Itagaki Taisuke — The Man Who Missed His Chance to Die

Don't Go Into the Room with a Crying Face

"Even if Itagaki dies, liberty never dies."

He is said to have shouted this at his attacker. It is still a famous line today.

But a record published a month after the attack gives slightly different words. It names a different listener, too. It even says that while he and the attacker were locked together, neither of them said a word.

So who were those words meant for?

The man who said them had been raised with one rule: never come home crying.

His name was Inui Inosuke. He would later be known as Itagaki Taisuke. He was born in 1837 in the castle town of Tosa, a han (a domain ruled by a lord) in what is now Kochi Prefecture. His family were high-ranking samurai. They held rice fields worth more than three hundred koku a year (one koku was about what a person eats in a year).

His mother, Hayashi, almost never scolded him. He could stay out until late at night or play dangerous games, and she said nothing.

She had just one rule. When he fought with another boy and came home crying, she always said this, it is said:

"Don't walk into the main room with a crying face."

She taught him only one thing, a biography says: how to win.

When he was four or five, he was taken to watch a sumo match. Most families with money had built raised seats to watch from. Inosuke got angry. "Everyone has a raised seat. How can it be only we have none?" he said, and he went home without even looking back, it is said.

When his mother heard, she said that a boy's spirit must not be broken, even a small one. That same day she called in dozens of carpenters and had a raised seat built overnight. Such work would normally take a week, they say.

His pranks, too, went straight for the other person's weakest spot. Once an aunt who was terribly afraid of thunder was staying at the house. When lightning struck nearby, he crawled under the hallway floor and rattled a big abacus in time with the thunder. The household panicked. The aunt, furious, forgot all about the thunder and chased him. Inosuke ran off through the neighbor's hedge, stuck his head out of a gap, and stuck out his tongue, it is said.

At fourteen or fifteen, he teamed up with seventy or so young men and attacked another gang in the middle of town. It turned into a brawl. The han picked three ringleaders to punish, and Inosuke was one of them. He was the youngest of the three, they say.

Once, that boy nearly threw everything away.

He loved to swim and went into the river almost every day. Because of that he hurt his ears, and he could no longer hear. The doctor forbade him to read or to practice with the sword. Day after day, nothing was any fun, and in the end he thought, it's all over, a biography says.

If I have to stand in front of people with ears that can't hear, I would rather give up the whole house.

He gathered his relatives and even began talks about having an adopted son take over the family. The relatives would not allow it.

One day he tried pinching his nose and mouth shut and blowing out as hard as he could. There was a sound, and his ear opened. After that, whenever the trouble came back, he cured it the same way, and by his early twenties it was completely gone, it is said.

In 1856 he was punished by the han again, this time for insulting a man of his own rank. He was sent away to Kōda, a village on his family's land south of the castle.

His friends came to cheer him up now and then. One day they all climbed the mountain in front of the village, spread straw mats, and drank sake. One of them ate pickled plums and grilled eel together, and said his stomach hurt. In that region, eel and sour food were thought to be a bad mix.

He laughed. "I have good medicine. Drink this." Then he wrapped a grilled eel around a plum and finished it in one bite. "Still hurting?" The friend who had been in pain got better soon, and everyone burst out laughing, it is said.

While he was under house arrest, Yoshida Tōyō, a senior official of the han, once came to see him. Papers accusing you keep landing on my desk, he said, and it has been a headache. He comforted him like that and went home, it is said.

Inosuke never once visited Yoshida's house. He saw Yoshida's group as a gathering of weak scholars. A samurai dies on the battlefield and comes home wrapped in horse hide, he thought. What good is talking about human nature and theory? That is what he was thinking, his biography says.

During his confinement, he took hunting dogs into the mountains and spent his days chasing boar and deer.

Yoshida Tōyō, the man he had looked down on as a talker of theories, was killed one night in 1862, on the road home from the castle.

I'll Leave This Life with You for a While

In 1860 his father fell gravely ill. Taisuke deeply regretted how he had behaved until then, and a biography says he stayed at his father's side day and night. His father died, and Taisuke took over the Inui family.

That same year, as a menbugyō, an official in charge of the rice tax, he toured the villages of Tsunoyama, deep in the mountains. They were poor villages. The villagers knelt by the roadside and begged for a lighter tax. They put a little flour in a paper bag and passed it around to eat, it is said.

Seeing this, Taisuke is said to have told the village officials: Do the officials above teach the people not to fight? My view is the opposite. To rouse lazy people, you have to start with a fight. A fight only starts once a person knows shame.

The senior officials were shocked when they heard this, and they scolded Taisuke, it is said.

Even when he encouraged people, he picked a fight.

The samurai of Tosa were split into two ranks, the upper samurai and the lower samurai, and the two had long been hostile. When Yoshida Tōyō was killed in 1862, the standoff came out into the open.

A rumor reached Yamauchi Yōdō, the former lord of Tosa, that the lower samurai were after the upper samurai's heads. Asked what he would do, Taisuke is said to have answered firmly:

"Washing blood with blood is not a good plan to begin with. But for what happened today, there is nothing else we can do."

He had more than fifty comrades, Taisuke went on. One of the senior officials who heard this said, "Inui really has no fear of death," they say.

Around that time, Nakaoka Shintarō, who stood on the side of the lower samurai, came to visit Taisuke. It was a time when the two ranks were at each other's throats. Taisuke is said to have opened without warning:

"When I was in Kyoto, weren't you and your friends trying to kill me?"

Nakaoka straightened himself and answered:

"That could never be."

Taisuke sat up sharply and scolded him, in a slightly teasing tone, they say.

"Isn't Nakaoka Shintarō a man? And you still talk like a woman?"

Nakaoka apologized and confessed:

"It is deeply embarrassing, but at first I thought nothing could be done unless you were removed."

Then Taisuke smiled broadly, it is said.

"That was a straight answer. Now at last we can talk about the great matters of the nation."

The talk moved on to details, and their knees edged closer and closer. The mood in the room softened as if a spring breeze had blown through, the biography says. As he was leaving, Nakaoka said: I thought you were just one of the ordinary thinkers. That showed how poor my eye was.

Taisuke liked the man who had confessed he meant to kill him.

A few years later, in 1867, Taisuke rushed from Edo (now Tokyo) to Kyoto, and Nakaoka and the others met him. What is our plan for today? they asked, all at once. Taisuke was silent for a while. Then he answered quietly, it is said:

"When I left Edo, I had truly decided to die warning our lord. I meant to apologize that way to our comrades across the land. If this one death could wake him up, I would not mind losing my life. As for what comes after, I hope you will think of it."

To die warning your lord. It was one way a samurai could die.

Nakaoka pounded the floor and shouted in anger:

"Do you mean to be noble all by yourself? The country is in danger right now. The most important thing for a man is the place where he dies. If you can tell a heavy death from a light one, why not die the heavy death, and instead throw your life away in a pointless dog's death? I will not yet allow you to die. Tell me today's grand plan."

The biography adds a strange remark here. Earlier, when Taisuke scolded Nakaoka, Nakaoka wept and apologized. This day Nakaoka scolded Taisuke, and Taisuke broke into a cold sweat and apologized. What a strange turn of fate, it says.

Taisuke stayed silent for a long time. At last he is said to have said:

"Then I will leave this one death with you for a while."

Instead of the han, his comrades would raise an army to overthrow the shogunate, the military government that had ruled Japan for centuries. That was the answer Taisuke gave. Nakaoka and the others were overjoyed, and they clapped their hands and shouted "Splendid!" three times, it is said.

In the eleventh month of the old lunar calendar that year, Nakaoka was attacked by assassins in Kyoto while he was with Sakamoto Ryōma. He was badly wounded and died soon after. Until the end his face did not change, and he quietly left what came next to his comrades, the biography says.

When the news reached him, Taisuke walked back and forth singing sad songs, not knowing what to do, it is said.

The life I left with him, no one can give back to me now.

The next year, 1868, Taisuke led troops out of Kyoto.

Those who had opposed him in Tosa lamented, it is said: giving that man an army is like letting a tiger loose in a field.

A Basket of Potatoes

In the second month of the old lunar calendar in 1868, Taisuke led the Tosa troops out of Kyoto. They were the vanguard of the Tōsandō army on the new government's side, an army sent to attack the eastern domains that backed the old shogunate.

At Ōgaki in Mino, he changed his family name from Inui to Itagaki. A biography says he was returning to the name of his ancestor Itagaki Nobukata, a retainer of the warlord Takeda Shingen.

On the same march, Nomoto Heikichi, captain of the second unit, broke the army's rules. He was an honest man whom his comrades called a gentleman. He was close to Itagaki, too.

Itagaki shook off his tears and cut him down, a biography says.

On October 8 of the same year (the 23rd day of the eighth month in the old calendar), Itagaki and his men attacked Wakamatsu Castle in Aizu. The Aizu han had been named an enemy by the new government and fought from inside its castle. Many died or were wounded, both among those defending the castle and those attacking it, a biography says.

That day Itagaki climbed Takizawa Pass with Makino Gunma, the army's inspector. They were such close friends that they would have staked their heads for each other. Below them they could see Wakamatsu Castle.

Gunma leapt for joy, it is said.

"This is the place to bury my bones. Today is the day to die."

Then he turned to Itagaki, called him "elder brother," and asked:

"Will you die too, brother?"

The men around them backed away, startled, thinking he had lost his mind. The two ate a meal together, came down the mountain, and went off to their separate posts, they say.

Gunma advanced to the front of the castle, pulled the cannon rope himself, and cheered on his troops. A shell struck his body and exploded, and he died after nightfall.

When Itagaki heard, a biography says, he could not stop crying.

About a month later, Aizu offered to surrender. The envoys asked that their lord be treated gently. Itagaki had a go-between ask them back, it is said: if he is not treated gently, can you not surrender? The envoys bowed their heads and said no, that was not so.

Itagaki had them told, it is said: "Just remember that Itagaki is not a man who is stubborn about only one thing."

Even so, he did not make his men stop firing until the surrender flag went up.

After the fighting, the generals gathered in camp, talking and laughing. One of the Tosa samurai who had guarded the surrendered lord and his son at a temple told a story.

A farmer had come carrying roasted potatoes in a rough basket. I am very sorry to the lord, he said, but this was made by the hands of a humble person. Please accept at least my feelings. He held it out, and the samurai was so moved that he passed it along.

Everyone there praised it.

Only Itagaki said nothing.

Then he slowly stroked his armor and began to speak, it is said.

When we marched into Aizu, the people here took their wives and children and their belongings and all ran away. Not one of them raised a blade against us. More than that, little by little they became our porters and took their pay without a care. I have always wondered about that and could not forget it. Now, hearing your story, I finally understand.

"Those who do not share the pleasures do not share the sorrows."

The Itagaki of the biography goes on: it is because you never counted such people as people. That is why, when the country fell, only three thousand samurai staked their lives. I do not understand why you are so impressed by one basket of potatoes.

He was the same man who had said in the villages of Tsunoyama that to rouse lazy people, you have to start with a fight.

On the day he returned in triumph to Kochi, the townspeople had poured into the streets to wait for him. Itagaki hated that. He took a detour on purpose and slipped into the Chidōkan, the han school. The spectators were greatly disappointed, it is said.

Then Itagaki was put in charge of the government of Tosa. Together with his fellow samurai Fukuoka Takachika, with the former lord's permission, he took a proposal to the national government: to release the samurai from their own role. If the ranks among samurai were to be abolished, they argued, first release the samurai from their fixed duty, the family job of fighting. He pressed this at the Council of State, the new government's highest body, won agreement, and went back to Tosa, he later said himself.

A man born into a high-ranking samurai family had gone to pull away, with his own hands, the very ground his rank stood on.

In 1873 he lost a fight inside the government over whether to send a mission to Korea, and he resigned as sangi, a councillor, one of the government's top posts. The next year, together with his colleagues, he submitted a petition asking for an assembly of members chosen by the people.

From then on, the tool he used to move the country was not the sword but the speech.

In 1881, Itagaki founded the Liberal Party and became its president.

The next year, April 6, in Gifu. When his speech was over, he walked out the front entrance of the hall by himself.

You Must Be Pleased

According to a book on the party's history, Itagaki was feeling a little unwell that day. Even so, he gave a speech for nearly two hours at a friendly gathering at the Shinto Chūkyōin, a Shinto teaching hall, and he grew so tired that he could not stay seated.

The gathering was still going. Around six in the evening, Itagaki left his seat alone, ahead of the others, to go back to his inn. He refused escorts and farewells so as not to spoil everyone's fun, the party history says.

He put on his shoes in the entrance hall and took two or three steps.

From behind, a man threw himself at him, clinging like an embrace. A short sword went into his right chest.

"What are you doing?"

Itagaki shouted this and shook the man off, says a record published a month after the incident. The man came around to the front and stabbed his left chest. Only then did Itagaki realize the man was an assassin, the record goes on.

He had nothing in his hands. According to the party history, he did not even have a cane. He grabbed the blade itself with his right hand. As he tried to wrench it away, his right hand was cut deeply. He was also wounded in his left hand and left cheek.

During all this, neither Itagaki nor the assassin said a word. The record goes out of its way to say so, in parentheses.

People who noticed the noise ran over, and Naitō Roichi grabbed the man's arm and threw him down. Several men pinned him, and a comrade over fifty tied him up. Some who were furious kicked the man hard in the face and backside, it is said.

Ōno Saiichi held up Itagaki, whose face was dripping blood.

Seeing the blood pour out, Saiichi cried out loud and shouted, "How awful!" the record says. He kept crying, pressing his right sleeve to the blood falling from Itagaki's body.

Itagaki heard that and turned around. And quietly, it is written, he said:

"Gentlemen, do not grieve. Even if Taisuke dies, liberty will not perish. Gentlemen, press on."

In this record, these are not words shouted at the assassin while glaring at him. They were said to a comrade who was holding him and weeping, as he turned to him. The record also says his face did not change in the slightest.

Everyone asked about the wound, about how he felt. He had been stabbed twice in the chest. It might have gone deep into the lung. But he felt no different from usual, he answered. Asked if it was hard to breathe, he said it was nothing at all. Then the lung must be fine, someone said, and everyone, they say, finally relaxed a little.

His comrades carried him on their backs to an umbrella shop in front of the gate. One of them undid his own sash, took off his coat, and laid it over Itagaki's body.

While he was being treated at the umbrella shop, Itagaki called one of his comrades to his side. I have promised to attend a friendly gathering in Takatomi tomorrow. Tell them right away that I cannot come.

Stabbed twice in the chest, what he was worried about was tomorrow's appointment.

Back at the inn, Itagaki called in Naitō and thanked him, it is said. According to the party history, this was because Naitō had sternly stopped the men who were trying to beat the assassin to death, and had handed him over to the officials.

"There is something I must thank you for. You handled the assassin properly and did not let anyone treat him roughly. That kept our party's honor."

Gotō Shinpei, the director of a hospital in Aichi Prefecture, got the news and rushed over too. Even when a prefectural official brushed him off coldly, saying it was outside his jurisdiction, he put his own job on the line and brought doctors from his staff, it is said.

Gotō examined Itagaki and is said to have said:

"Your Excellency, with a wound like this, your pulse is steady and you have no fever at all. And there is a look of joy on your face. You must be pleased, sir."

Itagaki answered.

"Yes. In fact, I think I have found a good place to die, and I am truly glad."

What matters most to a man is the place where he dies. Nakaoka Shintarō, who had said this when he scolded him, had been dead for a little over fourteen years.

Perhaps he felt he had finally found a use for the life he had left in Nakaoka's keeping.

When Gotō got up to leave, Itagaki said to his comrades, they say: That doctor is a bit of an odd bird. It is a shame he cannot be made a politician.

But the wounds healed. Itagaki did not die.

The man who stabbed him was named Aihara Naobumi. He was a teacher at a school in Aichi Prefecture, and he was twenty-seven.

Cut Open Your Belly and Apologize

Before leaving home, Aihara Naobumi had left behind letters. One, addressed to his parents, is included in the party history book like this:

"I cannot hold back my loyalty to the emperor, so I will strike down Itagaki Taisuke, traitor to the nation. But in doing so I break the law of the land above, and I will be unable to care for the two of you below. When I think of this, I have no words to apologize for the sin of failing you as a son."

To his colleagues at the school where he worked, he wrote that he had called in sick for three days and nights to think about this great matter, and asked them to forgive him. He was a man who loved reading the conservative arguments of a certain newspaper and was deeply devoted to it.

The court sent a messenger to Itagaki to ask whether he wished to bring charges against Aihara. Itagaki is said to have answered:

"I have no intention of bringing charges. If possible, please pardon him."

Even so, the law could not be bent, and Aihara was sentenced to life in prison.

He had been this generous to the man who stabbed him.

Yet in that very same year, Itagaki would press his comrades to cut open their bellies, the old samurai way of taking the blame.

According to the party history book, it began with a trip to Europe. Gotō Shōjirō (a different man from the doctor Gotō) advised him to go and see foreign countries, and said he would borrow the travel money from an acquaintance, a nobleman. Itagaki agreed.

Inside the party, Baba Tatsui and others objected: should the president leave Japan? Another political party spread the word that a trip to Europe must cost a fortune, and that the source of the money was suspicious.

When Itagaki heard that Baba and the others had raised these doubts again, he flew into a rage, it is said. You pushed me to be head of the party, and now you ride on another party's slander to hurt my honor. Such rudeness has no limit.

Itagaki gathered the party's leaders. His words then remain in the party history book.

"If it is proven that I have even one speck of dirt in this affair, I will cut open my belly and apologize to you, gentlemen. But if it becomes clear that there is no dirt, then you gentlemen must cut open your bellies and apologize to me."

One leader pounded the desk and shouted that this was fun and that he agreed. Baba refused, calling a vow to cut one's belly a barbaric old custom. Another shouted that Itagaki meant to kill them, it is said. No agreement was reached, and Baba and the others left their seats.

The man who had asked for the man who stabbed him to be pardoned had demanded that doubting comrades cut open their bellies.

Being doubted by comrades may have hurt more than being stabbed with a blade.

Baba and the others later visited Itagaki and apologized, and the relationship went back to normal for the time being. But after Itagaki returned from Europe, they split over how to punish one of their comrades, and Baba and the others left the party.

In 1884, the Liberal Party decided to disband at Daiyūji temple in Osaka.

In his closing speech, Itagaki said that even though he had used up his fortune and been wounded in body, he had not bent in the least. Then, the party history says, he continued:

"If I die, unfortunately, I hope, gentlemen, you will let my grave be buried in the tall autumn grass. Do not let it be stained with the bad habit of the capital's cemeteries, where people put up huge gravestones for those who did nothing great, and hold a contest of tombstones even after death."

It is recorded that the hall roared with laughter and applause.

At the party for the disbanding, a dozen or so young men stepped up in front of Itagaki. We have nothing to offer our president at today's feast, they said. At least let us lift you up and toss you in the air, to celebrate your long life. They hoisted him up and threw him into the air again and again, it is said.

Itagaki's face broke into a smile, and he said it was great fun, they say.

About two and a half years later, in May 1887, an imperial order came to grant the title of count, a rank in the new nobility, to this man who had gone out of his way to give up the samurai class with his own hands. He was on his way to Osaka and knew nothing about it.

To accept a rank went against everything he had been saying. In June, Itagaki submitted a letter declining the title.

"I am nothing more than one samurai of the southern sea."

The southern sea means Tosa, which faces the sea to the south.

A vice-minister of the Imperial Household Ministry called Itagaki in and told him that the emperor remembered his loyalty and that he should accept gladly. Itagaki was overwhelmed, and his eyes even filled with tears, it is said.

He did not want to betray his loyalty to the emperor. But given what he believed, he could not accept the rank. Caught between the two, he neglected sleep and meals, the party history book says.

In July he submitted a second letter of refusal. That too was sent back. On July 15, Itagaki went to the palace and handed in a letter saying he would accept the title.

The rank he had wanted to refuse, he accepted in the end.

A newspaper at the time looked into Itagaki's property and wrote it up. A few hunting dogs, twenty ducks, and two hunting guns. That was all, they say.

Two years later, the schoolteacher who had stabbed Itagaki would get out of prison and come to see him.

The Manuscript Under the Pillow

In 1889, as part of a pardon celebrating the proclamation of the constitution, Aihara Naobumi was let out of prison.

Accompanied by someone, Aihara visited Itagaki's house in Tokyo. He apologized, saying that he had been mistaken back then and asking to be forgiven, it is said. He also said he wanted to go to Hokkaido and work as a settler, clearing new farmland.

Itagaki is said to have answered:

"What happened that day did not come from a private grudge. It came from love of your country. I do not blame that heart. But it is a pity that you misjudged things before you acted. If from now on Itagaki's actions truly harm the country, you may do it again, and I will not regret it in the least."

Aihara went home for a while, then boarded a ship for Hokkaido. While crossing the Enshū-nada Sea, he is said to have vanished. Some say he threw himself in, others that he was thrown into the sea, and the truth is not known.

Itagaki lived thirty more years. He rebuilt a political party, served as a minister, and urged the nobles to stop passing their ranks on to their children. Only thirty-seven answered, it is said.

In his later years, they say, he often described his own life like this.

On the old Tōkaidō road, each post town had porters who changed at every stop. There were also "through porters," who carried a load alone all the way from Kyoto to Edo. I am a through porter, he said. Loyalty to the emperor and overthrowing the shogunate, the movement for freedom and people's rights, constitutional government, social policy: my partner changed again and again. But I did not change at all, and I carried it all the way, alone.

Many of the comrades who had shared the load had left along the way, or had died before him. Nakaoka Shintarō, with whom he had left his life. Makino Gunma, who died on the day they looked down on the castle from the Aizu pass. Even Baba Tatsui, who had left the party, had been struck down by illness in America, where he had gone.

From the autumn of 1918, Itagaki took to his sickbed. He was eighty-one.

Even so, he kept calling in his disciple Wada Saburō to speak his thoughts and have them written down. The manuscript piled higher and higher. From now on, every opinion I publish is a last testament to the people of this same country, he said. Wada wrote that Itagaki had always said so, ever since Wada began writing about social policy.

Among those pages was a piece about Aizu. On the day Aizu fell, only those of samurai rank staked their lives for the country. The farmers and townspeople shouldered their loads and fled. There was just one farmer who offered potatoes to the imprisoned former lord.

What he had seen in the Aizu camp fifty years earlier, he was telling again on his sickbed.

Also, he asked that after his death the title of count not be passed on to his children and grandchildren. He made that a will too, Wada wrote.

In June 1919, even when his chronic bronchial illness flared up again, Itagaki hurried to finish the book. When the finished manuscript reached his bedside, he was delighted. He read it through once, then put it under his pillow and, it is said, would never let anyone else touch it.

On July 15, his illness worsened and Itagaki called Wada to his bedside.

Wada sat beside Itagaki's wife, who was worn out from nursing, and gripped Itagaki's right hand firmly with his own right hand. I am the one who has come, he told him.

Itagaki smiled. And once more he entrusted the publication of the book to Wada, Wada wrote.

Wada swore that the revisions and preparations for publication were done, and Itagaki nodded again and again. He tried to say more, but could not say much.

Tears poured from his wife's eyes and wet the bed. Wada could not hold back, left the room, and cried out loud, it is said.

Early the next morning, the 16th, his condition changed suddenly. Wada and the family offered him the last water, the farewell sip given to the dying.

At 8:30 in the morning, Itagaki Taisuke died with his manuscript still under his pillow. He was eighty-two.

In 1919, the year he died, a piece was published under his name. It describes the scene in Gifu in his own words. In it, Itagaki glares at the assassin and says:

"Even if Itagaki dies, liberty never dies."

The party history book he had supervised nine years earlier tells the same scene with the same words.

But in the record made a month after the incident, he does not look at the assassin. He turns quietly toward the comrade who was crying as he pressed a sleeve against the wound.

Gentlemen, do not grieve.

The boy who grew up being told never to go into the main room with a crying face was now saying the same thing to a person who was crying.

That evening there had been a friend who cried, pressing a sleeve to the blood. A friend who carried him on his back. A doctor who rushed over, staking his job. Thirty-seven years later, a disciple who gripped his right hand.

The day before his death, it was the people around him who were crying. He was the one smiling.

The manuscript stayed under his pillow.