Devil's Garden

Chapter 22

They were once called the Spartans of Japan, a hardy clan of Samurai warriors in the southern province of Satsuma. The decadence that attends to privilege and power in their position had not fallen on them, for Satsuma was not a rich province, and its samurai had to work in the fields like common peasants to eke out a living and provide the rice necessary to sustain them. Rugged and disciplined, they were a rock-like people, constantly training in the arts of war like the formidable Spartans of ancient Greece.

Every village in the province had its own Gochu, an organization of samurai that recruited all the young men by the age of 15. Here they would be instilled with the virtues of bravery, and the necessity of endurance, and the power of will in ensuring the attainment of both. The samurai were constantly being tested by their senior members, forced to confront their fears and overcome in the face of all hardship.

With a long and dangerously exposed coastline, the clan had also taken to the development of maritime skills. When foreign devils first came to Japan in their awesomely ugly ships of iron, the Sagumo took note of the power these new machines represented. And one, in particular, drew some very important conclusions when an enemy fleet first darkened the horizon off the shores of Satsuma.

Born in 1847, he was called Chugoro until coming of age in the youth clans in the spring of 1860 and receiving the adult name of Heihachiro Togo. He joined his Gochu, training and studying each day even as the boys of Sparta were put through trials to forge them into the hardened warriors they became as men. He sang at the Gochu patriotic festivals, recounting the tragic death of the ‘Forty Ronin’ and other heroic stories just as the Greeks celebrated and recounted stories of the Iliad and Odyssey.

A studious and diligent youth, he was well like by his peers, respected, and thought of as possessing a natural quality of leadership without being showy or ostentatious. These same virtues of character, determination, assiduous study, and a quiet disposition that endowed him with a well of calm in battle, would serve him throughout his life. He took up with a favorite schoolmate, Kuroki, who would also take a dramatic role in the defeat of the Great European power of Imperial Russia. The teachers of the Gochu did not realize it at that time, but they were schooling the boys who would become the men to usher Japan into the modern age and lead her onto the world stage with some of the most astounding and decisive military victories ever recorded in history.

Two years later an incident would occur that would set the course of young Heihachiro Togo’s life. In 1862, a notable lord, a relative of the ruling clan lord of Satsuma province, was traveling home through the village of Namamugi when his procession came upon four British foreigners. Thinking themselves as the equal or better of any man in Japan, the foreigners rudely crossed the path of the lord’s procession, failing to dismount or pay him any respect as he passed.

The lord’s guards were infuriated at the behavior and deliberate bad manners of the British, and the resulting confrontation left one foreigner dead, beheaded with a single swipe of a samurai guard’s sword, with two of the remaining four seriously injured. Great Britain, however, would not tolerate the abuse of its citizens, no matter where they were found, and protested vigorously to the bakufu, the central government of Japan, which subsequently offered a payment equivalent to 100,000 British pounds in reparation. It was an enormous sum, equal to nearly twenty percent of the current treasury of Japan in silver, yet it was not deemed sufficient by the British. They wanted blood for blood, but the proud samurai of Satsuma province refused to apologize or to execute the guards responsible for the attack.

A brief, little known war resulted, the “Anglo-Satsuma” war, when ships of the Royal Navy appeared off Kagoshima Bay to express the Crown’s displeasure. A Japanese emissary from Satsuma came aboard the British flagship Euryalus, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Neale. There letters were exchanged presenting the British demands for redress, but the Japanese simply sought to delay any negotiations.

Impatient after the expiration of their 24-hour ultimatum, the British first seized several steamships anchored in the harbor and belonging to the Satsuma clan, which quickly prompted the Japanese to open fire on the British fleet with shore based cannon. They had waited until the onset of a raging Typhoon to begin this attack, thinking of how the invading fleet of Genghis Khan had been utterly destroyed by a similar “Divine Wind” in a previous century.

The British had not expected to be opposed, believing that the mere sight of their fleet at anchor would be sufficient to intimidate the Japanese, but they had not taken the full measure of the Spartans of Japan. They escalated by pillaging and burning the steamers they had captured, and then formed a battle line to bombard the town. Five trading junks were set ablaze, and an equal number of peasants ashore were killed in the attack, as the Japanese had wisely ordered the evacuation of the city before the bombardment began.

One man evacuating was the young samurai Togo, who was ordered instead to a nearby castle on the shore with other samurai to defend it from any British incursion. There he stood behind a cannon on the battlements to witness the British bombardment with his close friend Kuroki.

“Look how they form a line of battle, Kuroki! They mean to sail past us and then one ship after another will deliver its broadside to any point they desire. This is fearsome power!”

“Let us hope these stone walls can provide a shield. What of our own cannon?”

“They seem a meager reprisal in the face of that,” Togo pointed to the bay where smoke from the British guns wafted up to darken the furled sails on the main masts of their ships.”

“And with ships like that the British can go wherever they please. They can stand off our shores like shadows, like sea dragons waiting to breathe this hot fire on our ports and cities at their whim!”

“Yes, but let them dare set foot on our sacred land and then see what happens. Our samurai will muster in the tens of thousands to devour them. We will cut them to pieces and feed their entrails to the birds!”

“I would hope so, Kuroki, but remember, the British have guns as well. They can kill well beyond the range of even the best of our swordsmen.”

“And we have archers.”

“They have cannon to bring ashore with their infantry-artillery, mortars, siege guns. My father has seen these things.”

“Our valor and numbers will overcome them, and the Gods will favor us too. Is this not the heavenly land, Togo? Do not learn fear by watching the British bombard our city here.”

“Oh no, Kuroki, I do not fear them-but I respect them for what they are and what they can do with the weapons they have, many far superior to anything we have here. No. I learn something else entirely from this.”

“And what is that?”

“Just this, my friend… An enemy approaching from the sea must be fought at sea and stopped there, before they can bring the power of their cannons to bear on our sacred homeland.”

“A good lesson, but I’m afraid it is one we cannot heed at the moment. We have no ships to stop the likes of this at sea. Only these forts and the cannon we should be firing instead of all this talking!”

“Not at the moment,” Togo said with determination. “Yet one day soon we will have ships like that. Japan is an island nation surrounded by the sea on every side, just as England is. See what the British have done? We must do the same. Japan must have a great navy, the greatest in all the Pacific, if not the world. Only then will we ever ascent to our rightful place in the events of this century. Without a navy, all we can do is sit here under these guns and sharpen our swords in utter frustration, because the British need not ever set foot here to humble us. Those ships can strangle our trade and commerce, and keep us landed here forever if we let them. That must not happen. The next time an enemy comes from the sea, we must be ready to meet them there, and prevail.”

The incident was one of many after the emperor’s earlier edict to “ban all barbarians” from the Japanese homeland earlier that same year. And after that was decreed, enemies did come from the sea, and from every direction. Navies from France, the Netherlands and even the United States were soon involved in conflicts with the Japanese, who responded with the battle cry, “Revere the Emperor and expel the barbarians!” But the Barbarians were not so easily cast out, just as the realities of the modern world Japan was now entering could not be held at bay.

From that moment forward, Togo devoted himself to the study of maritime matters and warfare at sea, for he knew the fate of Japan would rest on her ability to defend its shores with a strong navy, just as Great Britain had so ably demonstrated. After studying at home on the Kasuga, a 1290 ton wooden paddle-wheel warship purchased from Great Britain, Togo moved on to the warship Ryujo as a midshipman, a ship that was also built by the British. There he trained under a sub-lieutenant of the Royal Marines, invited aboard as an advisor after sentiments towards foreigners had subsided.

Togo soon won a scholarship to travel to England and learn the art of warfare at sea from those who were its undisputed masters for centuries, the Royal Navy. He arrived at Southampton in July of 1871 and studied diligently near the site where Admiral Nelson’s famous ship HMS Victory was moored, often visiting the ship and coming to see Nelson as a kind of spiritual mentor, a demigod of the high seas and strangely, as his own ancestor from a previous life. During his years in England Togo had also learned that language, keeping a journal in English wherein he once wrote that he was convinced he was the reincarnation of the British Admiral.

He learned much of the culture of the West, which had both rawness as well as refinement in his eyes. Though he never quite grew accustomed to the food, the style of architecture or the massive burrows of cities like London, he came to appreciate the iron at the heart of the British character, and the artistry and skill they showed at the making of war. They once called their ships men-of-war, and indeed they embodied that name in every action they undertook on the world stage. In his eyes, Britain was truly great, and deserving of that honorific title. Japan, he thought, must be great as well.

He was called “Johnny Chinaman,” by the British, a nickname given more out of their own ignorance of Asia and inability to distinguish between Japanese and Chinese in any significant way. Togo resented the label, and fought more than one battle with his English schoolmates to lay it to rest.

The Japanese trainees were also in the UK awaiting the completion of several battleships they had commissioned. In 1878 Togo was assigned to one of these for the voyage home to Japan. He sailed in Hiei, along with Fuso and Kongo. These were not the ships of the same name that fought in WWII, but their forerunners from the pre-dreadnaught era, the first real fighting ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy. They were actually no more than armored corvettes, using a combination of both sail and steam power for propulsion at a sedate 14 knots and displacing no more than 3,700 tons. By 1908 they had already been retired and decommissioned.

China had built bigger ships by the time Togo sailed home, and an arms race was soon underway that saw Japan enlisting the aid of France to build a fleet of armored cruisers, and the British for the design and construction of a new idea, the torpedo boat, which became the forerunner of the destroyer class ships of the future. These Kotakas, or ‘falcons’ of the sea would play a big role in Japan’s victories over China between 1894 and 1895, and over Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. At nearly 30 knots, the small 150 ton boats carried 14 inch torpedoes that would become the bane of the Russian fleet.

Yet the English also gave Togo a sense of what the world was really like beyond Japan, even allowing him to partake in a voyage to circumnavigate the globe aboard the training ship Hampshire in 1875. He contracted a disease on that voyage which nearly took his eyesight and would have ended his career, but pulled through to regain his health after much hardship. And Togo put those eyes to very good use, learning much by studying the operations of the British and French at sea, and the French Army when it fought the Chinese in Formosa.

In Japan’s war with China in 1894 the young man, then a Captain aboard the cruiser Naniwa, demonstrated an uncanny ability to navigate the treacherous waters of international relations when he sunk a British freighter chartered by the Chinese to carry supplies. The incident might have brought Great Britain into the war on China’s side, but jurists ruled that the sinking was entirely appropriate under the rules of international law and regulations of war. Chinese soldiers carried by the ship had taken control of the vessels when threatened by Togo’s ship, and so they became legitimate prizes of war.

Togo’s star rose and he was soon promoted to Rear Admiral and commander of the Japanese Naval War College. When war with Russia called him to action again in 1904 Japan had much more of a navy to rise to the challenge. The Japanese Navy Minister personally requested that Admiral Togo be appointed Commander-In-Chief of the Combined Fleet, and it was the wisest appointment the Emperor ever made.

Thought to be a ‘man of good fortune,’ Togo’s luck and considerable skill saw him achieve a stunning and decisive victory over Russia. He handily defeated their First Pacific Squadron, investing Port Arthur, besting them in the Yellow Sea and bottling up their armored cruisers in Vladivostok. When the Russians sent their entire Baltic Fleet to restore order, Togo soundly defeated them at the famous battle of Tsushima Strait. He was a legend by 1908, his name nearly synonymous with the Japanese Imperial Fleet he so ably served.

Togo’s victory at Tsushima sent real shockwaves around the world and hastened the demise of the last Tsar of Russia. While that nation was soon descending into the turmoil of revolution, Japan consolidated her position as the rising preeminent power in the Pacific. All history had pivoted on that single battle, which would eventually lead Japan into conflict against the Chinese, and then the Americans in WWII. It would forever relegate Russia to the role of a third rate naval power in the Pacific, with little influence beyond the cold northern shores of the Kuriles and Sakhalin Island, and Japan had even taken half of that from them in exchange for peace.

The American President in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt, had helped to broker that peace at Portsmouth to end Japan’s war with Russia, but he soon realized that Japan was now a force to be reckoned with in Asia and the Pacific. As much to demonstrate America’s ability to move from one ocean to another, Roosevelt secured funds to have the entire US Navy battle fleet circumnavigate the globe in 1908, the battleships all dressed out in clean white paint.

On that day, just as the Tatsu Maru first set eyes on the massively threatening silhouette of the battlecruiser Kirov off her port bow, the “Great White Fleet” of the US Navy was approaching Hawaii, 16 battleships and other auxiliaries preparing to make a brief port of call there and continue across the Pacific with planned stops in the Philippines, New Zealand, Australia and eventually Japan.

Roosevelt would show Japan the entire might of the US Navy, and perhaps smooth out the way for better relations with in the days ahead. It was a clear application of one of his favorite maxims-to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ But the Great White Fleet was soon to find much more than a long and arduous sea voyage as it continued west, just as Admiral Togo was soon to find that the fires of war with Russia were not yet fully extinguished.

A new enemy was coming at Japan from the sea to throw down the gauntlet of challenge. Another man of war was on the scene now, in a ship unlike any other in the world. Karpov’s shot across the bow of the Tatsu Maru was indeed the opening round of a new war, and one that would change the fate of all nations with interests in the Pacific for centuries to come.