A grave obsession

Just a few years before the Hayama Incident, another scandal arose involving a number of prominent Japanese anarchists, among them Kotoku Shusui and his partner Kanno Suga. This incident, however, had far more serious consequences. The High Treason Incident ultimately resulted in the execution by hanging of 12 people, and the imprisonment of a further 14. Osugi Sakae himself might have become a victim of this government witch-hunt had it not been for the fact that he was already serving a prison sentence for an unrelated offence.

Kotoku Shusui and Kanno Suga

The incident centered on an alleged plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji. The real facts of the matter are not entirely clear, and while some of the accused had tested a crude bomb, it's generally accepted that most of those convicted had no connection to any conspiracy and that at most five or six people were involved (a plea for a retrial was submitted after the Second World War but eventually rejected by the Supreme Court). The main aim of the authorities appears to have been to crush the Japanese anarchist movement once and for all.

One of those who became embroiled in the High Treason Incident was Uchiyama Gudo, a Soto Zen priest who wrote and published anti-government propaganda using a printing press hidden at the Rinsen-ji temple in Hakone of which he was in charge. As a result of the incident, Gudo was deprived of his status as a Zen priest and excommunicated. In 1992, however, a submission was presented to the then head priest at Rinsen-ji requesting that Gudo's name be formally reentered on the registry of priests, and the following year Gudo's status was posthumously restored. His grave at Rinsen-ji, which previously took the form of a simple stone with no mention of Gudo's name, was subsequently upgraded to include a full headstone.

The grave of Kotoku Shusui

Visiting the graves of Japanese anarchists is a minor obsession of mine. I've visited the grave of Osugi Sakae in Shizuoka twice (in 1994 and 1996), and in 2003 I traveled to the town of Nakamura on the southern tip of the island of Shikoku to visit the grave of Kotoku Shusui, who was executed along with Gudo in 1911. Rinsen-ji is not on the Tokaido, but it's not far from Hakone-Yumoto, where I'll probably be staying on day 21 of my walk. If I get up early the following morning, I should have time to visit Uchiyama Gudo's grave before continuing on to Oiso.