Outside the Japanese Empire the name of Fujita Toko is but little known, yet he undoubtedly exercised an influence which tended greatly towards the making of Modern Japan, if only by reason of his pronounced hostility to the Regency of the Bakufu and his steadfast, unwearying inculcation of the doctrines of loyalty to the real sovereign and constant preparation for national defence. That he was in advance of his age is clear, for he lived in an era when Japan was secluded from the outer world, and was mainly dependent on such information regarding it as filtered through from Holland by way of the Dutch settlement at Nagasaki. Fujita was a renowned Chinese scholar and teacher of the classics, born in the third year of the Bunkwa period (1806), at Mito, in eastern Hondo, the seat of one branch of the Tokugawa family which for 250 years virtually ruled the country from Yedo. Mito is distant from the capital some fifty-five miles by railway, and is now the chief town of the Ibaraki prefecture, with a population of about 35,000, but in the time of Fujita it was accessible only by road through Tsuchiura, a town at the extremity of the large inlet or lagoon named Kasumi-ga-ura which penetrates from the Pacific a long way inland just to the north of Cape Inuboye. Mito itself is about twelve miles from the coast and is a flourishing agricultural centre, famed for its output of barley, beans, millet, and buckwheat. Tobacco is also extensively cultivated in this region, which is at the present day in the enjoyment of exceptional facilities of communication, for sea-going steamers call at Choshi, an anchorage at the mouth of the river Toné, close to Cape Inuboye, and smaller craft ply between Choshi and the towns situated along the Toné or on the shores of Kasumi-ga-ura, in addition to the branch railway from Oyama on the main line to the north of Japan and a separate line in connection with the capital through Tsuchiura.

Fujita Toko was not merely a celebrated professor of Chinese literature in an age when classical learning was highly prized, but he was the friend and counsellor of the famous Rekko, senior prince of Mito, whose seventh son, born in 1837, was destined to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the nation, and who happily still occupies a leading position as Prince Tokugawa Keiki, better known in pre-Restoration days as the Shogun Hitotsubashi, and whose share in the revival of imperial rule is elsewhere referred to in these pages. The head of the Mito house, Prince Tokugawa Nariaki, strenuously opposed the Bakufu form of government and its policy towards foreign powers, but there is no direct evidence that he was personally antagonistic to the people of the Occident. Dark deeds were attributed to his followers, but the perpetrators were at all events in theory “ro-nins” or outlaws, who had voluntarily severed their connection with the clan beforehand, and for whose crimes the house of Mito was not to be held responsible. This was particularly the case in regard to the assassination of the Regent or Tairo, Ii Kamon-no-Kami, in 1860, at the Sakurada Gate in Yedo. Though the murderers had once, it turned out, been followers of the “old prince of Mito”—as he was termed—they had cut themselves adrift from the clan, and were acting independently of it when they perpetrated the crime that so profoundly stirred the community.

Fujita had long before this taken up his abode in Yedo, and dwelt in that part of the capital known as Koishikawa, down to the date of the terrible earthquake of 1855, in which he, in common with many thousands of his fellow-citizens, was engulfed. He spent practically the whole of his life, however, in Mito, and thither came in 1842 the future Commander-in-chief of the Imperial Forces in the War of the Restoration, and at a later period Minister for War in the Government of Revived Imperial Rule, Saigo Takamori. Saigo became Fujita’s pupil, and there is no doubt that the professor instilled into Saigo’s mind a hostility to the Shogunate as deep and enduring as his own, to bear fruit in after years when the possibility as well as the desirability of effecting a complete revolution in the administration came to be a matter no longer of secret consultation but of free and open discussion. If in the affectionate remembrance of his countrymen Saigo Takamori was the “sword and spear” of the Revolution of 1868, as Kido was its “brain” (employing a phrase once much in vogue), the thoughts of people in Japan must often turn to the long since dead Mito scholar who implanted in his pupil the conviction of the pressing need that there was for a return to the old order of things, and the personal rule of the real emperor.

There is a little story still current in Japan relative to the time of Saigo’s departure from Mito, after a stay of some years’ duration there under Fujita’s tuition. The master had bidden a number of his friends to a supper in Saigo’s honour, and in accord with ancient custom Fujita offered his sakazuki (wine-cup) to his pupil in token of friendship, but Saigo, to Fujita’s surprise, at first begged to be excused. When rallied on his excessive caution Saigo explained that he went in fear lest under the influence of wine he might be guilty of acting imprudently, but Fujita would not accept the plea. “A man who aims at distinction as a samurai must never refuse his master’s invitation to take wine with him,” declared Fujita,—meaning, apparently, that a soldier must place himself unreservedly in the hands of his chief,—and Saigo thereupon took the risk, as he deemed it, on that occasion, and drank several cupfuls of Sake. Fujita was pleased with his pupil’s spirit, and often said of him afterwards that whatever Saigo might undertake he would assuredly succeed in, as he could accommodate himself to circumstances.

Fujita had many other students of classical literature staying with him at Mito at various times, it being a period when not only was there the highest appreciation of Chinese literary composition, but things Chinese in general had a vogue in Japan which approximated to that which in later years was developed in respect of things European. There was, moreover, a growing disposition among the samurai to apply themselves to the study of such arts and sciences as were revealed to them through translations of foreign works introduced by the Dutch at Nagasaki. To thinking men of the type of those who went to Fujita for instruction the Dutch books formed the only media whereby the desired information concerning the Western world could be obtained, and considering the difficulties under which those who sought knowledge in those days must have laboured the perseverance shown in its pursuit reflects vast credit on professors and pupils alike. Long prior to Commodore Perry’s first visit in 1853 the Japanese people were cognisant to some extent of the existence of railways, and steam engines,—even of the electric telegraph, it is said, which was at that time quite new to Europe and America,—and blast furnaces, mills, and workshops of different kinds had been set up on plans obtained from Nagasaki, with no inconsiderable share of success. Other industrial inventions had been introduced, which, if they did not precisely originate in the Occident, had at least been brought to some degree of perfection there, such as the art of printing from movable types, which is said to have belonged in the first place to Korea, and so with human effort in other directions it was at last discovered that all unknown to the Western world the leaven had been working in the various strata of society in Japan with results as astounding to the onlooker as they were beneficial in their effects on the nation. The disposition towards independence of political thought that arose from the perusal of foreign writings which found their way to the country in its period of seclusion was productive, when once the upheaval commenced, of a mental activity that manifested itself in a thousand ways in the last half-century, and there is little likelihood, despite her eagerness for progress, that Japan will ever forget those who aided in the past to bring about her emancipation from a feudal system which sapped her energies and blighted her prospects of advancement. Fujita Toko lives in the hearts of his countrymen.