Matsudaira
Character Profile[edit]
| Name: | Matsudaira Yasuhira |
| Date of Birth: | Unknown |
| Service: | Lady Arikawa, Tokugawa Shogunate, Japanese Empire |
| Rank: | Bugyô (Magistrate) of Nagasaki |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
| Billets: | Hatamoto (samurai) Bugyô (Magistrate) of Nagasaki |
Biography[edit]
Matsudaira is a Japanese official, described by William Laurence as "an older man, with a narrow beard that framed his face in dark lines salted with a little grey; his mouth was thin and hard". He was brought by Lady Arikawa to interrogate Laurence over the shipwreck of the HMS Pontentate.
He took Laurence to Hakata Bay, where Laurence met Lord Jinai, a Sui Riu dragon, and viewed the battle scene where Lord Jinai had fought Temeraire, Maximus, Lily, and the other British dragons.
When Lady Arikawa invited Kaneko Hiromasa to ride upon her back to Hakata Bay, Matsudaira seemed to disapprove of her action, which Laurence judged "by the tightening of his lips". He also accuses Laurence of being a liar and in league with the Chinese, and treats him coldly and angrily.
Matsudaira informs Laurence that the Celestial may not be a Chinese breed at all, but Japanese. According to Matsudaira, "Such a dragon [a Celestial] has not been seen across the sea for five centuries, since the servants of the Yuan emperor stole the last egg of the Divine Wind line from Hakozaki Shrine as he withdrew in ignominy from his attempt at conquest, his murderous beasts having slain the rest of that noble line." (Blood of Tyrants, p. 49)
Real History[edit]
After the incident with the HMS Phaeton in 1808, the Nagasaki Magistrate, Matsudaira, took responsibility by committing suicide by seppuku. [He has survived until 1812 in the alternative history of Blood of Tyrants.]
Before committing seppuku, Matsudaira left behind a written account of his interpretation of the events which unfolded, and of where blame should be placed. Noell Wilson argues that among the chief motives behind his suicide were an acknowledgement of his failure to obey shogunate policy, which demanded that Nagasaki harbor be denied to foreigners other than the Dutch and Chinese, and that the British ship should have been destroyed. In killing himself, he pre-empted any formal trial and sentence, and thus saved his own family from harm or death, as was standard in such cases of seppuku committed in order to preserve or protect family honor.
In his account, Matsudaira chastises his own men for failing to protect the Dutch agents, who were officially under the protection of the shogunate, from their abduction at the hands of the British. He then also rebukes Saga han for its failure to have enough men actively stationed in the harbor. It would seem, however, that even at the time it was unclear whether policy or precedent called for Saga troops to require permission from the Nagasaki bugyô to withdraw from their posts. Rather, it was standard for troops to withdraw - without explicit permission from the bugyô - after the Dutch ships left for the season; no Dutch ship had arrived nor was expected that summer.
Matsudaira also argues that those in the position of Nagasaki bugyô should not be hatamoto (samurai), as he was, with no forces of his own to call upon, but should instead be daimyô (lords), with their own armies, however small, upon which they could rely. It was the disparity between his rank or position and that of the daimyô (lords) of Saga and Fukuoka that exacerbated ambiguities in the command hierarchy of the defense of Nagasaki harbor. Nagasaki bugyô had initially been daimyô, but this practice had come to an end quite early in the Edo period, as the result of misconduct on the part of Takenaka Shigeyoshi, Nagasaki bugyô from 1629-1633, and daimyô of Funai han.
Though his reasons for doing so are unknown, Matsudaira focused on this manpower issue in his writing, making no mention of the condition or quality of weaponry as an issue.
Some sources argue that fiscal difficulties on the part of Saga han were to blame for an inability to muster sufficient forces; yet, while Saga may have indeed been experiencing financial difficulties, other sources argue that complacency borne out of the extreme rarity of incidents in which martial defense was called for, was truly to blame for chronic shortfalls in manpower.
The death of Matsudaira Yasuhira marked the single case during the entire span of Tokugawa rule in which a Nagasaki Magistrate took his life for defense related matters.
During the Phaeton incident, no shots were fired during the two days the ship was in port; rather local troops could not respond because so few soldiers were stationed at the coastal fortifications. Conventional critiques of Tokugawa military failure focus on technological backwardness, but analysis of this incident suggests that ambiguous military organization, and lack of a unified command, were equally critical impediments to effective defense in early nineteenth century Japan.
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