Remembering Aizu Misremembering Aizu? What

Remembering Aizu

Misremembering Aizu?

What was history like in an age before more objective forms of documentation? Today, we have wartime reporters who at least attempt some journalistic lack of bias. We have the advantage of the television or newspaper camera's unwavering eye. But before these innovations, individuals who were active participants in historical events wrote history. They were not the mere, observing witnesses and recorders of history of today, they were both major chroniclers and major or minor actors in events. In the text Remembering Aizu, the author Shiba Goro refers to a number of historical events where he was an involved participant, as a resident of the village of Aizu. Because of his personal and emotional involvement with these events, and because he often reports facts he could have no secondary and unbiased verification of, the reader must mistrust Shiba Goro as a witness to history. The informed reader must look at his words more as an encapsulation of the sentiment of the people of Aizu and their collective memory of the events of the Meji Restoration, rather than regard the author as a legitimate and accurate witness of the events.

The point at which Shiba Goro's interpretation of events surrounding the Meiji Restoration be flawed comes crystal-clear is when he admits his relatively young age. "For a child, it was most perplexing. My understanding was that the shogun had carefully considered the situation and, as a result, had returned his ruling powers to the emperor...Moreover to avoid a military confrontation," the Shogun "had repeatedly sent messages expressing his submission to the court. But his appeals had been ignored because the samurai from Satsuma and Choshu were plotting with nobles to use the young emperor to dominate the new government." (43) Thus, as a child, Goro is clearly remembering events that took place a long time ago. He did not keep a journal as such a young person. Moreover, he had also seen the subsequent events that took place after the Aizu debacle and the Meji Restoration, and this only naturally colored his view of history as well.

Even the factual information Goro presents may be problematic because of his after-the-fact bias. Despite his youth, he frequently describes battle scenes in great numerical and adjectival detail. Although this might be seen as giving certain veracity to his account, ultimately his attention to detail suggests that he is relying upon unsubstantiated sources after the battle, or worse, a kind of collective memory of the survivors of the tragedy. "The decree [from Katamori for the people of Aizu to unite] was received by one and all with 'gnashing of teeth and clenching fists." (42) Surely not 'all' of Aizu reacted as one unit; a reflective reader might wish to say. "The fighting force was organized into four battalions, each named after a god traditionally believed to guard one of the four compass directions," (45) This sounds less like what a child would remember, then of how the tales of battle were traditionally told and remembered.