Ryohei Noguchi 'Biographies of Bakumatsu Figures: Expelling Barbarians and Opening the Country' Episode 4: What Cultivated Makuzu's Writing Style—Gleaning Makuzu's Fallen Ears (7)
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7 If the 'evil law' Makuzu refers to is imperialism
This enigmatic passage has been called 'Thoughts on Christianity' because the word 'Christian' appearing twice in the text was equated with 'evil law.'
Listing the two examples:
Example 1: '[The evil law from foreign lands] is a law led by subordinates to accumulate the hardships of Christians and spread it throughout the country over the years.'
Example 2: 'Drying food is a study of what was done in that country when the Sendai castaways became Christians.'
First, what we can understand is that 'Christian' is used to refer to 'people' (the bearers or leaders of the 'evil law') in (1), and 'country' in (2).
The 'Sendai castaways' in (2) are thought to be the crew of the 'Wakamaru,' which set sail from Ishinomaki, was shipwrecked, and drifted to Russian territory in 1794 (Kansei 6). Among them, four people, including the sailor Tsudayu (1744-1814), returned to Nagasaki in 1804 (Bunka 1) accompanied by the Russian envoy to Japan, Nikolai Rezanov (1764-1807).
The Rangaku scholar Gentaku Otsuki (1757-1827), who interviewed the castaways in Sendai and compiled 'Kankai Ibun,' was an acquaintance of Heisuke Kudo. Also, her husband Iga Tadano (?-1812) was a senior official and intellectual of the Sendai Domain. It is thought that Makuzu had obtained information about the Wakamaru to some extent. The 'Christian' in (2) likely refers specifically to Russia.
Rezanov, who came to Japan carrying a port entry permit already obtained from the Shogunate, ordered his subordinates to attack northern Japanese bases after the Shogunate rejected his trade demands (Bunka Russian Raid = Khvostov Incident, 1807).
The phrase 'drying food' in the text likely refers to the fact that only those castaways who received baptism in Christianity (Greek Orthodoxy) and chose to reside permanently were guaranteed food, clothing, and shelter in Russia.
This attitude of the Russian government caused a deep rift between the castaways who chose to be baptized and those who did not and continued to live harsh lives. The text notes that if the same were done to the 'Christians' who came to Japan, the other party might learn their lesson.
The mention of 'Holland' seems abrupt, but it may be that the British warship that disguised itself as a Dutch ship and illegally entered Nagasaki for the purpose of capturing Dutch ships, leading to the brink of battle between Japan and Britain, the Phaeton Incident (1808), was remembered by Makuzu in that form.
Looking at it this way, it can be presumed that this passage is a groping in the dark amidst the arrival of an unprecedented crisis for the archipelago—one that even her father Heisuke Kudo did not know—namely, Russia's southward expansion and Britain's advance into the Orient.
Is the 'evil law = Christianity' that Makuzu speaks of not a concept referring to Western imperialist powers themselves, which she perceived in her own way, rather than Christianity (believers, country) in the narrow sense? If what Makuzu showed toward Confucianism and Buddhism was a cold-headed recognition that they were powerless entities from the perspective of the great powers, then an explanation that boils it down to submission to Bakin seems to be a trivialization of the situation.
In that sense, the common name 'Thoughts on Christianity' is prone to misunderstanding, and calling it simply 'Thoughts on the Evil Law' might be a step toward making the 'mystery' no longer a 'mystery.'
(The Shogunate issued the Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels, which ordered indiscriminate shelling of foreign ships approaching the Japanese coast, in 1825, the year Makuzu died. This edict was abolished in 1842, when the Qing Dynasty was defeated in the Opium War.)
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*Header image: World circumnavigation map of Tsudayu and others from the Wakamiyamaru (National Archives of Japan - Shichoso (Rezanov's arrival in Nagasaki) Navigation Map) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tsudayu_map.jpg
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