—also known as Chiba Takuron—lived as an obscure liberal political activist and schoolteacher in the late Tokugawa, early Meiji period. In his younger years, Takusaburō studied Confucian, Buddhist, Christian and Methodist thought. In his later years, Takusaburō devoted his life in disseminating the importance of liberty and rights for the people. His numerous texts include the draft constitution in 1880 (influenced by texts regarding English, German and American models of governmental structure), The Institutional Maxims of Chiba Takusaburō, Treatise on the Kingly Way, and On the Futility of Book Learning. Takusaburō died in late 1883 after a long battle with tuberculosis.Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), Ch.3. Chiba Takusaburō attempted to bring forth a "grass roots" society, driven by the people. Chiba is emblematic of how the revolutionary spirit, more frequently attributed to men like Itagaki Taisuke, Ōkuma Shigenobu and Fukuzawa Yukichi, was existent in even low ranking samurai during the Freedom and People's Rights Movement or Jiyū Minken Undō.Ann Waswo (1987), "The Culture of the Meiji Period: a Review", Journal of Japanese Studies 13 (1), 140–145
Background After the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the Meiji era began. Though acting in the name of imperial interests, the Meiji Restoration consolidated all power to an oligarchy, composed of the old samurai elite. By the 1870s, political protest against the new Meiji government emerged. Formerly a leader of the Restoration, Itagaki Taisuke urged the public to end the tyranny of the inner elite dominating the government. This Freedom and People's Rights Movement petitioned for a national assembly elected by the people. When the government rejected the petition in 1874, the People's Rights Movement increasingly mobilized the agitated urban public. The voices of revolution and modern consciousness soon reached even remote mountain villages.Peter Duus, Modern Japan, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998)
Early life
On 17 June 1852, Chiba Takusaburō was born into a rural samurai family in the Shirahata village of Kurihara county. Separated from his biological mother at the age of three, Takusaburō was raised by his foster mother Sada along with his older brother Rihachi. At the age of 12, Takusaburō became a student of Confucian scholar Ōtsuki Bankei and began his formal education. However, his education at the Sendai domain school was cut short by the Boshin War. Answering the fervent cries of Sendai Domain troops to support the ruling Tokugawa government, Takusaburō left Ōtsuki to Shirakawaguchi where he engaged in combat twice against the new government army. When returning home, Takusaburō found his old teacher arrested and imprisoned for his role in resisting Satchōdo forces.
"Wanderer Seeking Truth" After Bankei's arrest and the establishment of the Meiji government, Takusaburō began studying medicine under Ishikawa Ōsho. A progressive minded doctor near Sendai, Ōsho began his own studies under Itō Genboku and several Dutch doctors in Nagasaki in the late Tokugawa era. Greatly revered by Ōtsuki's students, Ōsho appealed to Takusaburō with his pioneering intellectual views. Facing a similar fate as Ōtsuki himself, Ōsho was arrested and imprisoned by the new Meiji government for "aiding and abetting the shōgun".Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 80.
In 1868, Takusaburō began his studies of National Learning, known as kokugaku, under Nabeshima Ichirō in Kesennuma. In Nabeshima, an eccentric teacher educating students in both arithmetic and classical Japanese literature, Takusaburō hoped to discover the ideology of the Meiji government. Kokugaku studies encapsulated the philosophy behind the sonnō jōi movement "Revere the Emperor," and contributed to the dissent against the Tokugawa shogunate. Unlike Takusaburō's previous teachers, Nabeshima emphasized the importance of the return of the Emperor's rule and the divine spirit of the imperial ancestors. Four years later, in 1872, Takusaburō began his studies under a Pure Land Buddhist monk known as Sakurai Kyohaku. However, as Christian thought reached northeastern Japan, Takusaburō left his Buddhist studies after five months and turned to the tutelage of Father Nikolai.
Born as Ivan Dimitriyevich Kasatkin in 1836, Father Nikolai dreamed of traveling to Japan after reading Captain Vasily Golovnin's, Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan in St. Petersburg. When ordained in 1860, Father Nikolai received permission to reside in Hokkaidō as the new Russian consulate. Though he could not propagate Christian beliefs publicly, as anti-Christian bans were still imposed by Japanese government, Father Nikolai devoted seven years to the study of Japanese language, history, and Confucian and Buddhist thought. After he baptized his first Japanese converts in 1868, word reached the Pure Land Buddhist follower Takusaburō. Because Father Nikolai's new spiritual ideals assimilated traditional conservative beliefs, Russian Orthodoxy became increasingly popular among the "ruined samurai" class which included Takusaburō.
It is unclear whether or not Takusaburō was baptized. According to historian Daikichi Irokawa, the name Takusaburō does not appear under the seminary's baptismal records. However, researchers Richard Devine and Otis Cary state that Takusaburō left for Tokyo to study directly under Father Nikolai, and was baptized as Peter Chiba in 1872.Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, (London: Fleming H. Revell, 1909, 402–409) When returning to Sendai, the newly Peter Chiba (Takusaburō) was arrested because of his religious preaching and disputes with the Buddhists and Shintoists in his community. After completing his hundred-day prison sentence, Takusaburō returned to Father Nikolai's seminary in Ochanomizu, Tokyo.Richard Devine (1979), "The Way of the King: An Early Meiji Essay on Government", Monumenta Nipponica 34 (1), 49–72
In 1872, the Japanese government confronted Father Nikolai, with accusations that Father Nikolai disparaged the Meiji Emperor in his sermons. In response, Father Nikolai's beliefs stressed the submission to the Emperor and state authority as true faithfulness to God. Consequently, Takusaburō grew increasingly detached to Father Nikolai's mission.
Spiritual crisis In 1875, Takusaburō left Father Nikolai to study under Confucian scholar Yasui Sokken of the Ichigaya Academy. This move marked a radical change in Takusaburō's beliefs. While drawing ideas from the kokugaku ideology, Sokken was ultimately unorthodox in his beliefs. Unlike the teachings of Father Nikolai, Sokken was notorious for his denunciation of Christian intellectuals in early Meiji Japan, most notably in his controversial text Benmō meaning vindication. Christian missionaries viewed Sokken's heretical beliefs as the work of the Anti-Christ himself. Takusaburō first entered the Academy several years after Sokken's most accomplished disciple had passed. Executed by the Meiji government in 1870, Kumoi Tatsuo was only twenty six years old when he planned an insurrection to reestablish feudal rule. Just before his execution, Kumoi wrote a poem of resistance against the authoritarian forces, lauded by other activists as "a compelling image of resolute revolutionary resistance".Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 87–88. Kumoi's poem would later inspire and rouse the interests of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement supporters, which would include Takusaburō.
After Yasui Sokken's death ten months after Takusaburō's admission, Takusaburō left to study under French Catholic priest Father François Paulin Vigroux, a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society who had traveled to Japan in 1873. Coined as a "walking priest", Vigroux traveled a Catholic circuit through Japan's major cities every month. While Takusaburō accompanied Vigroux on these tours, Takusaburō first became acquainted with the residents of Itsukaichi, where he would eventually end his years of wandering.
Learning and Debating Society In August 1877, Takusaburō met with missionary Reverend Maclay. A member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Maclay was sent to Japan three years earlier amidst the wave of Methodist mission stations already established in Nagasaki, Hakodate and Shinshū among other major cities. It is believed that this step towards Methodism eventually paved the path to Takusaburō's leap into liberal activism. After many years on his spiritual quest for truth, Takusaburō found a home in Itsukaichi, where the plans for the Freedom and People's Rights movement were already unraveling.
In 1872, regulations in Japan set a mandate extending universal elementary schooling to all classes, dismantling upper class monopolization of education access. Inspired by the American model of education, Japan hoped that education would produce "free and independent individuals".Peter Duus, Modern Japan, (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 92 Under this provision, the Kannō School was opened as an elementary school in Itsukaichi in 1876, headed by Naganuma Orinojō. After hearing of the many Sendai men already appointed, Takusaburō joined the school in 1880.
By 1880, Itsukaichi became the center of activity for metropolitan intellectuals "on the crest" of the Freedom and People's Rights movement.Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 96–97. The new Learning and Debating Society became the ground for local activists to improve debating and oratory skills and increase the level of political discussion. An active member of the group, Takusaburō soon grasped the essence of the natural rights theory. That same year, Takusaburō began privately lashing out against the Meiji government who "deprived" the Japanese of their "most precious freedoms". Though the new government had seemingly maintained order behind their reformist policies, Takusaburō believed that unbeknownst to the Japanese, it came at an enormous cost of "our brothers' blood, sweat, and toil".
More importantly, Takusaburō asserted the necessity of a national assembly and constitution, previously promised by the Emperor Meiji himself. In response to the widespread petitions calling for the establishment of a constitution, the Council of State declared that the Japanese citizens possess no rights. Furthermore, the Japanese citizens were faced with more suppression of free speech through the newly instated Newspaper and Assembly Laws. In response, Takusaburō believed that in order to preserve liberty, freedom and happiness, the Learning and Debating Society must take this immense responsibility on their own hands.
Draft constitution After his ten years of wandering, Takusaburō had finally found happiness in Itsukaichi. In a letter to his companion and fellow teacher at the Kannō School in December 1880, Fukasawa Naomaru, Takusaburō shared the communal nature of the Learning and Debate Society. The members of this study group have firmly resolved to devote themselves to furthering freedom and to reforming society. Sharing an inflexible determination to overcome all obstacles, we are united by a spirit of affection, esteem, and harmony. It is almost as if we were of the same flesh and blood, or brothers in one large family. Daikichi Irokawa, The Culture of the Meiji Period, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), 108