Sawa Shigekichi

2024/02/07

Image: Collection of Urakawa Town Local Museum

"I am pleased to hear that you are continuing your studies as usual and that your business is gradually progressing. It is easy to speak of independence in life, but difficult in practice. Your twenty years of long patience is like a single day. I have nothing but admiration for you."

This is a passage from a letter by Yukichi Fukuzawa dated January 25, 1896. It was addressed to Sawa Shigekichi. Sawa was the local leader of a group that developed the former Ogifushi Village, located about 50 kilometers from Cape Erimo in Hokkaido. Fukuzawa wrote that while it is easy to talk about "independence in life," he had nothing but admiration for the many years of effort spent building a new town and starting industries in the wilderness of Hokkaido. Among Fukuzawa's many letters, it is rare to find a message of appreciation so filled with deep emotion.

Sawa Shigekichi (formerly Katsuya) was born in 1853 as the eldest son of Sawa Jinzaemon, a samurai of the Sanda Domain in Settsu. It is said that he went to Tokyo around 1869 to study at Keio University, but returned home before completing his studies for the sake of his mother, Sai. According to his mother's tombstone, his father died in 1865, and it is thought that he lived a difficult life alone with his mother. While no record of his enrollment at Keio University remains, there are cases of students who lived and studied at Fukuzawa's residence without formal records, and Sawa may have been one such case.

The last lord of the Sanda Domain, where Sawa was from, was Kuki Takayoshi, known as an enlightened figure. The relationship between Fukuzawa and the Sanda Domain was very deep, beginning when Fukuzawa met Kawamoto Komin, also from the domain, at the Bansho Shirabesho (Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books) at the end of the Edo period. Komin was 25 years older than Fukuzawa and was a scholar with deep knowledge of the natural sciences; it is thought that Komin introduced Takayoshi to Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa was impressed by Takayoshi's proactive personality and willingness to take on new challenges, and the two developed a close friendship. In "Fukuon Jiden" (The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa), there is an anecdote about how they were "long-time acquaintances, and he once told me to come visit Sanda," leading to an actual visit.

The Kuki family was progressive even before the Meiji Restoration, introducing Western-style military training and opening English schools. After the Restoration, they were among the first to adopt Western clothing and food and to promote Western learning. They also showed a deep understanding of Christianity from an early stage.

Shirasu Taizo, who supported Takayoshi as a high-ranking official (daisanji) of the domain at the end of the Edo period, served as Takayoshi's treasurer. His grandson was Shirasu Jiro, who played a key role in restoring Japan's independence after World War II. With advice from Fukuzawa, Taizo worked hard to ensure that the lord's assets were soundly maintained and expanded, and he struggled to use them for projects that would benefit the public interest. These efforts included the establishment of the Shimasan Shokai trading company, the founding of Kobe Home (the predecessor of Kobe College), and involvement in urban development projects in Kobe. In a land registry map of the Sannomiya area in Kobe from the early Meiji era, Yukichi Fukuzawa's name appears alongside Shimasan Shokai and Kotera Taijiro (whose son, Kotera Kenkichi, served as Mayor of Kobe), who was also from Sanda. It is said that Fukuzawa also profited from land speculation in Kobe.

Returning to Sawa Shigekichi, after leaving the Juku, he studied cattle raising and condensed milk production under a scholar of Western medicine in Nara. Around 1874, he opened a cooperative dairy business in Kobe. During the same period, in 1875, the Settsu Sanda Church (initially the Settsu Third Christian Church; the first was in Kobe, the second in Osaka) was established in the Great Hall of the Sanda Jinya (Sanda Castle). Among the 16 people baptized in the first baptismal ceremony were the names of Sawa Shigekichi and his mother, Sai.

Sawa's business later stalled due to an outbreak of cattle plague, and he appears to have been in poverty. There is a letter from 1877 in which Fukuzawa wrote to Shirasu Taizo, mentioning Shigekichi's name as someone "I have known since he was a boy," expressing concern for his situation and asking for help in finding him a job. It is unclear if this was related, but from that same year until 1879, he reportedly taught mathematics and Chinese classics at the aforementioned Kobe Home.

The turning point in his life was joining the Sekishinsha in April 1882. This was a Hokkaido development association formed by Christians, primarily former samurai of the Sanda Domain, which made its founding principles and alliance rules public in April 1880. It held the ideal of "poor people without capital" pooling small amounts of money to achieve a great undertaking. To this end, it took the form of a joint-stock company and received approval from the Kaitakushi (Hokkaido Development Commission) in August. Suzuki Kiyoshi, a former Sanda samurai who was the first to manufacture canned beef in Japan, became president. At the shareholders' meeting in January 1881, Kuki Takayoshi and Shirasu Taizo became committee members. Once the number of shares reached 600, the first group of over 50 immigrants was sent out in May. The company had the privilege of receiving free grants of reclaimed land until 1890. However, the plan to settle in Nishicha, Urakawa, via Hakodate was met with dark clouds from the start: they were stranded in Hakodate due to stormy weather and ran out of funds early on. When they finally arrived at the site on a chartered ship, the huts that were supposed to be finished were incomplete. Furthermore, a separate shipment carrying tools drifted toward the Kuril Islands. Immigrants began to desert, and the project fell into a state of collapse.

President Suzuki recognized the importance of local leadership and selected Sawa Shigekichi. In May 1882, Sawa, as the second head of the development department, settled in the Motourakawa basin of Ogifushi, Urakawa District, Sapporo Prefecture (now Ogifushi-cho, Urakawa Town) with a second group of 83 immigrants, including his mother Sai, his wife Tei, and his eldest son Ryo. The following year, Sawa became the vice president of Sekishinsha, and from then on, he dedicated his life to the development of this land and the lives of the immigrants.

However, hardships continued. In the spring of 1883, blizzards damaged houses, and in the summer, a massive locust outbreak devoured crops. In the autumn, there were rainstorms, and the following year, 1884, the Matsukata Deflation caused agricultural and land prices to plummet. Business capital decreased due to the cancellation of shares, and a major crop failure added to the difficulties. The "History of Urakawa Town" records that this "indescribable" poverty was a "crisis of life and death."

Even in such circumstances, Sawa sought a Puritan ideal of living based on faith. Therefore, alongside land reclamation, he focused on community building and the spread of learning to emphasize the independence of the immigrants, providing opportunities to deepen friendships by lecturing on farming, economics, ethics, and morality on Sundays. In 1884, he established the private Sekishin School using donations as a combined school and meeting hall. It was a grass hut of only about 40 square meters, and Sawa himself handled the instruction. This was the only educational facility until the Ogifushi branch of Urakawa Elementary School was established in 1891. In 1886, the Motourakawa Church (now the Urakawa Church of the United Church of Christ in Japan) was established, becoming a spiritual support for the settlers.

The initial poverty of the Sekishinsha reached the Sapporo Prefectural Office, and in 1885, a special relief fund of 860 yen was paid to the company. President Suzuki distributed half of that amount to the 43 immigrant shareholders, which is said to have stopped the desertion of immigrants and become the driving force for recovery. At that time, 21 people offered to use their distributed funds as a foundation and use the interest for moral education, leading to the establishment of the Tokuyokai (Moral Education Society). In the existing bylaws, Sawa Shigekichi's signature and seal appear at the top of the list of signatories.

Shigekichi noticed that the climate of the area was suitable for grazing horses, and in 1886, he selected grazing land and began a livestock business. He worked on improving horse breeds and producing dairy products. In the same year, he opened a store; in 1888, he began sericulture; in 1893, fruit gardening; and in 1894, he began brewing soy sauce from locally produced soybeans and wheat, successfully launching a diversification of businesses one after another. While many Hokkaido development projects of that time repeatedly failed, the case of Ogifushi is evaluated as a model.

The "History of Urakawa Town" records Shigekichi's achievements as follows:

When Shigekichi faced the reality that the company's immigrants had left their familiar hometowns, said goodbye to relatives and friends, and come to the cold northern land with a different climate, living in thatched huts in the middle of a vast, barren wilderness and tasting the hardships of development with single-minded devotion, he felt a deep sense of unbearable human emotion. However, because he always comforted and encouraged the immigrant families with an appropriate balance of kindness and strictness, the immigrants did not dwell on their miserable circumstances, but hid their sorrow and overflowed with the power of determination. ... He was constantly active, rushing about without a day of rest for all kinds of public works for the village, such as the creation of village property, the completion of schools, hospitals, post offices, and other necessary facilities, the cutting of roads, flood control work on rivers, and the construction of bridges. He was truly an unparalleled benefactor of the development of Ogifushi Village, and it is no exaggeration to say that the Ogifushi Village of today is the crystallization of Shigekichi's efforts and contributions.

The author visited Ogifushi in the late autumn of 2009. That year, as part of the Keio University 150th Anniversary Project, a traveling Yukichi Fukuzawa exhibition was held at three locations across the country. Instead of the well-known businessmen among Fukuzawa's disciples, the exhibition featured many minor disciples under the title "Another Fukuzawa Mountain Range." At that time, materials on Sawa Shigekichi were borrowed from his descendants. I visited to return them.

Sawa's name is still remembered in that land as a benefactor of the Ogifushi development. In front of the Ogifushi Branch of the Urakawa Town Hall, a bust of Sawa (created by Shin Hongo) is installed alongside Suzuki Kiyoshi, the former Sanda samurai who served as president of Sekishinsha, and Nishi Tadayoshi, from Aizu, who realized the establishment of a stud farm and solidified the foundation of the area as a horse-breeding region.

Surprisingly, Sekishin Co., Ltd. still exists today at 1 Ogifushi-cho, Urakawa Town, as a store selling daily necessities and sake (it was destroyed by fire in 2018 but has since been rebuilt). It was impressive that his relatives still affectionately call him "Grandpa Shigekichi." At that time, I asked to be taken to Sawa Shigekichi's grave in the town-run Mizuho Communal Cemetery.

The epitaph written by Nishi Tadayoshi had faded over years of wind and snow and was almost impossible to read, but it seemed to briefly record Shigekichi's biography and achievements in classical Chinese. Tracing it with my finger, I followed from the beginning: "His name was Shigekichi, the eldest son of Sawa Jinzaemon, a samurai of the Sanda Domain in Settsu..." At the end, there was an inscription summarizing his achievements in four-character phrases. Among phrases like "Devoting oneself to the northern sea" and "Ten years as a single day," there were the four characters for "independence and self-respect." The awareness that he had studied under Fukuzawa certainly pulsed throughout the life of Sawa Shigekichi, who settled in the cold, windswept northern land and led his comrades. I can still never forget the shivering shock I felt when I noticed these four characters carved on a small tombstone in a cemetery visited by few.

Sawa Shigekichi ended his life on September 15, 1909, at the age of 56.