however, is much younger looking. Why would
The Housewife’s Companion repeatedly alter such a seemingly trivial detail?
One reason is marketability. The majority of the magazine’s readers at the
time consisted of unmarried working women or newly married ones; The
Housewife’s Companion therefore tended to feature cover girls who would em-
body either the prototypical “young lady” (musume-san) or the “young wife”
(wakafujin) “to whom the average lady could relate closely.”43 By contrast, at
the time of their deepest engagement with political activism, the “real” Tokiko
and Bōtō were significantly older than the average reader of The Housewife’s
Companion, a detail that could have made it difficult to relate to their stories.
Moreover, not only were they older, but, at this point in their lives, they had both
172 Chapter 9
been widowed for a long time and were no longer concerned with issues of
child rearing, much less child bearing. (In 1829 Bōtō had married a samurai
with three children of his own; she bore him four, but they all died in their
infancy.) Tokiko and Bōtō were thus given a symbolic facelift in an effort to
make them appeal to The Housewife’s Companion’s target readers.
There is, however, a second possibility, one that is less related to market-
ing and profit and more to ideology. By portraying Tokiko as a damsel in dis-
tress lost in a dark forest (and Bōtō as a prisoner drawing her own blood), The
Housewife’s Companion used her story as a cautionary tale for its young female
readers: this is what can happen if you meddle with politics. The text itself,
after all, told the story of how her actions had caused Tokiko to travel “as a
prisoner in a palanquin in the frozen rain.” Unlike other more progressive mag-
azines of the time (for example Fujin kōron), The Housewife’s Companion pro-
moted domesticity over politics.44 With this insert on Tokiko (and Bōtō), it
praised loyalty to the country but also reminded readers that safety existed
only within the walls of one’s home.
The text reiterates the suggestions made in the illustration. The narrative
opens not with Tokiko leaving the domestic sphere but, rather, returning to it
after a journey. As she nears her hometown, she stops at a tea house to rest and
fi ll out the final page of her diary, where she writes:
Oboeteka As I remember it,

ume mo warau zo even the plums smile
waga kokyō where I live.45
Why had she left? As the text explains, Tokiko was a poet who traveled for
her art:
Having approached her forties she had cut her black tresses, donned
a faded coat, and had grown accustomed to carrying a walking stick
[i.e., to travel]. She considered herself a female haikai master. She
was the wife of a Shugendō practitioner from Naka district, but af-
ter his death she had gone with the flow, idling with the clouds, ap-
pearing to devote her heart to nothing but poetry.
Besides having ridden herself of any “superstitious” Shugendō influence, this

Tokiko also had a patriotic conscience, but a passive one at that: “knocking on
her door,” adds the piece, one would find “a center of loyalist studies and a ref-
uge for patriotic samurai.” Tokiko, in other words, was not one to steal the
scene—like the 1930s women she was supposed to inspire, she knew her place
and understood that her role was not to act like a man but to be of support and
assistance to men.
Had it not been for a fortuitous encounter at that tea house, Tokiko would
have never turned into an activist. As luck would have it, however, Shishido
Nakatsukasa arrived at the same tea house and immediately recognized her as
a fellow poet (notice, in the following excerpt, the use of her pen name):
“Ah, isn’t that Rikkyō? When did you get back?” There he was: her
dear friend, Hitachi loyalist scholar Shishido Nakatsukasa.
This is the turning point when the poet is pushed into action. Nakatsukasa tells
Tokiko about Nariaki’s arrest and about the Ansei Purges and begs her to flee
in a very dramatic fashion:
Everyone knows that, beside poetry and verses, you usually de-
vote your heart to the imperial household. Run! You are at the cross-
road between life and death [literally, “the crossroad between this
world and hell,” jigoku to kono yo no wakaremichi]. It would be best
if you ran off to Ezo or to Kyushu, now.
At the crossroad between this world and hell, with her dream of a smooth re-
entry into the bliss of the domestic sphere (where “even the plums smile”) shat-
tered, Tokiko makes the unavoidable decision to plunge right into the eye of
the storm and head out to “turbulent Kyoto.”46
As with the illustration, the text too features a telling distortion. The
encounter with Nakatsukasa, as Tokiko writes in one of her diaries, had
taken place in her house, not at a tea house in the woods. Why change yet an-
other seemingly minor point? This editorial choice may be key to yet another
aspect of the political inclinations of The Housewife’s Companion. Founder
Ishikawa Takeyoshi believed in the separation of genders, so much so that
at the magazine’s headquarters male and female reporters met in separate
rooms.47 By staging the encounter in a public place rather than at Tokiko’s
home The Housewife’s Companion sent the message that there was a time and
a place for everything, and that the house was not a suitable arena for inter-
mingling, much less for political conspiracies.
The Housewife’s Companion’s characterization of Tokiko as a poet who had
distanced herself from the influence of Shugendō reminds us that, along with
gender-inappropriate behavior, Tokiko’s role as a religious specialist remained
a cause of great concern. This apprehension, as we have seen, harkened back to
the early Meiji period, when the government had ordered the suppression of
174 Chapter 9
new religions and of Shugendō. The crackdown had continued in the interwar
years, when even progressive magazines like Fujin kōron reminded women that
“the power of the world is in science” and enjoined them to get an education
rather than flirting with “many superstitions.”48 Unlike the issue of female ac-
tivism, which could be retrofitted but never ignored (it was in fact the very rea-
son why Tokiko’s ghost was resurrected in the first place), matters of the spiritual
kind could be omitted from the narrative without trouble, and they often were.
It is possible, for example, that the concern for the association between spiri-
tuality and (female) irrationality led Takamure Itsue (1894–1964) to gloss over
Tokiko’s role as a divination master in the Great Biographical Dictionary of
Japanese Women (Dai Nihon josei jinmei jisho, 1936).
The Great Biographical Dictionary was published in the same year as Nuno-
mura’s Women and the Meiji Restoration, a work that reflected the tension that
new opportunities for women had generated. As a woman, Takamure had ex-
perienced such tension on a personal level; she opened her autobiography (which
she started composing in the 1930s) by proclaiming, “I have always been some-
one’s child, someone’s wife, but at the same time, I have been a poet, a histo-
rian, and, of course, an individual member of humanity.”49 To this already long
list of credentials Takamure would have added anarchist and feminist. In 1925
she had created a stir by briefly divorcing her husband and penning “The Leav-
ing Home Poem” (Ie de no shi) to celebrate defiance and the rejection of the
household.50 Takamure was not a paragon of domesticity. Yet, for diametrically
different reasons than Nunomura’s and despite her endorsement of multiple
and overlapping identities, she too found it important to produce an altered
version of Tokiko’s story, one that would present her as a source of inspiration
for modern, rational times. She could not afford, in other words, to jeopardize
Tokiko’s qualifications by introducing elements that would cast doubts about
her lucid determination and clear sense of purpose.
The heavens, one may add, did not awe Takamure in the least. As early as
1918, at the time of her pilgrimage to Shikoku, she had written about her “vague
dread of magnificent, mysterious things” and about her quest for a “sense of
wonder” that was clearly lacking. While Tokiko looked up toward the heavens
and saw signs and wonders, Takamure saw nothing. The sky, she wrote, “is not
good, and again it is not bad. It is only empty; yes, only empty.”51 She was not
an atheist, yet she did not think that professing her faith in Kannon would ipso
facto make her a mediator between the human and the divine; at the time of
her Shikoku pilgrimage she made several snide remarks about the gullible peo-
ple who thought that, as a pilgrim, she would have acquired special healing and
fortunetelling powers.52 Later in life she once again identified the supernatu-
ral with weakness when, in her autobiography, she spoke of being rejected by
a man in these terms:
I was facing a major crisis. I felt a tremendous sense of incongru-

ity, a world with no sky was painted like a rainbow in my head. Day
or night it seemed as though vampires and witches were flying
around my head, calling out to me.53
In order to function as a model of female strength, Tokiko had to return from

the dead in the guise of a strong-willed woman, not of someone at the mercy
of cosmic forces. For this reason, comets, ghosts, and hexagrams found no place
in the Great Biographical Dictionary entry on Tokiko.
There is a second silence in Takamure’s story, and it has to do with To-
kiko’s activities as a teacher. This one is more difficult to explain, for Takamure
herself had worked as a teacher and was interested in matters of education.54 It
is possible that Takamure, who by her own admission felt pulled in multiple
directions by her many roles and obligations, opted for a streamlined narra-
tive in which the protagonist was nothing but a champion of justice. Takamure
thus envisioned and created a Tokiko who, “with no help from others,” set out
“to rectify . . . injustice,” period. Appropriately, the opening line of her entry
reads, simply, “Kurosawa Toki[ko] (2466–2550): heroine.”55
In most cases Tokiko’s connections to Shugendō were acknowledged (if at
all) only by mentioning her father’s affiliation with the mountain religion rather
than her own experience as a diviner. Japanese Women: A Cultural History (1938)
goes as far as to say that “She was nurtured in the beliefs of Shugendō, the fam-
ily business,” but immediately adds that “she was also accomplished in nativ-
ist studies and in the art of Japa nese poetry,” offsetting the dangerous
implications of the former with the safe and respectable presence of the lat-
ter.56 The use of a passive voice (“was nurtured,” yashinaware), moreover, ex-
onerates her from any responsibility, for it suggests unsolicited exposure; the
clarification that Shugendō was the family business (kagyō) also sustains the
impression that Tokiko was an accidental recipient of its principles. Her
passive exposure to Shugendō stands in contrast to her active quest for an
education in nativism and Japanese poetry and to her subsequent accomplish-
ments. Tokiko, in other words, was a discerning heroine who knew to pursue
activities that were safe, meaningful, and acceptable in the “new Japan.”
As part of a comprehensive memory project, the new and improved To-

kiko of the 1930s and 1940s served as a model for the modern woman as much
176 Chapter 9
as an embodiment of the ideal Japanese subject. As a paragon of female vir-

tues, she was made to project obedience (Ogawa), heroism (Takamure), love
for the domestic sphere (The Housewife’s Companion), and sacrifice (Nunomura).
As a model citizen she was of sound (rational) mind, for a superstitious sub-
ject would have implied backwardness on a national level. The requirements
of modernity and of the nation caused entire episodes of Tokiko’s story to end
up on the cutting-room floor, like unused footage that no longer fit in with
the script. In her original role, Tokiko wrote the script, acted the part, and
directed the action. In the modern remake(s) of her story, however, others were
calling the shots. Mito sympathizers were no exception, as the next chapter will
show.
10 Circles Redrawn
The View from 1930s Mito
In 1930s Mito, Tokiko’s accomplishments remained a source of great

local pride. In a former domain that had no shortage of connections to iconic
figures of the Restoration, to lack one’s hometown hero (or heroine, as it were)
was unthinkable. Boosterism and a quest for distinction motivated local his-
torians and bureaucrats, who had been the first ones to advertise Tokiko’s
feats, to carry on with their mission in increasingly grandiose ways, writing
hagiographies, erecting monuments, and founding societies named after her.
Many of the goals and methods of the Mito bureaucrats and sympathiz-
ers coincided with those expressed in publications that circulated nation-
wide: at a time of uncertainty and instability, Tokiko was an exemplary woman,
frugal, devoted to the nation and to the household, and overall inspiring. For
example, a pamphlet produced locally in 1937, the year of the outbreak of the
war with China, claimed, “we are facing a time of national crisis and all Japa-
nese citizens, men and women, young and old, . . . must prepare to serve with
loyalty and courage. . . . It is especially in times like these that one cannot but
wish there were more women like [Tokiko].”1 Tokiko’s supporters in Mito also
applied the same tricks of lights and shadows to illuminate that which they
found appealing about her story and to obscure that which did not fit their
agendas.
In many other respects, however, the stories that came out of Mito differed
from the ones featured in magazines and monographs produced elsewhere—
showing how local interests trumped preoccupations shared at the national level
and gave a distinct shape to regional memory projects. First, the stories pro-
duced in Mito tended to place greater emphasis on Tokiko’s identity as a poet
and on her role as an educator. Including these facets of her life enabled her
local supporters to tell a longer, more nuanced story; they did not have to ring
the curtain down at her arrest and imprisonment but could stretch Tokiko’s
act all the way into the Meiji period. Second, even though her local support-
ers, just like the authors of nationwide circulating works, edited out inconve-
nient scenes from her life, they did so for different reasons. Less interested in
177
178 Chapter 10
obscuring problematic aspects of Tokiko’s multilayered character, they hoped

instead to present the story of her journey to Kyoto as an unmitigated success.
Third, whereas the “real” Tokiko had often felt displaced and disoriented in
her transition from the Tokugawa to the Meiji orders, the heroine of 1930 Mito
apologists fit right in with the modern—a modern not just of the Meiji, but even
of the early-Shōwa kind (one that the historical Tokiko never experienced).
Lastly, in applying their own creative editorial techniques, Mito historians and
bureaucrats seemed especially obsessed with redefining Tokiko’s networks. They
drew new circles within which to lodge her and made sure that her already re-
markable figure would bask in the additional glow that emanated from estab-
lished celebrities. Attempts at glorification by association were not new, of
course; Shimomura had deployed similar tactics in his Women and Children
installments in the early 1900s, and The Housewife’s Companion would do the
same in 1938. In Mito, however, the reconfiguration was relentless and occurred
along especially creative lines to secure the local heroine’s (and her domain’s)
place in the larger narrative of the Restoration.
At the forefront of the Mito-based efforts to immortalize Tokiko’s life

was her great-grandson, Kurosawa (Sekiguchi) Minesaburō. Minesaburō
had met Tokiko in 1885 while attempting to open branches of Ontakekyō in
rural Ibaraki. He had married Tokiko’s great-granddaughter Akirako in 1889
and had taken the family name Kurosawa, becoming an “acquired son.”
Minesaburō worked tirelessly not only to keep the Ontakekyō branch afloat
after Tokiko’s death but also to collect, edit, and publicize her works. He pro-
duced a copy of Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration in which he rendered
Tokiko’s old language into a more modern idiom and assembled anthologies
of her poems.2
Unfortunately some of Minesaburō’s works, which were preserved in the
Joshi Gakushūin library in Tokyo, burned during the 1945 fire bombings and
were forever lost. Luckily, the creative efforts of another Mito native, Tate-
bayashi Miyatarō, would withstand the test of time. Tatebayashi had gradu-
ated from Tokyo Trinity School (Tōkyō Seisan Isshin Gakkō) in 1906; in the
same year he had taken office as an evangelist for the Anglican Church of
Japan (Nihon Seikōkai). By 1909 he had left the ministry and had returned to
Mito, where he founded the Center for the Study of Mito Ideology (Mitogaku
Kenkyūjo).3
Not only did Tatebayashi pen one of Tokiko’s few biographies (Kurosawa
Rikkyō, 1937), he also contributed to the perpetuation of her memory by found-
ing and directing the Rikkyō Society (Rikkyōkai), named after Tokiko’s sobri-
quet. Other founders included two members of the House of Peers, a retired
Circles Redrawn: The View from 1930s Mito 179
army colonel (Sakamoto Sakyō, who served also as president of the society),
the mayor of Iwabune village, the director of a local newspaper, the principal
of Ibaraki Middle School, a university professor, the chief priest of Tokiwa
Shrine, and the president of a business venture.
As stated in its manifesto, the Rikkyō Society wished “to honor the mem-
ory of Kurosawa Rikkyō, heroine of the late Tokugawa period, [recipient of]
Junior Fift h Rank, and to tell in perpetuity the good that came from her vir-
tues.”4 The society would promote the image of Tokiko through a variety of
means, including the publication and distribution of informative material and
of her manuscripts as well as the sponsorship of a monument. The founders
actively recruited members, for example by sending requests of support to lo-
cal schools.5 Membership would be open to all those who “approve and sup-
port [our] goals and actions . . . and volunteer [to promote them].” Regular
members (educators and women teachers) would pay a fee of twenty sen; sup-
porters could join by contributing a fee of one yen; special members, such as
schools and organizations, were admitted pending payment of a two-yen fee.
Honorary members paid five yen or more and could only be nominated by the
society. Each member would receive Tokiko memorabilia such as her portrait,
a photograph of the petitionary poem, a brief biography, or copies of Rikkyō’s
Complete Works (Rikkyō zenshū). Honorary members would also receive a silk
scroll with her biography and portrait.
Among the literature produced by and for the Rikkyō Society is a six-page
folded pamphlet titled The Story of the Woman Rikkyō and of the Long Poem
She Offered (Rikkyōjoshi to kenjō no chōka), which includes a short biography,
a portrait, and an image of the petition. Inside, “The Woman Kurosawa Rikkyō:
A Short Narrative” (“Kurosawa Rikkyōjoshi ryakuden”) recounts her venture
into politics. It is to this pamphlet that we must turn, for in it we find the ide-
ology, motivations, and agendas of Mito sympathizers at work.
“A Short Narrative” celebrates Tokiko’s feat of loyalty against the back-
ground of the conventional “desperate times call for desperate measures” sce-
nario. It presents Tokiko not as an active participant motivated by free will
but as a passive bystander thrown into the political arena by unpredictable
circumstances. Under Ii’s policies of oppression, the text explains, patriots
(including Tokugawa Nariaki) suffered all manner of abuse and indignity;
some even “died as martyrs.” In the midst of this crisis, Tokiko saw a comet
and “secretly, in her heart, was saddened by this natural disaster.” Shortly
thereafter, Nakatsukasa’s visit propelled her into action. When he informed
her about the cruelty of the Ansei Purges, she was “suddenly” overcome by a
surge of devotion and decided to travel to Kyoto, but not before receiving a
full endorsement from her mother.
180 Chapter 10
The narrative choices deployed in “A Short Narrative” perpetuate the rev-

elation scenario (which explains the mention of the comet) while ignoring
evidence that points to a political consciousness that had grown over time.
Why? Because, as the “ideal Japanese woman,” Tokiko had to be cast as a
paragon of domesticity and frugality rather than as a simmering hotpot of
dissent:
She deserves our admiration as an ideal Japanese woman, as a loy-

alist heroine, as a female teacher, and as the model woman that
modern Japan needs. She never sought glory, never pursued wealth
and honors, but conducted herself well and took care of the
household, yet when emergency arose she served with loyalty and
courage; despite being a woman, she put her life on the line for her
lord and her country attaining her loyal goal. When she returned
home after it was all over, she once again devoted herself to her vo-
cation; we believe that such spirit, which never lets [one] change
one’s determination of purpose, is entirely exemplary of the Japa-
nese woman.6
In a world where women tend to indulge in “evil customs,” to be carried away

by vainglory, and to covet fame and fortune, the pamphlet continues, all should
“learn a lesson from Rikkyō’s acts of virtue” and from her self-discipline.
Testimony to the anxiety over the place of women at the intersection of
the domestic and the public spheres, the Rikkyō Society publication celebrates
Tokiko in the utmost terms, but stops short of endorsing general female par-
ticipation in politics. What makes Tokiko exceptional is not only that she raised
her voice but also that she knew when to stop talking; not only that she stepped
out into the political arena but also that she knew when to step back into the
house. Modest and frugal, Tokiko joined in the loyalist movement because of
dire circumstances, but then quietly returned to her true calling, which by ex-
tension ought to be understood as the true calling of every “ideal” Japanese
woman: the household, domesticity, and domestication.
Had the authors of “A Short Narrative” stopped here, they would have fol-
lowed in the same footsteps as their non-Mito-based predecessors. More prob-
lematically, they would have done little to ensure that Tokiko’s name live “in
perpetuity.” First, by their own admission, her foray into politics had been pre-
cipitated by dramatic circumstances, and while it spoke volumes about her abil-
ity to react to a crisis, it did not cast enough light on her true colors as they
shone on a daily basis. Second, it had ended too soon; short of mentioning
the 1875 land grant and the conferral of posthumous rank in 1907, political
activism alone would not have enabled the members of the Rikkyō Society to
weave an intricate enough story of Tokiko’s successful transit across the
Tokugawa-Meiji divide. Admirable as it was, her engagement with politics
could not be the only activity that defined her. The solution was to recast To-
kiko as a character defined not only by her political consciousness but also by
her impressive education: Tokiko thus got to play the added roles of exem-
plary poet and teacher.
Nowhere does the choice to pay special homage to her erudition emerge
more clearly than in the very name of the society, which celebrated not “To-
kiko” but “Rikkyō,” her poetic alter ego. (Along similar lines, Tatebayashi’s 1937
biography always and only refers to her as “our Rikkyō.”) Inside the folded pages
of the pamphlet, moreover, “A Short Narrative” establishes Tokiko’s literary cre-
dentials by tracing her educational background with detail worthy of a cur-
riculum vitae; naming her every tutor and her every skill, from haikai to waka,
from comical verses to Chinese poetry. Perhaps most telling of all is Tokiko’s
portrait, also included in the pamphlet (figure 10.1). The portrait does not cap-
ture a young heroine in action, or a feisty combatant, or an undercover trav-
eler on a mission, but rather a poised and respectable elderly woman who has
weathered a great storm and has lived to write, elegantly, about it.
The erudite Tokiko of the Rikkyō Society does not live in opposition to the
activist, but as a complement to her: the cover of the pamphlet commends her
for being “an authority as a woman writer and loyalist in the late Tokugawa pe-
riod” as well as “a pioneer female educator in the modern age.”7 An insert at the
bottom of page 7, moreover, advertises the purchase of her writings as a virtual act
of patriotism: “We trust that those who shed tears [of joy] having all these
[writings collected] in a single volume are, possibly, the true Japanese.”
By marrying her political and literary personae, the members of the Rikkyō
Society could tell a better, longer story, one that began the moment Tokiko
picked up the brush and continued into the last days of her life. As a village
school instructor first and an elementary school teacher later, this Tokiko also
made a seamless transition across the Tokugawa-Meiji rupture. Taking Tokiko’s
story beyond the restrictive frame of the 1850s and inscribing it within the
longue durée (relatively speaking) not only optimized the Rikkyō Society’s
chances to immortalize its heroine “in perpetuity,” but also enabled its ideo-
logues to highlight aspects of Mito greatness that transcended the Restoration.
To be clear, in choosing to be more comprehensive, the members of the
Rikkyō Society were catering to their own agendas, not aiming at historical
accuracy. In pointing the spotlight toward Tokiko’s literary persona and her
village school, they purposely moved it away from her flirtations with the cos-
mos. Their selective approach is encapsulated, metaphorically, in the portrait
Figure 10.1. Portrait of Tokiko from the Rikkyō Society’s pamphlet, 1937.
Rikkyōkai, Rikkyōkai shuisho (Akasaka, Ibaraki-ken: Rikkyōkai, 1937). Author’s
personal collection.
from the pamphlet (figure 10.1). Upon close inspection, one will notice that this
close-up is in fact based on the photograph for which Tokiko had posed in 1889
(figure 8.2): the formal kimono is the same and so are her facial expression,
her slightly tilted head, and her general posture. Something, however, is miss-
ing: the lower part of Tokiko’s body has been cropped out of the portrait,
eliminating the all-meaningful props with which she had originally posed. The
members of the Rikkyō Society would not have had the means to enlarge the
original photograph and to read the suggestive words of the vessel-poem, so
this is not a case of deliberate censorship. It is, however, a telling representa-
tion of their approach to the issue of Tokiko’s engagement with the heavens:
by editing the picture, they cleared the stage of any ghost while still present-
ing Tokiko as a woman of letters, poised and “rational” as the age demanded.
(The comet is mentioned in the text, but it is simply one of the elements that
precipitated her decision to step out of the household, not part of a compre-
hensive and continuous engagement with the heavens.)
The fact that her identity as an oracle would be dismissed is not particu-
larly surprising at this point and does not require further elaboration. More
intriguing, however, is another silence, one that speaks volumes about local pre-
occupations with establishing an unblemished—in fact, a perfectly glorious—
legacy for the hometown heroine. After Tokiko’s political awakening, the story
fades out as her mother blesses her decision to go to Kyoto and fades back in
with Tokiko’s arrival at the imperial capital. Details of the journey as well as
references to the encounters with Keien and Koresada are absent. The reader
is left with the impression that Tokiko not only pulled off this mission entirely
on her own, but also may in fact have walked straight into the court and de-
livered the petition directly into the hands of the emperor. The authors of “A
Short Narrative” dare not say such a thing, of course, but they do not seem
preoccupied with denying it either. This silence enables them to suggest the story
of a success simply by not telling the story of what was, all things considered,
a failure. To this extent, other Mito apologists in the 1930s portrayed Tokiko’s
mission as a triumph in no uncertain terms. In his 1935 compendium on the
lives of great loyalists, Andō Tokuki, the grandson of Tengu member Andō
Hikonoshin, describes the petition entering the imperial court by way of
Higashibōjō and reaching the hands of the emperor; having made her dream
come true, he adds, Tokiko was so overjoyed that she proclaimed: “A woman’s
will-power can make its way through rock.” “The heroine from Mito,” one of
only two women mentioned in Andō’s work,8 is extolled for “making her name
known inside the halls of the imperial court” despite being a “coarse country
woman” of “humble origins.” Andō is mum, unsurprisingly, on her activities
as a diviner.9
184 Chapter 10
The ideologues of the Rikkyō Society deployed another creative strategy

to add luster to their story: they envisioned otherwise nonexistent connections
between Tokiko and the brightest stars of the loyalist firmament. Let us return
to the opening segment of “A Short Narrative,” the one that sets the stage for
Tokiko’s political awakening. In venting her outrage, it turns out, Tokiko was
not alone. In the final days of the Tokugawa, loyalists and patriots everywhere
raised their voices as representatives of “the realm’s public opinion.” Among
them were Fujita Tōko, Sakuma Shōzan, and Yoshida Shōin—known collec-
tively, the texts explains, as the three heroes of the late Tokugawa. Women too
became indignant; some “offered men valiant help” and some succeeded at “he-
roic actions not even men could pull off.” In this especially exclusive group we
find not only Kurosawa Rikkyō but also Muraoka no Tsubone and Nomura
Bōtō, the “three heroic female writers” of the time. With almost geometrical
precision the text propels Tokiko into the empyrean of loyalist glory, first by
including her in the perfect triangle of female loyalism, then by superimpos-
ing said triangle to the one formed by the three great male heroes of the late
Tokugawa, and finally by suggesting that the two shapes are mirror images of
each other.10 Little did it matter that Tokiko never actually worked side by side
with these historical figures; what mattered was that theoretically, ideologically,
she could have, that, geometrically, she fit right in. As we will see below, these
creative efforts did not stop at linking Tokiko with illustrious figures of her day
and age, but also entailed the forging of connections that transcended the bar-
riers of time.
Tatebayashi’s biography of Tokiko, published in 1937 by the Rikkyō Soci-
ety, repeats many of the points emphasized in the pamphlet, with one impor-
tant exception: where the pamphlet had to be succinct, the biography could
elaborate. And elaborate it did, modernizing a Tokugawa-era woman with clever
narrative techniques, with calculated appeals to scientific discourse, and with
reinterpretations so creative that even a liability turned into an asset.
First, almost each section in the book opens not with an episode in To-
kiko’s life but with the larger historical picture, generally in the form of a para-
graph applauding an allegedly distinctive Japa nese quality or talent—either
modern or timeless—or simply “Japaneseness” in and of itself. After establish-
ing such a quality, Tatebayashi zooms in on the small scale, showing how “our
Rikkyō” embodied it to perfection. The section on her years as a poet in train-
ing, for example, begins with the following statement: “Among all the poetic
formats in the world, haiku, for its structure and content, has possibly no
equal. . . . It would not be an exaggeration to call it the pinnacle of all literary
forms known to mankind. . . . Aside from us Japanese, no other peoples pos-
sess the ability to appreciate the poetic flavor of haiku.”11 Only at this point does
the narrative switch to Tokiko and to her rigorous training. By praising her talents
within a larger historical or cultural frame, one that would have resonated with
his 1937 readers, Tatebayashi keeps Tokiko’s figure relevant even in the face of
changing times. (Writing in the year when open war with China broke out, Tate-
bayashi treads lightly when dealing with Tokiko’s study of Chinese poetry, spec-
ifying that “the Japanese are not at all like the Chinamen” and that the Chinese
emperors are nothing like the emperors of “our land of the gods, Japan.”)12
Second, in Tatebayashi’s biography the modernization of Kurosawa To-
kiko (and, by extension, of Mito loyalism) reaches a new high by combining
historical narrative with up-to-date and unassailable scientific principles. In
the same way as red flowers always produce red flowers, Tatebayashi explains,
so loyalist blood always produces loyalist blood. “To put it in modern scien-
tific terms,” he continues, Tokiko’s loyalist spirit was “a hereditary trait” (shu
no iden).13 (Tatebayashi had paid particular attention to the line of the petition-
ary poem that alluded to a blood connection with the Fujiwara; see chapter 4.)
Tatebayashi was, of course, no geneticist, and his attempt to offer an explana-
tion for Tokiko’s loyalism by way of scientific theories comes off more as a
poetic—and a bit awkward—move than as a rigorous elucidation. His idea
to marry science and historical biography, however, is telling, for it shows how
concepts of racial purity and eugenic superiority sustained not only the state’s
discourse on civilization, general calls for national pride, and comprehensive
colonization policies but also small-scale regional memory projects.
Genetics and eugenics had, by the 1930s, established themselves as rele-
vant fields in the Japanese scientific community as well as in nationalistic rhet-
oric with the foundation of the Greater Japan Eugenics Society (Dai Nihon
Yūseikai) in 1917 and the publication of the journal Eugenics (Yūseigaku) be-
ginning in 1924.14 Only three years after Tatebayashi wrote of Tokiko’s devo-
tion to the emperor as an inherited trait, Japan would pass the National Eugenics
Law (Kokumin Yūseihō, March 1940), which legalized attempts to perfect the
quality of the population by sterilizing the sickly and unfit while encouraging
the reproduction of healthy citizens.15 At around the same time the Japan Hy-
giene Association (Nihon Eisei Kyōkai), after studying the effects of miscege-
nation, had concluded—unsurprisingly—that it should be avoided at all costs.16
The times were more than ripe, in short, for the Rikkyō of old, and by exten-
sion for Mito in general, to be represented as genetically fit for the modern age.
Like the blood flowing through her and her ancestors’ veins, she herself could,
indeed, generate loyalist sentiments for generations to come, if not by actual
biological reproduction at least by everlasting inspirational example.
Faced with potentially problematic aspects of Tokiko’s life—namely her
flirtations with the comet (and, to a lesser extent, her encounter with the ghost
186 Chapter 10
of Michizane)—Tatebayashi cleverly deflects the issues in a host of creative ways,

from minimizing them, to representing them as assets, to simply ignoring them.
The section dedicated to Tokiko’s reading of the celestial body concedes that
modern science does not think of comets as omens, but also reminds the read-
ers that up until the Meiji period celestial phenomena were always read as sym-
bols due in large part to the influence of Chinese culture. Lest one ascribe
celestial prognostication to an inherently “Asian” penchant for superstition,
however, Tatebayashi adds that reading the skies in search for clues was a prac-
tice common in both the East and West: when Jesus was born, he writes, a shoot-
ing star appeared to warn King Herod. Further to absolve Tokiko, Tatebayashi
points out that even in his own day and age stars commanded attention, for
example at the time of festivals.17 Such association with a recreational activity
enables Tatebayashi to minimize the link to superstition and to present celes-
tial readings as a form of harmless entertainment, much in the same way that
Meiji-era kokkuri games had tamed divination.
Doubling the effort to deflect potential charges of irrationality, Tatebayashi
turns a liability into an asset by minimizing any concern with Tokiko’s read-
ing of the comet and emphasizing her reaction thereto:
Despite being a woman, she resolved to spare the realm any grief
[by denouncing the corrupt ways of Ii Naosuke]. Such is the soul
of the true Japanese. Men and women, young and old, all share this
spirit, it is the first thing that enables us to call a Japanese a Japa-
nese. Unlike modern women, who pursue empty, superficial fads,
[Tokiko] could not be unaffected by the appearance of the comet.
If Tokiko ever read a comet, it was not because she was gullible or backward
but because she was, in fact, so forward thinking that she had already “devel-
oped a mature sense of national self-awareness as a Japanese.”18 Mito, here, comes
out ahead of the curve in terms of patriotic sentiment, as even the suspiciously
superstitious is turned around and transformed into an example of (Shōwa-
era) nationalistic zeal on the part of Tokiko. Hers is not an act of divination
but, in fact, one of dedication, one that ought to teach a moral lesson to all Japa-
nese women. Satisfied with his repackaging of the comet issue, Tatebayashi
chooses to be silent on the story of Michizane’s ghost—his Tokiko is a woman
of refined intellect and inner strength, and he leaves it at that.
Tatebayashi and the members of his society realized that the ultimate way
to ensure that Tokiko’s story be told in perpetuity was, literally, to cast it in
stone. As Michael Wert reminds us, when it comes to commemoration, “writ-
ten words are not enough. The success of any memory project requires mate-
Figure 10.2. Ceremony for the unveiling of the stone monument commemorating the
thirtieth anniversary of the conferral of posthumous court rank to Tokiko; Suzugoya,
February 22, 1937. Kurosawa Minesaburō sits in the front row, second from the left, next
to a Shinto priest in ceremonial attire. The first man to the front right, standing, is
Tatebayashi Miyatarō. Courtesy of Ōsawa Toshio, Kurosawa Tokiko Kenshōkai.
rial elements that impact the senses and provoke emotions to support written
discourse.”19 In 1937, on the thirtieth anniversary of the bestowal of Tokiko’s
court rank, the society erected a commemorative monument (figure 10.2) near
her native home.20
The unveiling, which took place on February 22, was a major affair involv-
ing prominent Mito figures. Tatebayashi, of course, was in attendance, and so
was Tokiko’s great-grandson, Minesaburō.21 Congratulatory poems and speeches
came courtesy not only of army colonel and Rikkyō Society president Saka-
moto Sakyō but also of an Iwabune village assemblyman, of the Iwabune Ele-
mentary School principal, and of the director of the Ibaraki Prefecture Education
Board, among others.22 The inscription on the stone bears the names of House
of Peers member Tokugawa Kuniyuki (of the Mito branch), of former Mito sam-
urai turned House of Peers member Murota Yoshiaya (who composed the ded-
ication), and of Sakamoto Sakyō (who wrote it). It reads, in part,
Thirty years after the emperor’s favor extended to the late [Rikkyō],
a group of volunteers has decided to erect this monument to
188 Chapter 10
commemorate such imperial favor and to tell the story of her

unswerving loyalty in perpetuity.
The rest of the inscription gives an account of Tokiko’s life, briefly but with no
glaring omissions: her father’s connections to Shugendō, her education, her mar-
riage, her job as a teacher, her period of political activism, but also her impor-
tant achievements beyond the Restoration—her appointment as elementary
school teacher in 1872, the 1875 grant, and of course the posthumous confer-
ral of Junior Fift h Rank.
Like the pamphlet, the inscription places Tokiko in the midst of circles she
had never known. After her arrest, for example, “she was locked up in jail with
Yoshida Shōin and Fujimori Kōan.” Associating her with Shōin and Kōan was
not a distortion, for indeed both loyalists had been imprisoned in Tenmachō
at the same time. Serving time under the same roof, however, does not imply
familiarity, and none, frankly, is suggested here. Still, as with the pamphlet,
the simple dropping of these names helped aggrandize Tokiko’s standing in
the annals of loyalist history while firmly reasserting Mito’s centrality in the
broad narrative of the Restoration.
The creative expansion of Tokiko’s circles did not end with the heroes of
her day and age but came to include celebrities of the present, namely former
minister Tanaka Mitsuaki. Tanaka had served in the Imperial Household
Agency at the time Tokiko had received her rank, and his name appears on
the bestowal notification. In preparation for the unveiling ceremony, Tatebayashi
sent Tanaka an invitation to attend. His presence would not only have added
luster and gravitas to the event (turning it from local to national), but would
also have symbolized the completion of a decades-long effort to commemo-
rate and glorify Tokiko’s story, starting with the conferral of rank in 1907 and
ending with the 1937 monument that would forever cast her actions in stone.
Tanaka, however, was old and ailing. When the invitation arrived, he was too
frail even to reply; after much delay he asked an assistant to compose a letter
in his stead. Dated February 26, 1937, the five-page letter addresses Tatebayashi
as “Society Director.” In it, the assistant explains that his “master” “rejoices and
truly congratulates you on the celebration and unveiling of the memorial stone
commemorating the bestowal of rank upon Kurosawa Tokiko,” but regrets not
being able to attend due to health issues. The letter also acknowledges the
receipt of a print of the monument: “It is truly splendid. No doubt [Rikkyō]
herself would have been satisfied and pleased.”23 Although they were unable
to secure his participation, the members of the Rikkyō Society must have been
pleased with Tanaka’s belated response and with his words of praise for their
work. Tanaka was a former Tosa loyalist who had ascended to prestigious posts
in the Meiji administration; as Michael Wert reminds us, in the Meiji period
Tanaka had been responsible for selecting nearly 60 percent of all rank recipi-
ents (always giving a “preferential treatment” to the Tosa activists).24 By having
him in the picture, so to speak, the Rikkyō Society’s ideologues were able
symbolically to draw another circle, one that, connecting Mito to Tosa and past
to present, placed Tokiko’s story within an extended region of loyalist senti-
ment that stretched across space as much as it did across time.
In the spring of 2007, seventy years after the unveiling ceremony, the mon-
ument still stood, tucked in the woods on a hillside near Tokiko’s native home,
quietly telling not one story, but two. The first was the tale of one woman’s ef-
forts to leave a mark on the path of history; the second, the story of people she
had (for the most part) never known who were determined to help her succeed
by building her an altar that would withstand the test of time. Five years later,
in 2012, a third story was inscribed onto the monument: hidden by overgrown
weeds, the path to it no longer accessible, the invisible monument (along with
the decaying house) now told the story of how ephemeral most memory proj-
ects are; the story of how the ability to secure a permanent place in history is
often at the mercy of natural, political, and economic forces; the story of how
the repercussions of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, which
damaged the house, drained financial resources, and halted the plans for a new
effort at commemoration (see next chapter), reached far and wide, inviting the
return of that historical amnesia Tokiko and her hagiographers had so much
feared; the story, in short, of the inexorable passing of time and of the futility
of human efforts to stop it.
11 Encores
New Scripts
The past is not the exclusive domain of historians and ideologues. Nov-
elists and cinematographers, among others, poach in the preserve of history,
if not in the name of accuracy, in the name of action; if not for study, for spec-
tacle; if not to educate, to entertain. The cuts and angles they select, the fi lters
they deploy, the poetic and creative licenses they invoke make for good sto-
ries, not necessarily for rigorous history. Though beyond the scope of this study,
it is worth mentioning briefly that creative renditions of Tokiko’s saga did not
end with the conclusion of the war time years but continued in the postwar
period, when they materialized, among other things, in the form of a histori-
cal novel and a fi lm project. Tokiko’s was, after all, both an action-packed and
an inspirational story—one with great potential to command attention; how-
ever, as the historical circumstances changed, so did the reasons why Tokiko
was brought back into the limelight. No longer needed as a paragon of patri-
otic zeal, her encores now provided diversion or served as examples of social
responsibility. What did not change was the creative editing to which her story
was subject. In the new scripts of the postwar and contemporary eras, Tokiko’s
story is either sensationalized with captivating yet implausible details or re-
duced to a single message of hope. Be it by omission or alteration, historical
accuracy continues to elude the story of Kurosawa Tokiko.
Finally Changing the Course of History

One of the strangest postwar reconfigurations of Tokiko’s story appeared in
the pages of a romanticized historical novel, Funabashi Seiichi’s A Flower’s
Life (Hana no shōgai, 1952–1953; later selected to become NHK’s first televised
historical fiction series, or taiga drama, in 1963).1 The flower in question is not
Tokiko; the novel centers on the figure of Minister Ii Naosuke, who blossomed
and was cut down at the height of his prime. Tokiko, in this work, is cast in
the role of an extra, albeit an intriguing and (as she would have liked) a
pivotal one.
190
Encores: New Scripts 191
A Tokyoite by birth, Funabashi (1904–1976) may have become acquainted

with Tokiko during his stint in Mito (1922–1925), where he had transferred to
attend high school.2 (In 1923 he even visited Ōarai, where Tokiko had entered
into a symbolic dialogue with Tokugawa Nariaki shortly before her 1859 mis-
sion; see chapter 3.)3 Whatever version of Tokiko’s story Funabashi heard dur-
ing his Mito years, however, may not have been sufficiently romanticized for
the task at hand—further embellishment was in order. In A Flower’s Life
Funabashi thus portrays Tokiko as a female daredev il and a spy; more impor-
tantly, he turns her into the single “historical” character responsible for the suc-
cess of the attack on Ii at Sakurada Gate. For the first time since her “real” arrest
in 1859, Tokiko gets to play the part of the villain.
Tokiko makes her appearance relatively late in the story.4 She does so
not as an actual physical presence but as a mounting yet invisible threat. The
year is 1860. Caught in the aftermath of the Ansei Purges, an exhausted but
still upbeat Ii converses with his concubine, Riwa (Nishimura Sato). It has come
to his attention that a spy from Mito has infiltrated his house.
Ii: A secret missive from [staff officer Nagano] Shuzen5 notified me that a
woman named Kurosawa Tokiko, the widow of a certain Kamoshida,
a Mito samurai, entered my residence in the guise of a servant. Is any-
one aware of this woman in the lower mansion?
Riwa: This is the first time I hear of it, but just to be sure I will investigate
the matter further.
Tokiko indeed has successfully made her way into Ii’s residence in the guise of
a servant named Tsurue.6 Nagano Shuzen discovers the plot and informs Ii that
Tsurue could indeed be “that woman from Mito.”
Nagano: She is not an ordinary person. She did not have any particular
Mito accent . . . but in my opinion there is not a shadow of a doubt [as
to who she is].
Ii: Shall we investigate her identity?
Ii Naosuke’s question offers Funabashi the opportunity to introduce the

historical character in some depth, which he does with a relative degree of accu-
racy. What is, then, Tokiko’s (Tsurue’s) identity?
Nagano: She is the daughter of Kurosawa Tachū, a Shugendō priest from

the Hōjuin in Suzugoya village, Ibaraki district. I believe she is the same
Tokiko who is the widow of a certain Kamoshida, who lived in Kojima
192 Chapter 11
village, in Kuji district. Last year [1859], in the second month, she left
Mito and, in the company of a fellow villager, Koibuchi Jihei, she sneaked
from Kasama to Oyama, then passed through Sano and stopped in
Kusatsu. She then crossed Shibu Pass, went past Shinano and Mino, fol-
lowed the Ōmi Road, and at the end of the third month arrived in the
capital [Kyoto]. She intended to carry out a plot involving the court and
the government, something I have been able to confirm in detail thanks
to the reports from Kyoto. She was sent to Edo but since then we have
lost her—the investigators are at a loss. That is the woman.7
This summary of Tokiko’s life is by and large accurate (the earlier attribution
of samurai status to her husband is omitted). Where Funabashi departs more
prominently from the historical record is in his placing Tokiko in the Ii man-
sion: after her banishment, the Tokiko of A Flower’s Life does not return to Su-
zugoya to resume her teaching career but instead stages a comeback in Edo.
Whereas historical circumstances (namely her banishment) had written the “ac-
tual” Tokiko out of the story playing out in Edo, Funabashi’s poetic license places
her right back at the center of the stage. More than that, it transforms her into
a game-changer, a veritable deus ex machina.
Following the conversation with Ii, Nagano returns to his room to find out
that important papers have been stolen. He immediately knows whom to blame:
“That woman . . .”8 It is here that Tokiko is fully transmogrified into “the woman
spy from Mito” (Mito no onna kanja). Her transformation signals a change in
the pace of the narration; tensions heighten as her reinvented character emerges
as a tangible threat. Up until this point she had loomed as a menacing yet in-
distinct presence, her fictional persona infusing the storyline with tension in
the fuzzy way of the “is she, is she not?” kind. With Tokiko’s disappearance
from Ii’s house and the theft of the documents, however, all doubts dissipate,
and the threat becomes real.
Why did Funabashi need to reconfigure Tokiko’s actions to such a creative
extent? Funabashi held a degree in literature from Tokyo Imperial University
and had a demonstrated interest in history (A Flower’s Life was not his only
period piece); at the time he published this novel he was forty-eight and already
an established author. His, in other words, was not a rookie mistake. As with
the alterations to Tokiko’s story (and image) in the 1938 issue of The Housewife’s
Companion (see chapter 9), one explanation for Funabashi’s creative editing
has to do with the audience for whom he wrote. (A second explanation,
which I will discuss below, is found in the historical moment in which he
wrote.) Funabashi wrote A Flower’s Life for readers who already knew how
the story of Ii Naosuke would play out. This posed a problem: there is no enter-
tainment value in predictability. Tokiko’s feat of espionage, thus, adds an ele-

ment of surprise to a well-known story by foregoing accuracy in favor of
amazement. From here on out, Funabashi’s readers, already privy to the ulti-
mate fate of the title character, start seeing the unfolding of the events that
will lead to Ii’s assassination from an entirely new—because largely made-up—
angle. They are hooked.
The new and improved story reads as follows: on 1860/3/2, one day be-
fore the attack on Ii at Sakurada Gate, the loyalists gather at a Shinagawa brothel
to finalize their plan. One of them reports: “Kurosawa Tokiko, a truly excep-
tional person, and a woman at that [josei no mi de arinagara], gained access to
the Ii residence and stole important documents.” The documents attest to Ii’s
ownership of triple-barreled guns, a revelation that forces the warriors to re-
consider their intention to attack him only with swords. The 1950s readers are
here treated to a “behind the scenes” view of one of the most infamous assas-
sinations in Japanese history, a view that is as captivating as it is farfetched.
Had it not been for Tokiko’s intervention, the story implies, the loyalists would
have been ill prepared to face Ii’s firepower, and the minister might have sur-
vived the ambush. Unconcerned with strict historical accuracy, Funabashi
uses “the woman spy from Mito” to add unexpected pizzazz to a foregone con-
clusion, intriguing his readers with possibilities that found no match in the his-
torical record but were the narrative equivalent of dynamite. In rewriting the
script, Funabashi achieved what no other biographer or apologist, much less
Tokiko herself, had done before: at long last, he enabled Tokiko to change the
course of history.
In her second cameo Tokiko enhances the entertainment value of
Funabashi’s work by blurring the boundaries of gender. The words of the loy-
alist at the Shinagawa brothel (“and a woman at that”) had already anticipated
the idea that Funabashi’s Tokiko defies all gendered expectations. In the sec-
ond cameo Funabashi expands on this notion. The scene takes place on Ha-
kone Pass, where several travelers are marooned due to heavy snow. Among
them we find Nagano Shuzen’s mistress, Takajo, as well as Tokiko, now a pris-
oner in a cage. The episode is reminiscent of her 1859 journey along the Tōkaidō
after her arrest, but the similarities, and with them the accuracy, end here. To-
kiko, we learn, had been arrested in Fushimi a few days earlier; Nagano’s doc-
uments were recovered, establishing once and for all her responsibility for the
theft—or, for the modern readers, establishing her merit for the success of the
(soon-to-unfold) ambush on Ii. Caged on Hakone Pass, Tokiko is suffering from
frostbite, yet she does not utter a word when a nurturing Takajo rubs ointment
on her hands. “Since leaving Kyoto,” we are told, “she has yet to speak a single
word.” Although death looms (“stealing documents is not a light crime. There
194 Chapter 11
is no avoiding crucifixion, after being paraded about”),9 Tokiko remains poised

and inscrutable. Following her arrest she had been subject to the “lobster” tor-
ture (a form of bondage) but, despite the pain, she did not confess. The most
erudite among Funabashi’s readers may have known that, in the Tokugawa pe-
riod, the lobster method was employed only after less severe forms of torture
had failed,10 indicating therefore that Tokiko had suffered not one but many
forms of torture at that point. Her ability to withstand all manners of physical
suffering suggests a degree of strength rarely associated with women—hers is
not just toughness, but virtual manliness. For readers less familiar with the
intricacies of Tokugawa-era punishment, the simple mention of torture
would have sufficed to paint a clear picture—this was an extraordinary
woman indeed.
Tokiko’s gender-defying feats continue in her third and final cameo. As
the story unfolds, Tokiko and Takajo meet again, this time at Sanjō Bridge in
Kyoto. Here Tokiko and three masterless samurai kidnap Nagano’s mistress.
Tokiko, whom we had last encountered as a prisoner, informs Takajo (and the
readers) that she had been released from custody around the time of Ii’s assas-
sination, “otherwise on that very same day . . . my head would have been sent
flying.” She wants Takajo to reveal the whereabouts of Nagano Shuzen, her next
target. When Takajo professes ignorance, Tokiko’s voice becomes “increasingly
stern and louder”; she slaps Takajo and proceeds to torture her. For three days
and three nights Takajo suffers all manners of “unreasonable punishments” at
the hands of Tokiko, who ruthlessly prods her: “Still you won’t confess. Maybe
tomorrow we will subject you to the ‘box’ torture.”11 This is a callous and mer-
ciless Tokiko, not one that interwar apologists would have approved of, but one
that postwar readers looking for diversion—not indoctrination—would have
found irresistible.
As an extra in a work of fiction focused on Ii Naosuke and his immediate
entourage, Tokiko’s main function was to dramatize the well-known events sur-
rounding the minister’s death. She did so by adding mystery, suspense, and un-
expected twists and turns not only to the basic historical narrative, but also to
the otherwise conventional characterization of gender roles. Tokiko, in A Flow-
er’s Life, is a crossbreed of feminine and masculine traits. It is suggested, for
example, that she was the lover of Koibuchi Jihei, Suzugoya’s village head with
whom the “real” Tokiko had spent some time on the road to Kyoto. At the same
time, however, she is also “manly” (otokomasari) and capable of feats of endur-
ance and cruelty only men could conceive. Shrewd yet no stranger to romance,
Tokiko is a “female daredev il” (daitan futekina onna).12
Tokiko’s characterization as a daredev il calls to mind the early-Meiji
biographies of “poison women”—most infamously represented by seductress,
robber, and murderer Takahashi Oden—whose irresistible allure was matched

only by their sinister intents. In 1879, for example, writer Kanagaki Robun
had described Oden as a she-devil, a protean character whose actions required,
as Mark Silver puts it, “masquerade and self-refashioning.” Poison women,
adds Silver, were the byproduct of an era when the erasure of the old status
system had engendered anxieties about social mobility and the crime it may
incite.13 Th is brings us to the second reason behind Funabashi’s creative ad-
mixture of fact and fiction in the portrayal of Tokiko: the historical moment.
In the immediate postwar years the Occupation forces controlled the
media, inked out textbooks, and even micromanaged the production of his-
torical fiction—for example, by forbidding tales of samurai loyalty and by
banning kabuki performances of the saga of the forty-seven rōnin.14 By 1952,
however, the Occupation was over and the thirst (or simply nostalgia) for
good old tales of samurai vendettas had returned, allowing for the publication
of works like A Flower’s Life. With the demise of the “good wife, wise mother”
rhetoric (now a thing of the militaristic past),15 Kurosawa Tokiko could come
back in the guise of a gender-defying character not seen since the days of the
modern girl (moga) in the 1920s.
As with the poison women of the Meiji era, Funabashi’s Tokiko also re-
flected the uneasiness engendered by a new historical juncture. First, the hawk-
ish Tokiko exemplified the discomfort about the recent militaristic past that
defined the immediate postwar era, a time when the Restoration losers were
being rehabilitated and the Mito loyalists vilified as “ultranationalist” fanat-
ics.16 (Not coincidentally, Ii Naosuke describes Tokiko as the wife of a Mito sam-
urai.) Second, her gender ambiguity projected anxieties about the present—a
time when women were enjoying freedoms either long revoked or never be-
fore attained.17 Third, her protean character embodied (and perhaps exorcised)
the uncertainties of the future—the reconstruction and the lingering fears of
the unexpected in the atomic age. To this extent it is worth pointing out that
her story, in A Flower’s Life, is truncated, a non-sequitur of sorts: the reader
never knows her fate after the Kyoto encounter with Takajo. Likewise, in the
early 1950s the fate of the country may have appeared to many as a road fork-
ing off in several possible directions—some rewarding, some terrifying, all
equally uncertain.18 In this respect the Tokiko of Funabashi Seiichi reflects a
defanged, demilitarized, post-female suffrage, pre-economic recovery Japan be-
set by emerging Cold War anxieties—a country whose citizens paused to en-
joy, at long last, the deeds of swashbuckling heroes and gender-bending heroines
while waiting for the next chapter in their own history to be written.
196 Chapter 11
Nostalgic Nods to a Past That Wasn’t

The adventures of Tokiko in popular culture seemed destined to continue in
the fall of 2009, when a Japanese production company, S-Cube, expressed in-
terest in releasing a film about her life. On January 1, 2010, Ibaraki shinbun broke
the news in an article featuring enthusiastic comments from local supporters,
a photo of the director and other production members as they scouted the lo-
cation in Shirosato (formerly Suzugoya), and an insert with a brief biography
of Tokiko and her portrait (a cropped version of the 1889 photograph).19
Apparently uninterested in her political activism or in her conversations
with the cosmic forces, the producers decided instead to focus on her work as
a teacher. Whereas the shady Tokiko of A Flower’s Life had not returned to her
classroom, her 2009 reincarnation would be the epitome of the dedicated edu-
cator, an absolute positive. The newspaper article, titled “Kurosawa Tokiko: The
Making of a Movie,” bears the subtitle “From Shirosato, Japan’s First Female
Teacher.” Director Kubota Shōji (b. 1974), interviewed in the piece, explained:
“I came across Kurosawa Tokiko because I love the late-Tokugawa era. She was
such an exceptional person, and yet she is not well known, not even in [her
own] Ibaraki Prefecture. When it comes to the state of education, what is im-
portant in the formation of an individual? I could speak to this point using the
life of Tokiko, who lived amidst the chaos of the late Tokugawa.” The article
adds: “From within the prefecture already more than 2,500 people, especially
educators, have voiced their intention to help [with the project].” Indeed an un-
specified source is cited as saying, “This could be a great opportunity to recon-
sider the true meaning of education. Moreover, the movement to preserve her
native home has been revitalized.” Further to underscore the angle that the film
would be taking, a pre-production draft compiled in November 2009 listed as
a tentative title for the fi lm Learn More (Motto manabinasai) and as a possible
subtitle The Life of Kurosawa Tokiko from Ibaraki, Japan’s First Female Teacher.20
In the absence of a full script, it is difficult to speculate about true mean-
ings and real intentions, though nostalgia for purportedly simpler times and
simpler values seems to infuse the director’s comments. In an age of unem-
ployment (the rate reached an all-time postwar high in July 2009),21 precari-
ous jobs with little to no benefits or prospect of promotion, educational reforms
that have hurt low-income students, and empty fads hyped by consumerism,
Kubota’s words imply that old-style education can offer much-needed direc-
tion and substance.22 More than that, it can reestablish a type of human con-
nection that has been lost in the modern shuffle. In this respect the film—whose
director would have come of age precisely around the time of the economic
“bubble burst” of the early 1990s—seems to have been conceived as part of the
larger trend to idealize the past (not necessarily of the late-Tokugawa kind) as
an antidote to the hopelessness of the present.23
As any historian knows, nostalgia requires selective amnesia. The Ibaraki
shinbun article makes but minor concessions to Tokiko’s political persona: born
in the last century of the Tokugawa period, Tokiko “lived a life of ups and
downs.” “At age fi ft y-four she resolved to appeal to the imperial court [to
proclaim] the innocence of Mito domain lord Tokugawa Nariaki, who had
been ordered into house arrest in the course of the Ansei Purges, and trav-
eled to Kyoto by herself.” At this point, however, the text fast-forwards to the
Meiji period and to her work as an educator. There is no mention of what one
would have thought of as “made for the big screen” moments: the comet, the ar-
rest, the banishment, or her divination sessions. (One would expect greater inter-
est for her activities as a diviner, especially in the context of a New Age curiosity
for fortunetellers and spiritual guides.24 That this is not the case may be attribut-
able to the “overwhelmingly negative” light in which people have come to see
practices pertaining to “cults” since Aum Shinrikyō launched the sarin gas at-
tacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995.25) Rather, the piece focuses squarely on two
main aspects of Tokiko’s life and personality: her education on one side and her
strength of character, especially her self-reliance, determination, and indepen-
dence, on the other. One hundred and twenty years after her death, against a
historical background she would have neither recognized nor understood, To-
kiko continued to serve as a model and as a source of inspiration, this time for
the socially conscious: “in this day and age during which one may argue that
education is wasting away,” reads the pre-production draft, “we cannot help but
notice that [her story] is being forgotten. Let us inquire, once again, about the
importance of learning.”
Learn More ran into financial roadblocks, not the least of which was due
to the crisis precipitated by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and has
yet to come to fruition. However, the excitement it generated at the time, espe-
cially in Mito, still serves as a good endpoint for Tokiko’s journey in historical
memory. Against all odds, the unassuming sparrow of the late Tokugawa pe-
riod has managed to fly through storms for more than a century, disappearing
and then resurfacing across time and space, reconfigured as fierce hawk, gen-
tle dove, or indomitable phoenix. A life defined by the crisis of the late Tokugawa
and by the uncertainties of the Meiji transition has, over time, come to reflect
principles, ideas, and anxieties never known to the original historical charac-
ter: the modern patriot, commendable citizen, paragon of frugality, domestic
diva, androgynous spy, or exemplary educator serving as a mirror of local agen-
das, of prevailing ideologies, and sometimes even of the gyrations of the mar-
ket. This is not, hopefully, the final stretch in the sparrow’s centuries-long flight.
198 Chapter 11
If this work inspires further research into, or even just a bit of curiosity about
the many roles and scripts of Kurosawa Tokiko, the place of women and the
non-elites in the Restoration movement, the intermingling of prophecy and pol-
itics, or the many forms of female political activism around the world, then
perhaps there is a chance that, as Gunji Atsunobu and Tatebayashi Miyatarō
had hoped, her story may be told and retold “in perpetuity.”
Conclusion
The Doing That Matters
Kurosawa Tokiko was right when she likened herself to a “speck of

dust in the wind” and her actions to “one drop in the ocean, one hair out of
nine cows,” for none of what she did changed the course of history. We do not
know whether the petitionary poem ever reached the hands of the emperor,
but even if it did, it failed to spare Tokugawa Nariaki the indignity of house
arrest: he died in 1860 while still serving his sentence.
Efforts have been made, to be sure, to cast Tokiko in a more influential
role than the one she likely played. Unsurprisingly, most of these efforts came
out of Mito. In a 1981 article published locally, for example, Koibuchi Takeo
listed the names of thirty-seven men from Suzugoya who partook in the so-
called Kinmon Incident, a battle near the imperial court in Kyoto in the sum-
mer of 1864. Koibuchi attributes these men’s drive not only to the pervasiveness
of loyalist thought in Mito, but also to the thirst for vindication spurred by the
arrest and banishment of Kurosawa Tokiko five years earlier.1 As chapter 10
elucidated, moreover, there have also been attempts to reshape Tokiko’s circles
and retroactively claim for her greater glory by association.
At the same time, for one who was a self-professed nobody, Tokiko had
unquestionably forged personal ties with established loyalists and knew many
of the men who would be later commemorated as prominent Mito loyalists.
Koibuchi, for example, reminds us that among the twelve Suzugoya loyalists
who died at the time of the Restoration and whose names are listed on a com-
memorative stone monument at Keiganji in the Mito valley, at least two, Ey-
ama Shinzō Norimitsu and Mimura Tahei Motosada, had personally met
Tokiko. In 1859, at the time of her sentencing, they were summoned to Edo in
their capacity as village administrators.2 More to the point, Tokiko knew, and
had spent time on the road with, her own village head, Koibuchi Jihei, who had
been an active participant in the Nariaki exculpation movement since the 1840s.
Whether she was “famous” or “anonymous,” whether her mission was a
“success” or a “failure” is actually not the point. What matters is that Tokiko
existed at the fringes of late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji history and, from that
199
200 Conclusion
angle, wrote about it. She wrote about turmoil and about her quest for order;
she wrote about her gender and about her identities; she wrote about her friends
and about her enemies, her circles and her networks, her past and her present.
What are we to make now of her own life as she wrote it?
Let us start with what we should not make of it: a model. The goal of this
work was not to present Tokiko’s story as exemplary of the way in which women
lived through the turmoil of the late Tokugawa, much in the same way as no
monograph on Saigō Takamori, Sakamoto Ryōma, or Yoshida Shōin should
ever claim to be a window into the way in which “men” experienced the Res-
toration. Tokiko, for one, was not the only woman to engage in political activ-
ism in the late Tokugawa period, nor was she the only commoner to do so. Other
women in Mito supported, in one way or another, the activities of loyalist men;
Anzō Ryōko, for example, mentions the role played by the wives of Tengu reb-
els during the 1864 civil war.3 Even outside Mito, several mothers, wives, or
mistresses of loyalist men helped them behind the scenes.4 Tokiko commands
our attention because, among other things, she produced an enduring paper
trail, whereas many of these other women did not, or, if they did, it no longer
exists. Their stories may have been just as relevant, but without documentary
evidence, we can never reconstruct them.
Second, Tokiko is not a model because, to state the obvious, not all female
political activists reasoned along the same lines or performed the same script.
Some women, for example, sided with the Tokugawa and even went to war for
them, as the case of Aizu domain’s Women’s Army (Jōshigun) illustrates.5 Even
those who sided with the loyalists did not always deploy the same tactics. As
we have seen, Nomura Bōtō thought nothing of illness whereas Tokiko turned
it into a platform to reiterate her role as pivotal figure in the process that would
ultimately heal the body politic. Yanagawa Kōran used the hexagrams as ex-
amples of literary erudition, not as tools to extrapolate the immediate future.
Matsuo Taseko thought and acted rationally; she would have abhorred Tokiko’s
flirtations with cosmic forces and ghosts. A fierce anti-Buddhist (she scorned
all sites associated with Buddhism during her journey to Kyoto in 1862),6 Taseko
would have equally disapproved of Tokiko’s acceptance of Buddhist principles
and of her belief, here expressed poetically, that
Asa na yū na The teachings of the Law

kokoro ni kakete erase all of
kokodaku no the sins
tsumi mo kieyuku clinging to our hearts
nori no oshie wa mornings and evenings.7
The Doing That Matters 201
It is precisely because these female loyalists, while sharing the same basic ideas,
acted them out in different ways that telling Tokiko’s story is not redundant
but in fact enriching.
Having established that Tokiko’s story is meaningful neither for its results
(arguably inconspicuous) nor for its “exemplary” value, I wish to turn now to
the actual lessons we can draw from it. Tokiko’s story, I contend, is worthy of
notice for the route it followed and for the methods it deployed in order to place
the ordinary individual within the purview of large-scale history. In a study
of Indian subaltern classes and of their confrontations with the dominant dis-
course, Assa Doron and Ursula Rao emphasize that the ultimate result is not
as important as the process itself. Involvement alone, they argue, “indicates dy-
namism and agency and may in some cases generate unpredictable results.
Voices and performances of dissent carry the potential to arrest attention and
seduce engagement. The doing harbours the possibility for transformation, how-
ever gradual and incremental.”8 In other words, it is the process that counts,
for its very unfolding bespeaks historical opportunities hitherto unavailable
and generates tensions hitherto unimagined. In the case of Tokiko, it is pre-
cisely “the doing” that matters. Whether she changed the course of history,
whether she can serve as “case study” for “Restoration women,” is irrelevant.
The lessons learned here are of a different kind, and they are numerous.
From the perspective of gender, Tokiko’s life story bespeaks fresh oppor-
tunities to voice and perform dissent but also great resistance thereto. It dem-
onstrates that, even at a time of rupture in women’s history, a time when more
avenues opened for them, gender requirements were still being negotiated, for
traditional roles and expectations of passivity were far from being forgotten,
much less discarded.9 Th is was as true in the late Tokugawa as it was in the
first half of the twentieth century, when Tokiko’s story was manipulated,
censored, and creatively retold to offset specific fears about female autonomy
while bolstering contemporary notions of female subordination and gendered
patriotism. (In this respect, hers is also a case study in the fallacies of historical
memory and commemoration and in the impossibility of preventing the anx-
ieties, ideologies, and preoccupations of the present from coloring the under-
standing of the past.)
As a peculiar combination of no-nonsense focus and visionary flights of
the imagination, Tokiko’s plunge into big history nuances our understanding
of political consciousness and activism among rural commoners and non-elites
at the twilight of the Tokugawa era. It shows how both the rational and the cos-
mic and divine colored the political vocabulary of some loyalist sympathizers,
reminding us that the two lexicons were not mutually exclusive. Tokiko’s
202 Conclusion
upbringing in the Hōjuin had exposed her to the principles of Shugendō; her
activities as a prognosticator had shown her the tangible benefits that came
from being proficient in the language of the heavens. If one lesson was to be
learned from her early life experiences, it was that abstract principles could
and should be measured against reality; that humans benefited from their in-
teractions with gods and spirits; that the heavens were not aloof but within
reach, ready to offer help and guidance if consulted correctly. Tokiko was not
acting disingenuously when she called on comets and ghosts: she was simply
applying this lesson. To her, what we would call “the rational” and “the spiri-
tual” were not irreconcilable opposites but in fact two sides of the same coin;
she was a pragmatist with a background in mysticism, a ritual specialist bent
on solving a practical dilemma. Her approach to problem-solving indicates
that, far from being the sole preserve of hysterical peasants who interpreted the
fall of amulets from the sky as heaven’s invitation to run away to Ise Shrine,10
or of frenzied townspeople chanting “ain’t it great” (eejanaika) and looting the
storehouses of wealthy merchants in the name of world renewal,11 the signs and
wonders of the cosmic forces and of the gods could also become part and par-
cel of a direct, focused, educated, and determined approach to activism.
More broadly, Tokiko’s case also expands our understanding of the vari-
ous forms of peasant resistance and dissent the world over—what James C. Scott
has called the “weapons of the weak.” In his seminal study, Scott examines
indirect and often subtle challenges to the state on the part of Malaysian peas-
ants in the 1970s. By deploying such tactics as foot dragging, false compli-
ance, noncompliance, character assassination, slander, feigned ignorance, or
sabotage—argues Scott—the peasantry acted to defend its interests.12 Tokiko’s
foray into activism offers a different example of opposition to the state on the
part of the non-elites. The tactics she used against the policies of the Tokugawa
in 1859 did incorporate some of the traditional weapons of the weak—slander
and character assassination, for sure, but also noncompliance (with the terms
of her banishment, for example, or more broadly with established expectations
related to her gender) and false compliance (intentionally filling out the guest
log in Moriyama with false information, to name one). At the same time, To-
kiko’s “performance of dissent” was open and direct; so direct, in fact, that it
took her all the way to Kyoto and resulted in her incarceration. Her actions,
moreover, were not motivated by self-serving, localized interests, but, as she
repeated throughout her writings, by the determination to restore health to the
body politic of the realm writ large. More importantly, Tokiko contested the
state and fought against the onset of chaos not only with the traditional weap-
ons of the weak but also with an arsenal of cosmic ammunition and a small
army of ghosts.
The Doing That Matters 203
Her cosmology also teaches us a lesson in the manifold ways in which in-
dividuals constructed and negotiated their roles in late-Tokugawa society. To-
kiko’s world and Tokiko’s heavens danced around each other, touching and
connecting, intersecting and conversing; she was the pivot that made this dance
possible, bringing the two spheres together by reading symbols and omens, by
reciting incantations and prayers, by summoning visions and ghosts. The hexa-
grams with which she divined the fate of her fellow villagers taught her that
the universe consisted of a series of permutations of high and low, big and small,
strong and weak; they told her that opposites worked in tandem, not indepen-
dently. Such a view of the cosmic order was not at all incompatible with the
idea that even a base-born person could rise above her station in life. If any-
thing, it encouraged such a notion, and in doing so, inspired Tokiko to play a
role that was larger than life.
As an exercise in squaring large- and small-scale history, this study of
the odyssey of Kurosawa Tokiko demonstrates the advantages of looking at
large historical events from the peephole of microhistory. Such a perspective
turns the spotlight away from the title characters and from the usual sus-
pects and points it at the extras; it replaces bright marquees and oversized
billboards with individual portraits; it muffles loud rumbles to give space to
the voices in the background. The switch in focus brings out a picture of per-
sonal joys and sorrows that impacted the lives of people just as much as (if
not more than) the large-scale historical events unfolding in the distance—a
picture of preoccupations, priorities, and contingencies that were never com-
pletely detached from the main narrative, but were not entirely subordinated
to it either. While most texts trumpet (for good reasons) the political revolu-
tion of 1868 as a key turning point, fewer investigate how the ordinary, un-
important individual reacted to change. Available evidence points at other
key transitional moments in the constantly renewing life of Kurosawa To-
kiko on both sides of the 1868 divide: the death of her husband, Hikozō, in
the early 1830s; her taking over the family school in 1854; the encounter with
Nakatsukasa in 1858; the end of her incarceration and her surreptitious return
to Suzugoya in 1859; her transformation into an elementary school teacher in
1872; the bestowal of the land grant and the editing of her diaries in 1875;
and her involvement with Ontakekyō in the 1880s. At each of these junctures
Tokiko either made a fresh start or steered her life in a new direction. The
story of a hairpin peddler and poet, a prognosticator and teacher, an activist
and modern educator is, in its twists and turns, unusual enough to catch our
attention and unique enough to reveal motivations, attitudes, and values that
would otherwise have remained in the background, out of focus if not entirely
out of sight.
204 Conclusion
By zooming in, we get a sense for the resourcefulness and creativity with
which the single historical actor managed to navigate the turbulent waters of
change. After completing her mission to restore order in the realm, Tokiko re-
oriented her priorities toward the local, deploying her expertise as an oracle to
aid her fellow villagers during the 1864 civil war. When the world as she knew
it came under attack and then crumbled to be replaced with unfamiliar recon-
figurations, Tokiko had to find ways successfully to transition across two eras
while preventing historical amnesia and preserving the old in the face of the
new. She did so by adapting, by “going with the flow” (as she put it), and by
reconceptualizing her roles: when the Meiji government introduced a national
school system, she turned her classroom into an elementary school; after the
same state eradicated the Shugendō tradition, she applied for a license to rep-
resent Ontakekyō. At the same time Tokiko strove not to erase the past; her
transitions thus included transformation but also tenacious (if subtle) resis-
tance to change. When she posed for her portrait in 1889, Tokiko looked into
the camera, a modern object, knowing full well that next to her stood a sym-
bolic vessel (the poem) capable of resurrecting ghosts of her world as it was in
the 1850s. By way of visions, vessels, and verses, Tokiko negotiated the fall of
the Tokugawa and the onset of Meiji modernity on her own terms.
Other microhistorians have spoken eloquently about the ways in which
individuals transiting across different cultures or historical moments adjusted
their identities to stay afloat: Natalie Zemon Davis in her study of the trickster
al-Hasan al-Wazzan, for example, or Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s portraits of Prince
Meale, Anthony Sherley, and Nicolò Manuzzi.13 That Tokiko should join such
a cohort of border-crossers and cultural intermediaries may appear strange:
she never left the confines of her country, after all, nor did she interact directly
with foreign visitors. As a peasant woman from a rural village, her resources
and connections were far more limited than those of such illustrious prede-
cessors, many of whom spoke multiple languages, traveled on a global scale,
and rubbed elbows with rulers. But Tokiko also crossed important thresholds
(from her rural village to the imperial capital; from extra to center stage; from
Tokugawa to Meiji), and, like al-Wazzan and Meale, like Sherley and Manuzzi,
she too had to adjust, improvise, and use creative ways to stay true to herself
in the face of change.
In the end, this work remains the story of a self-described speck of dust.
However, as one of the primers from Tokiko’s personal library proclaimed,
“When it piles up, dust becomes a great mountain.”14 And so, maybe, will her
story. That it may in fact end up collecting more dust in the shelves of libraries
and bookstores is as ironic as it is poetic.
APPENDIX
Poems in honor of Sugawara no Michizane that Tokiko composed while incarcer-

ated in 1859. When read in sequence, the first syllables of each poem spell out Ki-
tano Tenman Daijizai Tenjingū, Michizane’s title.
Ki-ta-no
Kimi ga tame For my lord
harubaru kokoni [I have come] this far
Kitano naru to Kitano
kami ni chikai o to make a vow
kakete inoramu to its deity.
Tamaboko1 no Making my way

michi fumiwakete along the jeweled spear road
kyō koso wa today
kami no mimae ni I have come
hikare kinikere before the gods.
No no sue mo At the edge of the fields

kami no mikaki mo and by the gods’ fence
oshinabete the scent of plum [blossoms]
ume no nioi wa was not
kawarazarikeri much different.
Te-n-ma-n (Te-mu-ma-mu)
Tesusabi ni Were I to pluck one for fun,
orabaya oramu would it break?
kamigaki no What are those flowers called
hana to iu wa nani [that grow] on the shrine fence?
kokoro ukarete Joy for the heart.
205
206 Appendix
Murasame no It comes down through

kumo no taema o a break in the clouds
furiidete of a passing shower
na noru ya kami no and announces its name: a cuckoo
yama hototogisu from the peak of the gods.
Masukagami The pure shine

kiyoki hikari wa of the bright mirror:
iku chiyo mo before the gods
ya o yorozuyo no for ages,
kami no mimae ni eternally.
Musashino ni Parting the dew

shigeru yomogi no on the mugwort that grows lushly
tsuyu wakete in the Musashi Plain:
kumoue ni kayou divine guidance
kami no michibiki to the place above the clouds.
Da-i-ji-za-i (Ta-i-shi-sa-i)
Tama chihau People of Yamato,
kami no michi to te return to the past,
sunao naru when we followed
mukashi ni kaere the way of the gods
Yamato kunibito who gave us divine protection.
Inishie mo Far is the end

ima mo sakaeru of the Sugawara
Sugawara no god:
kami no misue no he flourishes now
sue zo tōtoki as he did then.
Shigarami to Let us get together,

narite todomeyo tight as a net,
kimigayo no making an oath to the gods
chiyo no tameshi o for the eternity
kami ni chikaite of our lord’s reign.
Saranuda ni I am thinking,
omoi o komeshi this cannot be . . .
kamigaki ni The light of the fireflies
yo na yo na mo yuru burning each night
natsumushi no kage by the shrine fence.
Appendix 207
Iku tose mo Over the years

iro wa kawaraji their color does not change:
kamigaki no the green pines
temoto ni shigeru lushly growing under
matsu no midori wa the shrine’s fence.
Te-n-ji-n-gu-u (Te-mu-shi-mu-ku-u)
Terisukasu Along with
asahi no kage to the bright
morotomoni rays of the morning sun
kiyoki kokoro o the purifying water [at the shrine] reflects
utsusu mitarashi an untainted heart.
Murachidori Flock of plovers

kami no miyama ni descending
orihaete on the mountain of the gods
matsu ni yachiyo no cry their cry of thousands of years
ne o nomizo naku on the pine trees.
Shikishima no Oh spirit
yamatogokoro o of ancient Japan,
kami kakete by all means
migaku hikari wa let your bright radiance
yomo ni kagayake shine all around.
Musasabi to Were I to become

naritemo kami no a squirrel, I would still
miyashiro ni come
kimi ga tame ni ya to the shrine of the gods
yukikayoisemu for the sake of my lord.
Kumiwakete A mind like water

kami ya mamoramu streaming down
tamaboko no the jeweled-spear road:
michi o nagaruru be sympathetic
mizu no kokoro wa and the gods will protect you.
Ukikoto mo Even grief

ureshiki koto ni seems to turn
kawaru rashi into joy:
kakeshi chikai wa the vow I made
kami no mani mani is in the hands of the gods.
NOTES
KTS Kurosawa Tokiko shiryō, Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan, Mito

KKM Kurosawa-ke monjo, Ibaraki University, Mito
INTRODUCTION
1. Marguerite Yourcenar, That Mighty Sculptor, Time, trans. Walter Kaiser (New
York: The Noonday Press, 1993), 5.
2. J. Victor Koschmann, The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection
in Late Tokugawa Japan, 1790–1864 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 1, 130, and 133.
3. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi (KTS, MSS Nos. 2–3), I: 13 verso.
Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki wakashū (KTS, MS No. 19), 3 verso.
4. Anne Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the
Meiji Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Tanigawa Kaeko,
Nomura Bōtō-ni: Hitosuji no michi o mamoraba (Fukuoka: Karansha, 2011).
5. Although not a loyalist, another late-Tokugawa woman interested in politics,
Tadano Makuzu, disdained metaphysical approaches, did not see any connec-
tion between the heavens and the world of men, and believed that cosmology
was not the key to understanding the world. Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Thinking
Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763–1825) (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 210–215 and
242–243.
6. H. J. J. M. van Straelen, Yoshida Shōin, Forerunner of the Meiji Restoration; A
Biographical Study (Leiden: Brill, 1952); Marius B. Jansen, Sakamoto Ryōma and
the Meiji Restoration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961); Mark
Ravina, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori (Hoboken,
NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004); David Magarey Earl, Emperor and Nation in Ja-
pan: Political Thinkers of the Tokugawa Period (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1981); Thomas C. Smith, The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1959); Koschmann, The Mito Ideology.
7. Neil L. Waters, Japan’s Local Pragmatists: The Transition from Bakumatsu to Meiji
in the Kawasaki Region (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 3.
8. H. D. Harootunian, Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness
in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970); Susan Burns,
209
210 Notes to pages 4–6
Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Mod-
ern Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); William W. Kelly, Def-
erence and Defiance in Nineteenth- Century Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1985); M. William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern
Japanese History (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003); Gregory J. Smits, “Shak-
ing Up Japan: Edo Society and the 1855 Catfish Picture Prints,” Journal of
Social History 39, no. 4 (Summer 2006): 1045–1077.
9. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 76 and 162–167. Specifically, Koschmann reads
the trek to Nikkō as a pragmatic military exercise combined with a symbolic
reappropriation of “the aura of original purity” surrounding Tokugawa Ieya-
su’s resting place.
10. Ravina, The Last Samurai, 115 and 128.
11. Haga Noboru, Bakumatsu shishi no seikatsu (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1982), 14–
16. Yoshida Shōin chose the moniker Nagato kyōme, “the maniac from Na-
gato”; Yamagata Aritomo was also known as Yamagata kyōkai, “merely a maniac
from Yamagata”; and Takasugi Shinsaku was nicknamed Tōyō ikkyōsei, “a life
possessed in the East.” See also Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 222.
12. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 138 and 220–223.
13. Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 15.
14. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology; Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann, Con-
flict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1982); Kelly, Deference and Defiance.
15. George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Res-
toration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 61 and 85.
16. Steele, Alternative Narratives, 59. See also Katsunori Miyazaki, “Characteristics
of Popular Movements in Nineteenth-Century Japan: Riots during the Second
Chōshū War,” Japan Forum 17, no. 1 (2005): 1–24; Irwin Scheiner, “Benevolent
Lords and Honorable Peasants: Rebellion and Peasant Consciousness in
Tokugawa Japan,” in Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period 1600–1868:
Methods and Metaphors, ed. Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1978), 39–62; Watanabe Hiroshi, A History of Japanese
Political Thought: 1600–1901, trans. David Noble (Tokyo: International House
of Japan, 2012), 225.
17. For examples of frenzy or opportunism, see Laura Nenzi, “To Ise at All Costs:
Religious and Economic Implications of Early Modern Nukemairi,” Japanese
Journal of Religious Studies 33, no. 1 (2006): 75–114; Nancy K. Stalker, Prophet
Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial
Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008).
18. Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century
Miller (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Giovani Levi,
Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988). For microhistorical studies of more privi-
leged men, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century
Notes to pages 6–9 211
Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), and Sanjay Sub-
rahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early
Modern World (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011).
19. George R. Stewart, Pickett’s Charge: A Microhistory of the Final Attack at Get-
tysburg, July 3, 1863, cited in Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Th ree
Things That I Know about It,” trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi, Crit-
ical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 10–35.
20. Levi, Inheriting Power, xvi.
21. Ginzburg, “Microhistory.”
22 . John Brewer, “Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life,” Ludwig-
Maximilians Universität Center for Advanced Studies, CAS e-series 5 (2010): 2.
23. Brad S. Gregory, “Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Every-
day Life,” History and Theory 38, no. 1 (February 1999): 100.
24. Ginzburg, “Microhistory”: 22.
25. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (KTS, MS No. 12), 13 recto.
26. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 15 recto.
27. Ibid., I: 15 recto and 16 verso.
28. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki zatsuei Genji ninen yayoi (KTS, MS No. 14), 9 recto.
“No one comes / to chat: / day in and day out / the bamboo in my garden / looks
like my only friend” (katariau / hito konakereba / akekure no / tomo to koso
mire / niwa no kuretake).
29. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō (KTS, MS No. 1), 3 recto, and Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto
toraware no fumi, I: 18 verso.
30. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 22 recto.
31. Ibid., 19 verso.
32. While I will focus almost exclusively on works produced through World War
II, it is worth mentioning that recent studies also fail to discuss Tokiko’s rela-
tions to Shugendō and divination. See Shiba Keiko, “Hendō suru jisei ni
tachiagaru onna: Toraware no fumi,” in Bungaku ni miru Nihon josei no reki-
shi, ed. Nishimura Hiroko et al. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2000), 176–178.
33. Ginzburg, “Microhistory”: 22.
34. Fukai Jinzō, Kinsei josei tabi to kaidō kōtsū (Toyama: Kashira Shobō, 1995), 54–74;
Yamakawa Kikue, Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family
Life, trans. Kate Wildman Nakai (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992), 144 n. 1.
35. See Kaneko Sachiko, Nihon joseishi daijiten (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan,
2008), 216–217; Sakuma Yoshio, ed., Kyōdo rekishi jinbutsu jiten: Ibaraki (To-
kyo: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan, 1978), 80–81; Mito-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, Mito no sen-
datsu (Mito: Mito-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, 2000), 250–253; Nihon Rekishi Gakkai,
ed., Meiji ishin jinmei jiten (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981), 376.
36. For example, Aida Hanji and Harada Haruno, Kinsei joryū bunjin den (Tokyo:
Meiji Shoin, 1960), lists seventy-six female writers of the early modern period,
thirty-one of whom lived in the late Tokugawa, but leaves Tokiko out. She is
also not included in a four-volume anthology of Tokugawa-period female
writers: Furuya Chishin, Edo jidai joryū bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho
Sentaa, 1979; first ed. 1919).
37. Minesaburō’s collection is mentioned in Joshi Gakushūin, ed., Joryū chosaku
kaidai (Tokyo: Joshi Gakushūin, 1939), 509 and 26–27. I was informed about
the destruction of the manuscript in a personal email from Kuramochi Hitoshi,
Gakushūin librarian, on February 12, 2007. After the war what remained of the
library collection was inherited by the Gakushūin Joshi Chū-Kōtōka.
38. Katsura-mura Shidankai, ed., Katsurashi kiyō 4: Kurosawa Tokiko tokushū (Kat-
sura: Katsura-mura Shidankai, 1979).
39. For the complete list, including the names of the individual exhibitors, see ibid.,
63– 64.
40. Ibid., 65.
41. “Kurosawa Toki o eigaka e,” Ibaraki shinbun, January 1, 2010, 35.
42. Mito-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, Mito no sendatsu, 250–253.
43. Sakuma Yoshio, ed., Kyōdo rekishi jinbutsu jiten, 80–81. For more on Tokiko’s
activities as a teacher, see Anzō Ryōko, “Onna terakoya shishō no seikatsu: Ku-
rosawa Tokiko no nikki ni miru terakoya kyōiku no yōsu,” Edoki onnakō 11
(2000): 23–34; and, by the same author, “Onna terakoya shishō no seikatsu: Ku-
rosawa Tokiko no nikki ni miru terakoya kyōiku no yōsu,” Sogō joseishi kenkyū
21 (March 2004): 106–108.
44. Shiba Keiko, Kinsei no onna tabi nikki jiten (Tokyo: Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2005),
44–46. An English translation is also available: Shiba Keiko, Literary Creations
on the Road: Women’s Travel Diaries in Early Modern Japan, trans. Motoko Ezaki
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2012). See also Fukai Jinzō, Kin-
sei josei tabi to kaidō kōtsū, 54–74.
CHAPTER 1: A NEST AND A NEXUS

1. All Tokugawa period dates are given according to the pre-modern lunar cal-
endar unless otherwise specified.
2. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen (Katsura: Katsura-
mura, 2004), 288. The average Tokugawa-era village consisted of approximately
one hundred households; see Scheiner, “Benevolent Lords and Honorable Peas-
ants,” 44, and Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 218.
3. Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi (Katsura: Katsura-mura,
1978), 4.
4. Ibid., 43.
5. Also known as Shōjirō, Mitsunaka, Masahisa Sōjirō, or Sōsaburō. See Ogawa
Enson, Bakumatsu rimenshi: Kinnō retsujoden (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha,
1998), 80; Joshi Gakushūin, ed., Joryū chosaku kaidai, 565; Gunji Atsunobu,
ed., Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko (Mito: Gunji Atsunobu, 1900), 1; Shimomura
Miyokichi, “Kurosawa Tokiko,” pt. 1, Fujin to kodomo 2, no. 9 (September 1902):
43; Saiki Kumi, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōzō shashin no waka ni kansuru
ikkōsatsu: ‘Masukagami’ o tegakari ni,” Ibaraki daigaku kyōiku gakubu kiyō
(Kyōiku kagaku) 60 (2011): 22. Noguchi Katsuichi reads the name as Sōsaburō
Masahisa; see Noguchi Katsuichi, “Kurosawa Tokijo den,” in Yashidai ishin
shiryō sōsho 16, denki 7, ed. Nihon Shiseki Kyōkai (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shup-
pankai, 1975), 216.
6. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 287–288.
7. Anzō Ryōko, “Nikki ni miru Genji kinoenone no ran, Genji gannen Kurosawa
Tokiko no Nichiyō chōhōki kara,” Edoki onnakō 13 (2002): 51.
8. Ernest W. Clement, “Mito Samurai and British Sailors in 1824,” Transactions
of the Asiatic Society of Japan 1, no. 33 (1905): 125–126.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. Kate Wildman Nakai, “Introduction,” in Yamakawa Kikue, Women of the Mito
Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life, trans. Kate Wildman Nakai (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), xv.
11. Yamakawa, Women of the Mito Domain, 19.
12 . Kanamori Atsuko, “Kurosawa Toki Jōkyō nikki, Kyōto toraware no fumi,”
Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō 71, no. 8 (August 2006): 117. Anzō Ryōko,
“Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō,” Ibaraki shirin 25 (2001): 63. Tatebayashi
Miyatarō, Kurosawa Rikkyō (Mito: Rikkyōkai, 1937), 15.
13. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 22, and Anzō, “Onna terakoya shishō no sei-
katsu” (2000): 24, set the date at 1831; Anzō, however, also writes that Hikozō
died in 1832 in “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō”: 63. Saiki gives a date of
1834 in “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōzō shashin”: 22.
14. It was common practice for widows to shave their hair, pick a religious name,
and become nuns after the death of their husbands. While Tokiko did not take
the vows, she still marked the transition by acquiring a new name. See Barbara
Ruch, “The Other Side of Culture in Medieval Japan,” The Cambridge History
of Japan 3, Medieval Japan, ed. Kozo Yamamura (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 508–509.
15. Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 38–39.
16. Ibid., 41.
17. Anzō, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō”: 62.
18. In Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 41.
19. For a sample of the haiku she composed under Obana An, see Katsura Sonshi
Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 292–293.
20. Anzō, “Onna terakoya shishō no seikatsu” (2004): 106.
21. Anna Beerens, Friends, Acquaintances, Pupils and Patrons—Japanese Intellec-
tual Life in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Prosopographical Approach (Leiden:
Leiden University Press, 2006), 230–231.
22 . Takeshi Moriyama, “Communicating Provincials: The Correspondence Net-
work of Suzuki Bokushi (1770–1842),” Japanese Studies 29, no. 1 (May 2009):
47–63.
23. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 17 verso; Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi,
I: 16 recto and II: 14 verso. In a collection from 1856, Tokiko cites Ode to the
Autumn Wind, putatively attributed to Emperor Wu of the Han. Kurosawa To-

kiko, Ansei sannen waka zatsuei hinoetatsu keishū (KTS, MS No. 7), 6 recto.
24. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei Ansei yonen hinotomi rōgetsu (KTS, MS No.
8), 4 recto. The poem is titled “Confucianism.”
25. Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, Ishin shiryō kōyō (Tokyo: Ishin Shiryō
Hensan Jimukyoku, 1937), 3:171. Shūshinroku osumitsuki (KTS, MS No. 44).
Sources that present him as her stepfather include Shima Fujio, Nihon
reppuden: Rekishi bidan (Tokyo: Kindai Shōsetsusha, 1942), 305; Katsura
Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 288; Tatebayashi, Kuro-
sawa Rikkyō, 24.
26. Hitachi Ōta Shishi Hensan Iinkai, Hitachi Ōta shishi: Minzoku-hen (Ōta: Hi-
tachi Ōta Shiyakusho, 1979), 606– 607. James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and
Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1990), 50–53. See also Martin Collcutt, “Buddhism: The
Threat of Eradication,” in Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji, ed. Mar-
ius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1986), 143–167.
27. For some examples, see Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-
hen, 293.
28. Poems by Fusako are included in Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōki randai (KTS, MS No.
5), 10 recto.
29. Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 45.
30. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 305.
31. Ibid.
32. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 307. For an exam-
ple of a petition, see Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 46.
33. Saiki, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōzō shashin”: 24.
34. Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 223.
35. Katōgi Nao, “Rikkyō joshi nenpu,” in Katsurashi kiyō 4: Kurosawa Tokiko tokushū,
ed. Katsura-mura Shidankai (Katsura: Katsura-mura Shidankai, 1979), 59.
36. Kurosawa Tokiko, Monjin renmenchō (KTS, MS No. 36), dated 1852/7. The “gifts”
may have been tuition fees paid in kind, as later diaries indicate.
37. Conrad Totman, “Political Reconciliation in the Tokugawa Bakufu: Abe Ma-
sahiro and Tokugawa Nariaki, 1844–1852,” in Personality in Japanese History,
ed. Albert M. Craig and Donald H. Shively (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1970), 205. The occasion was the preparation for Yoshiatsu’s nuptials.
38. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 38–39 and 148–149.
39. P. F. Kornicki, “Women, Education, and Literacy,” in The Female as Subject:
Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan, ed. P. F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio,
and G. G. Rowley (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Mich-
igan, 2010), 21.
40. Edoardo Grendi, “Ripensare la microstoria?” Quaderni Storici 29, nos. 86–87
(1994): 544; Edoardo Grendi, “Micro-analisi e storia sociale,” Quaderni Storici
12, nos. 34–36 (1977): 506–520.
41. Janine Sawada, Confucian Values and Popular Zen: Sekimon Shingaku in
Eighteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 10–11
and 139. For a look at private academies, where teachers were mostly samurai,
see Richard Rubinger, Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1982).
42. For a complete list of their names, see Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura
sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 288.
43. Ibid., 291.
44. Ibid., 289.
46. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859) (KTS, MS No. 40), entries for
12/13 and 12/18.
47. For example, see Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō (KTS, MS No. 33),
entries for 7/18 and 7/19; Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859), en-
tries for 12/9 and 12/10.
48. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entries for 8/17 and 8/3.
49. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859), entries for 12/10 and 12/23.
50. Brian Platt, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan,
1750–1890 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 75–99.
51. Oshieguruma (Tokiko Shiryōkan, Shirosato); Tenarai shikimoku (Tokiko
Shiryōkan, Shirosato). Both manuals have unnumbered pages; all page refer-
ences are based on my own counting. The content of Rules for Learning is
virtually identical to the set of precepts included in R. P. Dore, Education in
Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 323–326.
52. Oshieguruma, 13.
53. A common expression in Edo period textbooks and the opening line of the
primer Jitsugokyō; see Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan, 280.
54. Tenarai shikimoku, 1 verso.
55. Oshieguruma, 3– 4.
56. Ibid., 7–8.
57. Tenarai shikimoku, 1 verso–2 verso. One section in this manual is titled “Dos”
(tsukamatsurubeki koto). Ibid., 11 verso.
58. Oshieguruma, 14.
59. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entry for 8/3.
60. Ibid., 12.
62. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan, 271 and 275.
63. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entries for 8/10 and 8/17 (warui,
ahōmono, komarimono).
64. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859), entries for 10/22 and 12/12.
66. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859), entry for 11/15.
67. Ibid., entry for 12/27.
69. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan, 260.

70. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entry for 8/11; Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–
1859), entries for 9/29, 9/30, and 10/6.
71. Mimura Shōji[bei], Kinsu azukari shōmon no koto (KKM, Box No. 6, MS No.
1053).
73. Byron Earhart, “Introduction,” in Miyake Hitoshi, Shugendō: Essays on the
Structure of Japanese Folk Religion (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies,
University of Michigan, 2001), 2–3.
74. Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975), 20–22.
75. Royall Tyler and Paul L. Swanson, Editors’ Introduction, Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 16, nos. 2–3 (1989): 94.
76. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, 22.
77. Fabian Drixler, Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan,
1660–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 97.
78. Kanda Yoriko, Miko to Shugen no shūkyō minzokugakuteki kenkyū (Tokyo: Iwata
Shoin, 2001), 341–349 and 503.
79. Helen Hardacre, “Conflict between Shugendō and the New Religions of Baku-
matsu Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (1994): 141 and
146. See also Miyake Hitoshi, “Religious Rituals in Shugendō: A Summary,”
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 16, nos. 2–3 (1989): 101–102.
80. Tanigawa Ken‘ichi, Yōkai (Tokyo: San‘ichi Shobō, 1988), 157.
81. Ibid., 157–158.
82. Gorai Shigeru, Shugendō reizan no rekishi to shinkō (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 2008),
47.
83. Fukui Ryōmei, “Shugendō kyōgisho de no hontō futaha,” Indogaku bukkyōgaku
kenkyū 23, no. 2 (1975): 853–858.
84. Ehara Tadaaki, “Shugendō no chihō soshiki: Mitoryō no baai—sono ichi,”
Ibaraki shirin 4 (1975): 18 and 20. See also Ibaraki Shinbunsha, ed., Ibaraki-
ken daihyakka jiten (Mito: Ibaraki Shinbunsha, 1981), 521.
85. Kanda, Miko to Shugen, 74; Nishida Kahoru, “Miko,” in Takano Toshihiko, ed.,
Minkan ni ikiru shūkyōsha (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2000), 51–89.
86. Wai-ming Ng, “Study and Uses of the I Ching in Tokugawa Japan,” Sino-Japanese
Studies 9, no. 2 (November 1990): 24– 44. Charles Hepner, The Kurozumi Sect
of Shinto (Tokyo: Meiji Japan Society, 1935), 65–71.
87. Hikime no daijizen (KKM, Box No. 5, MS No. 789).
88. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, 106–107.
89. Koike Jun‘ichi, “Hokiden no igi,” in Hokiden onmyō zassho nukigaki, ed. Hi-
sano Toshihiko and Koike Jun‘ichi (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2010), 291–309.
90. Richard Wilhelm, trans., The I Ching or Book of Changes (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1950), 392–395. Hepner, The Kurozumi Secto of Shinto, 65–71.

92. Katsu Kokichi, Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai, trans.
Teruko Craig (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), 83–84.
93. Hayashi Makoto, “Tokugawa-Period Disputes between Shugen Organizations
and Onmyōji over Rights to Practice Divination,” Japanese Journal of Religious
Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (1994): 168–169, 175 n. 6, and 176.
CHAPTER 2: CIRCLES AND CIRCUMSTANCES

1. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 19 verso.
3. Shimomura, “Kurosawa Tokiko,” pt. 1: 44. Shimomura identifies Sukenobu as
Tokiko’s second husband.
4. Mark Teeuwen reminds us that some branches of Kokugaku “did not necessarily
regard Japanese studies as incongruous with Chinese studies.” Mark Teeuwen,
“Kokugaku vs. Nativism,” Monumenta Nipponica 61, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 233.
5. On nativism see Mark McNally, Proving the Way: Conflict and Practice in the
History of Japanese Nativism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Cen-
ter, 2005); Burns, Before the Nation; H. D. Harootunian, Things Seen and Un-
seen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988).
6. Oshieguruma, 14.
7. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entry for 8/1. Anzō Ryōko reads the
name as Kaga Ginzaburō; Anzō, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō”: 62.
8. Hōjuin, Betsu ya dōjō kenritsu goseshu tsuki chō (KKM, Box No. 5, MS No.
786).
9. See Kanda, Miko to Shugen, 128. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, chapter 8.
10. Peter Knecht, review of Ingrid Fritsch, Japans blinde Sänger im Schutz der Got-
theit Myōon-Benzaiten, Asian Ethnology 58, no. 2 (1999): 444– 445.
11. Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, Ishin shiryō kōyō (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1941), 3:58. Akutsu Takuo, “Genjiki ni okeru sonjōha nōmin no
dōkō ni tsuite—Hitachikuni Kujigun Machida chihō o chūshin to shite,” Ibaraki
shirin 7 (1978): 20 and 29.
12. For a description of religious activities in the area, see Katsura Sonshi Hensan
Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 294–298.
13. Anzō, “Onna terakoya shishō no seikatsu” (2000): 24. Anzō also points out that
some of the people described in Tokiko’s diaries fit the profi le of the loyalist.
Anzō, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō”: 62– 63.
15. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei sannen waka zatsuei, 1 recto.
16. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (1857), 4 recto.
17. Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōki randai (1855), 14 verso.
18. Roger K. Thomas, Plebeian Travelers on the Way of Shikishima: Waka Theory
and Practice during the Late Tokugawa Period (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana Uni-
versity, 1991), vii.
19. The first two syllables in Hitachi allude to hida, or folds, conveying the image
of “folded sleeves.” Basil Hall Chamberlain, “On the Use of ‘Pillow Words’ and
Plays upon Words in Japa nese Poetry,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of
Japan 5, no. 1 (1877): 84.
20. Katagiri Yōichi, Utamakura utakotoba jiten (Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 1999), 194.
21. “Shaking and rectifying / a world / that lost / its peaceful ways: / the work of
heaven and earth?” (Tairakeki / michi ushinaeru / yo no naka o / yuriaratamemu
/ ametsuchi no waza). Nomura Bōtō, “Kōryōshū,” in Bōtō-ni kabunshū, ed. Sa-
saki Nobutsuna and Ōkubo Takaaki (Fukuoka: Morioka Kumahiko, 1911), 161.
Tanigawa, Nomura Bōtō-ni, 70.
22. For more on the loyalist connection between Shunzō and Tokiko, see chapter
7. Ibaraki University owns several letters from Shunzō to Tokiko sent well into
the Meiji period.
23. J. Victor Koschmann, “Action as a Text: Ideology in the Tengu Insurrection,”
in Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition, ed. Tetsuo Na-
jita and J. Victor Koschmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982),
89–92.
25. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi hen, 310.
26. Mito Shishi Hensan Iinkai, Mito shishi, chūkan 4 (Mito: Mito-shi, 1982), 965–970.
27. The faction centered on the Kōdōkan, the domain academy, pushed for the re-
turn of the decree. More radical elements, future members of the Tengu fac-
tion, opposed it.
28. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi hen, 312.
29. Ibid., 313.
30. Kanamori, “Kurosawa Toki”: 118.
31. Mito-han shiryō, jōhen, kon (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1915), 227.
32. Ibid., 228.
33. A previous cholera outbreak had occurred in 1822.
34. Komiyama Nanryō, “Nanryō nenroku,” in Ibaraki-ken shiryō, bakumatsu-hen
II, ed. Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan (Mito: Ibaraki-ken, 1989), 124; Kojima Ki-
yofumi and Fushiwaki Toshio, eds., Ōkyō zakki (Toyama: Katsura Shobō, 1990),
924; Maeda-ke Henshūbu, Kaga-han shiryō, bakumatsu-hen 1 (Tokyo: Hirose
Hōsaku, 1958), 987.
35. Komiyama Nanryō, “Nanryō nenroku,” 125.
36. Inoue Jōshō, Shinkakuji nikki II, jishin nikki 3–4 (Kōchi: Kōchi Shiritsu Shimin
Toshokan, 1969), 125.
37. Komiyama Nanryō, “Nanryō nenroku,” 123, 131, and 141.
38. Kojima and Fushiwaki, eds., Ōkyō zakki, 925.
39. Ibid., 910 and 916.
40. An 1868 broadsheet, for example, reports that 100 mon would buy 1.35 liters
of rice in 1857, but only 0.93 liters in 1869. Nakayama Einosuke, ed., Edo Meiji
kawaraban senshū (Tokyo: Jinbunsha, 1974), fig. 66.
41. Maeda-ke Henshūbu, Kaga-han shiryō, 970–976.
42. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen kika kichijōtsuki (KTS, MS. No.
9), 3 verso, 4 recto, and 11 verso. Similar poems appear in Kurosawa Tokiko,
Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen tsuchinoeuma shimotsuki (KTS, MS No. 10), 2 verso
(1858/6) and 4 verso (1858/11).
44. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859), entry for 12/26.
CHAPTER 3: GLIMPSES OF HISTORY (THE SCRIPT)

2. Kenneth R. Lang, A Companion to Astronomy and Astrophysics: Chronology
and Glossary with Data Tables (New York: Springer, 2006), 133, table 5; Ōsaki
Shōji, ed., Kinsei Nihon tenmon shiryō (Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1994), 516 n. 12.
3. T. A. Darragh, “Ludwig Becker, a Scientific Dilettante: His Correspondence with
J. J. Kaup and Others,” Historical Records of Australian Science 11, no. 4 (1996):
504; Roberta J. M. Olson, “A Water- Colour by Samuel Palmer of Donati’s
Comet,” Burlington Magazine 132, no. 1052 (1990): 795–796; Jay M. Pasachoff
and Roberta J. M. Olson, “Comets and Meteors in 18th and 19th Century Brit-
ish Art and Science,” Physics Education 30, no. 3 (1995): 156–162; Jay M. Pasa-
choff, Roberta J. M. Olson, and Martha L. Hazen, “The Earliest Comet
Photographs: Usherwood, Bond, and Donati 1858,” Journal for the History of
Astronomy 27 (1996): 129–145; Antonella Gasperini, Daniele Galli, and Laura
Nenzi, “The Worldwide Impact of Donati’s Comet on Art and Society in the
Mid-19th Century,” in The Role of Astronomy in Society and Culture, Proceed-
ings IAU Symposium 260 (2009): 340–345.
4. Mito-han shiryō, jōhen, kon, 228.
5. Inoue Jōshō, Shinkakuji nikki, 112–129.
6. Tōkamachi Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Tōkamachi shishi, shiryō-hen 5, kinsei 2
(Tōkamachi: Tōkamachi Shiyakusho, 1993), 713.
7. Laura Nenzi, “Caught in the Spotlight: The 1858 Comet and Late-Tokugawa Ja-
pan,” Japan Forum 23, no. 1 (2011): 18.
8. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 1 recto, 1 verso.
9. Shōmonki, the chronicle of Masakado’s rebellion (completed in 940), makes no
mention of a comet, but it does mention a change in era name in 938, the year
before the rebellion. While such changes were often prompted by the appear-
ance of comets, Judith Rabinovitch argues that in this case the change may have
been undertaken to ward off an earthquake, a military insurrection, and/or
other such calamities. Judith N. Rabinovitch, trans. and ed., Shōmonki: The Story
of Masakado’s Rebellion (Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica, 1986), 84 and 85
n. 57. Chinese records attest to the appearance of a comet in 936 and of one in
938. Ichiro Hasegawa, “Cata logue of Ancient and Naked-Eye Comets,” Vistas
in Astronomy 24, no. 1 (1980): 75 and 92.
10. Terajima Ryōan, Wakan sansai zue (Tokyo: Heibonsha 1985), 1:166.
11. Ōsaki, Kinsei Nihon tenmon shiryō, 502.
12. Sugi Takeshi, “Shoseki to fōkuroa: Kinsei no hitobito no suiseikan o megutte,”
Hitotsubashi ronsō 134, no. 4 (2005): 733.
13. Ōsaki, Kinsei Nihon tenmon shiryō, 463.
14. Junshōki chōsei igyō zuiri (Record of Pure Lights, Including Illustrations of Long
Stars with Strange Shapes) depicts the three major comets of the late Tokugawa:
Donati (1858), Tebbutt (1861), and Swift-Tuttle (1862). http://members2 .jcom
.home.ne.jp/88fukusenji/star.html.
15. Fujiwara Tadabumi (873–947), a general sent to crush Taira no Masakado in
940, held the title of seitō taishōgun.
16. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 1 verso.
17. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entry for 9/16. See also Kurosawa To-
kiko, Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen kika kichijōtsuki, 4 verso.
19. Luke S. Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The Merchant Origins of
Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 5–7; Luke S. Roberts, Performing the Great Peace: Political
Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2012), 43–52; Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 30.
20. Cited in Burns, Before the Nation, 28. Burns identifies this shift in the geographic
imagination with the second half of the eighteenth century and attributes it to
the availability of printed knowledge, the creation of new media, the develop-
ment of networks that facilitated the flow of information, and a spike in the
number of political commentaries. Ibid., 28 and 99.
21. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 13 verso, 14 recto.
22. Yoshikawa Eiji, “Aikoku josei emonogatari,” Shufu no tomo 22, no. 2 (Feb.
1938): 52.
23. Nunomura Yasuhiro, Meiji ishin to josei (Tokyo: Ritsumeikan Shuppanbu, 1936),
101; Gunji, Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 4; Takaki Shunsuke, “Sōmō no josei,”
in Nihon joseishi 3: Kinsei, ed. Joseishi Sōgō Kenkyūkai (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1982), 260; Noguchi, “Kurosawa Tokijo den,” 216.
24. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 13 verso and 14 recto.
25. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 2 recto. The entry for 12/26 in Nichiyō chōhōki
(1858–1859) makes no mention of Nakatsukasa.
26. Gunji, Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 4.
29. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 3 recto.
30. Ibid., 2 verso.

31. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen tsuchinoeuma shimotsuki, 16 recto.
32. “A perfectly clear / unclouded mirror / deep in my heart / its light shining / all
around” (kumorinaki / kokoro no soko no / masukagami / terasu hikari wa /
yomo ni kagayake). Ibid., 17 recto.
34. Ibid.
36. On her intention to obtain the document see Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 2 verso.
37. Ibid., 3 verso.
38. Ibid., 2 verso, 3 recto.
39. Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain, 5.
42. Burns, Before the Nation; Harootunian, Things Seen and Unseen.
43. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kikō, 14 recto, 14 verso.
44. Ibid., 4 recto.
45. Scroll 6, Winter, poem no. 979 by Muneoka no Ōyori. My translation. Laurel
Rasplica Rodd and Mary Catherine Henkenius translate it as follows: “As I
walked along / the road to Koshi I thought / only of you when / do the snows
ever disappear / on glistening Shira Mountain.” Laurel Rasplica Rodd and Mary
Catherine Henkenius, Kokinshū: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 331.
47. Ibid., 3 verso.
48. Ibid. For Mount Sumeru, see Miyake Hitoshi, Shugendō: Essays on the Struc-
ture of Japanese Folk Religion (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, Uni-
versity of Michigan, 2001), 136.
49. Kanamori, “Kurosawa Toki”: 121. See also Anzō, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai
to shisō”: 76, n. 4.
50. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 13 verso and 16 verso.
CHAPTER 4: FROM SCRIPT TO STAGE

2. Takamure Itsue, Dai Nihon josei jinmei jisho (Tokyo: Kōseikaku, 1936), 185–
186. Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 100.
3. Haga Noboru, ed., Nihon josei jinmei jiten (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentaa, 1993),
406.
5. Ibid., 9 recto. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 316.
On Jihei see also Mito Shishi Hensan Iinkai, Mito shishi, chūkan 4, 114–119.
6. Mito Shishi Hensan Iinkai, Mito shishi, chūkan 4, 119. A note produced by Suke-
nobu Hōin in 1843 bears the seal of “the shōya Jihei.” Sukenobu Hōin, Suzugoya-
mura onawairi tahata tanbetsu mura takachō gokaisei (KKM, Box No. 2, MS
No. 87).
7. Mito Shishi Hensan Iinkai, Mito shishi, chūkan 4, 114–119; the text of the peti-
tion is included here.
9. Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, Dai Nihon ishin shiryō: Ruisan no bu, Ii-ke
shiryō (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1959), 18:250.
10. Noguchi Katsuichi, ed., Mito zōi shoken ryakuden (Tokyo: Yashidai, 1892),
84–86.
12. Ibid., 10 recto.
13. Ibid., 11 recto–13 verso.
15. Ibid., 6 verso.
16. Ibid., 23 verso–24 verso.
18. Ibid., 21 verso. Obasute is traditionally associated with the sorrow of separation.
22. Scheiner, “Benevolent Lords and Honorable Peasants,” 54; see also Luke S. Rob-
erts, “The Petition Box in Eighteenth-Century Tosa,” Journal of Japanese Stud-
ies 20, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 423– 458.
23. Kanamori, “Kurosawa Toki”: 124.
24. Roger K. Thomas, “Macroscopic vs. Microscopic: Spatial Sensibilities in Waka
of the Bakumatsu Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 58, no. 2 (Decem-
ber 1998): 513–542. Haruo Shirane, Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthol-
ogy, Beginnings to 1600 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 6.
25. There are various versions of the long poem. The ones used here appear in Ku-
rosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 19 recto–20 recto; and in Kurosawa
Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (1860): 11 recto–13 verso. Another version is included in
her 1873 poetry collection titled Shiki wakashū, 2 recto–3 verso. For a printed
version (with some discrepancies) see Nagasawa Mitsu, Nyonin waka taikei 3
(Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 1968), 553–554. Other printed versions appear in Gunji,
Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 5–7; Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 103–104;
Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 301–302.
26. Shirane, Traditional Japanese Literature, 67; Haruo Shirane and Lawrence E.
Marceau, “Early Modern Literature,” Early Modern Japan (Fall 2002): 25.
27. Manabe Akikatsu (1802–1884) traveled to Kyoto in 1858 to receive the court’s
endorsement for Ii Naosuke’s policies.
28. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 132.
29. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 4 and 80. The slogan “revere the emperor, ex-
pel the barbarians” was first used by Mito scholars in 1838, though it did not
originally imply rejection of the Tokugawa government. George M. Wilson, “The
Bakumatsu Intellectual in Action: Hashimoto Sanai in the Political Crisis of
1858,” in Personality in Japanese History, ed. Albert M. Craig and Donald H.
Shively (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 248 and 248 n. 34.
30. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 49–54.
31. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 146–147.
32. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864) (KTS, MS No 41), 12 recto.
33. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 60 and 58.
34. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 106.
35. Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 128. Harootunian points out that it was pre-
cisely such complacency that spelled the demise of Mitogaku after the signing
of the treaties, when the idea of overthrowing the shogunate finally entered the
conversation; Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 135.
36. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 7.
37. Koromode, literally “sleeve,” is a pillow-word for Hitachi Province. Sleeves were
often “drenched” (hitasu), which created a convenient assonance with Hitachi.
Koromode also conveyed the notion of separation, as in “parting sleeves.” Kata-
giri, Utamakura utakotoba jiten, 167.
38. The Semi River, a poem-pillow for Yamashiro Province, runs through Kyoto.
Ibid., 236.
40. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki wakashū, 8 verso.
41. Tai‘i is the Chinese version of the court rank daijō daijin (Imperial Chancel-
lor). Nihon Daijiten Kankōkai, Nihon kokugo daijiten (Tokyo: Shōgakukan,
1972), 12:508.
42. Heian jinbutsu shi, available at http://tois.nichibun.ac.jp/hsis/heian-jinbutsu-
shi/Heian/years _kaei5/heian663.html. The entry indicates that he already held
the title of tai‘i in 1852.
43. Saida Koresada, Sukemasa Arima, and Masamichi Kurokawa, Kokki (Tokyo:
Hakubunkan, 1911), 572.
44. Zen‘aku [o] motte wakeru. Ōshitsu o tōtobi, iteki o shirizoke. Ibid., 579.
45. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 16 recto–16 verso. See also Gunji,
Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 75, and Katsura-mura Shidankai, ed., Katsurashi
kiyō 5: Ishin no shishi tokushū (Katsura: Katsura-mura Shidankai, 1981), 36.
46. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 315. According to
Nunomura Yasuhiro, Morita’s visit occurred ten years prior, in 1848; on that
occasion he gave Tokiko a copy of Michizane’s dying instructions that bore
Higashibōjō’s name. Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 103.
48. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki zatsuei (1861–1863) (KTS, MS No. 11), 19 verso.
49. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyoto toraware no fumi, I: 4 verso.
50. Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (New
York: New American Library, 1975), 184.
51. Tetsuo Najita, “Ōshio Heihachirō (1793–1837),” in Personality in Japanese His-
tory, ed. Albert M. Craig and Donald H. Shively (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1970), 170–171.
52. Najita, “Ōshio Heihachirō,” 172.
53. Morris, The Nobility of Failure, 202 and 204.
55. Ōga Tetsuo and Takiguchi Yasuhiko, eds., Ishinki no saijotachi (Tokyo:
Shōgakukan, 1980), 150.
56. Andō Tokuki, Ishin shishi meimeiden (Tokyo: Tōkō Shoin, 1935), 258. Another
text from the same decade argues that Higashibōjō delivered the petition to the
emperor; see Miwada Motomichi, ed., Nihon josei bunkashi, chū (Tokyo: Zen-
koku Kōtōjo Gakkō Kōchō Kyōkai, 1938), 2:826.
57. Horiuchi Seiu, Ishin hyakketsu (Tokyo: Seikō Zasshisha, 1910), 216.
58. Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 104.
59. Mito-shi Kyōiku Iinkai, Mito no sendatsu, 252. Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai,
Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 298.
60. Tsuji Michiko, Onnatachi no bakumatsu Kyōto (Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha,
2003), 111.
61. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyoto toraware no fumi, I: 6 recto.
CHAPTER 5: CAGED BIRD

2. The main version used here is the one from the KTS, MSS No. 2 and 3. For a
printed version with several discrepancies from the original, see Gunji, Kokon
musō retsujo Tokiko.
3. Daniel V. Botsman, Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 191.
4. Diana E. Wright, “Female Crime and State Punishment in Early Modern Ja-
pan,” Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 10–29.
5. Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American
Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–1075.
7. Fujii Yoshio, Ōsaka machi bugyō to keibatsu (Osaka: Seibundō, 1990), 340.
9. Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 317–318. Gunji, Ko-
kon musō retsujo Tokiko, 44– 45.
10. Botsman, Punishment and Power, 35.
12. Ibid., 6 recto– 6 verso.
13. Ibid., 8 verso, 9 recto, and 6 recto.
14. Ibid., 8 verso.

15. Ibid., 9 recto.
16. After this stint in prison Ukyōnosuke was arrested again in 1864 for siding with
the Chōshū samurai at the time of the Kinmon Incident, a battle near the impe-
rial court in Kyoto. See Nihon Rekishi Gakkai, ed., Meiji ishin jinmei jiten, 1.
19. Ibid.
20. Botsman, Punishment and Power, 36–37.
21. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 17 verso. Mimura Hachirō, “To-
kiko no uta, haiku,” in Katsurashi kiyō 4: Kurosawa Tokiko tokushū, ed. Katsura-
mura Shidankai (Katsura: Katsura-mura Shidankai: 1979), 7–8. Tokoro Kaiji,
“Toraware no fumi,” in Katsurashi kiyō 4: Kurosawa Tokiko tokushū, ed. Katsura-
mura Shidankai (Katsura: Katsura-mura Shidankai: 1979), 54.
22. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki wakashū, 1 verso. A shorter version of the same poem
is also included in Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki waka Meiji shichinen banka kichi-
nichi (KTS, MS No. 20), 7 recto–7 verso.
23. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 17 verso–18 recto.
27. Anne Walthall “Fragments of Friendship: Matsuo Taseko and the Hirata
Family,” Monumenta Nipponica 64, no. 2 (Autumn 2009): 315–335. In Tokiko’s
case, Nunomura Yasuhiro doubts an intervention on the part of Nariaki’s wife;
Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 102.
29. Ibid., 20 verso–21 recto.
30. In the actual supplementary poem (envoy, or hanka) attached to the petition
the first verse is slightly different, as Tokiko points out to the interrogator. It
reads “for all generations” or “for all eternity” (yorozuyo o).
31. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 24 verso.
32. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki zatsuei (1861–1863), 20 recto. The third line consists
of six instead of five syllables.
33. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 9 recto–10 verso; Kurosawa To-
kiko, Waka zatsuei (1860), 16 verso–18 verso.
34. Morris, The Nobility of Failure, 212.
36. Ibid., I: 16 recto.
37. Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century En-
gland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 15–16.
38. Tsuji, Onnatachi no bakumatsu Kyōto, 122. Takahashi Norihiko, “Henkakuki
o ikita josei 75 nin,” in Bakumatsu ishin o ikita 13 nin no onnatachi, ed. Shin
Jinbutsu Ōraisha (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1979), 298. Nagano had worked
with Ii Naosuke, but in 1862 the shogunate relaxed the grip of the Ansei Purges,
conceded amnesties, and punished many of Ii’s former associates. Nagano com-
mitted suicide on 8/1. Conrad Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu,
1862–1868 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980), 11–13.
39. Ogawa, Bakumatsu rimenshi, 214.
40. Sugano Noriko, “Nozomareru ishinki no joseizō,” Rekishi no riron to kyōiku
131 (2009): 3–5.
41. Amy Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early
Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 70, 88.
42. Sugano Noriko, “Edo jidai ni okeru josei no hanzai,” Teikyō daigaku bungakubu
shigakuka 21 (February 2006): 172 and 183.
47. “Under the whole heaven, every spot is the sovereign’s ground; to the borders
of the sea [land], every individual is the sovereign’s subject [minister].” See Earl,
Emperor and Nation in Japan, 179.
48. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 16 recto–16 verso.
49. See Earl, Emperor and Nation in Japan, 94 and 179.
50. Ibid., 180 and 189–190. Shōin would criticize the shogun in his later years. Ibid.,
190 and 203–210.
51. Cited in ibid., 181.
52. Janine Sawada, Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in
Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), 22–23.
53. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 14 recto–14 verso.
54. Ibid., I: 13 verso.
56. Kanda Shigeru, Nihon tenmon shiryō (Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1978), 2:480– 601.
57. Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 109. See also Walthall “Fragments
of Friendship”: 315–335.
58. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 15 recto, 16 verso.
59. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entries for 9/2 and 9/3.
CHAPTER 6: THE CHAOS AND COSMOS OF KUROSAWA TOKIKO

3. Kurosawa Tokiko, Ansei gonen nikkichō, entries for 7/3, 7/16, and 8/16.
4. Koike, “Hokiden no igi,” 298.
6. Tokiko called Shibu Pass “snow hell” (yuki no jigoku) in Kikō, 14 recto.
7. Wilbur Hansen discusses a similar cosmology in the writings of Hirata Atsu-

tane. However, Atsutane was more interested in denunciation than in resolu-
tion, and excluded women from his vision. Wilbur Hansen, When Tengu Talk:
Hirata Atsutane’s Ethnography of the Other World (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2008).
8. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shinmei ryakki (KTS, MS No. 4).
9. Ibid., 8 verso–9 verso.
11. Masuda Wataru, Japan and China: Mutual Representations in the Modern Era
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 92–93.
12. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shinmei ryakki, 28 verso.
15. Wright, “Female Crime and State Punishment”: 16.
16. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 25 recto–25 verso.
17. Roberts, Performing the Great Peace, 38–39.
18. See for example Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, I: 14 recto and
17 verso. On other occasions, while conversing with her interrogators, To-
kiko refers to Nariaki as “domain lord” (hōkun); ibid., I: 16 recto and Kikō, 2
verso.
19. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 3 recto–3 verso.
20. Ibid., 4 recto.
21. Morris, The Nobility of Failure, 41– 66.
22. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyoto toraware no fumi, II: 9 recto–10 verso.
23. Robert Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 326.
24. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 285 and 288.
25. Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane, 20 and 134.
26. Ibid., 275–277; Morris, The Nobility of Failure, 53–54.
27. Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane, 296. For a translation of the entire poem, see
Helen Craig McCullough, Brocade by Night: ‘Kokin Wakashū’ and the Court
Style in Japanese Classical Poetry (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985),
279–284.
28. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 4 verso–5 recto.
30. Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, Ishin shiryō kōyō (1937), 3:171. Shinsuke in-
dicates Sukenobu Hōin.
32. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 8 verso and 11 verso.
33. Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi no uta (KTS, MS No. 30), 3 recto.
34. “Kimi ga tame / kakeshi chikai wa / Kanaya to te / kago no uchi ni mo / inoru
akekure.” Ibid., 3 verso.
35. Suzuki Tōzō and Koike Shōtarō, eds., Fujiokaya nikki, in Kinsei shomin seikatsu
shiryō (Tokyo: San‘ichi Shobō, 1990), 8:543–544. See also Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō
Hensanjo, Ishin shiryō kōyō (1937), 3:179.
36. Fujiokaya lists their names: Finance Magistrate Ikeda Yorikata, City Magistrate
Ishigaya Atsukiyo, Temple and Shrine Magistrate Matsudaira Munehide, Chief
Inspector (ōmetsuke) Kugai Masanori, and Inspector (metsuke) Matsudaira
Kyūnojō Yasumasa. Suzuki and Koike, eds., Fujiokaya nikki, 8:543–544.
37. Ibid., 543. Kuki Nagato no Kami Takayoshi (1837–1891) was the lord of Mita
domain in Settsu; Toda (Matsudaira) Tanba no Kami Mitsuhisa (1832–1892),
the lord of Matsumoto domain. See Nihon Rekishi Gakkai, ed., Meiji ishin
jinmei jiten, 349 and 670.
38. Helen Hardacre, Kurozumikyō and the New Religions of Japan (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 4–5. Helen Hardacre, Shintō and the
State, 1868–1988 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 53. See
also Carmen Blacker, “Millenarian Aspects of the New Religions in Japan,” in
Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 567–571.
39. For example Nakayama Miki (Tenrikyō) and Akazawa Bunji (Konkōkyō). Mi-
yake Hitoshi, Shugendō, 107.
40. Tenrikyo, Ofudesaki: The Tip of the Writing Brush (Nara: Tenri Jihosha, 1993),
122.
41. Emily Groszos Ooms, Women and Millenarian Protest in Meiji Japan: Deguchi
Nao and Ōmotokyō (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 3 and 63– 64.
42. Tenrikyo, The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo (Nara: Tenrikyo Church
Headquarters, 1996), 86–87.
43. Miyake, “Religious Rituals in Shugendō”: 105. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow.
44. Stalker, Prophet Motive, 35. Hardacre, Kurozumikyō, 78–79.
45. Modern Kurozumikyō sermons, for example, admonish that “we dwell here in
the heavenly land” and “the age of the gods is now”; Hardacre, Kurozumikyō,
80 and 94. On how established religions in the Tokugawa period focused less
on theological abstractions and more on offering tangible benefits, see Dun-
can Ryūken Williams, The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of Sōtō Zen Bud-
dhism in Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). For
contemporary examples see Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr., Practically
Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i Press, 1998).
46. Tenrikyo, The Life of Oyasama, 7; Ooms, Women and Millenarian Protest in
Meiji Japan, 86.
47. Hardacre, Kurozumikyō, 198.
48. Stalker, Prophet Motive, 26.
49. Tenrikyo, Ofudesaki, 15.
50. Robert J. Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (Stanford, CA: Stan-
ford University Press, 1974), 40– 49; Helen Hardacre, Marketing the Menacing
Fetus in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 2.

52. Ibid., I: 7 recto.
53. Hardacre, Kurozumikyō, 12 and 13 (fig. 1).
54. Ibid., 29–30 and 52–53.
55. Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 29 and 42–50. Good fortune is also beckoned with
lucky objects; see Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious, 46.
56. Aizawa Seishisai had spoken of the country as a body (shintai) in his 1825 New
Theses (Shinron). Noriko J. Horiguchi, Women Adrift: The Literature of Japan’s
Imperial Body (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 1.
59. Sasaki Nobutsuna, Nomura Bōtō-ni zenshū (Atami: Nomura Bōtō-ni Zenshū
Kankōkai, 1958), 704–705 (letter n. 68).
60. Ibid., 689– 693 (letter n. 61).
61. Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japa-
nese Discourse, 1600–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 238.
62. See for example Sasaki, Nomura Bōtō-ni zenshū, 737–738 (letter n. 87) and 738–
740 (letter n. 88).
63. Ibid., 729 (letter n. 81) and 761 (letter n. 101).
64. Nomura Bōtō, “Bōshū nikki,” in Nomura Bōtō-ni zenshū, ed. Sasaki Nobutsuna
(Atami: Nomura Bōtō-ni Zenshū Kankōkai, 1958), 565; Sasaki Nobutsuna and
Ōkubo Takaaki, eds., Bōtō-ni kabunshū (Fukuoka: Morioka Kumahiko, 1911), 366.
65. Nomura Bōtō, “Bōshū nikki,” 565; Sasaki and Ōkubo, eds., Bōtō-ni kabunshū,
366 (where this verse reads “kimi mamoruramu”).
66. For example see Sasaki, Nomura Bōtō-ni zenshū, 357, 644; Sasaki and Ōkubo,
eds., Bōtō-ni kabunshū, 268.
67. Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 117, 170, 171, 225, 228, 231. The
reference to Rengetsu is on 233.
68. Credit for this pun goes to David Howell.
CHAPTER 7: TRANSITIONS
3. Thomas M. Huber, The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1981), 89.
4. Botsman, Punishment and Power, 61– 64, 73, and 78.
5. The other Mito woman incarcerated with Tokiko was Sei, the wife of Mito re-
tainer Dazai Seiuemon (1829–1864). Seiuemon, implicated in the clashes over
the emperor’s secret decree, had fled after receiving orders to turn himself in
on 1858/10/3; fifteen days later, the Tokugawa authorities had taken Sei into cus-
tody. Ibaraki Kenshi Hensan Bakumatsu Ishinshi Bukai, Ibaraki-ken bakuma-
tsushi nenpyō (Mito: Ibaraki-ken, 1973), 111; Nihon Rekishi Gakkai, ed., Meiji
ishin jinmei jiten, 590.
6. Yoshida Shōin had arrived at Tenmachō on 7/9. Other loyalists cross-examined

that day included Hasegawa Sōemon, Hasegawa Hayami, Yoshimi Chōzaemon,
Fujimori Kōsuke, Katsuno Mokunosuke, and Katsuno Magozaburō.
8. Ibid., 19 recto.
10. According to Katsura-mura kyōdoshi the sentencing read: “Slandering high level
officials was outrageous. Therefore, she is sentenced to medium banishment.”
Katsura-mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 299. Kurosawa Tokiko,
Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 19 verso–20 verso. See also Suzuki and Koike,
eds., Fujiokaya nikki, 9:35; Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo, Ishin shiryō kōyō
(1937), 3:230.
11. Fujii, Ōsaka machi bugyō to keibatsu, 358.
12. Sugano Noriko adds gambling, false accusations, and usury. Sugano, “Edo ji-
dai ni okeru josei no hanzai”: 186. To understand the Tokugawa government’s
interest in, and extensive policies regarding, forests and woodlands, see Con-
rad Totman, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Pre-Industrial Japan (Athens,
OH: Ohio University Press, 1998), chapter 4.
13. Fujii, Ōsaka machi bugyō to keibatsu, 366–370.
14. Ibid., 358–359 and 364.
15. Ōsaka Shishi Hensanjo, ed., Ōsaka machi bugyōsho yoriki, dōshin gonbō kiroku
(Osaka: Ōsaka Shiryō Chōsakai, 1995), 63– 64. Fujii, Ōsaka machi bugyō to kei-
batsu, 359–360.
17. Ibid., 363.
18. Ibid., 360.
19. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 19 verso–20 verso.
20. Chūtsuihō okamai basho (KTS, MS No. 43). For a printed version, see Nagas-
awa, Nyonin waka taikei 3, 552–553.
22. See Botsman, Punishment and Power, especially chapter 4.
24. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki randai waka (KTS, MS No. 16), 16 recto; Kurosawa To-
kiko, Waka zatsuei (KTS, MS No. 18), 3 recto; Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōki randai
(KTS, MS No. 21), 4 recto.
26. Roberts, Performing the Great Peace, 8.
27. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 28 recto. See also Katsura Son-
shi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 293.
28. Suzuki and Koike, eds., Fujiokaya nikki, 8:608.
29. Nakai, “Introduction,” xii.
31. Koschmann, “Action as a Text,” 85; Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, 143.
32 . Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki randai waka zatsuei (KTS, MS No. 13), 10 recto–10
verso.
33. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki waka Meiji shichinen, 8 recto. There are six syllables
instead of seven in the second line.
34. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (1860), 18 verso. With a minor variation the
same poem is included in another collection she composed in 1874: Kurosawa
Tokiko, Tōki randai (1874), 4 recto. Three years after Nariaki’s death Tokiko
wrote:
Kimi masa de For you, my lord,

akekure sode o I have been squeezing
shiboritsutsu my sleeves [wet with tears]
sannen sugi ni shi for the past three years,
yume no yo no naka as if in a dream.
Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki zatsuei (1861–1863), 10 verso.

35. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kyōto toraware no fumi, II: 22 recto. Tokiko’s youngest daugh-
ter, Teruko, had married the doctor Iwama Tōan, whom the Kurosawa took in
as an adopted heir. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 36.
36. Kurosawa Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (1860), 2 recto.
37. For example:
Uguisu no On Earless Mountain

miminashi yama ni a nightingale
ki kakurete hidden amidst the trees:
oi no ukine o nobody hears
kiku hito mo nashi the sad sound of aging.
Ibid., 2 verso. “Earless Mountain” refers to Kokinshū poem no. 1026.

38. For example see Anzō, “Onna terakoya shishō no seikatsu” (2004): 107;
Kanamori, “Kurosawa Toki”: 124; Anzō, “Nikki ni miru Genji kinoenone no
ran”: 60– 61.
39. Borgen, Sugawara no Michizane, 184.
41. Takaha Sei‘emon, Oazukari mōsu kinsu no koto (KKM, Box No. 6, MS No. 1054);
Tōkichi, Shakuyō mōsu kinsu no koto (KKM, Box No. 6, MS No. 1055); and
Tōkichi, Shakuyō mōsu kinsu tegata no koto (KKM, Box No. 6, MS No. 1056).
Each refers to loans of one ryō.
42. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 42. Examples include the Teradaya Incident
of 1862, the rise of Tenchūgumi and the Ikuno uprising in 1863, and the Kin-
mon and Namamugi incidents of 1864. Ibid., 280.
43. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, xxii. The second watershed year
according to Totman was 1866, when Chōshū defeated the shogunate.
44. Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 252 and 258.

45. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, xvii.
46. Nomura Bōtō, “Kōryōshū,” 261 and 273.
47. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 4 recto. Koibuchi Takeo, “Suzugōya
o chūshin to shite mita bakumatsu no arashi,” in Katsurashi kiyō 5: Ishin no
shishi tokushū, ed. Katsura-mura Shidankai (Katsura: Katsura-mura Shidankai:
1981), 16–17.
48. Nakai, “Introduction,” xvi–xvii.
49. Anzō, “Nikki ni miru Genji kinoenone no ran”: 53.
50. Akutsu, “Genjiki ni okeru sonjōha nōmin no dōkō ni tsuite”: 35–36.
51. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 4 verso and 7 recto.
52. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 114–115.
53. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 11 verso and 12 verso.
56. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki randai waka zatsuei, 5 recto.
57. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 16 recto. Ukibito may also mean
“those who suffer.” The same poem appears in Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki randai
waka zatsuei, 3 verso.
58. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki randai waka zatsuei, 5 recto.
59. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 9 verso.
61. For example, “six three” means “the third line from the bottom is broken, or a
yin”; “nine five” means “the fift h line from the bottom is solid, a yang”; “be-
ginning six” means “the bottom line is a yin.” See Takada Shinji and Gotō Mo-
tomi, eds., Ekikyō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2008), 1:33.
62. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 13 recto.
63. Ibid.
64. Ng, “Study and Uses of the I Ching in Tokugawa Japan”: 24– 44.
65. See Harootunian, Toward Restoration, 165–166.
66. In Tsuji, Onnatachi no bakumatsu Kyōto, 101.
67. Wilhelm, The I Ching, 25. Another translation reads, “With the sincerity which
is declared in it, there will be brilliant success. With firmness there will be good
fortune.” James Legge, trans., I Ching or Book of Changes (Whitefish, MT: Kes-
singer Publishing, 2003), 66.
68. Michael Dylan Foster, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the
Culture of Yōkai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 9.
69. Wilhelm, The I Ching, 62– 65.
70. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 121.
71. Kurosawa Tokiko, Nichiyō chōhōki (1864), 23 recto.
72. Nakai, “Introduction,” xviii.
73. For various poems on the grief Tokiko experienced at the time, see Kurosawa
Tokiko, Waka zatsuei (1871–1872), 6 recto.
74. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki zatsuei (KTS, MS No. 17), 7 verso–8 recto. Narasu
means “make them emit a sound.”
CHAPTER 8: RESCUING THE PAST FROM THE PRESENT

1. Mimura, “Tokiko no uta, haiku,” 19.
2. Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōki randai (1874), 19 verso.
3. Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 89. Before the Meiji era, shūkyō indicated Buddhist
sectarian doctrines; it came to signify “religion” in the broader sense with Fu-
kuzawa Yukichi and Mori Arinori in the mid-1870s; ibid., 102.
4. Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs, 50–53.
5. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki wakashū, 14 verso. See also Mimura, “Tokiko no
uta, haiku,” 11.
6. Kurosawa Tokiko, Tōki randai (1874), 18 verso–19 recto.
7. Ibid., 18 recto.
8. Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 93–94.
9. Ibid., 94–95.
10. Platt, Burning and Building, 137.
11. Gunji, Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 9. The document does not indicate who the
three witnesses were.
12. Joshi Gakushūin, ed., Joryū chosaku kaidai, 566; Nagasawa, Nyonin waka tai-
kei 3, 553; Gunji, Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, 9–10.
13. Shūshinroku osumitsuki in KTS.
14. Cited in Haga, Bakumatsu shishi no seikatsu, 178.
15. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kaki eisō (KTS, MS No. 22), 3 recto and 4 recto. Katsura-
mura Kyōiku Iinkai, Katsura-mura kyōdoshi, 300.
16. Kurosawa Tokiko, Kaki eisō, 8 verso.
17. Kurosawa Tokiko, Shiki waka Meiji shichinen, 8 recto.
18. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 114.
19. Foster, Pandemonium and Parade, 95.
21. Sugawara Toshikiyo, Tokieda Tsutomu, and Nakayama Kaoru, eds., Kiso no
Ontakesan: Sono rekishi to shinkō (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2009), 25–59.
23. Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 192.
24. Sarah Thal, Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage
Site in Japan, 1573–1912 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 134–
135, 142, and 163.
25. Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 7–8, 42–59, and 68–72.
27. Sugawara et al., eds., Kiso no Ontakesan, 113.
28. Ibid., 118.
29. Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs, 85.
30. Thal, Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods, 203–204.

31. Otori Sessō, Fukyō ninka sōrō [no] koto (KKM, Box No. 5, MS No. 953);
Kurosawa Tokiko, Shintō Ontakekyō kyōkaisho secchigan (KKM, Box No. 5,
MS No. 955).
32. Hardacre, Shintō and the State, 69 and 78.
33. See KKM, Box No. 5, MSS No. 953–955. Tokiko’s request is titled Fukyō ninka-
gan (Request for Authorization to Proselytize), Box No. 5, MS No. 954. See
also Katsura Sonshi Hensan Iinkai, Katsura sonshi: Tsūshi-hen, 385.
34. Maki Fukuoka, “Selling Portrait Photographs: Early Photographic Business in
Asakusa, Japan,” History of Photography 35, no. 4 (2011): 355–373.
35. See W. Theodore De Bary, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann, Sources of
Japanese Tradition, Volume 2, Part 2: 1868–2000 (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 2001), 79.
36. Kokaze Hidemasa, “The Political Space of Meiji 22 (1889): The Promulgation
of the Constitution and the Birth of the Nation,” Japan Review 23 (2011): 119.
37. Ibid., 119–137; the quotation appears on 137.
38. None of the major newspapers published in 1889 reported the news, making it
impossible to establish a precise date.
40. Saiki, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōzō shashin”: 21–36.
41. Tatebayashi Miyatarō offers a slightly different version of the poem in Kuro-
sawa Rikkyō, 98:
Kimigayo ni For our lord’s reign

tateshi misao no you raised a clear mirror
masukagami of devotion
nao yukusue mo which may shine
terimasaruran to the end of time.
The general meaning, however, is not affected.

42. Saiki, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōzō shashin”: 24.
44. Allen Hockley, “Packaged Tours: Photo Albums and Their Implications for the
Study of Early Japanese Photography,” in Reflecting Truth: Japanese Photogra-
phy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Mikiko
Hirayama (Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004), 67.
45. Margarita Winkel, Souvenirs from Japan: Japanese Photography at the Turn of
the Century (London: Bamboo Publishing, 1991), 31.
CHAPTER 9: THE MANY REINCARNATIONS OF KUROSAWA TOKIKO

1. Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy toward
Women, 1890–1910,” in Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee
Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 158; Walthall, The

Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 334.
2 . Sheldon Garon, “Women’s Groups and the Japa nese State: Contending Ap-
proaches to Political Integration, 1890–1945,” Journal of Japanese Studies 19,
no. 1 (1993): 10.
3. Mara Patessio, “Readers and Writers: Japanese Women and Magazines in the
Late Nineteenth Century,” in The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in
Early Modern Japan, ed. P. F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio, and G. G. Rowley (Ann
Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010), 192–193.
4. Garon, “Women’s Groups and the Japa nese State”: 10.
5. Nolte and Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy toward Women,” 154–155. Women
would be excluded from political meetings until 1922 and from political orga-
nizations until 1945.
6. Horiguchi, Women Adrift, 33.
7. Nolte and Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy toward Women,” 157.
8. Gerald Figal, Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Dur-
ham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 7.
9. Tenrikyo, The Life of Oyasama, 100, 90, and 172.
10. Foster, Pandemonium and Parade, 85–87 and 108. In kokkuri, three or four peo-
ple would sit around a makeshift round table, summoning the spirits and ask-
ing them questions. Ibid., 85.
11. Michael Wert, Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in
Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
12. The first, by Kashiwada, does not include page numbers; the second goes from
page 1 to page 2. After that, the main text restarts at page 1.
13. Gunji, Kokon musō retsujo Tokiko, introduction by Sekito, 1 and 4.
14. Ibid., introduction by Sekito, 2.
15. Shimomura Miyokichi, “Kurosawa Tokiko-den hoi,” pt. 1, Fujin to kodomo 3,
no. 12 (December 1903): 40.
16. Shimomura Miyokichi, “Kurosawa Tokiko,” pt. 2, Fujin to kodomo 2, no. 11 (No-
vember 1902): 27.
17. Ibid., 28.
18. Ibid., pt. 3, Fujin to kodomo 2, no. 12 (December 1902): 36; ibid., pt. 4, Fujin to
kodomo 3, no. 4 (April 1903): 33–34.
19. Ibid., pt. 3: 36; ibid., pt. 4: 33–34.
20. Hagiwara Shōtarō, Kinnō resshiden (Tokyo: Ōzorasha, 1995).
21. “Zōi,” Asahi shinbun, November 16, 1907, Tokyo morning edition, 4; “Zōi gos-
ata,” Yomiuri shinbun, November 16, 1907, morning edition, 2.
22. Ibaraki Shinbunsha, ed., Ibaraki-ken hyakka jiten, 17; Tatebayashi, Kurosawa
Rikkyō, 127.
23. Ibaraki Shinbunsha, ed., Ibaraki-ken hyakka jiten, 17.
24. Hitachi no Kuni Higashi Ibaraki-gun Iwabune-mura Ōaza Suzugoya Zōi Shu-
kusai Jimusho, Waka konsei (KKM, Box No. 3, MS No. 371).
25. Hōji no tsūchi (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 92).

26. KKM, Box No. 2, MSS Nos. 161–164. In 1902 Takasu Kōzō had coauthored Lec-
tures and Notes from the Kōdōkan (Kōdōkan kikōgi).
27. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 7. A similar trend occurred with Matsuo
Taseko, with a first “Taseko boom” around 1900–1913, a lull in the Taishō
era, and a second boom between 1936 and 1943, when Taseko became a
model of patriotic loyalty. See Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman,
chapter 16.
28. Arima Sukemasa, Kinnō bunko (Tokyo: Dai Nihon Meidōkan, 1919).
29. One example is the relatively nondescript entry in Tajiri Tasuku, Sōi shoken-
den (Tokyo: Kondō Shuppansha, 1975, first ed. 1927), 1:421.
30. Shakai Kyōiku Kyōkai, ed., Kinnō bunko 5: Kinnōka shishū (Tokyo: Shakai
Kyōiku Kyōkai, 1921), 83–85.
31. Horiuchi, Ishin hyakketsu, 215–216.
32. Miwada, ed., Nihon josei bunkashi, chū, 801.
33. Sarah Frederick, Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women’s Magazines in
Interwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 93.
34. Yoshikawa, “Aikoku josei emonogatari”: 49– 61. For Tokiko see ibid.: 52–53.
35. Frederick, Turning Pages, 84.
36. Nunomura, Meiji ishin to josei, 101–102.
37. Ibid., introduction, 1.
38. Ibid., 6.
40. Ibid., 823.
41. Ogawa, Bakumatsu rimenshi, 9–13.
42. Sasaki, Nomura Bōtō-ni zenshū, 713 (letter n. 73) and 490– 491. For a photo-
graph of the copy of the sutra see photo insert on 4.
43. Frederick, Turning Pages, 94, 97–98, and 103.
44. Ibid., 100.
45. Yoshikawa, “Aikoku josei emonogatari”: 52.
46. Ibid.: 52–53.
48. Ibid., 42 and 46. Frederick cites articles from 1916 in both cases.
49. Ronald P. Loftus, “Female Self-Writing: Takamure Itsue’s Hi no Kuni no Onna
no Nikki,” Monumenta Nipponica 51, no. 2 (1996): 159.
51. Susan Tennant, trans., The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue: An En-
glish Translation of Musume junreiki (Bowen Island, BC: Bowen Publishing,
2010), 9, 27, and 156.
52. Ibid., 156 and 51.
53. Loftus, “Female Self-Writing”: 161.
54. Tennant, The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue, 49, 54, and 145.
55. Takamure, Dai Nihon josei jinmei jisho, 185–186. The dates of birth and death
are based on the imperial calendar, which starts with the reign of legendary
first emperor, Jinmu.
CHAPTER 10: CIRCLES REDRAWN

1. Tatebayashi Miyatarō, ed., Rikkyōjoshi to kenjō no chōka (Akasaka, Ibaraki-ken:
Rikkyōkai, 1937).
2. Tokoro, “Toraware no fumi,” 48. Joshi Gakushūin, ed., Joryū chosaku kaidai,
26–27.
3. Tatebayashi Miyatarō, Mitogaku kenkyū (Tokyo: Shinkōasha, 1943), 321.
4. Rikkyōkai, Rikkyōkai shuisho (Akasaka, Ibaraki-ken: Rikkyōkai, 1937).
5. See for example Sakamoto Sakyō, Rikkyōkai kyōsangan (KKM, Box No. 3, MS
No. 239).
6. Tatebayashi also praised Tokiko as “the ideal Japa nese woman,” “a loyalist
heroine,” and “the role model of the woman modern Japan needs.” Tate-
bayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 4. Anzō, “Kurosawa Tokiko no shōgai to shisō”:
61.
7. Tatebayashi, ed., Rikkyōjoshi to kenjō no chōka. In 1943 Tatebayashi again de-
scribed Tokiko as “a great authority” in Mitogaku kenkyū, 272.
8. The other is Nomura Bōtō.
9. Andō, Ishin shishi meimeiden, 255–259.
10. An identical argument is included in Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 1.
11. Ibid., 18.
12. Ibid., 25 and 48.
13. Ibid., 4–5.
14. Sumiko Otsubo and James R. Bartholomew, “Eugenics in Japan: Some
Ironies of Modernity, 1883–1945,” Science in Context 11, nos. 3– 4 (1998):
552–554.
15. Ibid., 546.
16. Horiguchi, Women Adrift, 15.
17. Tatebayashi, Kurosawa Rikkyō, 41– 43.
18. Ibid., 43– 44.
19. Wert, Meiji Restoration Losers, 74.
20. For the request for permission to erect the monument sent to Mito chief of po-
lice Iwasaki Zen‘ichirō, see Sakamoto Sakyō and Tatebayashi Miyatarō, Hihyō
kensetsu kyokagan (KKM, Box No. 5, MS No. 956). For the various documents
regarding the remission of late payments to Kanahara Hikoroku, the Mito stone
supplier, see Sakamoto Sakyō, Keiyakusho (KKM, Box No. 5, MS No. 976-1);
and Sakamoto Sakyō, letters to Kurosawa Minesaburō and Kurosawa Kameichi
(KKM, Box No. 5, MSS Nos. 976-2 through 976-7).
21. A letter dated 1937/2/14 reveals that Minesaburō’s grandson, Kurosawa Seiichi,
who was living in Tokyo, would not be able to attend. Kurosawa Seiichi, Kenpi
jomakushiki no hi kesseki no henji (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 128).
22. Sakamoto Sakyō, Shikiji (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 165); Tasaki Gishichi, Shu-
kuji (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 166); Shima Mitsunosuke, Saishi (KKM, Box
No. 2, MS No. 167); Ishikawa Masasumi, Norito (KKM, Box No 2, MS No. 168);
Matsuoka Hidekuni, Shikiji (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 169); and Yamazaki
Takayoshi, Shukuji (KKM, Box No. 2, MS No. 170).
23. Tanaka Mitsuaki, letter to Tatebayashi Miyatarō, February 26, 1937. Author’s
personal collection.
CHAPTER 11: ENCORES

1. Funabashi Seiichi, Hana no shōgai (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1961). Originally pub-
lished in installments in Asahi shinbun. In the televised version, actress Yama-
oka Hisano (1926–1999) played Tokiko.
2. Noguchi Fujio, “Kaisetsu,” in Funabashi Seiichi, Funabashi Seiichishū (Tokyo:
Shinchōsha, 1971), 557 and 560.
3. Kurosawa Fukashi, Funabashi Seiichi to Mito (Mito: Kaikyō no Kai, 1979), 120.
Kurosawa indeed argues that the years in Mito were one of three formative ele-
ments in Funabashi’s growth as an author along with his grandmother’s influ-
ence and his childhood years in Yokoamichō. Ibid., 10.
4. On page 607 of the 740-page Shinchōsha edition.
5. Nagano Shuzen (1815–1862) had directed the Ansei Purges on behalf of Ii.
6. Funabashi, Hana no shōgai, 607 and 633– 634.
7. Ibid., 637.
8. Ibid., 639.
9. Ibid., 673 and 676.
10. Botsman, Punishment and Power, 38.
11. Funabashi, Hana no shōgai, 715–720.
12. Ibid., 666 and 640.
13. Mark Silver, Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Litera-
ture, 1868–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 41 and 23. Sim-
ilarly, Sari Kawana has argued that detective fiction helped exorcise the fears
engendered by Taishō modernity. Sari Kawana, Murder Most Modern: Detec-
tive Fiction and Japanese Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2008).
14. Carol Gluck, “The Past in the Present,” in Postwar Japan as History, ed. An-
drew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 69.
15. Kathleen S. Uno, “The Death of the ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’?,” in Postwar
Japan as History, ed. Andrew Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1993), 294.

17. In drawing this parallel, I depart from the analysis of Kurosawa Fukashi, who
argues that Meiji-style poison women simply do not appear in Funabashi’s oeu-
vre. Kurosawa, Funabashi Seiichi to Mito, 192. Kurosawa may have focused on
Funabashi’s main characters only, overlooking the extras.
18. For the cultural climate of the unstable years between 1945 and 1960, see Ann
Sherif, Japan’s Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 2009).
19. “Kurosawa Toki o eigaka e,” Ibaraki shinbun, 35.
20. I am grateful to Gotō Norio for sharing with me a copy of the draft.
21. William D. Hoover, Historical Dictionary of Postwar Japan (Lanham, MD:
Scarecrow Press, 2011), 160.
22. For an enlightening article connecting contemporary education and the labor
market, see David H. Slater, “The Making of Japan’s New Working Class: ‘Freet-
ers’ and the Progression From Middle School to the Labor Market,” The Asia-
Pacific Journal, January 4, 2010, http://www.japanfocus.org /-david _h _-slater
/3279.
23. “Since the ‘lost decade’ began,” writes Michael Wert, “everyone from political
pundits to local memory activists has invoked the late Tokugawa period as a
model for solving Japan’s contemporary problems.” Wert, Meiji Restoration Los-
ers, 139. For an example of a different idealized past, see Jordan Sand, “Showa
Nostalgia,” Weekend Australian Financial Review, April 5–9, 2007, 1– 4.
24. Mark R. Mullins, “Religion in Contemporary Japanese Lives,” in Routledge
Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society, ed. Victoria Lyon Bestor and Theodore
C. Bestor with Akiko Yamagata (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 71.
25. Ibid., 63.
CONCLUSION
1. Koibuchi, “Suzugoya o chūshin to shite mita bakumatsu no arashi,” 19.
2. Ibid., 21–22.
3. Anzō, “Nikki ni miru Genji kinoenone no ran”: 60.
4. See for example Tokunaga Shin‘ichirō, “Shishi no haha, tsuma, koibitotachi,”
in Bakumatsu ishin o ikita 13 nin no onnatachi, ed. Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha (To-
kyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1979), 74–79.
5. For the female combatants in Aizu, see Miyazaki Tomihachi, ed., Aizu Boshin
sensō shiryōshū (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1991); Hiraishi Benzō, Aizu Boshin
sensō byakkotai jōshigun kōreisha no kentō (Aizu Wakamatsu: Maruhachi
Shōten Shuppanbu, 1928); Diana E. Wright, “Female Combatants and Japan’s
Meiji Restoration: The Case of Aizu,” War in History 8, no. 4 (2001): 396– 417.
As Wright points out, even in this case men did not react kindly to the female
intrusion into their turf and denied the Women’s Army permission to join their
forces because “if the enemy saw Aizu women participating in combat, they
would take it as a sign of the domain’s weakness and desperation.” Wright, “Fe-
male Combatants”: 408.
6. Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman, 151, 157, and 163. Taseko had
been a “fervent Buddhist” but became anti-Buddhist after joining the Hirata
School. Ibid., 70.
7. Mimura, “Tokiko no uta, haiku,” 23.
8. Assa Doron and Ursula Rao, “From the Edge of Power: The Cultural Politics of
Disadvantage in South Asia,” Asian Studies Review 33 (December 2009): 419–
428. The quotation is on 422.
9. On the idea of rupture see Nagai Michiko, “Meiji ishin wa josei ni totte nan de
atta ka,” in Bakumatsu ishin o ikita 13 nin no onnatachi, ed. Shin Jinbutsu
Ōraisha (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha, 1979), 46.
10. In the late Tokugawa charms and talismans bearing the name of a religious in-
stitution (usually Ise Shrine) often fell from the sky, sparking mass pilgrimages.
On these fabricated miracles, see Yoshioka Nagayoshi, Nukemairi no kenkyū
(Tokyo: Hōkō Shobō, 1943), 103 and 109–110.
11. The eejanaika phenomenon of 1867 was also linked to reports of amulets fall-
ing from the sky; see Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1995), 445.
12. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).
13. Davis, Trickster Travels; Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien.
APPENDIX
1. Tamaboko ( jeweled spear) is a pillow word connected to michi (road).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unpublished Manuscripts, Non-Circulating Works

Kurosawa Tokiko shiryō (KTS), Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan, Mito
Chūtsuihō okamai basho (1859). MS No. 43.
Kurosawa Tokiko. Ansei gonen nikkichō (1858). MS No. 33.
———. Ansei sannen waka zatsuei hinoetatsu keishū (1856). MS No. 7.
———. Kaki eisō (1875). MS No. 22.
———. Kikō (1859). MS No. 1.
———. Kyōto toraware no fumi (1859). MSS Nos. 2–3.
———. Monjin renmenchō (1852). MS No. 36.
———. Nichiyō chōhōki (1858–1859). MS No. 40.
———. Nichiyō chōhōki (1864). MS No. 41.
———. Shiki eisō (1867). MS No. 15.
———. Shiki randai waka (1867). MS No. 16.
———. Shiki randai waka zatsuei (1864–1866). MS No. 13.
———. Shiki waka Meiji shichinen banka kichinichi (1874–1875). MS No. 20.
———. Shiki wakashū (1873). MS No. 19.
———. Shiki zatsuei (1861–1863). MS No. 11.
———. Shiki zatsuei (1869). MS No. 17.
———. Shiki zatsuei Genji ninen yayoi (1865). MS No. 14.
———. Shinmei ryakki (1855). MS No. 4.
———. Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi no uta (1859?). MS No. 30.
———. Tōki randai (1855). MS No. 5.
———. Tōki randai (1874). MS No. 21.
———. Waka zatsuei (1860). MS No. 12.
———. Waka zatsuei (1871–1872). MS No. 18.
241
242 Bibliography
———. Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen kika kichijōtsuki (1858). MS No. 9.

———. Waka zatsuei Ansei gonen tsuchinoeuma shimotsuki (1858). MS No. 10.
———. Waka zatsuei Ansei yonen hinotomi rōgetsu (1857). MS No. 8.
Shūshinroku osumitsuki (1875). MS No. 44.
Tokiko Shiryōkan, Shirosato

Oshieguruma (1852).
Tenarai shikimoku (1852).
Kurosawa-ke monjo (KKM), Ibaraki University, Mito

Hikime no daijizen. Box No. 5, MS No. 789.
Hitachi no Kuni Higashi Ibaraki-gun Iwabune-mura Ōaza Suzugoya Zōi Shu-
kusai Jimusho. Waka konsei (1908?). Box No. 3, MS No. 371.
Hōji no tsūchi (1908). Box No. 2, MS No. 92.
Hōjuin. Betsu ya dōjō kenritsu goseshu tsuki chō (1820). Box No. 5, MS
No. 786.
Ishikawa Masasumi. Norito (1937). Box No 2, MS No. 168.
Katōgi Heijirō. Shukuji (1908). Box No 2, MS No. 162.
Kurihara Yūichirō. Saishi (1908). Box No 2, MS No. 164.
Kurosawa Seiichi. Kenpi jomakushiki no hi kesseki no henji (1937). Box No. 2,
MS No. 128.
Kurosawa Tokiko. Shintō Ontakekyō kyōkaisho secchigan (1887). Box No. 5,
MS No. 955.
———. Fukyō ninkagan (1888). Box No. 5, MS No. 954.
Matsuoka Hidekuni. Shikiji (1937). Box No. 2, MS No. 169.
Mimura Shōji[bei]. Kinsu azukari shōmon no koto (1858). Box No. 6, MS
No. 1053.
Otori Sessō. Fukyō ninka sōrō [no] koto (1888). Box No. 5, MS No. 953.
Sakamoto Sakyō. Rikkyōkai kyōsangan (1936). Box No. 3, MS No. 239.
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INDEX
Abe Masahiro, 26, 124 Brief Chronicles of the Ming and Qing
Aizawa Idayū, 125–126 (Shinmei ryakki), 101–102
Aizawa Seishisai, 73, 93, 126, 229n56
Aizu, 136, 200, 239n5 catalpa bow, 60, 75–76
Ajima Tatewaki, 110, 125–126 cholera, 47–48, 218n33
Akutsu Takuo, 41, 130–131 comet: appearance and repercussions of,
Alcock, Sir Rutherford, 109 53–54; as cause of Tokiko’s activism,
Ansei: calamities of the fi ft h year of, 7, 8, 56, 58, 64, 94–97, 179–180; color of,
46–50 (see also comet); Edo 54–55, 94; Kurosawa Tokiko on, 53–56,
earthquake, 44 95–97; lore, 55; not mentioned in the
Ansei gonen nikkichō. See Diary of Ansei 5 petitionary poem, 77, 95; not mentioned
Ansei Purges: arrests during, 41, 57, 86, in works about Tokiko, 9, 164, 167, 168,
134; effects of, 81, 120, 130; Ii Naosuke 175, 197; as problem for Tokiko’s
and, 46–47, 161, 191; Kurosawa Tokiko biographers, 168, 183, 185–186
and, 11, 98, 113, 135, 162, 169, 179; confession, 86–87, 103–104
Nagano Shuzen and, 90, 238n5; cosmos. See Kurosawa Tokiko (as
relaxation of, 128, 226n38; Shishido spiritualist): cosmology of
Nakatsukasa on, 57–58, 164, 173, Coxinga, 102, 107
179, 84
Ansei Treaties: effects of, 56, 72, 79, Dai Nihonshi. See Great History of Japan
223n35; Kurosawa Tokiko and, 2, 98, Davies, Lady Eleanor, 90
113, 135; signing of, 46, 49 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 204
Anzō (Hasegawa) Ryōko, 31, 39, 41–42, Deguchi Nao, 111–113
57, 200 Diary of Ansei 5 (Ansei gonen nikkichō):
Aoki Ukyōnosuke, 86, 89, 225n16 as accounting book, 31; as diary, 28,
arrest (of Kurosawa Tokiko), 23–24, 64, 40–41; divination sessions in, 35, 35
81–82, 83, 107, 146; effects of, 199 fig. 1.3; Tokiko’s cosmology in, 96,
Asakusa jail, 110, 120 98, 99 fig. 6.1
Aum Shinrikyō, 197 divination, 32–33, 47; Kurosawa Tokiko
and, 7–8, 31–37 passim, 35 fig. 1.3, 48,
banishment, 122–124; of Kurosawa Tokiko, 133–136, 148, 174; manuals, 34–35, 99,
12, 122–123, 128, 192, 199, 202, 230n10 137 fig. 7.1; in the Meiji period, 160 (see
Blacker, Carmen, 32, 34, 60 also kokkuri); not mentioned in works
Book of Changes, The, 34–35, 93, 133–136 on Tokiko, 9, 174, 197, 211n32. See also
passim. See also hexagrams Book of Changes; Tsuchimikado
Book of Songs, The, 23, 93 Donati’s comet. See comet
Botsman, Dani, 85, 86 Dore, R. P., 30–31
257
258 Index
education: in the Tokugawa period, 19, Great Promulgation Campaign, 149–150

26–31 passim; in the Meiji period, 8, Grendi, Edoardo, 26–27
141, 145. See also Kurosawa Tokiko (as Gunji Atsunobu, 57–58, 66, 80–81,
teacher); Rules for Learning; Wheel of 161–164, 198
Teaching
Ekikyō. See Book of Changes Haga Noboru, 4
eugenics, 74, 185 Hamaguri no Mon Incident. See Kinmon
Incident
fiction (about Tokiko). See Flower’s Life Hana no shōgai. See Flower’s Life
fi lm (about Tokiko), 11, 190, 196–197 Hardacre, Helen, 111, 114–115, 151
Flower’s Life, A (Hana no shōgai), 9, Harootunian, H.D., 4, 26, 72–73, 223n35
190–195 Harris, Townsend, 49
Fujimori Kōan, 188 hexagrams: description of, 34, 98, 137 fig.
Fujin kōron, 172, 174 7.1; readings of, 35, 133, 232n61; Tokiko’s
Fujiokaya Yoshizō, 110 use of, 35 fig. 1.3, 133–138 passim;
Fujita Koshirō, 126 Yanagawa Kōran’s use of, 134–135, 200.
Fujita Tōko, 126, 154, 164, 184 See also Book of Changes
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 145, 233n3 Higashibōjō Sugawara Tokinaga, 78–81,
Funabashi Seiichi, 190–195, 238n3 107, 183, 224n56
High Court. See Hyōjōsho
gender: defiance of, 86, 89, 95, 193, 194; Hirata Atsutane, 39, 61, 227n7
expectations related to, 90, 91, 201; in Hirayama Seisai, 149–150
historiography, 3, 84; as justification, Hitotsubashi Keiki, 88, 125
85, 90, 92–93; in the Tokugawa penal Hōjuin: Kurosawa Tokiko and, 34, 37,
system, 83–94 passim, 123, 145–146; in 40, 63, 148, 202; relations with the
works about Kurosawa Tokiko, 11, 66, community, 33, 40; as religious center,
159–162, 165, 168, 193–195 19, 24, 31, 33, 34; in the Meiji period,
gender and Kurosawa Tokiko: 152, 152 fig. 8.1
consciousness, 6, 69, 96, 103; defiance Horiuchi Seiu, 81, 167
of, 2, 119; and Kyoto journey, 66, 69; Hotta Masayoshi, 79
relating to her activism, 58, 71, 84–95 Housewife’s Companion, The (Shufu no
passim, 145–146 tomo), 57, 178; ideology of, 172, 173;
gender and politics: in seventeenth-century on Kurosawa Tokiko, 100, 100 fig. 6.2,
England, 90; in the Tokugawa period, 3, 167–168, 171–173, 192; on Nomura Bōtō,
81, 91, 96, 116–119; in the Meiji period, 171; readers of, 171
145–146, 159–160; in the 1930s and Hyōjōsho (High Court), 107, 109–110, 123
1940s, 168–176 passim, 180, 235n5; in
recent historiography, 11. See also Ibaraki Kenritsu Rekishikan. See Mito
loyalism: and women (archives): Rekishikan
Ginzburg, Carlo, 9 Ii Naosuke: assassination of, 63, 126; in
“good wife, wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo), fiction (see Flower’s Life); Kurosawa
160, 165, 195 Tokiko on, 69, 92–93, 113–115, 126–127;
Gotō Norio, 11, 151 in the petitionary poem, 2, 71–77 passim,
Great East Japan Earthquake, 10, 11, 88, 95; policies of, 46–47, 81; as topic
189, 197 of Tokiko’s interrogations, 85, 88,
Greater Learning for Women, The (Onna 92–93; in works about Tokiko, 161,
Daigaku), 11, 20 167, 179, 186
Great History of Japan (Dai Nihonshi), illness: Kurosawa Tokiko and, 110–117
1, 166 passim, 120–121, 200; new religions and,
Index 259
113–114; Nomura Bōtō and, 117–119, Koschmann, Victor, 4, 73

200 Kotohira. See Konpira
Imagawa, The, 11, 20 Koya. See Suzugoya
Imperial Household Agency (Kunaishō), Kunaishō. See Imperial Household Agency
162–165, 189 kuni, 57
Inoue Jōshō, 47, 54 Kurosawa Family Records (Kurosawa-ke
Irie Iori, 86 monjo). See Mito (archives): Ibaraki
Ishigaya Inaba no Kami Atsukiyo, 109, 121, University
228n36 Kurosawa Fusako, 20, 24, 136
Kurosawa-ke monjo. See Mito (archives):
Joshi Gakushūin, 10, 178, 212n37 Ibaraki University
Kurosawa Kissō, 20, 24, 40
Kamoshida Hikozō (Genzō), 20–21, 39–40, Kurosawa Kumeko, 21, 136, 148
191, 203 Kurosawa Masakichi, 20, 212n5
Kanagawa, Treaty of, 26 Kurosawa Minesaburō, 10, 150–151, 166,
Kanamori Atsuko, 64, 70 178, 187, 187 fig. 10.2
Kanda Yoriko, 33 Kurosawa Seiichi, 10, 238n21
Kaneko Magojirō, 24, 126, 156 Kurosawa Shinsuke. See Sukenobu Hōin
Kangiku An, 22, 68 Kurosawa Teruko, 21, 148, 231n35
Kankoku kōgiroku, 91 Kurosawa Tokiko (biographical details):
Katōgi (family), 148, 166 education of, 20, 24; native home, 10, 17,
Katōgi Shunzō: as political activist, 25, 67, 19–20, 20 fig. 1.1, 39, 152, 152 fig. 8.1, 196
124; and Kurosawa Tokiko, 22, 43, 45, (see also Hōjuin); status, 2, 6, 74, 83, 92,
124, 157, 218n22 94; death of, 2, 8, 87
Katōgi Toyo, 25, 43, 47, 124, 156 Kurosawa Tokiko (as literata): diaries of, 9,
Katsu Kokichi, 36 12, 28, 38; embedded messages in poems
Katsura, 10, 11. See also Suzugoya of, 88–89, 156; formation as, 22–24; nom
Keien, 78–80, 121, 183 de plume (see Rikkyō); poems by, 43,
Kikō. See Travel Diary 136; in scholarship, 11; Tōkaidō poems
Kikuya (family), 26, 68 of, 107–109; in the Tokugawa-Meiji
Kinmon Incident, 199, 225n16, 231n42 transition, 141. See also petitionary
Kitano Tenmangū (Kitano Shrine), 78–80, poem
104–105, 207 Kurosawa Tokiko (networks of): and her
Kobayashi Heishichi, 22, 124 activism, 8, 40–41, 66, 78–80, 124, 157;
Kōgiroku, 91 evolution of, 45, 148; poetic, 22–23,
Koibuchi Jihei, 66–68, 81, 161, 199; in 43–45, 68; social, 28, 41; spiritual and
fiction, 192, 194 religious, 7, 40–41; teaching-based, 40,
Koibuchi Kaname, 63, 126 68; as topic during interrogations, 95,
Kojima (village), 20, 21, 39, 191 121; in works about her, 178
Kojima Harutaka (Shunson), 22, 45, 57, 148 Kurosawa Tokiko (as political activist):
Kokaze Hidemasa, 154 anti-foreignism of, 49, 71; growth of, 39,
Kokinshū, 23, 62–63 44–46, 53–65 (see also under comet);
kokkuri, 160, 186, 235n10 Kyoto journey of, 40, 57, 59–65 passim,
Kokugaku. See nativism 66–70, 92; and loyalism, 2–6 passim, 39,
kokutai, 80, 115–116 97, 105–106, 109, 157, 184–185, 199. See
Kōmei, emperor, 2, 46, 56–57, 64, 77, 78, also Mito (ideology): Kurosawa Tokiko
81. See also secret decree and; land grant; posthumous rank;
Konpira, 149–150, 152 Tokugawa Nariaki: Kurosawa Tokiko
Koresada. See Saida Sahei (Ubei) Koresada and
260 Index
Kurosawa Tokiko (as spiritualist), 5, 7, Letters from the Kyoto Incarceration,

60, 141, 157–158, 197; cosmology of, 83–84, 94–95, 125, 127; later editing and
8, 36–37, 95, 98–102, 106, 111–112, 116, other copies of, 64, 108, 148, 178
132, 150, 202–203; and healing, 35–36; Levi, Giovanni, 6
and new religions, 111–115. See also Li Boyu, Lady, 101–102, 107
under comet; divination; Ontakekyō; loyalism, 4–5; and women, 3, 58, 84–87
Shugendō passim, 162–165 passim, 163 table 9.1,
Kurosawa Tokiko (as teacher), 25–31, 40, 170, 200–201. See also Kurosawa Tokiko
49, 74, 129, 141, 175, 181; class rosters of, (as political activist): and loyalism
11, 26, 28; classroom of, 10, 29 fig. 1.2, loyalists, 4, 71, 167; motto of, 1, 39, 79,
152, 152 fig. 8.1; in the Meiji period, 2, 130, 223n29. See also Mito (domain):
8, 12, 13, 141, 144–145, 148, 203–204; loyalists of
tuition and income, 17, 31, 49, 214n36.
See also fi lm; Rules for Learning; Wheel Manabe Akikatsu, 71–73, 77, 95, 121,
of Teaching 222n27
Kurosawa Tokiko (visual representations Man‘yōshū (Anthology of Ten Thousand
of), 11–12, 13 fig. I.1, 99 fig. 6.2, 170 fig. Leaves), 71
9.1, 171–172, 181–183, 182 fig. 10.1 Matsudaira Yorinori, 131
Kurosawa Tokiko (works about), 8–12 Matsuo Taseko, 3, 96, 129; as anti-
passim, 38; absence in historiography, Buddhist, 200, 240n6; on her body, 119;
9–10, 166, 211n36; and Kyoto journey, posthumous rank of, 163 table 9.1;
11, 66, 81, 128, 178, 183; as local celebrity, rationality of, 4, 200; studies of, 236n27
10–11, 166, 177–189; as model, 161, Meiji: Constitution, 154–155; emperor,
167–170, 175–176, 180, 197, 237n6; in 165; Industrial Exposition, 166;
the 1930s and 1940s, 8–9, 167–176, modernization, 2, 13; religion in, 141,
177–189; as political activist, 162, 164, 149–150, 233n3; Restoration, 12, 26,
179–180, 183–184; as symbol of Mito, 154, 159, 161, 177, 181, 188; science
159, 161–163, 181, 185–189 passim; in and “superstition,” 8–9, 157, 160, 174;
women’s magazines, 39–40, 100–101, separation of kami and buddhas, 12–13,
163–165, 167–168. See also fi lm; Flower’s 142, 149, 151. See also under education;
Life; gender: in works about Kurosawa gender and politics; new religions;
Tokiko; Rikkyō Society Shugendō
Kurosawa Tokiko (works of). See Brief microhistory: benefits of, 26, 203–204;
Chronicles of the Ming and Qing; Diary definitions of, 6; Kurosawa Tokiko as
of Ansei 5; Letters from the Kyoto case study for, 28, 48–50; and the Mito
Incarceration; Poems from the Fifty- civil war, 130–131
Three Stages of the Tōkaidō; Priceless miko, 32–34
Record of Daily Necessities; Travel Diary Mimura Shōjibei, 31, 121
Kurozumikyō, 112, 113, 115, 228n45 Mito (archives): Ibaraki University, 10, 31,
Kusatsu, 26, 67–69 passim, 192 40, 121, 124, 148, 151, 166; Rekishikan,
Kusunoki Masashige, 105 10, 108, 123; Tokiko Shiryōkan, 10
Kyoto journey. See under Kurosawa Tokiko Mito (castle town/city), 19, 33, 41, 50,
(as political activist) 125, 166
Kyōto toraware no fumi. See Letters from Mito (civil war), 41, 129–136 passim;
the Kyoto Incarceration Kurosawa Tokiko on, 130–136, 204.
See also Tengu faction; Student (Shosei)
land grant, 24, 64, 145–148 passim, 162, faction
180, 203 Mito (domain), 1, 4, 57; and Buddhism, 24,
Learn More (Motto manabinasai). See fi lm 73, 142; loyalists of, 41–42, 70, 81,
Index 261
165–166, 195, 199; political factionalism Ōgiya inn, 70, 80–81

in, 45, 46, 125–126, 218n27; records of, Ōmotokyō, 111, 112
47, 54, 55; roads of, 33, 41–42, 42 map Onna daigaku. See Greater Learning for
2.1. See also Tokugawa Nariaki Women
Mito (ideology), 1, 45, 72, 131, 223n35; Ontakekyō, 149–150; Kurosawa Tokiko
Kurosawa Tokiko and, 72–74, 105 and, 112, 149–152, 152 fig. 8.1, 203–204;
Mitogaku. See Mito (ideology) Sekiguchi (Kurosawa) Minesaburō and,
monument (for Tokiko’s posthumous 178, 150–151
rank), 10, 186–189, 187 fig. 10.2, 237n20 Ōsawa Toshio, 11
Morita Yoshio, 22, 79, 148, 223n46 Oshieguruma. See Wheel of Teaching
Moriyama (post town), 69, 202 Ōshio Heihachirō, 80–81, 89–90
Moriyama, Takeshi, 23 Ōtagaki Rengetsu, 119
Morris, Ivan, 80 Otori Sessō, 151
Motoori Norinaga, 39, 61
Motto manabinasai. See fi lm peddler (Kurosawa Tokiko as), 22, 41,
Muraoka no Tsubone (Tsuzaki Noriko): 43, 68
arrest of, 70, 81; and Kurosawa Tokiko, Perry, Commodore Matthew, 17, 26, 27,
164, 168, 184; posthumous rank of, 163 102, 164
table 9.1, 164; trial of, 110 petitionary poem, 70–81 passim, 85, 95,
Murayama Taka (Kazue), 90, 92 156, 183, 199; authorship of, 87–88; as
Murota Yoshiaya, 187 instrument of treason, 88, 103; reprints
and studies of, 167, 179, 185, 224n56
Nagano Shuzen, 90, 191–194, 225n38, 238n5 petitions, 25, 67, 70, 124
Nakai, Kate Wildman, 125 photograph(y), 153–154, 157–158;
Nakanoya Minekichi, 30, 41 Kurosawa Tokiko’s portrait, 153–158,
Nakatsukasa. See Shishido Nakatsukasa 153 fig. 8.2, 183, 196, 204
Nakayama Miki, 111–114, 160, 228n39 Poems from the Fifty-Three Stages of the
national body. See kokutai Tōkaidō (Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi no uta),
nativism, 39–40, 217n4; Kurosawa Tokiko 107–109
and, 164, 175 poetry. See under Kurosawa Tokiko (as
Nenohigahara (Ōarai), 58–59, 64, 76, 191 literata)
networks, 23, 66, 95, 121, 123–124. See also poison women, 194–195, 239n17
Kurosawa Tokiko (networks of) posthumous rank, 163 table 9.1, 165–167,
new religions, 4, 111–115; illness in, 180, 187–188, 187 fig. 10.2
113–114; and Kurosawa Tokiko, 111–115; Priceless Record of Daily Necessities
in the Meiji period, 148–149, 160, (Nichiyō chōhōki, 1858), 28, 31
173–174 Priceless Record of Daily Necessities
Nichiyō chōhōki. See Priceless Record of (Nichiyō chōhōki, 1864), 35, 130, 133, 136
Daily Necessities prison. See Asakusa jail; confession; Letters
Nomura Bōtō, 3, 129–130, 184, 237n8; exile from the Kyoto Incarceration; Tenmachō;
of, 91, 117, 171; on illness and medicines, torture
117–119; poems by, 44; posthumous
rank of, 163 table 9.1, 164; Ravina, Mark, 4
representations of, 171–172 Records of Filial Piety and Righteousness
Nunomura Yasuhiro, 57, 66, 81, 168–170, (Kankoku kōgiroku), 91
174, 176, 223n46, 225n27 Rekishikan. See under Mito (archives)
“revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”
Ōarai. See Nenohigahara (sonnō jōi), 1, 39, 79, 130, 223n29
Obana An, 22 Rikkyō, 44, 77, 173, 181
262 Index
Rikkyō Society (Rikkyōkai), 178–189 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, 204

passim Sugano Noriko, 91, 230n12
Roberts, Luke, 103 Sugawara no Michizane, 78–80, 128, 132,
Rules for Learning (Tenarai shikimoku), 160–161, 223n46; Kurosawa Tokiko and,
29–30 89, 104–107, 108, 111, 143–144, 157, 186,
Ryokuju-en. See Kobayashi Heishichi 205–207
ryōsai kenbo (“good wife, wise mother”), Sukenobu Hōin (Shinsuke), 23–24, 57, 107,
160, 165, 195 146, 149, 222n6; and nativism, 39–30;
death of, 26
Saida Sahei (Ubei) Koresada, 79–81, 121, 183 Sumeru, Mount, 64, 73
Saigō Takamori, 4, 154, 166 Suzugoya, 18–19, 21, 33, 41–45 passim, 67,
Saiki Kumi, 155, 156 127–128. See also Katsura
Saitō Tomejirō, 67–68 Suzuki Bokushi, 23
Sakamoto Sakyō, 179, 187
Sakuma Shōzan, 134, 154, 184 Tadano Makuzu, 209n5
Sakurada Gate. See Ii Naosuke: Taira no Masakado, 54, 219n9, 220n15
assassination of Takahashi Oden. See poison women
Sawada, Janine, 94 Takajo, 193–194
schools. See education Takamure Itsue, 66, 174–176
Scott, James C., 202 Takasugi Shinsaku, 166, 210n11
secret decree: issuing of, 46; tensions over Tanaka Genzō, 130–131
the return of, 67, 86, 126, 130, 218n27, Tanaka Mitsuaki, 165, 188–189
229n5 Tanigawa Kaeko, 3
Sekiguchi Minesaburō. See Kurosawa Tatebayashi Miyatarō, 178; as Tokiko’s
Minesaburō biographer, 148, 166, 181, 184–186; on
Seki Shinpei, 145–146, 162 Tokiko’s lineage, 74, 185; and Tokiko’s
Semi, River, 76, 109, 223n38 monument, 186–188, 187 fig. 10.2. See
Shibu, Pass, 61, 68, 192, 226n6 also Rikkyō Society
Shikishima, the Way of, 44, 59, 75, 207 Teihōin Yoshiko. See Tominomiya
Shimomura Miyokichi, 39, 163–165, 178 Tenarai shikimoku. See Rules for Learning
shinbutsu bunri, 12–13, 142, 149, 151 Tengu faction, 4, 130–131, 136, 200, 218n27
Shinmei ryakki. See Brief Chronicles of the tenka kokka, 61–63, 65, 81, 85, 130, 135
Ming and Qing Tenmachō, 2, 89, 120–123, 188
Shishido domain. See Matsudaira Yorinori Tenpō (era), 17, 22, 27
Shishido Nakatsukasa, 57–58, 84, 94, 121, Tenrikyō, 111, 112, 160
203; in works about Tokiko, 162, 164, terakoya. See education: in the Tokugawa
173, 179 period
Shufu no tomo. See Housewife’s Companion Thal, Sarah, 149
Shugendō, 2, 24, 31–33, 61, 111, 132; Togakushi, Mount, 61–62
Kurosawa Tokiko and, 11, 40, 101, 164, Tōkaidō: poems by Tokiko, 107–109;
172, 175, 211n32; manuals, 34, 102; Tokiko’s travel along, 107–109, 108 map
Meiji-era abolition of, 8, 142, 148–149, 6.1, 113, 116, 193
160, 173–174. See also Hōjuin; miko; Tokugawa Iemochi, 47, 58, 92
yamabushi Tokugawa Iesada, 47
slander, 83, 89, 106, 122, 142, 202, 230n10 Tokugawa Kuniyuki, 187
Sōgo, 68 Tokugawa Mitsukuni, 1, 21, 73
sonnō jōi, 1, 39, 79, 130, 223n29 Tokugawa Nariaki: against the shogunate,
Stanley, Amy, 91 24–26, 46–49 passim, 69, 121;
Student (Shosei) faction, 130, 136 exculpation movement, 25, 47, 63, 67,
Index 263
70, 124, 199; in home confi nement, 41, Walthall, Anne, 3, 4, 87, 96
49, 103, 110, 125, 199; Kurosawa Tokiko Wert, Michael, 161, 186, 189, 239n23
and, 11, 42, 59–60, 80, 92, 103–104, 107, Wheel of Teaching, The (Oshieguruma),
109, 155–156, 227n18; policies of, 21–22, 29–30, 40
73; death of, 126–127, 133, 158, 231n34. women’s magazines. See Fujin kōron;
See also petitionary poem; Tominomiya Housewife’s Companion; Shimomura
Tokugawa Yoshiatsu (Tsuruchiyo), 25, 46, Miyokichi
125, 214n37 Wright, Diana, 83
Tokugawa Yoshikumi (Yoshikatsu), 46
Tokugawa Yoshinobu. See Hitotsubashi yamabushi, 20, 32–34, 41, 47, 99. See also
Keiki Shugendō
Tokushuku Tajurō, 22, 24–25, 47, 49 Yamakawa Kikue, 46, 84
Tominomiya (Teihōin Yoshiko), 87, Yanagawa: Kōran, 134–135, 146–147, 163
143–144, 147, 152, 154–155, 162 table 9.1, 200; Seigan, 134, 146–147
torture, 86–87, 94, 95, 98, 194 Yokokura, 80
Totman, Conrad, 129, 136 Yoshida Shōin: Kurosawa Tokiko and, 89,
Travel Diary (Kikō), 9, 12, 56, 58, 64, 65, 93, 121–122, 184, 188; moniker of,
67, 148 210n11; political views of, 4, 93, 129;
Tsuchimikado, 36 posthumous rank, 154; sentencing of,
Tsuji Michiko, 81 90, 122; works by, 83, 93
Tsukuba, Mount, 19, 130–131 Yourcenar, Marguerite, 1, 13, 27
Tsuzaki Noriko. See Muraoka no Tsubone Yumoto: Heibei (Tōjū), 68; Tarōuemon, 68
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Nenzi (Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara) is Associate Profes-

sor of History at the University of Tennessee. She is the author of Excursions in
Identity: Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan (Uni-
versity of Hawai‘i Press).
Production Notes for Nenzi | The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko: One
Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan
Jacket design by Julie Matsuo Chun
Display type in Myriad Pro and text type in Minion Pro
Composition by Westchester Publishing Ser vices
Printing and binding by Sheridan Books, Inc.
Printed on 60 lb. House White, 444 ppi.
HISTORY / BIOGRAPHY
Of related Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan
interest MODERNITY, LOSS, AND THE DOING OF HISTORY
JASON G. KARLIN
2014, 320 pages, 45 illus.
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3826-3
“At once theoretically sophisticated and eminently readable,

Gender and Nation in Meiji Japan is one of the most
important works to be published on the Meiji era in many
years. Jason Karlin examines a diverse and compelling array
of topics such as fashion, cartoons, young adult ﬁction,
photography contests, and women’s magazines in order to
track the relationship between competing conceptions of
masculinity and femininity and Japanese national identity.
Karlin’s adept analysis of both visual and textual sources
reminds us again of the beneﬁts of an interdisciplinary
approach and the usefulness of cultural history for thinking
about politics.” —Susan L. Burns, The University of Chicago
Performing the Great Peace

POLITICAL SPACE AND OPEN SECRETS IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN
LUKE S. ROBERTS
2012, 288 pages, 3 illus., 2 maps
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3513-2
“A gracefully written study of the performance of authority

in Tokugawa politics. It is also one of the most thoughtful
historical studies that I’ve had the pleasure to read in a long
time. In the course of rereading Tokugawa documents to
propose a wonderfully fresh way of thinking about political
space in history, Roberts challenges us to rethink our
assumptions about how to read evidence of such seemingly
basic categories as life and death, truth and secrecy. A book
for scholars of Japan and nonspecialists alike, Performing the
Great Peace is worth a read for anyone interested in what it
means now, and what it has meant across space and time, to
understand and write about the past.” —New Books in East
Asian Studies
JACKET ART JACKET DESIGN
Kurosawa Tokiko in Julie Matsuo-Chun

1889. Courtesy of
Ibaraki University
Library.
UNIVERSITY
OF HAWAI‘I
PRESS
HONOLULU, HAWAI‘I 96822-1888

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T H E C H A O S A N D C O S M O S O F

One Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan

One Woman’s Transit

University of Hawai‘i Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc.

Introduction The Flight of a Sparrow 1

PART I: Tokiko’s World

1 / A Nest and a Nexus 17

2 / Circles and Circumstances 38

PART II: The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko

3 / Glimpses of History (The Script) 53

4 / From Script to Stage 66

6 / The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko 98

PART III: Memory, Manipulation, and Amnesia

8 / Rescuing the Past from the Present 141

9 / The Many Reincarnations of Kurosawa

10 / Circles Redrawn: The View from 1930s Mito 177

11 / Encores: New Scripts 190

Conclusion The Doing That Matters 199

Furball, have provided countless distractions, mostly in the form of comic

In That Mighty Sculptor, Time, Marguerite Yourcenar likens

who enters through a window in the great hall warmed by a blaz-

Cosmic Configurations and Human Connections

Fragments and Footnotes

they can be consulted only as manuscripts at the prefectural archives in Mito

following a strict investigation, was sentenced to banishment.” The entry ends

Figure I.1. Tokiko as a demonic warrior.

Shinto deities (kami) and buddhas, or the propagation of Western-based ideas

Incomplete and inconsequential, Tokiko’s life story adds a human face to

TOK IKO’S WOR LD

Map 1.2. Suzugoya and surrounding villages. Map by Will Fontanez.

west of Mito castle town, Tokugawa-period Suzugoya was an average-size

Figure 1.1. Tokiko’s native home in 2007. Photo by author.

Mito shore, prompting concerns about espionage, the “return” of Christian-

1844/9/8: Pilgrimage to Shizu Shrine. Since the third of this month,

retired head of the Kikuya family in Kusatsu (modern-day Gunma Prefec-

relatively commonplace, Tokiko’s choice also reminds us that historical char-

Teaching: The Abstract and the Practical

The main sources that give us a glimpse of Tokiko’s activities in the

Between Village and High Heavens: Divination

period, Shugendō combines Buddhist principles, shamanism, Daoism, and

Because fortunes and misfortunes were believed to originate in the sphere of

Tokiko’s Diary of Ansei 5 records divination sessions on 1858/8/26, 9/6, and

Marenidani With hardly anyone

Yo no naka o Such a sad world,

celebrates Suzugoya’s purported remoteness as a source of bonding among li-

Upon Visiting a Poet

Koromode no Leaving Hitachi

michi aru miyo o the august age

Koromode no Leaving Hitachi

Mura ame no Passing showers over the village,

Omohiki ya I never thought that

Hi no moto no The barbarian vessels

THE CHAOS AND COSMOS OF

On top of this turmoil, an uncommon comet has appeared since

At that time [i.e., in the tenth century], astronomers were sum-

Nigori e no We may have sunk