Clouds above the Hill

A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War, Volume 1

Shiba Ryōtarō, Phyllis Birnbaum, Juliet Winters Carpenter, Andrew Cobbing, Paul McCarthy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415508766
• eBook ISBN: 9781136162237
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Clouds above the Hill is one of the best-selling novels ever in Japan, and is now translated into English for the first time. An epic portrait of Japan in crisis, it combines graphic military history and highly readable fiction to depict an aspiring nation modernizing at breakneck speed. Best-selling author Shiba Ry?tar? devoted an entire decade of his life to this extraordinary blockbuster, which features Japan's emerging onto the world stage by the early years of the twentieth century.

Volume I describes the growth of Japan's fledgling Meiji state, a major "character" in the novel. We are also introduced to our three heroes, born into obscurity, the brothers Akiyama Yoshifuru and Akiyama Saneyuki, who will go on to play important roles in the Japanese Army and Navy, and the poet Masaoka Shiki, who will spend much of his short life trying to establish the haiku as a respected poetic form.

Anyone curious as to how the "tiny, rising nation of Japan" was able to fight so fiercely for its survival should look no further. Clouds above the Hill is an exciting, human portrait of a modernizing nation that goes to war and thereby stakes its very existence on a desperate bid for glory in East Asia.

Part 1

Translated by Paul McCarthy

1

SPRING—OF OLD

A small island nation was about to enter a period of great cultural change.

One of the islands in this archipelago was Shikoku, and it was divided into the provinces of Sanuki, Awa, Tosa, and Iyo. The principal feudal domain of Iyo was Matsuyama.

The population of the town was around thirty thousand, including samurai families, and at its center was Matsuyama Castle. There was a small hill shaped like an overturned cooking pot with stone walls up to a hundred feet high rising from a covering of red pines. Above the walls, the castle’s three-storied keep stood out against the sky over the Inland Sea. The castle had long been known as the greatest in all Shikoku, but because of the beauty of its surroundings, neither the stone walls nor the keep seemed terribly forbidding.

The heroes of this story are three Matsuyama men whose paths we must trace. (Though perhaps the small country of Japan in that period is the principal character of our story.) One of them became the haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, who breathed new life into haiku and tanka, those short poetic forms traditional to Japan, and thus became their great champion in modern times. In 1895, returning to his hometown of Matsuyama, Shiki composed a haiku.

Spring—of old
this castle town once boasted
one hundred fifty thousand koku of rice

Even such a haiku as this may be faulted for being a bit too positive, but Shiki, unlike Ishikawa Takuboku, his somewhat later poetic successor, had no complicated, negative feelings about his hometown. He could sing of its scenic beauties and human relations in a relaxed way. This may have been due to the difference in atmosphere between Takuboku’s northeastern Japan, and Shiki’s Iyo, in the southwest.

Another of our heroes is Akiyama Shinzaburō Yoshifuru, known familiarly as “Shin,” who was born into a family of okachi samurai in this town. The okachi were one rank higher than common soldiers but were by no means high-status samurai. The Akiyamas had for generations been receiving around ten koku of rice per year as their stipend from the local feudal lord.

Shin had been born two months prematurely in 1859, but in view of how large a man he grew up to be, probably the circumstances of his birth had little effect on the growing boy. In the spring of the year when Shin turned ten, an event occurred that was to have drastic effects on both the Matsuyama domain and the Akiyama family—the Meiji Restoration.

The Matsuyama domain was governed by the lords of Matsuyama. They were descended from a half-brother of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and thus were accorded special honor among the “three hundred feudal lords.” In the final days of the shogunate, they had been ordered by the central government to cross the Inland Sea and invade the pro-imperial Chōshū domain. In short, Matsuyama had been part of the proshogunate group of domains, which were eventually defeated.

Tosa, a Shikoku domain like Matsuyama, had backed the forces gathering to topple the shogunate. At the end of the shogunate, word spread that soldiers from Tosa were coming to Matsuyama, and the entire populace, both samurai and townspeople, grew terrified. A Tosa force advanced northward to occupy the Matsuyama territory with no more than two hundred men.

“Surrender to the imperial court! Present one hundred fifty thousand ryō in cash to the court!” demanded the young leader of the Tosa regiment.

All Matsuyama was in an uproar, but in the end the Tosa demand was met. For a time the castle, town, and lands of Matsuyama became a kind of protectorate of Tosa. Signs went up on the walls of domain offices and temples in the castle town declaring, “Under Tosa Occupation.”

Shin had been only a boy of ten, but it was something he never forgot all his life. “My blood boils even now when I think of it,” he later wrote in a letter to someone in his hometown from his posting in France.

Matsuyama was blessed with fertile soil, an abundance of crops, and a warm climate, and had in its outskirts the famous hot springs of Dōgo. Everything tended to mildness, and as a result its people did not have much fighting spirit. They had been on the losing side in the invasion of Chōshū, but instead of being truly disturbed over their loss, the Matsuyama people wrote a song about it.

Off to fight in Chōshū, it only spelled defeat.
Like a kitten in a paper bag, it meant that we’d retreat!

Even the children of samurai families sang this song.

Then there was the other defeat in the battle of Toba and Fushimi in Kyoto. The Matsuyama samurai had fled back home across the Inland Sea.

Not only were they soundly defeated there, but, as we have just seen, the very castle and domain lands came under Tosa’s “protection.” “Under Temporary Care of Tosa,” said placards planted at the castle and the main intersection of the town.

But in fact the men of Tosa did not harm anyone while they were in Matsuyama. The regimental commander was Ogasawara Tadahachi, a man known for his cool head, and he kept the occupying soldiers under strict control, taking care not to wound the feelings of the Matsuyama samurai unnecessarily.

Indeed, it was this Ogasawara who saved the Matsuyama domain. With the shogunate out of power, some troops from Chōshū crossed the Inland Sea and landed at Mitsuhama, a seaport in Matsuyama. “We’ll pay them back right and proper for their assault on Chōshū” was the attitude of the Chōshū men, bent on revenge. Ogasawara Tadahachi, however, calmed them down and would not let them stay in Matsuyama, sending them back across the sea. It was then that Chōshū made off with Matsuyama’s most prized possession—a steamboat.

* * *

But such humiliations did not upset the Matsuyama government as much as their economic problems. The demand for one hundred fifty thousand ryō was an almost impossible one for Matsuyama to meet, given its finances. The payment bankrupted the domain and reduced the samurai to extreme poverty. Those okachi like the Akiyamas, with only a ten-koku allotment per year, were in an especially pitiful state.

The Akiyamas already had four children and raising them was hard enough. Then in March 1868, the first year of the new Meiji period and of the “Tosa occupation,” another boy was born. He was to be named Saneyuki and would become the third hero of this story.

“We’d better abort it, hadn’t we?” Akiyama Heigorō, the head of the house, had asked of his wife Sada during her pregnancy. Among townspeople and peasants, the “culling” of unwanted infants was common practice. The midwife would, if asked, drown the baby in the course of its initial bath. But there was no such custom among samurai families, and the Akiyamas could not bring themselves to do such a thing.

“We’d better give him to a temple to be raised” was the conclusion.

But when ten-year-old Shin overheard this, he went right up to his parents, speaking in the Iyo dialect, the slowest-paced drawl in all Japan. “Oh no, we can’t do that! I don’t want you to give the baby to a temple, Father. I’ll study hard and make a slab of money before long.”

His speech seemed as soft as that of a girl from the Kyoto area, and the reference to “a slab of money” was typical of Matsuyama. The idea was that the paper money would be piled as high as a thick slab of tofu on a dining table. Adults in Matsuyama often used this figure of speech, and apparently Shin had heard it and remembered.

* * *

During the Tokugawa period, Japan’s educational system may well have been of world standard. Indeed, depending on the feudal domain involved, education may have exceeded the standard set by other civilized countries. The Matsuyama domain had established the Meikyōkan School for the education of all male children of samurai families. There was also a primary school attached called the Yōseisha, which boys entered around the age of eight. Shin was admitted at that age.

From 1871, a government-run primary school was established in Matsuyama for the sons of both samurai and townsmen families; but, unluckily, Shin was already thirteen at the time, too old, and so he didn’t enroll, as he explained to people in his later years. The problem of his age was not the only reason he didn’t enter the new school. The ruin of the samurai class after the Meiji Restoration left the Akiyamas almost penniless.

Next a middle school was established in Matsuyama, but Shin didn’t enroll there either. Far from being able to attend school, he spent his days like a common laborer. “He worked burning wood for fuel at a public bath” became a story handed down in the town. He was by then sixteen years old, light in complexion, with huge eyes and a nose that was almost too high, a strange look that reminded the townspeople of “some foreigner from Nagasaki.” Those large eyes turned slightly down at the corners, giving his face a distinct charm. His lips were as red as any girl’s, and, as he walked along the streets in the commoners’ district, young women would talk about him in quiet voices.

A former samurai named Kaida had opened a public bath in the neighborhood, right across from his own residence. From samurai to bathhouse keeper! It was the talk of the town, and much of the talk was not pleasant. “For a samurai to be in the business of washing the dirt off people’s backs. It’s an outrage!”

“Oh, but even worse, the Akiyamas’ son has taken the job of tending the fire that heats the water!” The gossip was getting more intense. In fact, Shin had asked for the job himself.

“Sure! I’ll give you one sen a day,” said Mr. Kaida. The work turned out to be awfully hard. First, you had to collect small tree branches from a hill called Yokodani to the east of the town. Then you had to draw water from the well, bucketful by bucketful, to fill the tubs. Then you lit the fire. And after that, you sat at the entrance to collect coins from the customers.

“Shin, you’re really doing great!” Mr. Kaida repeated on a daily basis. He was a past master at praise, notorious for using it to get the neighborhood children to do all sorts of tasks for him.

Watching Shin at work, the neighbors were disgusted with Kaida and sympathetic to the boy. “Poor Shin! Made to work like that for one miserable sen a day? He’ll wear himself out!”

* * *

There could not have been many people who inspired as little gossip as Akiyama Heigorō Hisataka, the head of the Akiyama household. Since his youth, people had said, “He’s the most serious, hardworking man around.” He was appointed superintendent of the okachi samurai from early on and did his job diligently until the collapse of the domain at the time of the Restoration. Then the samurai’s stipends were taken away, with less than one thousand yen given as compensation.

Other samurai used this sum to start businesses, but Heigorō Hisataka did not, saying, “What on earth can I do?” That may have been all to the good, since most of those who started businesses failed, sometimes losing everything and ending up virtually on the street.

Heigorō Hisataka was somewhat lucky in that, having a good reputation as a diligent official under the old regime, he was hired as a minor functionary in the new prefecture’s Academic Affairs Section. But the job was poorly paid, and supporting the numerous members of his household on his salary alone was impossible.

“I’ll feed you, but you’ll have to take care of everything else you need” was his constant refrain vis-à-vis his children. These educational views resulted in Shin stoking the fires at the bathhouse and taking home his one sen per day. With this small amount of money, he could buy books to read but could not afford to go to school. He once asked his father to send him to school, but Heigorō Hisataka could only reply in a small voice, “I don’t have the money.”

Heigorō Hisataka did manage to say something quite memorable though. “All the heroes of past and present rose out of poverty. My not earning much will do my son a great deal of good.” And, though he had no money to provide for schooling, he told his son, “Shin, if you don’t like being poor, then study hard!”

That was the prevalent spirit of the time. The men of the former Satsuma and Chōshū domains had taken political power, but the government, dominated by that clique though it was, nonetheless encouraged young men throughout the land to study, promising that if they became learned in some area, the nation would give them employment. All the samurai throughout Japan had become rōnin, masterless samurai, but learning was a new path to official service. This was the way to earn a living, and, especially for the former samurai of the domains that had fought on the losing side in the civil war, the only way to pull themselves out of the mire.

“I want to learn too!” Shin kept saying to himself. That’s why he stoked the bathhouse fire, sat at the counter taking the customers’ coins, and watched over their clothing as they bathed. Occasionally he found himself wishing for the impossible: a school in Japan that required no fees. As he sat at the counter thinking such thoughts and reading his books, he sometimes forgot to give the customers their change and was duly chastised.

The women customers were his harshest critics. “That Akiyama boy is cute enough, but he’s not very bright,” they would say in the changing room, intending to be overheard by him, which of course they were.

Eventually Shin heard some good news. A free school had been opened in Osaka.

* * *

One day Shin was walking through the Ōkaidō area of the castle town when he was stopped by Mr. Ikeuchi, a former Matsuyama samurai. Ikeuchi Nobuo was an elderly man who had served as a superintendent of the okachi, as had Heigorō, and was almost like a member of the Akiyama family.

“Aren’t you surprised to see me?” said Mr. Ikeuchi, meaning, “You should show more surprise and pleasure in seeing me.”

In 1870, the prefecture gave former samurai permission to take up farming or business and to live where they liked. Indeed, they were encouraged to move to new areas. To Ikeuchi Nobuo, staying on in the castle town seemed likely to lead to sure starvation, so he immediately made arrangements to change his status to farmer, applied for a prefectural grant of money for moving and housing, and moved with his whole family to the village of Nishinoshita in Kazahaya County. Since he was visiting Matsuyama for the first time in a long while, he wanted Shin to be “more surprised and pleased” to see him.

“We mustn’t stand here talking,” said the old gentleman, looking around. Standing and talking was something townspeople and farmers did, not samurai, by long custom from Tokugawa days. Looking about, Mr. Ikeuchi discovered a bench set out in front of a shop selling sundries. It wasn’t his shop, but he didn’t hesitate to sit right down. The old custom of samurai lording it over townspeople was not easily left behind.

“Have you heard?” Mr. Ikeuchi asked.

“About what?” said Shin, still standing.

“Oh, so you don’t know yet? A normal school for teachers has just opened in Osaka, and it’s free.” This was his important news. When Shin, amazed, asked for more information, Mr. Ikeuchi said, “I don’t know any of the details, but it’s odd that your father hasn’t said anything to you about this yet, working in the Academic Affairs Section as he does. I wonder why?” Getting...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Principal Characters
• Chronology of Major Events
• Japanese and Russian Fleets in 1904
• Introduction
• A Note from the Editor
• Maps
• Part 1, translated by Paul McCarthy
• Part 2, Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
• Glossary