Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan by Irwin Scheiner

Author:Irwin Scheiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

THE FOUNDING OF A SCHOOL AND THE CULTIVATION OF A NATION

TWO years after Niijima arrived in the United States, four of the most powerful tozama daimyō joined forces to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. At the same time that Niijima was entering his second semester at Amherst, Satsuma samurai were entering Edo, and shogunate and fudai retainers were scattering to their home domains. The first news of the rebellion reached Niijima at Amherst on February 21, 1868, the day before Washington’s birthday. There was civil war in Japan, he reported to Mrs. Hardy, and daimyō had risen against the shogun. He wrote that the shogun’s residence, only a short walk from his parents’ home in Edo, had been burned by a mob of Satsuma samurai. “But I do not feel anxious about my folks because I demand [sic] them under the protection of the Almighty Hand.”1 But news from Japan took only one paragraph of his letter. After all, he was living in America, and the next day he would celebrate a holiday, an American one. “Thank you for the holiday and congratulations on the event,” he continued. “I salute you all for the day, for the gift of the hero to this nation, and for independence. I should like to see such freedom in my country.”2

Two months later, Niijima received a letter from his sister describing the confusion in Edo. His family was afraid that the city would be attacked, and his father wanted him to return home immediately. But Niijima refused to return on his father’s command. “I am not his [Niijima’s father’s] own,” he wrote Mrs. Hardy. “How can I go back now, having a plow on my hands. I must prepare myself for my Master’s work.”3 Besides, he felt that this was not his war. “If I go back now I suppose I need go to war. I do not wish at all to kill myself in such a barbarous war.”4 His war, Niijima wrote, was with Satan, and his weapons were “the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.”5

Still, Niijima did want to return to Japan. He refused to return to fight in a barbarous war and he refused to return because of his father’s command, but he never refused to serve or aid his country. Indeed, shortly after hearing about the Restoration he wrote, “I want to do my utmost for Japan.”6 Even before the Restoration, he had joined a student missionary society on matriculation at Amherst and had declared that his ultimate objective was to return to Japan and there teach the gospel. What troubled him were the conditions under which he could return. This worry remained even after his father wrote of the great changes in the country, with “most of the people of high ranks cut[ting] their hairs short and dressing] in the American style” and of talk that “the educational system of the Western nations would soon be introduced.”7 Niijima had violated the Tokugawa proscription on leaving the country.

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