| Samurai Movies (23) |
March 10, 2022
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| [han] In the movie 'Yaji Kita dochu Teresko' there was a scene in which several foreign ships were in the far distance. Two people, who were chasing the woman who had escaped from a brothel and now traveled with Yaji and Kita, were on the beach in their soaking clothes, and one of them said, "We used a boat by your advice and were about to ride on a ship for England." They had swum back to the beach. In the distance, several ships which had three sails sailed. Some of them gave off smoke, so he knew that they were steamships. There was a comical tanka poem in the latter part of the Edo Period, which was introduced in textbooks at school, "High grade tea, only four cups of it, woke up the peaceful slumber, disturbing sleeping." 'High grade tea's sound was the same as 'steamship' in this country's language. This tanka teased the Tokugawa Shogunate which was panicking after an American commander with four frigates came to this country and demanded to open some of their ports for provisions in 1853. One of his biggest questions about the Edo Period was why and how this country caught up with Western technology soon after the end of the Edo Period. They started a telegraph system, a postal system, railways, a banking system, schools, newspapers, etc. within only 10 years after the Meiji Revolution. Actually, after the four frigates came, this country started to change drastically. They  maybe "woke up". The Tokugawa Shogunate invited experts from abroad, like Holland, England, France, etc. They taught how to cast high level iron, how to make steamships, they taught chemistry, engineering, even how to train modern soldiers. The Tokugawa Shogunate bought battleships, canons, and other weapons from those countries. But it was not only the Tokugawa Shogunate, which bought these technologies, some hans also started to study about new technologies and bought war armament, too. Those hans were all located in the southern regions of the country. Those southern hans have the same striking features. They were called 'Tozama daimyo'. In about 270 hans/daimyos, there were about 60 Tozama daimyos. Most of them were located far from Edo. They were out of the Tokugawa's close hans called 'Fudai'. They tended to be big koku hans. The big Tozama daimyos in the top 10 koku ranking was Kaga han (Kanazawa, No1, 1 million koku), Satsuma han (Kagoshima, No.2, 0.8 million koku), Date han (Sendai, No.3, 0.6 million koku), Higo han (Kumamoto, No.6, 0.5 million koku), Chikuzen han (Fukuoka, No.7, 0.5 million koku), Hiroshima han (No.8, 0.4 million koku), Choshu han (Yamaguchi, No.9, 0.4 million koku), Hizen han (Saga, No.10, 0.4 million koku). Besides the hans of Kanazawa and Sendai, the other hans were all in the southern region. The Tokugawa Shogunate was very careful about the Tozama daimyos because they were powerful and the Tokugawa Shogunate bullied the Tozama daimyos by taking some of their lands and ordering various public construction projects. Choshu and Satsuma played major roles during the Meiji Revolution. They had been keeping their grudges toward the Tokugawa Shogunate, and they changed it into their power. They made financial reforms and developed new businesses eagerly. They had two advantages: One: They were close to Nagasaki. The Tokugawa Shogunate allowed only three countries, Holland, China, and Korea, to trade at Nagasaki, which was governed by the Tokugawa Shogunate. In Nagasaki, Holland experts had been teaching students from all over of the nation, it was called 'rangaku'. They taught medicine, chemistry, engineering, etc. Two: Their locations were far from Edo, so they could do what they wanted easier than other hans, whether they were legal or not. He recently watched a movie which was a story of five young samurai who went to England to study at the end of the Edo Pried. The movie's name was 'Choshu 5'. (To be continued ...) |
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No. 469
*sail :帆
*slumber :まどろみ
*provision :食料などの補給
*cast :鋳造する
*striking :顕著な
*grudge :恨み
*reform :改革