I370－Y76 歐洲近世史論 横井時雄著 東京 警醒社書店 明43．10（1910） 706p 図版 23cm －31－ 欧洲近世史論
Yokoi Tokio’s letters to Griffis
LETTER 2
35 Higashi Take Cho
Hongo Tokyo
Nov. 19, 90
Rev. W.E. Griffis, DD
Dear sir,
Your very fine portrait came by the last mail. Many thanks for it. We shall prize that + that of Mrs. Griffis + children very much. I sent you by the last mail a brief sketch of the life of the late Marquis matzdaira (Shungaku9 I hope it will reach you safely.
My dear Dr. Griffis, i must have another $500 more to complete my building. I am very sorry to say this, but I must say it. You know I lost about 600 yen throught the recen rise in the price of silver, and as the plan of the building was drawn when silver was low, after this change we had to make several alterations in the plan. Among other things, to take away one of two towers. Now as the foundations are laid and as we are beginning to proceed to lay bricks, it looks too ugly to have one corner vacant. so we intend to add there a structure to save the looks of the building + allow a passage from the front entrance to the audience room. It will not be a tower, for we can not afford to build it but a smaller thing which the architecht thinks will save the symmetry + the beauty of the front view. It will cost 300 yen. Then we must have a fence in front, + if we can a gallery on two sides of the hall. I think if I could get $500 more from america, I will be able to secure a few hundred more here so that we will be able to finishe the building without debt. I have lately asked Mr. Mutsu our late minister in washington + the present minister of Agriculture and Commerce to secure for me 1000 yen from a rich gentleman in the city. H had tried hard to bet it but failed. It was a great disappointment to me. If I were building a school house I have no doubt I could secure something
II. I was born in Dec. 1, 1858. Was placed in Cap Jane’s school in Kumamoto, Higo, in 1871. The school was started through the endeavors of Saburo Numagawa, my cousin, who studied for some years in New Brunswick. It was a school maintained by the native princes of the place. In 1874 I began to read the Gospeals with Capt Janes. We read fror about a year, until the great superhuman personality of Jesus dawned before my imaginations and captured me, so that all difficulties about miracles etc. vanished. I at once consecrated my life to the preaching of the Gospeal. I felt that what I freely received I ought to give freely, that I was in duty bound to preach x.? to my countrymen, because they needed it. I was 18 years of age. Then came the persecution. My father’s friends who were then in power in Kumamoto counted on me a great dealy and when they saw that I was set obstinately on becoming a “Yaso-bozu” they were awfully disappointed + in great rage. They frightened my poor mother saying that if I became a xtian, my father’s name would go down to posterity as a xtian as the assassines charged him and there was at the time no greater odium than to be called a xtian. So my mother in her love to me + to her deceased husband decided to commit suicide, hoping by that means to clear her husband’s name + to make me renounce my faith. She told me one day “if you do not renounce your xty before this evening, I will commit suicide.” It was unexpected + a terrible blow + a great trial. I scarcely know how I got through except that there was the Power that led me. I told my mother I could not renounce xty until I was convinced of its untruth. I could not be convinced o fthis, until I gave some time to consider the matter. So I kept asking for time until she lost all enthusiasm to commit suicided and the family friends saw no hope except in time. So after 3 months’ imprisonment in two or three private housed of these friends, and after they have done all they could to worry me with all sorts of difficult questions, they allowed me to go to the Kaiseigakko in June of 1876. I spent one year there, then came the Saigo rebellion. My house was burnt up, my mother + the rest of the family were all broken in spirit and were willing that I should go to Kyoto to the school of ? there—this was in the fall of 1877. I spent two years there receiving a rudimental theological education. In June 1879 I was graduated and went to Imabari a town of 7000 inhabitants in the Is. of Shikoku. Here let me say there were about 25 young men who came to the Doshisha School in Kyoto from capt Janes' school and I graduated in a class of 14, all of them my schoolmates in Kumamoto. In three months I gathered a little band of xtians and wee were organized into a church. The members were 7 in number all male, all poor, all uneducated. But in 2 years we had 77 members were worshiping in a newly built church with the seating capacity for 500, costing 1500 dollars 4/5 of which was raised by the people themselves. In 7 years we numbered 370, the largest church in Japan at that time.
In Jan 1886 I received a call from tokyo to take charge of the new enterprize just being started there. I brought the matter to the consieration of the Church. They said we have been praying for the conversion of Japan and there is this opportunity in Tokyo, we must be true to our prayers. They unanimously voted that they would send me and I was consecrated to the work in Tokyo by their tears and sacrifice. But for a year i had to stay in Kyoto, part of the time in teaching in the theological school there, but a larger part of the time in having charge of the native home missionary society's book, through which ABCFM does all its evangelistic work. Then the way was finally opened for me to go to Tokyo and in 1887, in June, I came to Tokyo. The work I took charge of was already carried on by my friend for a year and it had 20 members. Now about two years hence it has about 70 members. It is a work among the college yough men, though we have other classes of people. In the quarter where I have been working there are half a dozen large colleges, with the Imperial university at their head and it is estimated that there are no less than 20000 young men in various school above the primary grades, within the radius of a mile + a half. The university + its collegiate department have together 2000 young men. Now there are I suppose only about 250 xtians out of 20000 young men and in the midst of this throng mine is perhaps the only church which is trying to meet the demand in this direction.
p 5. missing
III. Heisiro Yokoi was the name of my father. He was a scholar by profession but disdained the work of a scholar in the prevalent conception of the time, which was to write essays + poems and expound the writings of the Ancients. He ssaid the real taxk of a scholar was to understand the course of human events, read men + human society, through if need be the medium of books. He taught that "the aim of knowledge + wisdom was to choos the good." "that there was divine wisdom in man which wells up like springs and if we cast away all artificialness and conform to nature and the reality, our vision will bhe expanded so as to take in the past, the present + the future. + by our knoledge of the past help the present + by our foresight prepare for the coming time." He was born in 1808, lived a bachelor life till about 40, devoted himself to study and teaching, was hated+ persecuted by the reigning party of scholars + politicians. he had no opportunity of exercising his ability until the coming of Comm. Perry. Then he rose equal to the opportunity. Two or three years after the Comm. made his first appearance in the Bay of Uraga, he openly espoused the cause of foreign intercourse, not he said because it was unavoidable but because it was in accordance with the course of nature. He said foreign intercourse will lunch? the people, will help to strengthen the nation. In this he went far aahead of most of the leading men of the time. He thought the people of the West were men like ourselves and nothing need be feared if we acted in a true and reasonable way. He was looked upon as the chief advocate of foreign intercourse and was consequentlyu hated and persectuted. In regard to his position politically, he neither thought that Tookugawa dinasty must be kept up at all hazard nor that the Mikado must be restored to power. These things were in his eye secondary and a means to the end eq? of good of the people. He taught that King was King not because of his connection with the royal house, but because of his supposed virtue + wisdom. And he only is a true King who conforms to the thought of Heaven. Men said he was a democrat and meditated revolution. But he was reverential to the Mikado and nothging was further from his thought than this imputation. In 1858 or thereabout, Matsudaira Shungaku the Daimio of Yechizen invited him to becomed his teacher and counselor. So he went there. He went back + forth, for 5 or six years + at one time when Shungaku was made a Premier to the Shogun, my father became his sole adviser + resided in Yedo. This was before the resotration. He suggested several reforms all tending to pacify the discontent of the people, + to secure liberty of speech. Yet the government was filled with men who could see nothing and Shungaku gave up his post in disgust. then my father came home + spent 5 years of quite life, seeing people who came to see him, corresponding extensively with the prominent men of the time. He lived at this time in a village near the city of Kumamoto where he was born. He had a little farm and took great interest in it. He encouraged the cultivation of tea + mulberry tree, with the view to the foreign export of tea + silk. when the Mikado was restored, my father was called to become a member of his Cabinet, and he was the most aged member being at the time sixty-one, and his relation to others I believe somewhat like that of Franklin to his colleagues. I think he first moved that the distruction of "Yeta" a class of people regarded to be below human beings, be abolished. But he was looked upon with suspician by all the conservative fanatics and finally they assacinated him through a band of ruffians. These men charge him with meditating an overthrow of monarchy + setting up of democracy and believing in xty. In regard to xty he read the Scriptures in the Chinese translation. Did not like some of the forms it took. But speakes in one place in his writing in high terms of the good results of xty and bewails the bad religious condition of the Japanese. He once told in plain terms in a letter to a friend that xty will come + win the hearts of the best young men in a few years yet to the end of his life never became a xtian. His works all in manuscrips never yet published, are 1. a collection of his Chinese poems, 2. How to meet the foreign nations 3. On the wealth 4. on the navy 5. On the army 6. On the method of edu acation, etc. These are to ge collected with his letters + published in a short time.
III. My mother was born in the same province. She was 22 years my father's junior. they had two children both living. One, besides myself, a wife of an able xtian minister iand is at the head of the girl's school in Kumamoto. My mother became a xtian after resisting xty for 5 years and is now living with me, a sweet and earnest xtian lady, doing all she can to lead others to xt.
Ise and Numagawa were sons of my father's eleder borther. He dying when these boys were very young, my father became his heair. Ise + Numagawa were the assumed names, because at the time they went abraod, it was prohibited by the government and they did not like to compromise their luck. But when my father died according to the laws of Japan, Ise succeeded him and the paper was passed to him in his assumed name and ever since the family name got changed. They both died and I succeeded to my cousin ise. these my cousins both spoke of xty in very high terms though they did not profess xty, and these things were of much help in favorably disposing my mind toward xty.
(over)
Rev. Dr. Griffis,
My dear sir. I wish to thank you very much for your kind interest. It is a great encouragement and I have no doubt now that i will succeed. I wrote the account of my father etc. as you directed me. Please make what use you think best. It is not Japanese fashion you know to speak much of oneself. But I have been told since coming that i must speak of myself that that would be better. so I got to speaking of myself. Anything and everything that will tend to further my object which I believe firmly is that of Christ. I took cold + have not been able to go out on Satuday + yesterday + today. I hope to-morrow I will be able to go to Boston + see Mr. Johnson and Mr. Hardy.
I will be very gld to write a letter to the Daimio and do anything I can for you.
Yours very truly,
J.T. Ise
Anbrundale? Monday afternoon (probably June 3, 1889)