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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
Kaodou wo iku Vol 3 Hisatsu no michi.
In the previous article , I discussed the Mutsu Road. This time, I will describe the Hisatsu no michi
Hisatsu no michi
This trip will be to the southern part of Kyushu (Kumamoto and Kagoshima). The tour starts from Kumamoto Airport, visits Tahara-zaka, a famous old battlefield of the Seinan War in Ueki-cho, the northern neighbor of Kumamoto City, describes the historical rivalry between Higo and Satsuma, and then describes Takamori Saigo, the main character of the Seinan War. From Tawarazaka, he moves to Yatsushiro to see the ruins of Yatsushiro Castle, and then travels upstream along the Kusama River to Hitoyoshi at the foot of Aso, where he describes the Sagara clan that settled the area.
From Hitoyoshi, he crossed the Kushichi Pass, the border between Hisatsu and Kagoshima, and entered Kagoshima, where he saw a Jodo Shinshu temple and described the prohibition of Jodo Shinshu in Kagoshima (Satsuma) and its hidden monks. Finally, he goes to Gamo town and describes the education system for local children by a samurai company in the unique structure of the Satsuma samurai clan.
The journey began at Kumamoto Airport, which not long ago was just a small regional airport, but it is supposed to be renewed in 2023 in the following manner.
Kumamoto is famous for its famous water from the foot of Mt. Aso, and at the airport you can drink mineral forter in a Kumamon package. (Of course, this was not available in Ryotaro Shiba’s time.)
After describing the “Higo Mokkoso” temperament of the Higo people (a one-man, one-party temperament that dislikes interference from the central government) before heading to Kumamoto City, we visited Kumamoto Castle, which was partially destroyed in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake and recently restored.
We proceed to the story of Kiyomasa Kato, famous for his killing of the tiger that opened the
Next, we proceed from Kumamoto to Kagoshima, where the story of Tawarazaka, the scene of the rebellion (Seinan War), takes place.
The Seinan War (1877) was when Saigo Takamori, a leading member of the Meiji Restoration at the end of the Edo period, gathered a group of samurai forces dissatisfied with the Restoration to revolt against the Meiji government, and when Ryotaro Shiba visited in the 1970s, he heard that his family was actually there.
For example, in the Battle of Sekigahara, when the defeat of Toyotomi was decided, they took the anti-Tokugawa side (Toyotomi’s side) and dared to retreat by the famous “Shimazu’s retreat”, breaking through the enemy and escaping at a great cost. In the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, they joined forces with the previously mentioned Choshu to overthrow the Shogunate, and were a critical force with an independent spirit.
Next they headed for the Kuma River. The Kuma River is the largest river in Kumamoto Prefecture, flowing through Hitoyoshi and Yatsushiro in Kumamoto, and is one of the three most rapid rivers in Japan, along with the Mogami River and the Fuji River.
What is mentioned here recalls the conquest of Kumaso by Yamatotakeru during the period of the founding of the Yamato Imperial Court (around 97 A.D.), which dates back significantly beyond the Shimazu clan’s time. According to the account in the Kojiki, “Yamatotakeru (Nihon no Musuko), who came from the Yamato Imperial Court, dressed as a woman and snuck into the sleeping quarters of Kumasotakeru (Kumaso no Ken), the chief of the Kumaso, defeated them, and received the name Takeru from Kumasotakeru in the process. Another book says, “The Yamato kingship could not be held by force of arms, so he tamed the daughter of Isao, the chief of Kumaso, with many gifts, and made her father drink sake to make him drunk, cut the strings of his bow, and killed him.
Textbooks from the time of the Japanese empire taught that the good guy was Yamatotakeru and the bad guy was Kumaso, but in Satsuma (Kagoshima), it is also mentioned that Kumaso had a unique sense of beauty, that he gave his name to his opponent even when he was being defeated, and that he was a kinder and “better man” than Yamatotakeru.
On the way to Kagoshima from Kubamaro River, he next mentions the Jodo Shinshu sect and the “Nenbutsu stop” of the Satsuma clan. Jodo Shinshu is the Honganji sect of Buddhism, which was founded by Shinran in the Kamakura period (the time of the Genko invasion) and Rennyo as its central founder. Unlike other sects, the Honganji sect is relatively liberal in its beliefs, allowing for wives and married couples. Originally, Shinran wandered around without a fixed temple, and the size of the sect was small, but Rennyo, a descendant of Shinran, devised an original organization, expanded it, and managed it into a nationwide organization.
The Shimazu feared this organizational power and banned the Jodo Shinshu sect in their territory, just as Toyotomi Hideyoshi banned Christianity in the same period, in what became known as the “Nenbutsu Suspension. Similar to the hidden Christians who existed even after the ban, there were hidden follower groups in the Satsuma territory, and it is said that they quietly continued to observe the teachings until the Meiji era (1868-1912).
As is the case in Tohoku, the Kagoshima dialect, spoken in Kagoshima, the southern end of Japan, is also unique and very difficult to understand. The intonation itself seems to be similar to the one from Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and westward, but the language itself is very different. For example, “Kagoshima has many beautiful ladies” becomes “Kagoshiname yoka ogoi saatagaawe”. Incidentally, in Mongolian, it would be “Kagoshima borbul san ohin albin”, which is a little bit similar to “Kagoshima borbul san ohin albin”.
The last part of the Hisatsu Road trip is an introduction to the “Gamo Shikoku Kaisha,” a unique “samurai company” in Gamo County along the Kinko Bay. This was a mechanism for fostering human resources throughout the region by planting trees and raising livestock on the land of the “common company” and using the profits to pay for designated students to study in Tokyo. The story of the samurai class in Edo itself contributing to the education of their local sisters and brothers in the Meiji era is mentioned in the story of the Akiyama brothers in “The Cloud on the Hill,” and the development of modern Japan may have originated from something like this.
In Gamo County, there is a castle ruin in the mountains called Ryugajo.
A large number of Sanskrit characters are dug into the rock face here, and there is no record of when or by whom they were dug.
The Hisatsu-no-michi journey ends with the words, “There remain various dramas throughout Japan that have been buried in history and forgotten.
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