This event had been used as the setting for a wargame my son put on for the Abingdon Wargames club in 2022 - and we had a test run using a mix of painted and unpainted figures before he went back to England with them.
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| Testing out the Shimonoseki scenario. British and French naval parties, with some British regular infantry attempting to clear the defenders from the Choshu guns (and not making a very good job of it!) |
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| Today, replicas of the guns seized in 1864 stand imposingly under the bridge that now spans the straits |
Shimonoseki is notable for much more than just the attack on the batteries in 1864. Next to the replica guns can be found a small monument to a much larger battle fought over 800 years earlier at the end of the Genpei war when the Minamoto clan won a decisive naval victory over the Taira. Nearby is a shrine to the infant Emperor Antoku who was drowned during the battle.
Beside the shrine is a museum holding the table and other memorabilia from the negotiation and signing on the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. This concluded the Sino-Japanese War, fought mainly over influence in Korea but which ended with Taiwan being ceded to Japan as well.
From the museum we headed up through flurries of snow to a hilltop battery overlooking the whole area. A cold walk but well worth it for the view.
The visit to Kyushu was not simply for the sake of seeing Shimonoseki. We toured around much of the island, visiting Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Saga and Karatsu from our base in Fukuoka. This allowed us to see the domains of three of the four main clans that backed the Meiji Restoration in 1867 - the Mori in Choshu (where Shimonoseki is), the Shimazu in Kagoshima and the Nabeshima in Saga. Only the Tosa domain on the Island of Shikoku was beyond our reach. As background to my son's Boshin war project it was invaluable but we found much else to think about.
Our first stop in Nagasaki was the memorial to the nuclear bombing in 1945, made more poignant by its juxtaposition with the ruins of the Cathedral that the Japanese Christians had built after the Meiji Government lifted the prohibition on Christian practice imposed by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Nagasaki was the scene of the first major martyrdom of Jesuit missionaries and their converts by the Tokugawa and the cathedral was a celebration of the restoration of open practice of faith after more than two centuries.
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| Part of the cathedral destroyed by the atomic bomb at Nagasaki |
Kagoshima was the port through which St. Francis Xavier entered Japan to begin his mission. Already one of the most outward looking domains in Japan, it became a major force in the reform movement that led to the Meiji Restoration. Just as the Mori clan in Choshu were spurred by a foreign attack, the Shimazu clan in Kagoshima were stung by a British naval bombardment in 1863 to seek change. The intellectual and military leaders from Kagoshima played a disproportionate part in the Meiji Restoration and developments thereafter.
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| Plaque to Admiral Togo of Tsushima fame in Kagoshima. As a young boy he witnessed the British naval attack on Kagoshima in 1863 |
Paradoxically, Kagoshima's samurai schools also became the breeding ground for a reaction against the reform program after 1868 and it was from them that the Satsuma rebellion broke out in 1877. This was led by Saigo Takamori, who had been a key figure in the Meiji Restoration. The rebels were defeated and made their final stand in Kagoshima. The walls around the old school area still bear the pockmarks of the bullets.
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| Memorial marking the point where Saigo Takamori died in Kagoshima |
The impetus of the Satsuma rebellion was sapped by the seige of Kumamoto castle, which is where we went after Kagoshima. I had been there once before and had found the castle interesting to look at but sadly lacking in explanatory material. We arrived to find that the damage done by a subsequent earthquake was much more extensive than expected.
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| Earthquake damage at Kumamoto Castle |
Restoration work is underway. Happily, the exhibition material in the main keep - which was reconstructed using a steel frame some years ago, so stood up to the quake - is now very much better, though still rather coy about the city and castle buildings having been burned down during the Satsuma rebellion. Poor weather led to a decision not to try to head out of town to the museum to the Satsuma rebellion at Tabarazuka, where the rebel forces were defeated by Government troops, leaving that as the only significant site for the period that we missed out on.
The castle at Saga was surprisingly interesting. It is not large and only a small section of the old buildings have been restored but the exhibition there, focused on the 10th lord of the domain, Nabeshima Naomasa, provided a great deal of material. He had been responsible for introducing Dutch iron production methods as well as educational and administrative reforms that underpinned the Meiji era - his ironworks also produced the cannon that defended Shimonoseki!
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| Plaque at Saga commemorating the Dutch style reverberating furnace built for cannon casting |
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| Replicas of the Saga guns that made a significant contribution to the Imperial forces during the Boshin war standing outside the museum entrance in Saga. |
From Saga we made our way to Karatsu on the north coast of Kyushu. During the Boshin war this was a stronghold for a loyal ally of the Tokugawa Shogunate. More celebrated in the exhibition at the castle was the part Karatsu played before the Edo period as a major base for the invasions of Korea during the rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. These were actually aimed at the Ming Empire in China but got bogged down in Korea.
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| Karatsu Castle Keep |
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| Armour in the exhibition hall. In the background is a saddle brought back from Korea during the campaigns there during the time of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1590s) |
We were disappointed in Fukuoka to find that a small museum to the Mongol's attempted invasion of Japan was not open, but disappointment turned to delight in finding much of interest around the ruins of the old castle. The ruins themselves are impressive but most interest is to be found in the exhibition hall established over the archaeological remains of the Tsukushi Korokan. This was one of three places where in the earliest recorded period of Japanese history trade with foreign merchants was regulated and the only one whose ruins have been found. The earliest traces date back to the 7th century AD and the site underwent extensive development over subsequent centuries until the late 11th century when the loss of Imperial control over trade undermined its function. Much Chinese and Islamic pottery has been found there.
All in all, a most enjoyable trip on which I learned a great deal, and not just about the Boshin War!
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| In the Chofu - Domain House - near Shimonoseki, a Memento Mori |
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