Iwakura Tomomi — The Man with No Place to Belong

Heaven and Earth Are So Wide

"Heaven and earth are so wide. And still there is no place to put us?"

On the day he was told to move out of the broken-down house he had rented, one man is said to have cried out those words.

The house stood in Iwakura, a mountain village north of Kyoto. It had just three rooms: six tatami mats, four and a half, and three. The eaves were torn, the pillars leaned, and no one had lived there for a long time. It looked like a den for foxes and raccoon dogs, they say.

Even from there, he was about to be thrown out.

Not long before, this man had been a court noble, one of those who served close to the emperor.

Iwakura Tomomi. Thirty-seven years old.

Why was he in a place like this? The story goes back about a year.

At the end of 1861, Tomomi sat facing the shogun's senior councilors in Edo Castle.

Princess Kazunomiya was to be married to the shogun. It was a wedding meant to show that the imperial court and the shogun's government were joining hands. Tomomi was one of the men who pushed the plan forward.

But in Edo, a rumor was going around that the shogun's government meant to remove the emperor from his throne. Tomomi demanded an answer and made the councilors apologize. Even then, he did not back down.

"Councilors change as time passes. They are no proof for the years ahead. We ask that the shogun himself give us a pledge in his own hand."

Tomomi demanded this, it is said. In all the years since the shogunate began, no shogun had ever written such a pledge in his own hand. When they began to refuse, he would not listen.

A few days later, the shogunate gave in.

In Kyoto, the emperor opened the pledge. The brushwork was weak and the shapes of the characters were uneven. He could tell at a glance that the young shogun had written it himself, and he laughed, they say.

But in that same Kyoto, this work was seen in exactly the opposite way.

Loyalist samurai cried out that the foreigners must be driven out and that no one should do the shogun's bidding. They wanted to revere the emperor and expel the foreigners. To them, a court noble who married a princess off to the shogun and made deals with him was a tool of the shogunate.

In 1862, thirteen court nobles signed a joint complaint that Tomomi and others were in league with the shogunate. The text even said that their disloyalty was plain. Among the names was a court noble called Sanjō Sanetomi.

Tomomi was ordered to resign his post and shave his head.

That night, it is said, memories of the old days came to him one after another, and he did not sleep at all.

Even in the temple where he took shelter, the gossip reached him. They were secretly meeting to plot. They were casting curses. They were going to poison him. He had shut his gate and was seeing no one. Why was he hated this much? A biography says that Tomomi, alone, brooded over this and decided to become a monk and leave the world behind.

He asked a monk, Seiō, to shave his head. Seiō tried to talk him out of it, but Tomomi would not give way.

At dawn on the fifteenth day of the ninth month, by the old lunar calendar, Tomomi sat before the shrine of the National Teacher Butchō (a small cabinet for holding Buddhist statues). Seiō shaved his hair.

At that moment, a later biography says, Tomomi spoke these words in his heart:

"I was born on the fifteenth of the ninth month. On that very same day, I take the form of a monk. Is this not fate from a past life?"

It was his thirty-seventh birthday.

The next day, the biography goes on, Tomomi put on a straw hat and sandals, disguised himself as a traveling monk, and left the temple. He took a long way round to avoid being seen. Just as he was about to enter the village where Seiō's hermitage stood, he ran into Ōgimachisanjō Sanenaru coming the other way. Sanenaru was a court noble who had once been especially close to him.

Tomomi hurriedly hid among the sweet potato fields, it is said. Sanenaru passed by without noticing.

Two days later, Seiō and the servant went out, so Tomomi cooked the rice himself. The top of the pot was runny like porridge, and the bottom was burned black. Seiō came home in the evening, ate it, and burst out laughing, they say. It was the first time Tomomi had ever done his own cooking.

At the next temple, Saihō-ji, he cut charcoal for the tea ceremony with a small saw, to the length the tea master used. But the charcoal dust flew everywhere, and his beard and eyebrows turned black. The head priest saw his face and teased him, it is said.

To toughen his arms and legs, he once put on a torn hat, carried a bucket of manure on a pole, and spread it on the field with a long ladle. The servant who watched burst out laughing and said, it is said:

"You look like a scarecrow swaying in the wind."

Tomomi let out a long breath, and the story goes that he said:

"Even the lowest jobs, learn them if you have the time. Cooking and spreading manure can be done even by clumsy servants, men and women. Yet if a person of rank is not used to them, people will laugh at him all the same. All the more so with bigger things than these."

He could not stay long at the temples either. The head priest of Reigen-ji, the first temple he went to, saw how fiercely the court and the world hated Tomomi, and feared that disaster would fall on himself, it is said. Using some other business as an excuse, he asked Tomomi to leave.

So he moved to the house in Iwakura, the one from the start. Two days after he moved in, a cold wind blew hard and the snow piled up more than an inch, about three centimeters.

Nine days after he moved in, the owner of the house, Fujiya Tōgorō, suddenly came to see him. Something urgent had come up for this house, he said. Could Tomomi please move somewhere else?

The cry at the very beginning was from this moment.

A man who heard of it was a steward of Jissō-in, a temple. The steward is the person who runs the temple's affairs. He felt sorry for Tomomi in his trouble, calmly talked Tōgorō around, and had the demand withdrawn.

He was someone Tomomi had never met.

Tomomi was glad of such deep kindness, and thanked him with a poem, they say.

He had only one servant, an old man. When the servant went out, Tomomi carried the water himself, carried the brushwood, and stood in the kitchen, it is said.

From here, five years. Tomomi could not leave this village.

An Insect Chirping in the Grass

Life in Iwakura went on, two years, then three.

The court forbade him to live in the city of Kyoto. Hardly anyone came to see him.

In 1865, Tomomi finished writing an opinion paper. Its title was Sōri Meichū. It means an insect chirping in the grass.

Inoue Iwami of Satsuma, a powerful domain in southwest Japan, came to visit. Tomomi showed him the paper and asked him to get the views of Komatsu Tatewaki and Ōkubo Ichizō. He had known both of them for some time. Ichizō was the man who would later be known as Ōkubo Toshimichi.

At the start of the paper, Tomomi writes about himself like this:

"I was given a heavy punishment and shut myself away in a mountain village north of Kyoto. I have changed my clothes from summer to winter four times now. In all that time, the only people I have kept company with are farmers and woodcutters. When I ask about the world, I hear only town gossip. If I write by guessing like this, I will surely have gotten the facts wrong in many places. I beg readers to forgive me."

In the sequel he wrote:

"The court nobles all look at me as if I were their enemy, and not one of them sends so much as a letter. What puzzles me are Ōgimachisanjō and Ōhara. We were especially close. We once opened our hearts and talked about the country. Now even a bird's footprints have vanished."

That was the man he had hidden from in the sweet potato field, and let pass.

"I have no learning. My writing is poor," Tomomi wrote. If this leaked out to the world, it would add to his crimes. He knew that. Even so, his heart was moved and he could not stop. Please, he asked, do not let it go to anyone else. If there was anything in it worth using, that would be all he could wish for in this life.

A little more than a year later, in the middle of the twelfth month by the old calendar, news came that the emperor had caught smallpox. Day and night, Tomomi prayed to the gods of heaven and earth for his recovery.

On the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth month, a letter came from his father, Tomoyasu. The emperor had died the night before.

Tomomi cried out loud. The people serving him wet their sleeves with tears too, they say.

The biography writes down what Tomomi thought, alone, at that moment. Because of the matter of Princess Kazunomiya, he had drawn anger from the court and from the world, been given the name of a villain, and shut himself away for five years now. Not one day had he forgotten the emperor's kindness. All he had thought of was to see the emperor's face once more. That hope could never come true now. He would give up worldly affairs, enter the Buddhist path, and pray for the late emperor.

It was the second time he decided to give up the world.

Tomomi wrote his thoughts in a letter and sent it to Nakamikado Tsuneyuki, a fellow court noble. Tsuneyuki sent back a sharp scolding.

In that reply, Tomomi's own words were written back to him. Earlier, when Tsuneyuki had said he would step down if his opinion was not taken up, Tomomi had warned him, the letter said:

"That is what people in China do. In this country, you must never do it. Right or wrong, serve as a subject all your life."

Words that he himself had once used to warn another man now held him back.

In the second month of the new year, by the old calendar, a scholar named Tamamatsu Misao began coming to Tomomi's house. The man who introduced them told him, they say, that this person would surely become his right-hand man.

In the eleventh month of 1867, by the old calendar, Sakamoto Ryōma and Nakaoka Shintarō were cut down in Kyoto. Kagawa Keizō, who brought back the news, had wet sleeves. Tomomi said, it is said:

"Ah, what kind of monster has taken away my right arm?"

And he cried out loud.

On the night of the eighth day of the twelfth month, old calendar, loyalist samurai were gathered in Tomomi's house. The next morning, they would change the court's government all at once. That was the plan.

In the middle of the night, an urgent letter came from Ōgimachisanjō. The soldiers of the Owari domain had moved earlier than the agreed time. The plot might have leaked.

It was news from the very man of whom, more than two years before, Tomomi had written that even his footprints had vanished.

The samurai were furious. The troops of Aizu and Kuwana would surely come to surround the house. They would cut their way in and fight until they died. Everyone stroked his sword and waited for the time.

Tomomi had a maid bring sake and served it to the samurai. He said, the story goes:

"Heaven decides whether we succeed. Fate decides whether we live or die. With a heart that is not ashamed before heaven and earth, we plan what is not shameful before heaven and earth. Even if we fail and die, what is there to be ashamed of, in this world or in later ages?"

When he had finished speaking, laughing, Tomomi tossed his cup aside and lay down.

Soon a snore like thunder could be heard.

The samurai were amazed at how bold he was, they say.

Would the troops of Aizu and Kuwana come, or not? In the house before dawn, nobody knew yet.

Sake for the Assassins

Before long, a messenger from the Owari domain came to apologize. They had gotten the time wrong, he said, and had moved their troops too early. To the court they had made an excuse: there was a rumor that their lord would be attacked on his way home, so some young men had only rushed to guard him. The court, it is said, did not look into it any further.

When Tomomi woke up and got to his feet, one of the men waiting beside him told him this. And he asked: when everything was about to fall apart, what had he been thinking, to suddenly fall asleep?

Tomomi laughed and answered, they say:

"When my plans run out and my wits reach their end, I sleep a little. Then my mind clears, and a good idea comes to me again."

On the morning of the ninth day of the twelfth month, old calendar, a messenger from the court came and handed him an imperial order.

"By His Majesty's wish, your confinement is lifted. Restore your hair at once and come to court."

Tomomi put on his court robes, took a single box holding the draft of the new government, and went up to the Imperial Palace for the first time in five years. The soldiers who were supposed to guard it had not arrived yet. He sent his son Tomosada running to hurry the Satsuma troops. Outside the gate, Tomosada met Saigō Kichinosuke leading his soldiers, they say.

That day, the Proclamation of the Restoration of Imperial Rule was issued, the declaration that gave the government back to the emperor.

But the people who hated Tomomi had not vanished.

On the night of the third day of the first month of the new year, old calendar, fighting began at Toba and Fushimi against the soldiers of the old shogunate.

A court noble, Karasumaru Mitsue, had been saying for some time that Iwakura still had a heart that sided with the shogunate. When the news of the battle came, Karasumaru flew into a rage, hid a sword in his robe, and stood up. If there was not a word of apology, he would stab him dead. Ignoring those who tried to stop him, he walked into the room where Tomomi was resting.

The sound of guns rang out as far as the palace, and the doors and paper screens were shaking. In the middle of it, Tomomi was leaning on his desk, dozing, they say. Not a color in his face had changed.

At that sight, Karasumaru's will broke. He shook Tomomi by the shoulder and told a lie. The imperial army had lost. The enemy army was coming into Kyoto. What would he do?

"I knew it would come to this. I will die for the country, that is all. You gentlemen should think about what to do afterward."

Karasumaru said nothing more and left. He later told people, it is said, that he had been won over by Tomomi's calm, which nothing could shake.

Among his own side, too, some people were drifting away.

When the new government announced to the whole country that it would make treaties with foreign nations, Tamamatsu Misao pressed Tomomi hard. Tomomi answered that the world was not what it used to be. Making agreements with foreign countries could not be helped.

Tamamatsu let out a long sigh and said, they say:

"I have been sold out to a cunning schemer."

He was the man who had been introduced as Tomomi's right-hand man.

On the twenty-second day of the fourth month, old calendar, news reached Tomomi. A rōnin, a samurai without a lord, named Ochiai Naoaki and five or six companions were planning to attack him on the road.

Tomomi sent someone from his household to Ochiai with a message: come to my residence tonight, it is said.

That night, Ochiai came with one companion, the two of them. Tomomi sent his people away and called the two men close.

"I did not invite you for any other reason. I want to be with you as men of this country. Do you not want that too?"

That is how Tomomi began, they say.

The two said nothing and did not answer.

Tomomi went on. You are trying to kill me, too, out of true feeling, to remove a harm to the country. If what I do is truly a harm to the country, I will take both your blades here at this seat. I am never afraid of death.

And he said this too, they say:

"I hold a central post in the government. Even so, eight or nine things out of ten do not go as I wish."

The court has neither soldiers nor money. It has no choice but to borrow the strength of the great domains. If you borrow their strength, you must listen to what they say. Please, for now, hold back and wait for the time.

When he had finished, Tomomi had sake brought, took the flask in his own hand, and poured into the cups of the two men. They were deeply moved and thanked him.

Tomomi lent them Jissō-in, his old temporary lodging, as a place to shelter from rain and dew, and promised to send them money for living costs, it is said.

In the first month of 1870, old calendar, at his house in Tokyo, Tomomi held a small feast and invited the comrades from his hard days. In the preface to a poem he wrote then, it says:

"I never had learning or insight. What merit did I have in the great work of restoring imperial rule?"

He had only borrowed the wisdom of his friends, followed their plans, and served with a sincere heart, he wrote. Then he wrote out his comrades' names, one by one. That he could meet Kagawa was thanks to Matsuo and Fujii. That he could meet Sakamoto and Nakaoka was thanks to Ōhashi. Without those ladders, he would not be where he was today.

The preface voices a wish.

"My only wish is that you and I stay as we were long ago, calling each other 'you' and 'me' as old friends, forever."

A Speech in Traditional Dress

On December 23, 1871, Tomomi set sail from Yokohama.

Ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary. He was the head of a government mission that would visit the countries of America and Europe. The vice ambassadors were Kido Takayoshi, Ōkubo Toshimichi, Itō Hirobumi, and others. Tomomi was forty-six.

On the fifth day out on the Pacific Ocean, it was Niiname-sai in Japan, the day the emperor offers the new rice to the gods.

To celebrate the emperor's long life, every passenger on the ship was served champagne. Tomomi wore a hitatare, an old-style Japanese formal dress, and spoke to the Western passengers about what day it was and asked them to celebrate with him. The American minister to Japan, De Long, translated into English. The passengers stood up and raised their glasses, they say.

The record-keeper, Kume Kunitake, wrote down that this was the first time anyone on the mission had given a speech on the trip.

On the night after they arrived in San Francisco, a band came to the front of the inn, and tens of thousands of citizens filled the street. From an upper floor of the inn, Tomomi spoke words of thanks.

A few days later, Tomomi fell ill. For several days, the vice ambassadors went to sightseeing and lunches in his place.

On the third day of the second month of 1872, old calendar, at the State Department in Washington, the mission faced the Secretary of State and went as far as raising the matter of revising the treaties. But according to Kido's diary, the letter from the emperor they carried did not clearly say that they had been given the power to negotiate.

Ōkubo and Itō had to hurry back to Japan to get that permission.

Kido wrote deep regret in his diary. They had hastily gone along with what people who knew foreign affairs told them. It was truly their fault.

"We gave away everything they wanted, and we have not gotten a single thing we wanted."

In that day's diary, Tomomi's name does not appear.

A letter dated that same year came from the court noble Ōhara Shigemi, who was worried about the Iwakura family left at home. He had seen a photograph of Tomomi.

"I saw your photograph in Western clothes. Perhaps it is from eating meat, but you seem to have gotten quite fat. It is a happy thing for the country that you are in good health. Cutting your hair short is quite right too. I have cut mine short lately as well."

That was how a friend in Japan took in the sight of Tomomi with his topknot cut off.

On February 13, 1873, a telegram arrived in Paris. His father, Tomoyasu, had died.

Tomomi grieved deeply. The next day, a telegram came: end the mourning at once and return to your duties. The journey went on.

From Berlin, Tomomi wrote to Sanjō Sanetomi, the head of the government.

"I received word that my old father, in the end, could not be cared for and has died. In the middle of a journey abroad, it was something I never imagined, and I am shocked."

Sanjō, who had signed the accusation of the thirteen, was the first man of the government at that time.

In Berlin, an order from Sanjō had also arrived, calling Kido and Ōkubo back to Japan. Kido said he still wanted to visit more countries. Ōkubo said he would go home at once. Tomomi confided in Sanjō.

"I would like the two of them to act together, but my power does not reach that far, and I find it very regrettable."

He added a note: please do not show this letter to anyone else.

In May, from Rome, Tomomi wrote to Sanjō again.

"The mission has no talks on revising the treaties, so there is no problem at all. Please rest easy."

More than a year earlier in Washington, the talks had gone as far as revising the treaties. That is in Kido's diary. What happened in between that led Tomomi to write this? He wrote nothing about it in this letter.

On September 13, 1873, Tomomi returned to Yokohama.

Six days later, he wrote to Samejima Naonobu, who was in Paris:

"In two long years, so many things were changed one after another. I cannot take it in and am simply at a loss."

Kido was sick and did not appear. Ōkubo had gone to a hot spring to recover, and Tomomi had not been able to see him yet.

On September 18, Tomomi asked for fifty days of leave to mourn his father. Sanjō stopped him: at a critical time for the country, fifty days off would raise doubts at home and abroad.

In the end, what was allowed was seven days.

For all seven days, Tomomi went to his father's grave, they say.

As Long as I'm Alive

One month after he came home, the government was split in two.

Should they send Saigō Takamori to Korea as an envoy? Opinion divided into two sides, and Tomomi was against sending him.

On October 17, 1873, Tomomi wrote a letter to Sanjō.

"It was surely because I spoke so carelessly that I could not get my thoughts across, and I am deeply ashamed. Now there is nothing for it but to make up my mind and step down."

The same day, he wrote to the councilor Ōkuma Shigenobu too.

"I have decided to leave my post, and I have parted from Lord Sanjō."

But then Sanjō fell ill. Tomomi, then Minister of the Right, a top post in the government, was to take over the duties of the head of the government.

On October 22, Saigō and the others pushed their way into Tomomi's residence. They pressed him: decide to send the envoy and issue the order at once. Tomomi answered that he would report both opinions just as they were to the emperor and ask for his decision.

The argument did not stop. Kirino Toshiaki, who had come along, rolled up his sleeves and stroked his sword again and again, they say.

Tomomi pushed aside everyone's arguments and declared, it is said:

"As long as I'm alive, I will not let you do as you please."

Saigō said: Your Excellency's mind is already made up. There is nothing we can do.

Everyone rose from their seats. On his way out, Saigō turned around and said, it is said:

"The Minister of the Right held his ground well."

Saigō and the others left the government.

The night of January 14 the next year, 1874. Tomomi was on his way home from the Imperial Palace when his carriage came to a place called Kuichigai in Akasaka.

A later biography describes what happened from here in detail. There were seven or eight men by the road. One or two stepped forward to take hold of the horse's bit. When the coachman challenged them, the men suddenly drew their swords. One climbed up the right shaft of the carriage and slashed. Another slit through the hood from behind.

Tomomi had already crouched down on the driver's seat beside the coachman. He jumped down from the left shaft and ran. He had a scratch between his eyebrows and a wound on his left hip. The sheath of the short sword at his waist had stopped the blade, so the wound was not deep, they say.

The blades that chased him missed. Tomomi tumbled into a ditch and hid in a thicket of thorny bushes, it is said.

A man was searching around, a lantern in his left hand and a bare sword in his right. Tomomi feared that the striped collar of his clothes would stand out, so he turned his black coat collar over to cover it, and pulled down the brim of his hat to hide his face.

Just then, people made a noise in front of the palace gate. The men fled in a hurry, it is said.

Tomomi climbed the cliff and got out of the ditch. A man from the Imperial Household Ministry who rushed to the spot was shocked to see blood on his clothes and carried him on his back. At his residence, nobody knew anything. Only when the empty carriage, with no coachman, came home with a rattle of wheels did a fuss begin, they say.

Five days later, Tomomi wrote a letter to his aunt. She had always thought of him as her own son, and he looked up to her like a mother.

"It is by no means anything that threatens my life, so please rest easy."

And he went on:

"I have no private motive at all. I think only of the country, so I have nothing at all to be ashamed of before heaven and earth."

They were almost the same words he had said to the samurai six years before, on the night of the eighth of the twelfth month, old calendar.

But three months later, in a letter of resignation he entrusted to Sanjō, Tomomi wrote:

"Being spoken ill of by people is not a matter of just a day or two. Piling up the hatred of many people, in the end I have come to this."

Tomomi stayed on as Minister of the Right all the same.

On May 26, 1877, Kido Takayoshi died of illness. Tomomi wrote to Sanjō:

"It truly feels as though my right arm has been cut off."

They were the same words as when Sakamoto Ryōma was cut down, nearly ten years before.

On May 14 the next year, 1878, Ōkubo Toshimichi was cut down in Tokyo and killed.

The men who killed him had handed in a written statement of why they had struck, a zankanjō. In it, Kido's death is called heaven's punishment: heaven hated that great villain and struck down one man first.

And it went on:

"The rest of the wicked traitors, Iwakura Tomomi and the others, ... will not escape being cut down and wiped out before long."

A Hundred Years

In his last years, Tomomi had been gathering people to start a company to build a railway running north from Tokyo. A letter from one of his comrades says that on his mission abroad he had come to see that the source of a country's prosperity lies in railways.

Before long, the meetings moved to a small building on Tomomi's estate. One of the comrades wrote a poem calling the place the birthing hut of the railway.

One day, after the talks were done, Tomomi said that the preparations for starting the work had come a long way. Let's have a drink, he said, and celebrate the success ahead.

The side dishes his household brought were salted salmon and tofu. Tomomi laughed and said, they say:

"If you mean to endure the hardship of starting something, you must be strict about avoiding luxury. Now, as we pour this cloudy sake and eat this dried fish, never forget to be thrifty."

Everyone was happy, talking and trading cups. Tomomi gave three hundred yen for the cost of the gathering.

On June 10, 1883, Tomomi, fifty-seven, was in Arashiyama in Kyoto. He floated a pleasure boat with his friends and went up the Hozu River to see the azaleas. Aboard was Tada Kōmon, who would later put together Tomomi's biography.

On the boat, Tomomi said: in the days of the shogunate, the government office had planted young trees to replace the dead cherry and maple trees. Since the Restoration, they had been left to die. It was a pity. If they collected money from people of goodwill and planted saplings, could they not bring back the old scenery?

Everyone agreed, and a society was formed on the spot. A sapling cost five sen, a small coin. Tomomi and everyone aboard each gave money, they say.

Two days later, in Kyoto, Tomomi was struck by a violent pain in his chest. Food would not go down his throat.

On a day when he had recovered for a while, Tomomi poured sake for those who had come with him and chatted and laughed as usual, they say. Everyone felt a little relieved.

But on the boat back to Tokyo, the illness grew worse.

On July 5, the emperor came to visit Tomomi's sickbed.

On July 10, Tomomi submitted his resignation. The emperor had a messenger tell him that the Minister of the Right's staying or leaving bore on the safety of the whole country, and handed it back.

On the twelfth, the empress came to visit. The sickroom was cluttered with medicine tools. Tomomi worried that the empress would not mind, but her ladies-in-waiting would dislike it. He asked Kagawa Keizō to tell her that the ladies be kept outside the room.

Just as Kagawa was about to leave the room, Tomomi hurriedly called him back and said, the story goes:

"The empress sends away her ladies and enters a man's sickroom alone. If that example begins with my visit and becomes a rule for later times, my fault in making a bad custom would be great. Cancel the request I just made."

As the empress left the room, Tomomi pressed his hands together toward her back, it is said.

On the eighteenth, Tomomi submitted his resignation once more.

On July 19, an imperial order arrived.

"Minister of the Right Iwakura Tomomi: at his request, he is relieved of his present office. But he shall be called the former Minister of the Right. His seat in rank (his place in the order of seating) shall remain as before."

Tomomi's face brightened, as if he had forgotten his illness, they say.

That day, the emperor said, it is said:

"I will myself go and say farewell to the former Minister of the Right."

Before the escort was ready, the emperor's carriage left the palace gate. Hearing the news, Tomomi shed tears, it is said.

According to the biography, when the emperor came into the sickroom, Tomomi raised his head and said that he could no longer move as he wished and could not show proper courtesy, and pressed his hands together. How is your condition, former Minister of the Right? the emperor asked.

"Your servant can only pray for Your Majesty's long life."

That was his answer, they say.

The two faced each other, with no other words. The people nearby all secretly wet their sleeves, they say.

That night, Tomomi called his sons Tomotsuna and Tomotsune to his bedside and left these words, it is said:

"I could not be of use to the country alive, so I must not trouble people by dying. Keep the funeral simple. My grave must not be grander than that of my late father."

When the doctor Itō Hōsei came to examine him, Tomomi asked, they say:

"When is my last hour?"

The doctor was too frightened to answer. Kagawa, who was nearby, answered in his place:

"Your Lordship can still live a hundred years."

Tomomi laughed at that, they say.

At 7:45 the next morning, July 20, Iwakura Tomomi died at the age of fifty-seven.

He was the man who, more than twenty years before, in a broken-down house in the mountains, had cried out that heaven and earth were so wide, and still there was no place for him.

Though he left office, his seat remained as before. So it was written in the imperial order that arrived the day before he died.